KNOTTS berry Cracks down on line jumping

Dorney on Memorial Day weekend had security in all coaster queues. I was glad to see it.

Gotta make sure those 8 people in line don't cut each other

Six Flags used to do the paper tickets for a few years. Just a roll of standard numbered tickets handed out at the entrance and expected to be handed in at the station in the same order.

I think it really just comes down to confrontation. The people that work these rides are not willing to confront the line jumpers. Sometimes it's tough looking people using their size and intimidating body language to say "yeah... what are you going to do about it." Other times it's 10 year olds just "excuse me" - ing their way up to the station.

There's too much liability in confronting either / all line jumpers anymore. From physical attacks to "Karen" parents, it's just better to let it slide.

Speaking of KBF, I was there only a day or 2 after Hangtime opened, which was also Junior High field trip day. Literally half of the line in front of me was being jumped by groups of 20 or more every few minutes as one friend let in their entire class. I asked the young girl at the entrance and she basically shrugged her shoulders and said "sorry, nothing can be done."

Yeah, I know... "Cool story Bro." Well something can be done, it just involves hiring additional security staff. Meaning higher priced labor than your standard ride op. This would no doubt cost a fortune that the parks do not want to spend. Even then, they will still only be treated with the respect of mall cops and be met with accusations of classism and racism every time they take an action. I certainly wouldn't want the job.

As for CP they used to have a police department with actual uniformed officers. Sometimes a security person would work along side but I think having a cop there was more of a deterrent. Now the security personnel look like interns wearing costumes that Live E provided, not exactly lending an air of authority and intimidation to a situation.
Nothing makes me more mad than to see someone blatantly abusing rules that everyone else has learned to follow. You know, simple things like waiting your turn, paying for your stuff, being kind and considerate…

Richard Bannister:

There's a really simple solution to this problem – paper tokens issued at the queue entrance that have to be redeemed in sequence to enter the ride station. I'm sure I've seen parks do that before.

Time Warner era Six Flags did this. Numerical boarding passes were handed out on busy days at and collected just before entering the station. If there was a big jump in numbers they didn't ride.

Remember SFOG Batman had it's own security room with cameras set up on the line. If they saw someone line jumping they'd go get them and walk them to the exit and can't remember if they got ejected from the park as well. But on a busy Saturday you'd see security come through with people like every 20 minutes.

That all went away when Premier came in and reduced staffing levels,

RCMAC:

Nothing makes me more mad than to see someone blatantly abusing rules that everyone else has learned to follow. You know, simple things like waiting your turn, paying for your stuff, being kind and considerate…

My last visit to SFA (in 2003 if I haven't mentioned it) became my last primarily because of line jumpers, and the fact that staff did nothing about them. In the queue for nearly every ride we waited for, we watched multiple people (usually groups of two or more) walking past everyone, politely excusing themselves all the way from the queue entrance to the station as if they owned the place. It was infuriating.

Gunkey Monkey:

I could check a whole B&M inverted 28 passenger train on my own in under a minute when out in the park helping out. That was in the days before iROC but it goes to show what is possible when one hustles.

Olympia Looping routinely has a dispatch of a full 28-seat train every 22 seconds.

That's obviously an extreme case, but I've seen Nessie at Hansa Park being run by a single operator who kept two trains moving – checking every lap bar by hand – without stacking.

Olympia Looping has crazy operational abilities! I think they have a person for every car though to make it happen. Unfortunately, most American parks are publicly traded companies who have to kowtow to Wall St. so ever seeing correct staffing again probably won't happen (look at how many large funds are invested in Cedar Fair/Six Flags....DISASTER waiting to happen because they will want their investment back NOW which will mean staffing cuts, selling off under performing parks, reducing hours, cutting resale costs, etc!)

Not really news by itself, but at Cedar Point there was a altercation over line jumping.

https://www.wkbn.com/news/o...nt-report/

Brandon Paige, 37, told police he confronted a woman who stopped his children from jumping in line.

He said the woman punched him, so he punched her back, according to the police report.

