Ouimet says virtual queuing has potential for Cedar Fair

I quit a page or so back because I can predict what some people will answer my points with just as they can predict my answers to their points.

The next segment of the conversation was for people to tell me that if I don't like VQing, don't visit an amusement park. It kind of already went there. Then it would start getting personal, telling me to get a better job so I can make more money, so I don't have to complain about spending double for a park visit.

If I have to accept it, severely limiting it, either by price, or by limiting use, is much better. I don't like how it interrupts most of the people's day.

(I know... fuzzy math ahead.) And, if only 10% are using it, they are riding twice as much, which is taking away 20% from the others. (That's two hours longer people have to stand in lines in a ten hour visit). I happen to think that Lo-Q's Q-Bot scheme gets a little more business than just 10% of the overall park guests, so that number is probably higher.

Catchphrase time...

Flashpass is a scam. Six Flags is accepting bribes from line jumpers. Lo-Q is blackmailing park visitors. "Six Flags - Now with 20% longer lines!"

Only if you have a different expectation going in. Any customer who understands the various tiers of service and not being coerced, manipulated, or blackmailed in anyway. They paid for standby admission and that's exactly what they got.

LostKause said:

(I know... fuzzy math ahead.) And, if only 10% are using it, they are riding twice as much, which is taking away 20% from the others. (That's two hours longer people have to stand in lines in a ten hour visit).

Unless it's used as a time saver and not a automatic firing ride repeater. :)

That is to say, my family tends to use it not to get more rides, but to not stand in line for the rides we'd normally get. I don't think we ride more when we VQ, we ride more efficiently.

I have no idea if that's normal or not.

A lot of these assumptions are based on the idea that it's all about the sheer number of rides you can get. I don't think that's always the case.

I'd possibly argue that it's not even the case most of the time, but that opinion is being colored by my own experiences, so I'm not quite confident enough to try it yet. :)

I happen to think that Lo-Q's Q-Bot scheme gets a little more business than just 10% of the overall park guests, so that number is probably higher.

Then it seems like you're arguing both side of the coin. On one hand you often argue the cost is too high and on the other you argue that too many people use it.

Those scenarios don't exist together.

And I'm pretty sure that 10% number came straight from financials somewhere along the way, didn't it?

The one time I bought a FastPass was at Great Adventure, and I think I used it for El Toro and Kingda Ka, and that was it. And I only rode one coaster while virtually waiting for Ka, and that was because my ride time kept getting delayed because Ka was broken down for quite a while.

Perhaps I'm not the norm, either, but I can't imagine anyone but the militant enthusiast using VQ to power-ride everything they possibly can. Frankly, I get exhausted just imagining that.

Well, Gonch, I guess people use it for different reasons then. But, Lo-Q DOES encourage riding other rides while VQed. It's right on their signs explainin how complicated it is to use it.

I suppose my assumptions that it's all about the number of rides one gets is because that is what is important to me, and on those extremely busy days, I bet that is what is important to those, like me, who can only visit the park once a year as well. I think that we are both right because we have had different experiences. :)

I am arguing that the cost is too high for me (even though if the park is too busy for me not to get enough rides in, I feel that I have to buy it). I think that too many people use it because they don't want to be left out. Keep in mind that every experience that I have had with Q-Bot, except for Dollwood, the park was WAY too busy for anyone who was there for the rides to enjoy it otherwise. Dollywood was not busy at all, and Lo-Q didn't negatively affect my day too much at all.

Yeah, the 10% number was slipped out in some mostly unrelated news story. It's average. Again, on the super busy days that I have experienced at SFGadv, it was probably more like 15 or 20%. On the peaceful, tranquil visits to SF that you experienced, it was probably 1 to 5%.

Vater, the only reason I have tried to ride everything I can is because my visits to SFGAdv were extremely busy, and it was important to me to be able to ride everything at least once. I wouldn't consider myself to be a militant coaster enthusiast. I get sick if I ride over and over. I do want to experience everything that is offered though.

Wow. I think I finally understand why my opinion differs so much. I can never seem to get to a SF park on a slow day. I have heard so many people say that my experiences at a SF is not typical, but they live closer, and are more knowledgeable about the park's attendance. Each experience is different.

I think that this argument is over for me. :)

EDIT - ...For NOW. lol

LostKause said:
Whenever I make my first trip to a SF park in years, sometime in the near future, I will feel blackmailed into purchasing a bot, and I am just as familiar, if not more so, with their Flashpass system as a non-enthusiast. I will feel forced to purchase it because they are accepting bribes from line jumpers, and even though I don't want them to do that, I need to even the playing field.

Not sure why you will feel blackmailed. Odds are that if you're ok with wait of 20 minutes or so - 30 at worst, you should be ok on all but the busiest days.

