CP Capacity revisited

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While this might have the sound of a love thread, I assure you that it's not. This has to do with a debate that came with a recent trip report, namely the part about running rides at maximum capacity in any conditions.

Went to Cedar Point for a few hours last night and hit Raptor since it was the only ride I didn't get to on opening day. The wait was ten minutes (the day's school groups were all leaving at this point). They were running three trains. That wasn't all though... we watched train after train roll in to the station without stopping. That's right, not even a momentary stack.

The crew was visibly working their butts off, rushing to check restraints as quickly as possible. You could tell they had purpose (and no doubt had something to do with beating Magnum for capacity). I was with Old Timer Tim at the time... we had to congratulate them for running the ride the way it was meant to be run.

Sure, they could have run two trains and made us wait longer, but they didn't.

So what's the argument again for running your rides at low capacity on purpose? Saving wear and tear? Whatever... I want to get as much as I can of what I pay for and glad to see I get it at this park.

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Jeff - Webmaster/Admin - CoasterBuzz.com, Sillynonsense.com
"As far as I can tell it doesn't matter who you are. If you can believe, there's something worth fighting for..." - Garbage, "Parade"

Even as an ex-Magnum crew member, I'll admit that I think the Raptor crew was most impressive on my recent visit to CP. I did witness one of their 20 minutes of hell on Wednesday afternoon though when they had somone undo their seatbelt, so they had to stop the train on the lift and then that was promptly followed up by a puker. They did get that cleaned up much much faster than the MF crew did though the day before. The Magnum crew also looked much more comfortable with the new signaling system than they did on opening day and were dispatching trains right on time on Tuesday. Wednesday they only ran two (along with Gemini and Iron Dragon). It was ARC day which means many many special accesses, so this was to avoid numerous set ups. They ran three all day Tuesday leading to many walkons or one train waits for me! :)

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-Matt
2001 Magnum Crew

As much as I hear people complain about Cedar Point, you really have to credit those who work there as ride operators - I haven't seen more efficient people at ANY other park. And, during my visit in mid-May, the ops were visibly excited about their new jobs and really tried to pump up the crowd, which was a BIG bonus (for instance....."OKAY MAGNUM RIDERS....HOW WAS THAT RIDE!!!!!!!!!!!!). I can just hear them at the end of September ("welcome back how was the ride...[brief pause]...oncoming magnum riders......") Funny.

Cedar Point teaches their workers to be models of efficiency. And I think that really helps on crowded weekends in July and August when the capacity issue becomes slightly more important.

CP was running at max capacity when I was there last Tuesday (5/21), and it even wasn't that busy. I kind of had to laugh that even Corkscrew was running 3 trains, and I don't think a single completely full train went out all day.

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I get the feeling there's a conspiracy over at King's Island to remove anything that has "K" or "C" in its initials.

Every time I have ever went the Raptor crew was the best overall they pump you up and they are really fast at loading the trains. That is one of the reasons I think Cedar Point wins park of the year all the time.

Jeff said:

So what's the argument again for running your rides at low capacity on purpose? Saving wear and tear? Whatever... I want to get as much as I can of what I pay for and glad to see I get it at this park.

I gotta say that parks doing THIS will always get props from me....I hate seeing other parks, FL ones included stop a ride during the evening to REMOVE trains.....what, was the wait-time not long enough.....

Run your park like this, and folks leave happy....(even a longer wait wouldn't bother me if they're WORKING to make the wait shorter)....and I don't think I'm alone in saying I take more "merchandise" with me when exiting the park....

bill, saying the "big new ride" is only going to be the big new ride for 2-3 years anyway, so what the heck are they *saving* on wear-and-tear for, anyhow...or as Jeff said in another thread, replacing wheels, etc. is *just the cost of doing business*....maybe we should say the cost of doing it the RIGHT way.....hmmmm. Max capacity = Max satisfaction, at least at a "thrill park". If what you have is a quaint relaxed-atmosphere park, then another set of rules may apply.....

Thank you for reiterating my point from 5-11, Jeff. The wear and tear arguement was thin, almost anorexic. I realize that on Monday (Memorial Day) the crowds will be larger because the weather will be much improved, but I would rather visit a park that is running at full capacity. I'll place wagers on TRs Monday, that exemplify this same point. In three weeks, when I return to SFWoA, it will be June and all will be forgotten........hopefully.

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There's nothing like a woodie...

Raptor is my favorite coaster at CP now, so I hope this is how it is when I go so I can get as many rides as possible on it. All 4-5 times I've ridden Raptor before, the wait was an hour to an hour and a half when every other B&M invert I've been on(Montu, Alpie, Fire and Ice Dragons) besides Batman have been a walk-on to 10 minutes every time. I don't know why BGT takes time out to change the number of trains on Montu and Kumba even though the waits are really small.

As long as all the trains 'possible' are running and the crew is trying their hardest, that's all I need. I would rather be steadily and quickly moving through a 2 hour line than stopping every few seconds and waiting 5-10 minutes before the line moves again in a one hour line. Thankfully, most of my favorite parks have an excellent capacity... or are they my favorites because of that excellent capacity?! :)

I don't think it's "wear and tear" so much as parks just don't want to spend the money when they don't have to. Are parks are not the same, it's not like SFA can say, " screw those upper-management idiots, I'm running three trains no matter how much they need to save money". It all starts at the top.