...

Witnesses told a different story.

They told police they saw Paige approach the woman, grab her wrist, and begin hitting her

Brandon sounds like a wonderful human.

Maybe asking guest to police themselves isn't the greatest idea. There has to be a better solution than "Text us! We might show up eventually!" I think it starts with putting at least some security where most of your guest are and altercations occur, which in line for these major rides.

The inherent problem with patrons policing line jumping is that in order for it to be effective, you essentially have to have physical contact, because there’s no other way to stop a person who’s determined to get by you. Better to report it after the fact and have security (who by definition has the authority to engage in physical contact) waiting for them at the ride’s exit so they can be escorted from the park.

Problem is though, at least in my experience, unless the ride associate or security personnel personally witnessed it, there’s not a whole lot they can/will do. It just becomes a game of he said/she said.

Also, I fail to see how a reporting via text massage program will help. Even if you have a description of the offenders, by the time security got there, how easily would they find them? And they don’t know who reported it to ask them in person either. Seems like a too little too late kind of deal.

I think the best way to handle it is by being proactive. Having personal patrolling the line to both discourage it and to also be able to deal with it immediately when it happens. But it seems many places just do not want to provide the resources for that anymore which is a shame.

First time we took our kids to Disney World (late aughts), we were surprised by how common line jumping was. It was rare the line that didn't have at least one instance of it and many had multiple. Was also surprising that pretty much no one said anything about it. But that view seems to be more common now.

Many stores don't try to stop shoplifting. Employees are trained to get the merchandise go. Based on the risks involved, not really worth it.

I have always viewed enforcement (or lack thereof) as being part of any given policy. You can have a no smoking policy but if you don't enforce it, you really don't. And to me, the lack of enforcement is part of your policy. You can have a no line jumping policy but if its not enforced, you effectively don't. And unless either line jumping or smoking became a big issue, that can work out fine.

At this point, most members of the public are not interested in enforcing someone else's line jumping (or shoplifting) policies. Risk of doing so means its not worth it. And unfortunately, there are some people who understand the lack of enforcement and act accordingly. Thankfully the vast majority do not fall into that camp though.

RideOn:

text massage program

Vater:

In the queue for nearly every ride we waited for, we watched multiple people (usually groups of two or more) walking past everyone, politely excusing themselves all the way from the queue entrance to the station

Sounds exactly like my sole visit to Lake Compounce in 2017. I'd never seen it nearly as bad anywhere else (but I haven't been to SFA yet). The queue for Boulder Dash was actually twice as long as it looked once you accounted for the nonstop stream of line jumpers. The first few times we tried telling people we didn't appreciate it and this actually caused most of the people in line around us to side against us. Apparently, even the non-line-jumpers there were fine with it! Fine, I'll leave them to it. (Yeah, I'm still grumpy about it.)

My last visit to SFA, a very long time ago, I encountered some very impolite line cutters throughout the entire day. -Big Black guys wearing tank tops, physically touching people to get them to move out of their way. These same people tried to pick a fight with my buddy at the end of the night because he had long hair. They called him Howard Stern. They had an overall threatening attitude everywhere they went.

That was maybe three decades ago. Sounds like that's one thing that hasn't changed at the park.

But were the line jumpers bla... nevermind, you already provided the answer.

Now that I am all the way back home from my trip, I probably should try and turn this into a trip report of some sort. We were at KBF on Monday, having gone on a weekday to avoid the weekend crowds. We pulled into the lot only to be rerouted to a more distant parking lot underneith and to the right of Ghostrider. Pulling into the lot, I was surprised - at best 1/4 of the lot had cars. There bwere obviously a lot of school groups here - they were parking up and across the street I think.

As we walked under Ghostrider, it was running and we just made it up almost to the entrance to be stopped for 5 minutes or so to allow school group after school group to enter a security queue. Eventually we were allowed through to be routed down to the handicapped entrance. Mind you, we had no bags of substance and could have walked right through the staffed but not being used regular line. Once through security, two lanes were open for season pass holders that did not service a single customer while we waited another 10 - 15 minutes to get through the gate.