In 11 years of traveling to SF parks, we've felt we needed it 5 times. Twice each at Great Adventure and Over Georgia and on our only visit to Great America. The only park we've gotten it a majority of our visits is the Georgia park - mostly because it's so far out of the way and we want to be able to get on a few rides and because we always seem to hit that park on busy-ass days.

I really don't think that people think about Flashpass the way Gonch and the others are persuading us to see it, with the tiered service and such. I believe that it can be confusing for those who don't visit amusement parks more than a few times a year, or don't frequent amusement park websites.

I think you're severely underestimating the average guest. It's been a decade now. People are familiar. The only ones caught off guard are those who haven't visited a park using some kind of VQ in the past 10 or 12 years.

It's just part of the process. If you even glance at the park websites, it's right there. Hell, SF tries to sell you one along with your tickets - it's listed right on the same page.

We're reaching the point where we have kids who are teenagers that don't remember a time when their local SF park didn't have Flash Pass or Disney didn't have FastPass kiosks. It's done.

Hate it all you want, but it sounds as silly as saying, "I hate waiting in long lines with the new-fangled pay-one-price the parks do these days. Why can't it be pay-as-you-go like it used to be. Those were the good ol' days when everyone got exactly what they paid for. I mean what if I don't want to ride that much, I still have to pay $40 to stand around all day. It's blackmail, I tell you!"

Not saying that my feelings on the subject are typical, but I do wonder what kool aid people are drinking to be able to accept this way of treating customers.

Yeah, those bastards gave us an option to not have to stand in hot, crowded, annoying lines. What were they thinking? ;)

I still think the impact on your day ('you' being a non-VQ visitor) is much, much lower than you estimate.

It's been said a million times, but if people were rejecting it - both on priciple of having to pay more to enjoy the park and on the idea that their day is considerably worse because others buy it, then people wouldn't be going to these parks.

But that's just not happening. So is everyone absolutely oblivious to the reality around them or is the acceptance of such systems, impact of use of these systems and guest expectation at the park a lot different than you're thinking it is?

EDIT - Sorry, I was working off of the post you deleted.

Darn. I didn't know that that post went through. I deleted it 22 minutes after I posted it. I wanted to reply to the newer posts instead of the older ones. The accidental post was just practice, Gonch. lol

Keep your post up though. Don't be sorry. It was my mistake. You spent a lot of time forming your post too.

I don't want to reply to your last post because I want to pretend that I didn't say the things that you quoted me as saying. My mistake.

Please go back up and reread my totally changed post so I can feel like all that hard work wasn't for no reason. lol

Deletes and edits never go away. I liked it better when every post was equal, and had to wait the same amount of time. Now I make a post, and before I even finish, some other posts cuts in front of me. Why can't the Internet just be like Western Union was, 100 years ago?

+1

I combat Vater's +1 with a -1. lol

I posted it, but then noticed a few new posts that actually persuaded me (changed my mind a little bit), so I made a new, happier post as a reply with mostly un-recycled material. I know that the mods can see everything. I wasn't trying to hide anything. Gonch's words got to me. lol

I wouldn't have quoted a deleted post. It wasn't deleted when I quoted, then once I formatted, replied and posted, the original was deleted. Wasn't trying to keep anything you didn't want to say posted.

And I did read the re-post so the hard work wasn't for naught. I just don't have anything else to add at this point.

I do wish we hard more cold, hard numbers on usage, crowd patterns and stuff. I'd love to know that stuff.

I'd love to know that stuff too. No matter which argument it helped, it would be extremely interesting.

Jeff said:
Deletes and edits never go away. I liked it better when every post was equal, and had to wait the same amount of time. Now I make a post, and before I even finish, some other posts cuts in front of me. Why can't the Internet just be like Western Union was, 100 years ago?

I remember when posts weren't even threaded unless you had special software to clean up the mess for you, and even that couldn't always figure out where each message belonged. It was kind of like Twitter, where all the posts were just thrown together on the board, unsorted, and sometimes replies would show up hours before the original messages. And they scrolled across your screen at 1200 baud if you were lucky...

Those were the days! :)

Now for the more important comment...

Lord Gonchar said:
That is to say, my family tends to use it not to get more rides, but to not stand in line for the rides we'd normally get. I don't think we ride more when we VQ, we ride more efficiently.

And that's the issue that I think would be interesting to explore. What does the VQ system do to that family's length of stay? Do you spend more time in the park, because you're enjoying not waiting in long lines? Do you spend less time in the park, because you get all your riding done earlier? Does it make no difference at all because you can't imagine not being there O-C?

It's hard to say whether the parks have good data for this. It stands to reason that they have better data about VQ users than for non-VQ users. And I wonder if the guerilla photographers are also an attempt to gather length-of-stay data...they know when the photo was snapped, and whether you buy it or not, they know when you looked at it before going home...

