Single Rider Line for Fahrenheit...Fail?

I'd do it if it got me onto rides faster on those rare occasions I'm at a park alone. Or riding something that no one else wants to ride.

The only bad thing with the highlighter and polka dots is it makes it that much harder to do the ol' wait-for-the-second-row/slip-into-the-front-row trick.

I think the single rider line should only be used for filling individual open seats. They should never allow two single riders to take the place that could be occupied by a pair of riders who have been suffering through the main queue.

I have seen both at BGE and Hershey, the single rider line temporarily cut off once a certain amount of "singles" are in the line. Once the line thins, they open it back up to more "singles". This seems like a perfectly reasonable solution to keeping the single rider wait from being longer than the main queue's.

The single rider line seems to work great at Silver Dollar City on Powder Keg. But perhaps it's because most of the riders there are family groups and not groups of teens who would rather have a shorter wait than wait to sit together, which seems to be a problem at the big theme parks.

Wait a minute I thought Powder Keg doesn't have a Single Rider Line. When I was there on the rides very first Opening Day they did have one, but it wasn't working at all as waits there were much longer than the main que, so they closed it off and loaded all of us on the train. (To dump the single rider que.) I didn't think they ever tried it again since then. I know Wildfire has had one in use a few times before and it worked better there because of the 4 wide seating of the B&M coasters. Now the single rider line that was an Epic Win for me is the one for the Mummy at Universal Studios Orlando, as Mummy is a very high capacity ride and the Hotel Guest lines usually have odd numbered groups along with its 4 wide seating, I could easily ride this ride over 40 times (I didn't ride this 40 times in once day but I got at least 6 laps in within an hour there via Single Rider line) during a busy day easily.

A single rider is anyone who is willing to ride without their group in an available seat. If two people are together but are willing to board separately to speed the ride and allow trains to go out full, why not let them in the single rider line. This will work fine as long as folks are not allowed to pair up as they get to the front of the single rider line and ask to be loaded together.

Agreed, Ed.

Some of the groupers at Mummy will accommodate two people in the single-rider line who want to sit together - I don't like those groupers. Jill and I will often wait in that line, but it's our *expectation* that we'll be seated separately. Those "requests" should be dealt with as follows: "I'm sorry but we are unable to seat you with your party unless you wait in the regular line." Allowing the people to sit together only clogs up the SR lines by making people think they're able to cheat the system. The SR lines do increase capacity when used properly, and without any of the adverse effects noted in the various FastPass/Q-Bot discussions.

rollergator said:
The SR lines do increase capacity when used properly...

I know what you mean, but I would word that differently:

The SR lines use the available capacity more efficiently when used properly.

(because all any of these variations on the basic queue do is change the distribution of available capacity :) )

^Well said! Should have said "utilized" capacity. Then again, when IMPLEMENTED properly, I don't think the Q-Bot/Fastpass parks should suffer the reduction in achieved capacity that they do (e.g., allowing the FP line to enter from the exit slows down the exiting people, then the air gates don't open on time until the FP people are seated (thinking of RT's completely stalled line at GAdv in particular).

all any of these variations on the basic queue do is change the distribution of available capacity

There are some that can *reduce* capacity. If the queue/station design becomes more complicated, it can increase dispatch times.

True. Pretty much everything reduces the potential capacity. A train that meets interval and sends a full train every time is running 100% capacity - anything that prevents that from happening is lowering it.

But more to my point, available capacity and how it's distributed are two seperate, though related, things.

Brian brought up Disney World's single-rider lines on two of the 2-across trains.

My experiences have been different at the different coasters. Everest sets up the boarding station a train at a time so they'll just take a party of 3 and another party of 3 and sit the odd ones out together. So some trains fill without any single riders. You can be in the single rider line for Everest for a long time because of that.

RnR's single rider line also moves slowly, but because the boarding gates are sometimes stacked 2-3 trains deep, they'll usually just toss in a single rider in with an odd-numbered group without taking the time to space it out in the regular line.

Generally, single-riders rock on rides that load 3-across (Men in Black, Test Track) and are reasonable on 4-across. It's often hard to justify on a 2-across ride.

Screaming's single rider in DCA does load surprisingly well BUT it's a logistical nightmare. Unless I just caught it on a bad week this summer, it involves an elevator that drops you off at the station and it's anarchy at that point because there is no separate line. It's just a dozen people hanging around by the elevator who negotiate how the single riders go as they're called out. It can get pretty cluttered.

The 3 days I was at Hershey this summer, the single-rider line worked very well.

They would fill up as much of the train as they could with the regular line, and then if there was need for an extra rider, they would turn to the single-rider line. Believe it or not, it was used quite often!

People seem to forget that many groups travel with 3 people, maybe even 5, which opens up a seat on the train. Sure, lots of us have "riding partners", but in turn, a lot of us don't...

The thing I like about the single rider line is that it cuts into the Flash Pass/Q Bot profits.

As far as which single rider line works the best, hands down it's Expedition Everest. In a little over an hour I managed to get in 12 rides, when I went back to AK after the 2006 Convention.

I tried the single rider line on Nemesis Inferno, when they had it, and it was pretty ugly. They had you waiting on the exit ramp, which isn't that big to allow 2 rows of people, especially if the exiting crowd is trying to run down the ramp, in a mad bullrush, to get back in line.

Disney is, unfortunately, not always the best example for how to run a single rider line. Take RnRC, for instance (please!). While waiting for that one as a single rider you get to stand behind the greeter's console at the entrance to the pre-show, and there you can see the ratios they use to operate that ride. What they have done is to make it so that the single rider line is the *only* way to ride that coaster without a 90 to 120 minute delay. Why? Because the ride is set up to run at 80% FastPass. So you can get a FastPass ticket that says come back in two hours, you can wait in line for two hours, or you can go up the single rider ramp, where the single riders are blended in to make up for the fact that there are not enough fastpass customers to fill the 80% quota.

When I looked up "asinine" in the dictionary, there was a photo of G-Force Records...

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

80% isn't all that unusual for a typical Disney e-ticket, though I hear that Toy Story Mania is set quite low right now.

But, if some of those 80% are no-shows, they (are supposed to) draw from the standby line, not the single rider line. SR is (supposed to be) for filling in for odd-numbered parties (and should be after the merge, IIRC).

When it's done right, that's what happens. My experience is that it is usually done right.