I was disappointed last week that the one Universal Orlando put up was not being used. That said, they do have new electronic signage throughout the parks now with wait times.
How long did it take Qbots and Flashpasses to catch on? I see it taking slightly longer than those because you have to use your own equipment and use your own initiative to actually utilize it.
Interesting that parks are doing this the same time at least one chain is prohibiting all loose items in their queues. Will both of these trends become the rule at all parks?
Can't see people refreshing their screens too often with their phones stowed away in those temp lockers. Guess it will be a good thing for people with cargo shorts.
BTW Gonch,I don't know if your thread title was supposed to be a Who reference, but that was the first thing I thought of when I read it. *** Edited 6/14/2008 2:06:56 AM UTC by RatherGoodBear***
Ok, how hard did I laugh when I read the thing about the mobile phones being useless due to being stored in the lockers? Hehehehehe....this is an all pervasive topic! LOL
"Look at us spinning out in the madness of a roller coaster" - Dave Matthews Band
Just what we need! More peeps walking around looking at their phones and not where they are walking. Then they cuss you out like you did something wrong when they walked right into you.
I would like to see parks ban cell phones. Going to the park should be about getting away from everyday life. How did we ever enjoy our day at the park in the old days before cell phones?
High Speed Thrill Coaster "World's Finest" Overland Coaster
I like twitter better because I do not have an internet plan for my phone, but I do have text messaging. In addition, if there is some sort of announcement to be made, I will know immediately with twitter.
"If the wait time is long try the Sidewinder or sooperdooperLooper."
I'd be interested to see if this sort of thing in the future could actually make people consider rides they otherwise wouldn't have. In a park with a massive ride collection obviously most guests are only going to ride a handful so it would be interesting to see if something like this really could direct people over to something like Looper and even out lines.
That is an interesting point. I think it would be a beneficial side effect. I wonder what the ROI potential is on this and whether Cedar Fair and Six Flags would jump on board. Perhaps Six Flags could add some sort of advertising to help them out.
I don't want a flood of text messages being sent to me when I may only be interested in the wait times for Roller Coaster 1. That is why a static site is better than Twitter.
But why should a park use only one thing to distribute this kind of information? One of the biggest problems I have out there are companies starting new websites or services that are identical to an already existing one. For instance, each TV network distributes their shows online themselves, rather than let the viewer say, I want to use Hulu, or maybe I will buy it from iTunes.
Hershey should be using this, Twitter and anything else people are using to get their messages out there. IMO!