Busch Gardens Tampa announces Cobra's Curse roller coaster

Does Disney get some special exception to regulations or something? I have no idea how they do it, but they seem to be able to jam people through a station in a hurry without making it feel like a hurry. Maybe they just have a billion staff and they design their rides with capacity as a priority? (Space Mountain DL seemed to have a separate spur of track for loading handicapped guests so the regular trains could continue to load and unload at a blistering pace without stopping).

At Thorpe Park - for a few rides - they had a coat check area built directly into the queue just before entering the ride station. You would drop off your bags/coats/etc in a room at the base of the ride station and get a number tag/wrist band thing, go on the ride, and at the bottom of the exit ramp you would hit the opposing side and trade in the tag for your stuff. It was a great system and I imagine it helps with loading times.

I wonder how much money goes into staffing for a system like that...

I can't remember all of the rides that had the system in place, but I remember it being on Swarm and X for sure. Haven't found any good pics of it online to illustrate

Kingda Ka had a similar system during its opening season. I don't think it was free though. Actually, now that I think about it, they may have just routed the queue through a giant bank of lockers.

ApolloAndy said:

Does Disney get some special exception to regulations or something?

I just think they do the math when it comes to risk and loose objects. I mean, they can run a Vekoma roller skater with two trains and not stack it. It's the craziest thing I've ever seen.

It's a slow, slow day at work so I've been poking around the Internet.

I've come across several reports, most recently an April 2015 article at InsuranceJournal.com and a July 2013 report on WESH2.

In Florida, apparently, any amusement park that has over 1,000 employees, among other qualifications, is exempt from state inspection and allowed to have their own full-time, on-staff inspectors. The parks do submit quarterly injury reports to the state. The qualifications look to have been written to apply only to Disney, Universal and SeaWorld without naming the companies outright.

So they do indeed get a special exception to regulation.

Disney, Universal and SeaWorld Parks all report their injuries quarterly. Regardless, that has nothing to do with how they decide to run their rides. Operating on sheer data, there's nothing to suggest that the way Disney does things is less safe.

I wasn't suggesting otherwise, I just thought it was interesting.

The baggage claim areas at Thorpe are on four rides, I think. The ones you mentioned and also on Stealth & SAW. There is quite a commitment associated with those, there are often two people on those. Basic wage will be around 7 GBP per hour, per person + on costs. With wage and on costs that’d be around 10 GBP ($15) per hour, per person.

On that basis, a two person baggage claim unit would cost $50,400 for to staff for the season (I am sure those people have other duties though).

Just the mention of X at Thorpe brings back memories of "Really? What just happened?"

If someone could explain that ride to me, without undue spoilers, that'd be awesome. Felt like a weird mix of Bowie's Space Oddity with a smattering of the Apollo 13 mission and Disney's Space Mountain mixed in....

A baggage claim area for roller coasters sounds litigious. I don't know if I could just hand my belongings such as my iPod, wallet, dumb phone, and open water bottle to a stranger, even if they were employed by the park.

LostKause said:

About Busch Gardens and capacity on new rides, The Williamsburg park said in an interview that Tempesto will get about 600 riders per hour. For a park as popular as Busch Gardens, that's insane.

At least Sea World is going with a B&M next year.

If I didn't already know otherwise, I would have thought the Mack was going to Orlando and the B&M to Tampa.

Also a bit surprised at the addition of a second launcher (this one being a low-capacity clone built right on top of Apollo's Chariot) at Busch Williamsburg only 3 years after their first launcher.

600 pph on Tempesto would be 50 trains an hour. The ride cycle (at SFDK) is just about a minute. That leaves a whopping 12 seconds per train to unload, load, check and dispatch.

Tempesto has 18-passenger trains, not 12 like the one at SFDK. Assuming that you can get out a train every two minutes, that's still only 30 trains an hour and 540 pph. The point is still valid though - you'll want to ride it first thing in the morning or hope that you get lucky and you're there on a day with low crowds.

I tend to believe lines are self-regulating.

Doesn't matter if the capacity is 500pph or 1500pph. People will only stand in line up to a certain wait time. Under normal circumstances it's not like a low capacity coaster is going to have a four hour wait while other coasters are under 30 minutes.

There's a level of psychology involved.

Side note, the coaster looks to have Kumba's colors? This should be a nice addition to a park with a great lineup of coasters (although it would be so much better with Gwazi running well!)

I agree, Gonch. To add to that, there will be a lot of disappointed park guests who will not get to ride Tempesto, and Cobra's Curse in the near future, because "the line was too long."

I hear a lot on this site "More capacity is always good capacity" but I just don't think that's true. Increasing capacity by a little while increasing demand by a lot will result in disappointed guests and a lower quality guest experience.

And I think maybe in equilibrium, this idea of "low capacity rides will have the same lines as high capacity rides" would play out but definitely not when a coaster first opens or for the first year or so thereafter. The demand (i.e. how long people are willing to wait) for "the new bad-ass ride I saw on TV" is significantly higher than it is for any other ride in the park at any other time. I have definitely seen lines of S:UF (SFDK) that were over an hour while V2 was 20 minutes and Medusa was a walk on.

ApolloAndy said:

And I think maybe in equilibrium, this idea of "low capacity rides will have the same lines as high capacity rides" would play out but definitely not when a coaster first opens or for the first year or so thereafter. The demand (i.e. how long people are willing to wait) for "the new bad-ass ride I saw on TV" is significantly higher than it is for any other ride in the park at any other time

Absolutely. That's why I tried to qualify my statement with "Under normal circumstances"

The opening of a new ride probably doesn't qualify as normal circumstances. However, even the worst offenders usually settle down after the first year.

In terms of the argument for capacity, it's a non-issue beyond the opening excitement.

I have definitely seen lines of S:UF (SFDK) that were over an hour while V2 was 20 minutes and Medusa was a walk on.

Which is probably the around the limit of what people are willing to wait given park conditions on that day.

The point is that a coaster that moves 500pph doesn't automatically have a line three times as long as one that moves 1500pph because of the capacity ratio. There are such a plethora of factors that go into determining the length of wait for any given attraction at a park that it's silly. What's funny is that I'd be bold enough to suggest that capacity is barely one. (beyond determining how quickly the line reaches it's maximum point) That is to say, the lower capacity lines will become long much earlier in the day than higher capacity lines.

or IF a ride reaches its maximum point at all during the day. I bet most days Alpie can stay below 20 minutes while Tempesto is an hour, solely because of the people eating capacity of B&M's. I bet this will hold true long after demand for Tempesto has reached equilibrium (see Fahrenheit vs. Storm Runner or La Vibora vs. Titan).

And on busy days, the reason the lines for Alpie and Tempesto are approx. the same length is because a whole lot of upset people are getting out of line (or not entering the line) for Tempesto because of its length.

Number of people who want to ride - number of people who get to ride = number of upset guests
number of people who get to ride = capacity * operating hours

Yes. Exactly.