Interval Count Down Timers

Except that he said he does it just to stall and to piss people off.

LostKause said:

"They are parodying stupid people.

No they're not. They're *BEING* stupid people.

My one friend used to scream on the lift hill of Steel Force "we're all gonna DIE" like Beavis. It was kinda horrifically funny the first time, but after that it was just annoying. She never did anything in the station though because it was RUDE and uncalled for and wasted everyone's time. Good rider etiquette is a plus, blasterboy. I'm not exactly a mature person all the time, but even I find that to be eye-twitchingly irritating.

Back on topic, I think we'll see the timers for a little while and then they will be turned off, and the LED boxes will just sit there before being removed. I see timers and hustle my butt, but I'm sure I'm in the minority. I don't see it working.

blasterboy6500 said:

And trust me, I'm anything but a normal human being.

So says everyone else that thinks they're special. You're normal. You just don't want to be.

Yeah, little baby just wants attention. It's gonna be ok, little baby...

I really like the idea of timers on coaster platforms. It reminds of Magnum's "Ready... Ready Ready..." verbal signals over the intercom to the lab bar checkers. It's not just intended to signal the other employees to hustle, but it also gets the riders to hustle as well.

My photo above is from a popular series that ended a few years ago called LOST. You may have heard of it. In the second season, the group found themselves entering a sequence of numbers into a computer every 180 minutes. They believed that something terrible would happen to the planet if they didn't push the button. It would beep a minute before the enter button was pushed, sounding like getting rung up at Walmart, then if the numbers were not entered closer to the end of the countdown, a loud, horrifying alarm sounded.

They group were at odds with each other about "the button." Some believed that if they ignored it, nothing would happen. They thought that they were part of an experiment. Another part of the group thought that if they didn't push it, an magnetic or electrical discharge would be released and it would be catastrophic to life on earth.

You can imagine how excited the shows viewers felt when the button didn't get pushed and the above image showed up when the countdown ended. I wont spoil it for those of you who never watched the show, but that, and what happened afterwards was one of the most terrifying things I have ever seen on TV.

And when I read about a timer on the platform, I imagined what would happen if the countdown got to zero and the train had not been dispatched yet. lol

So, at the end of the ride, would everyone go to heaven in a lame, tacked-on manner?

Flashpass sales would go up, that's what!

I hate the idea. And it goes back to guest perception. Why give them the indication that things are less than perfect by publicly displaying the ride crews lack of hitting interval?

I don't think it speeds the crew up at all. It just pisses off the guests that figured out what the counter is for and see it running out over and over again.

Conversely, if they do hit it, though, they look pretty fantastic. If they don't, though, and guests start to get annoyed enough to complain, it could solve your problem right there.

Of course, the "Ready," "Ready ready" system Travis referenced that Magnum and Millennium Force use (I believe we might have used it on TTD as well) is perhaps a less obvious way of achieving the same result.

This is in reply to Gonch. Sirloin got in between our posts...

If the crew is doing a lousy job, then it should piss off the guests anyways. A clock just shows everyone what is expected of them. It's good customer service, and it helps the crew to do their job better because it also gives the guests a reason to hustle too.

Ah, but say they are just missing interval by a few seconds. If there was no clock, guests wouldn't know the difference, especially if the crew is (or appears to be) hustling. The clock tells guests that the crew's goal is not being met--even if just by a few seconds--and could result in pissed off guests.

LostKause said:

If the crew is doing a lousy job, then it should piss off the guests anyways.

But it probably doesn't. And what is a 'lousy job'? Missing by 3 or 4 seconds every cycle? Of course not, but when that time repeatedly hits zero, it's obvious that the crew is missing. You're setting an expectation with the guest and they'll react accordingly.

EDIT - Vater got in with the same idea while I was typing.

It's good customer service...

I couldn't agree less. It's good intentions, but you know where that gets you.

...and it helps the crew to do their job better because it also gives the guests a reason to hustle too.

I think you're giving everyone involved WAY too much credit. It's little more than an opening for the guest to complain if that timer hits zero for any reason...no matter how legitimate.

We've seen good crews be the determining factor, without timers. Look at Raptor or Space Mountain. And I do believe guests notice the hustle.

Yeah, fast crews exist without timers and timers aren't suddenly going to make a subpar crew able to hit intervals.

The timer is a completely arbitrary thing that simply draws attention to the whole timing issue.

Okay, I need to get a couple of things straight so I don't come across as a dipsh*t to you all. First off, I really do not care about attention. People trying to get attention just tick me off, and the last thing on this planet I would want is to come across as somebody like that. I mean it. Dead serious. If that's how I'm coming across as on these forums, please tell me. It's not on purpose. I probably just mis-expressed myself in the wrong direction because once again, I would HATE to be the guy who tries to be that stuck-up teen hungry for attention. At school, I'm always the silent one whom the teacher has to ask to speak up. I wouldn't call myself outgoing. Second, I sort of exaggerated when I said "just to stall and piss people off." The last time it happened for that reason was with some really bad crew members and a large group of people in line who cut just about everyone waiting for the Slingshot. I do joke around with my friends, but I stall at the max for around 10 seconds or so, just for the laughs. I do it in a way in which everyone does NOT turn around and look at me. It's just an inside joke.

So your response to other guests being obnoxious is for you to be obnoxious.

Okay, I shouldn't have done it. But that was once. I'm also the one to blame for getting this whole thread a bit off topic, so sorry about that too.

You also ate my burrito. >:-(

To be frank, you do come off on this board a little bit as someone who wants attention. The ratio of quantity to quality of posts is way higher than most veteran posters and the fact that a large portion of them are about you and not the topic at hand doesn't help.