Then consider the fact that the other CF parks I have been to do not follow Cedar Point's capacity lead(Knott's running one train on Ghostrider) and it makes me go hymmmmm...

*** This post was edited by OutKast on 5/25/2002. ***

Absolutely, Jeff! We took the students all day yesterday and all the rides were doing the same thing with the capacity issue. Cedar Pt always amazes me with their great capacity!

-Mikey

You know, if I lived in or near Virginia, BGW would easily be my favorite park, no contest. However, the Alpengeist crews of the last few years have been very nearly useless, to the point that there is no benefit to having three trains on the track at all. This is in stark contrast to the Apollo crews who operated much like the Raptor crew.

Yes, the Raptor crew has been working hard! I work at Raptor Hot Shots (The place where you buy your pictures when you get off) for those of you that don't know. When the cameras take the pictures they are timed to appear on the monitors after a certain amount of time. That time is usually ends up being when the guests come down the exit ramp. The crew has been working so good lately that many times the guests get to the booth before they appear on the monitors.

I'll give the crew two big thumbs up!

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Force Laps: 428
Wicked Twists: 56
VertiGo Shots: 32

OutKast said:

Then consider the fact that the other CF parks I have been to do not follow Cedar Point's capacity lead(Knott's running one train on Ghostrider) and it makes me go hymmmmm...

The only other Cedar Fair park I've been to is Dorney and they seem to runn at full capacity even when the park is ridiculously empty. Mother's Day saw Talon sending trains with an average of 3 to 10 riders per train and they ran two trains all day. They could've easily cut back to one train and still had walk-ons. Same thing on Steel Force. Mostly empty trains running all of Mother's Day but they continued to run two trains.

I wasn't complaining! :)

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www.coasterimage.com

our only visit to Dorney thus far was the evening before last year's SRM...sadly, single-training on Steel Force meant only one ride. On a positive note, they were double-training on ThunderHawk....my feeling is, we won....

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if you aren't outraged, perhaps you haven't been paying attention...

LOL, I was at Cedar Point yesterday and the Mantis crew was like "We are going to take you up 141 and down 137, that's right, we are taller than Raptor."

And then Raptor's was like "We are going to take you up [insert height here] and drop you [" "], yeah, we may not as tall as Mantis but we have more loops!"

And it was so funny at Power Tower, on the red side, one of the ops was going "5, 4, 3- (launch)"

And I noticed one of Mantis's trains (Train #1) was under the transfer track, wrapped in blue plastic...

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Why do they report power outages on TV?

S00perGIR said:

LOL, I was at Cedar Point yesterday and the Mantis crew was like "We are going to take you up 141 and down 137, that's right, we are taller than Raptor."
And then Raptor's was like "We are going to take you up [insert height here] and drop you [" "], yeah, we may not as tall as Mantis but we have more loops!"

Haha, I remember the ride bashing at CP! It's kind of fun. But eventually all the crews get yelled at and it stops - probably about mid-June or so! :) It's the same good stuff every year!

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-Matt
2001 Magnum Crew

You're telling me about Raptor's efficiency! Yesterday I was amazed at how fast they were sending trains. Literally, it took under 15 seconds for people to get in the trains, restraints down, locked, and checked and we were off. It was very impressive. I've never seen any crew work that fast.

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Snoopy Rocks! On Ice opens on June 22nd

Think they'll let me drive the Zamboni machine?

CP is DEFINATELY one of the most effecient and best capacity parks out there! They know how to keep the lines moving and you always see two or three trains running on everything whenever you go, no matter how empty it is :-D. SFGAM has also been doing better with ride capacity recently from what I understand.

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X Looks Awesome! Oh Yea!!

Wish we had some lessons here in California, Vortex at Great America is usually empty and they still have these ten minutes dispatches for the world's shortest stand up.

Invertigo wins for being the most poorly maintained piece of junk onthe planet, 40-60 minute break downs everyday and crews that are too busy keepin' people off the cage while passengers wait miserable in those seats for a ride. The last 12 times I went to ride Invertigo, it was either closed for maitainance, broken down, broke down after I wiated 30 minutes in line, stuck on the lift, or they couldn't dispatch the train. Don't even get me started on Stealth, they don't even know how to work that ride, world's worst station in 5 categories:

-Design

-Que under hot California sun with no covering, sccenery, just a very long out and back que over a hot slab of concrete, not even a tree in sight.

-Lines feel like jail cell

-Dispatch crew, even with 8-10 crew members in that station house, 2-3 train stacking is always occuring and average dispatch is like 30 minutes becuase they can't get the trains to go down

-brake system, if the ride is always stacking, please have a better plan than holding riders on there back with the sun right in their faces and restraints prevent movement of hands. You'll have a 10 minute ride, 90 seconds riding and 8.5 minutes on the block brake.

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Why does Marine World never have all the coasters operating? They have good dispatches, but the one train operations on every ride is just rediculous this season. With the 2-3 hour waits you see for Kong, you'd think that SLC was Magnum. Cedar Fair, please come to California.

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Lake Compounce-So Fresh and So Clean Clean

Cedar Fair already is in California, it's called Knott's. If you mean Northern Cal, why would they? It's a horrible market for amusement parks, with all the limitations imposed.

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