Explain Qbot at SFNE

Please?

Someone?

I'm trying to set my schedule in stone today, and I need a better understanding of how it works.

Thanks.

Here's the bigger issue: do parks only sell a certain number of Qbots per day? If so then you may be out of luck if you start your day at Compounce.

I know Jimvid has used Qbot at SFNE...have you emailed him?

Nope.

Will try.

You will pay money. They give you a pager bot. You scan it at a certain ride and it waits in line for you. So in about an hour it pages you an tells you to come back to the ride. You rescan it and enter the Q bot line. Which is a line that goes round the regular line then meets up with it. I don't believe SFNE has a Gold Q bot just the regular. You can only reserve 1 wait time per ride. You must clear the first ride before the second ride wait time will happen. Confused? Good me too have a fun trip!

SFNE does have gold.

Some rides allow you to use Qbot, you scan your pager at the exit of the rides (only one at a time), and it tells you to come back at that time. With the regular Qbot, they say that if the line is an hour, the pager reflects that and tells you to come back in an hour. That's not always the case though, there have been plenty of times that SROS had an hr plus wait, and I was told to come back in 20 minutes.

The gold works the same way, but instead - it cuts down your wait time by 75%. So, if you go on a weekend, and the place is mobbed with people, you'll wait about 15 mins for each ride rather then over 2 hours.

I always use it when I hit SFNE, which is about 5 times per season. I just used the gold 2 weeks ago.

^What he said. :)

You scan it at the Qbot sign at the front entrance and it "stands" in line for you. It will give you a window of time to come back and get into a special entrance. Once your time is near it will beep you to remind you. Sometimes the Qbot wait can be long, though. It just depends on crowds. It will also beep you to tell you whether a ride is down or not.

I don't know about SFNE's but at Great Adventure they sold out of them in a few hours. Di and I got one as soon as we got into the park. It worked out well for us. I liked it. We used the regular Q-bot though.

I would get a Qbot as early as you can. I think it's worth the money. I don't know what SFNE's crowds are like though, so Jimvid or someone who goes to the park quite a bit would be able to tell ya.

Ironically there was one point at Great Adventure where the Qbot line was longer than some of the coaster's lines!

When do you plan on visiting New England, Rob?

-Tina

*** Edited 6/26/2006 6:15:44 PM UTC by coasterqueenTRN***

At SFNE its a pretty good deal for Superman. Scan the Q-bot and you cut in front of everyone who is waiting over an hour to ride it, straight to the train. The problem is that the Q-bot is the main reason why everyone's wait is over an hour. Its an unfortunate ethical choice made available to the public by Six Flags to scam people for more money.

QBot isn't the reason why the lines are so long.

If the wait for Superman is an hr, and the wait for Qbot is an hr.. how does that make the line longer? It doesn't make a difference if I'm physically standing in line, or virtually. It's the same wait. By paying for a regular Qbot - your simply paying to wait the same amount of time, but your waiting outside the queue, rather then in it.

^ Wanna finish that thought, j ? ;)

(Sorry RGW my post got chopped and I just decided to start from scratch, hope this works :))

I'm a Virtual Queue (VQ) supporter, who will actually be @ SFNE this weekend with Q-bot in tow. But Even I can see that many of these VQs make lines longer.

Now I dont buy the arguement that in a park like GAdv which averages about 18,000 peeps/day that they are selling enough Q-bots to significantly affect lines throught the park, especially when you consider that the resevations are spread over 13 different rides. (It would be fun to know how many people on average, actually use Q-bot).

Additionally, I dont think that the "reserved row" which results in empty seats is a significant factor either. My gut feeling is if there are that few q-botters over the course of the day so that empty seats are going out all the time, then I doubt the park is that busy anyway..but I dgress. In any case, trains go out with empty seat all the time anyway, so I dont see this a a big deal either.

However, the sheer ineptitude by which they merge the physical and virtual queues does indeed result in lost time. The two queues should, be merged well in advance of the boarding spot (a la Disney). Having VQers come up the exit slows the whole boarding/dismebarking process on *every* cycle which as you well know *does* decrease throughput and makes lines longer.

However, I think that if the lines were merged ahead of time, there would be virtually zero impact on average guest waits (pun intended). There would be a similar (actual) wait for the attractions as there was before the VQs with similar park attendance.

Now, I think that we, as frequent park-goers experience "percieved" increased wait, especially for out home parks. We are used to seeing a physical line to a certain point (say the DJ booth in Millie's line) and being able to fairly well know how long the line is. However, with the VQs, we dont accurately know how many people are in the lines (physical and virtual) so when the time ends up longer than we predicted, we feel that we were made to wait longer simply because of VQ. However, that perception neglects the very probable occurace that, in the absence of a VQ, those people would be physically in line, the line would *not* have been at that short point, but much further back. And we still would have waited the same amount of time. The two scenarios are just percieved differently.

But, based on the spotty operations, I can freely and with a fair amount of certainty declare that many of the VQs *do* increase wait times for all. However, I'll make this admission from the flash-pass side of the rope ;).
lata, jeremy
-thanking God daily for disposable income

Will use all of this info on my trip.

Thanks a million everyone!

I found it hilarious that the building that sold the Qbots at Great Adventure had a VERY long line at one point (about a 2 hour wait at least) JUST to purchase a Qbot.

Talk about irony. :)

-Tina

OK, maybe someone already answered this question, but ..

can you go past all rides and schedule them with your Qbot and then ride them one after another (meaning: is the Qbot capable of handling reservations for more than one ride at a time?)

Or to put it into other words:

Could you have your Qbot wait for you at ride X and Y at the same time, or could at least, say, have your Qbot queue at ride X while your physical self waits in line at Y?

Because otherwise, Qbot might help you to stroll around the souvenir shops while you would slowly meander around the queue otherwise, but it will get you exactly 0 extra rides.

The reason VQing slows the lines down is that it allows some guests (those with VQing) to wait in two lines at the same time instead of just one. Thus, if there are 5000 people in the park, 1000 of which have VQ, then there are effectively 6000 people waiting in lines.

Yes, you can schedule more than one ride in a q-bot. But your wait for the following rides, ie. second ride reserved, third ride reserved... , does not start and is not calculated until the previous ride is checked in. That means it does not start until You have scanned and get the message that says enjoy your ride.

---

superman said:Qbot might help you to stroll around the souvenir shops while you would slowly meander around the queue otherwise, but it will get you exactly 0 extra rides.

---

Unless you use the free time to wait in another ride's line.

This link explains it all..

http://www.lo-qusa.com/flashpass/sfneps.htm