Anyway, it would be interesting to find out if the VQ systems have an effect on length of stay, and if it is a negative effect, have the parks taken to adjusting the return times as a way to try and compensate for it.

It's a side issue, mostly of academic interest, but I thought I'd bring it up anyway...

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

No, it's definitely interesting.

For us personally, I think we spend the same time in the park and it's never O-C. If anything changes, it leans more towards extending our stay slightly (and elevates the general tone of the day) because we've avoided the hassles of working around the whims of the crowd during the day.

Pretty much my only complaint about parks are crowds. At a park you can essentially do what you want with the exception of when the crowd conspires against you to create waits that change and affect your decisions. VQ eliminates much of that.

It doesn't matter if the next coaster we come across has a line spilling onto the midway, I just press a few buttons and I know I'm on in X minutes. No estimating lines, no debates on whether to wait it out or look elsewhere. And Q-bot has the added benefit of listing potential ride times for multiple rides - further enhancing the ability to choose wisely and effortlessly rather than plodding around ride-to-ride and wishing we had just got in line for the last one instead of looking for a shorter wait.

Maybe it's just us? But seriously, nothing else about the park experience really wreaks as much havoc on our day as crowds. To take that element essentially out of the equation when it matters most is very empowering.

We've also found it useful for mixed groups. My son wasn't 54" until this year. But myself, my wife and daughter were. Working it so everyone gets to ride and those left to wait, especially my son, are still occupied can be a hassle. A q-bot for two goes a long way. We can all do something for a few minutes. Two can ride relatively quickly and then we re-reserve and occupy ourselves (can be anything you normally do at the park - food, drink, shows, atmosphere, people watching, animals, characters, whatever) for a few more minutes and the others can ride.

VQ relieves the two biggest issues we face in a day at the park and lets us do more 'stuff' in the process.

If we are the exception and it changes length of stay for the worse, then I suspect the cost of buying in makes up for the lost in-park spending (and then some). Like I was saying earlier, per-caps at the big regionals hover around $40 - give or take. The cheapest Q-bots come in at $40 or $50. With that single purchase the park has effectively doubled that guest's spending. If they don't spend another dime in the park, it's a win over a guest not buying into the system.

I think you're severely underestimating the average guest. It's been a decade now. People are familiar. The only ones caught off guard are those who haven't visited a park using some kind of VQ in the past 10 or 12 years.

Not only that, but differentiated levels of service are *everywhere*. Club floors at hotels. VIP seating at concerts and sporting events. Preferred/valet parking. Different categories of campsites at state parks.

I'd argue that the "casual" amusement park guest is *more* ready to accept pay-to-cut systems than a hardcore enthusiast, because they did not marinate in years' worth of first-come-first-serve parks.

One thing not mentioned yet (I think.. might have missed it in some of the longer replies) .. is how the current VQ leader - Sixflags - has the flashpass as part of their overall pricing strategy. SF are the parks that charge the least for overall admission, but make up for it everywhere else - parking, food, premium attractions, and yes, priority access to rides. Compare this to the other end of the spectrum, say, Holiday World, where you get the fewest gate/SP discounts, but get the world for your initial admission. It's really more of the parks' overall business strategy.

I bring this up because Pat and I used a gold flashpass at SFDK recently, on a day we probably didn't really even need to. Reason? The park admission for both of us was free, thanks to "my coke rewards." SF is the only park chain offering their tickets thru MCR, keeping with their overall strategy of getting people in the park and hoping they spend once there. It did work for us-- since we figured we'll never be back anytime soon and wanted to ride as much as we could on that one day, we ponied up for the FP.

To those who say SF forces one to buy flashpasses due to deliberate inefficiency, I will say this park refutes that allegation in spades. Everything was running as best as they could run - all trains on all coasters, and reasonable dispatch times. Only Medusa lacked its third train, but considering we saw several dispatches with empty middles (due to no queue and everyone wanting the front), this was forgivable :)

RideMan said:
It's a side issue, mostly of academic interest, but I thought I'd bring it up anyway...

For once I get to (have to?) disagree with Dave - I think there is certainly an academic component to this kind of data analysis....but it also directly impacts the bottom line, IF you have that data and the knowledge to utilize it to the fullest. Currently, I don't think *any* parks have all the data I'd want to be able to predict most accurately how to staff rides, how many trains to operate, which flats are needed all day and which could conceivably only operate during the busiest times and days.

Somehow, some way, my park would combine all the data collection of VQ *and* the system like IB where we actually know what you're riding and when...all information costs money to collect, the most profitable businesses just know HOW to use that data to maximize profits (which includes both all relevant costs and all relevant revenue streams).

I think this thread wins the "most text per post" award.

Maybe, but I seem to remember the older VQ topics being more epic. lol

^Well, I am taking my medication these days (I can only speak for myself).