Bigger Capacities on Flats- Does it Help?

I went to Kings Island last week, and they have these two rides in which one is a drop tower by Intamin, and one is the Huss Giant Frisbee. These rides I believe have 40 (drop tower), and 50 (Frisbee) people per load.

Yes, these rides did get a lot of people per ride, but the loading was extremely slow. The employees have all these people to deal with going on the ride at one time. For both of these rides, the employees also have to give out numbers because they are such big rides which takes time. For some reason, they check your seatbelt twice which I just don't get at all.

In comparision, you are off on the KMG Fireball just like that even though it only gets 24 people. For the 2nd Generation Drop Tower, it also doesn't take that long to send the ride because it has less people to check. I imagine that the Kings Island tower cost much more than the 2nd Generation Drop tower even though I don't know how much more.

Of course for the KMG Fireball, one is at a carnival, and one is at an amusement park. Was it worth the money for Kings Island to spend around 6-10 million for each of those rides compared to a smaller flat? I don't think it was.

I think these drop towers are a fad anyway. It seems that once you did it, you did it. *** Edited 6/17/2008 7:03:38 PM UTC by Spinout***

They have two drop towers? I havent been there, but having two seems kind of strange. Sorry I cant answer your question, but I think that they probably can do about the same capacity, and the larger ones maybe even do better depending on the ops.

Of course a lot of it has to do with park loading procedures. If you have to triple check every harness -- while muttering "Check" through gritted teeth -- it's gonna be a long process no matter how good the ops.

^^No, they only have one drop tower. I was saying that the 24 2nd generation drop tower seems so much faster than loading this one.

On a sidenote, I thought it was cool to see the roller coaster tycoon rides at this park (the roto drop tower, and the helicopters that go really slow).

^Ok, that makes more sense. Yeah when I went to SFOG and I saw they had the roto drop I was like I need to ride that.

I think the problem is Kings Island, not the ride design. Cedar Point loads their Giant Frisbee in about half the time. I've never had a long wait for it.

^ I think they changed Maxair's loading sequence this year also...I only got checked once instead of twice this season.

Even with a slow loading cycle, getting two rides worth of people loaded at once and going through one cycle instead of two should take less time. Even if the load procedure takes twice as long, they are saving time with just one load cycle.

By the same token, I don't understand why they have to have such short ride cycles at big parks. You waste so much of the waiting guests time constantly loading and unloading the ride. If the ride cycles are longer, there will be less cycles in a day and therefore less time for unloading and loading. And the guest gets a decent ride cycle after waiting for it as opposed to feeling like it's over before it begins.

You've forgotten about The Crypt...

It seems that KI is into high capacity rides, but don't understand that you have to have efficient operations to maintain that high capacity.

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Jeff said:
I think the problem is Kings Island, not the ride design. Cedar Point loads their Giant Frisbee in about half the time. I've never had a long wait for it.

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This is because maXair assigns passengers into two mini-queues, while Delirium's is scattered, and not so organized. You'd think by now that the two parks are related, that the better idea would be spread to KI from CP....

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Acoustic Viscosity said:By the same token, I don't understand why they have to have such short ride cycles at big parks. You waste so much of the waiting guests time constantly loading and unloading the ride. If the ride cycles are longer, there will be less cycles in a day and therefore less time for unloading and loading. And the guest gets a decent ride cycle after waiting for it as opposed to feeling like it's over before it begins.

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Not everyone is like you and me, Matt.

Groundskeeper Willie says: "Och, there's puke EVERYWHERE".... ;)

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Spinout said:

Of course for the KMG Fireball, one is at a carnival, and one is at an amusement park. Was it worth the money for Kings Island to spend around 6-10 million for each of those rides compared to a smaller flat? I don't think it was.

I think these drop towers are a fad anyway. It seems that once you did it, you did it. *** Edited 6/17/2008 7:03:38 PM UTC by Spinout***

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Let's see here, where do I start? KMG doesn't make a ride called a Fireball. It's called the Afterburner. The Fireball is a theming option, like Reithoffer's Wild Claw. But that's minor nitpicking as you may have only seen it as a Fireball.

I do agree that the loading time on Drop Tower can be excruciating. While I'll only have had to wait in the line once (at Beastbuzz there was no line), I thought things could been done better. When Paramount ordered another version for King's Dominion they wisely chose to go without the spinning feature. I think that may slow down the ascent on the King's Island version.

I totally disagree that drop towers are in any, way, shape or form a fad. I still love getting on Drop Tower at KD, as the height is ridiculous, and when the ground is coming up at me at increasing speeds, it still gets me every time.

They also reached the fairground circuit several years ago with Chance's Slingshot, and ARM's Super Shot.

^Yeah, I know that KMG's manufacturing name isn't Fireball, but here's the confusion so I just say Fireball. Fabbri model was Space Jam. I think they only made one, and it's in another country now. They called the ride Afterburner as it's name.

Now, to make things worse there is yet another ride model called Fireball which is Larson's, and it's similar to a Ring of Fire, but it's just a little bit different.

For the KMG ride, I guess I like to call it more Fireball because I feel that there are more US KMG Afterburners called Fireball than any other name. One company has one, and they call it Feurerball which is so close to Fireball, but there are a lot of Fireball's compared to other names like The Claw, and Cyclops.

Fabbri also has a nice model of the drop tower which is probably my favorite of the two I've ridden (ARM, and Fabbri) which model is Jungle Drop, but they call it Mega Drop at the Ohio State Fair.