Once inside, headed to Silver Bullet. No major qualms. About a 30 or 35 minute wait, but worth it. Then went over to get in line for Hang Time. After about 10 minutes, it went down, so we bailed and went to Coast Rider. Nothing fancy, but a decent ride after a 45 minute wait.

Hang Time was back open with supposedly a 60 minute wait, so we got in line. And waited. And waited. And watched line jumping. And waited. And waited. And watched more line jumping. And texted security about line jumping. And watched it happen more. And waited. Finally after a 3 hour wait, we were able to ride. Every other train was being dispatched for those in the Fast Lane. Sometimes the other train had a few Fast Lanes as well. But the Fast Lane trains were also sometimes not full, with sets of 2 or 4 seats being left if the next group didn't line up right. Lets just say the ride was very good, but definitely not worthy of turning a 1 hour wait into 3.

When we got off the ride, got some water (we'd planned for a 1 hour wait not 3) and felt like some indoor time. Was going to try Knott's Beary Tales: Return To The Fair, alas, it was down. Went by Pony Express. Down. Thought about Ghostrider. The sign didn't show the wait, but the ride op was apologizing for it being a 165 minute wait with only 1 train running. (I thought it ran 3 on my last visit, but that was 20 years ago.) So, we went to Sierra Sidewinder. While being a lot smaller than Time Traveler at SDC, it was a fun ride. Only about a 30 minute wait. So, remember, we are now almost 5 hours into the park with 3 rides completed.

Walked back by Ghostrider - no change of substance as expected. Pony Express had opened up, so we rode it. Supposedly a 45 minute wait which turned into 60. As with Hang Time, every other train was being dispatched with Fast Lane. All in all, I was disappointed in the length of the ride. Why is it so darn short.

From there, got in line for Knott's Beary Tales: Return To The Fair. Guess what. While in line, it went down. So, we went over to Calico Mine Ride. About a 20 minute wait (momentary relief...) It is not Disney, but honestly, it was the first thing we really thought was neat and different. (And maybe previous visit bias, we liked it then as well.) On to Timber Mountain Log Ride. About a 20 minute wait.
Again, not quite Disney Caliber, but not far behind. Definitely one of the neater non-Disney / Universal log flumes. Back to try Knott's Beary Tales: Return To The Fair. Finally some success. The night was ending, so we searched the gift shops to see if there was anything that interested us. Very little. There was a lot of Peanuts branded items, but not really anything KBF specific outside of Peanuts. As we went by, Silver Bullet had a 30 minute wait, so we said, lets give it a try. 10 minutes i9nto our wait, it went down... So we left the park.

To finish the evening, we decided to get a chicken dinner to go. When we got up to order, they were out of Cole slaw and potato salad, and my daughter got the absolute last chicken tenders. The chicken servings were small, especially compared to what we saw at Disney for roughly the same price.

All in all, between the line jumping and poor operations, the day was very much a disappointment. Both my wife and myself really enjoyed our previous visit to KBF, and hoped our kids would get that same experience. Alas, at the end of the day, we honestly have no desire to go back because of the poor operations. It's not like this was a first weekend of operations in May after the park had been shutdown for all winter. KBF is basically open year round. As I said previously, this really reminded me (maybe even worse) of Six Flags in the 2004-2006 timeframe, when everything was basically one train operation, and we know where that led the chain.

Thanks fully the bulk of vacation was fun at Disney and Universal to outweigh this day at KBF. But, to say it was disappointing is an understatement.

I'd love to offer a comparison to Magic Mountain, alas while we had planned on that, due to a late flight arrival and a 3 hour wait for a rental car, we abandoned that plan for our trip...

Quite a shame, I was at Knott's I don't recall what year, but the day was excellent, rode all the rides, didn't wait very long, even for Ghostrider, which was running multiple trains. Mrs. Knott's for dinner, which was actually quite good, and even time for some rerides. What happened? Well obviously I know the simple answer, but why?