Six Flags Q-Bot Fastlane: Regular vs Gold. Is Gold worth it?

ok, final thought on this. its more like we both buy concert tix. i wait in line for general admission seats. you paid a lil extra so you get to go see a few other concerts while i stand in line. then you come back, go to the front of the line and i still wait further back. but oh well, different view points make the world go round :) its all good...

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RavenTTD said:
No, you were in line and then they made you wait longer so they could jump people in front of you. The names of the "special lines" don't make it a new service. They are selling your time and your service.

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The problem is the fact that you think they are selling you a spot in line or your time and service. They are not selling your time or your service. They are selling you access to the line. It is your decision to enter the line for any given ride. You could theoretically enter an Amusement Park and not step foot on a single ride. Your time and your service could be used playing games, eating food, or watching shows.

It is the park's discretion as to how they wish to administer access to the line and to the ride. You choose to spend your time waiting in line for a ride. If they wish to administer special access to those who are willing to pay above and beyond the admission price, then that is their perogative. Think back to the old days when you used to have to pay to enter the park and then pay to ride everything. If you did not have enough money, you did not get to ride as often as those who had more money than you.

Actually, they are selling your time. What would the value of the jump in line pass be if it did not give away your time? It is not like an additional water park or a skycoaster where there is a unique service you are paying for. The ONLY benifit is butting in front of people. *** Edited 6/8/2004 4:46:05 PM UTC by RavenTTD***

Do they have the Q-bots or gold Q-bots at the Texas parks? I am going to all 3 this summer and live in Michigan and have been worrying that I wouldn't get to ride everything and I know I wont be back for years if ever. I would definately be willing to pay a little extra to get to ride everything.

Biased, I can see how you get that, but no. I just made that my Coasterbuzz name because SFGAm is my home park, as I'm sure that's why you made yours. Actually I'd prefer going to non-corporate park like Indiana Beach instead of Cedar Fair or even Six Flags (sorry, not Disney, I'm a Disney fan.) And I brought in Resorts because that is a significant source of income for Disney, and a descent one for Cedar Point. Six Flags doesn't have that, basically, it all evens out in the end, and a money saving top notch trip to any amusement park is tough to pull off.

I just thought that pointing fingers at Six Flags and saying that they don't care about their customers was pushing it. Oh, and my Six Flags experiences are not the most significant, as the only SF park outside of SFGAm I've visited is SFMW, which I truly enjoyed. But I reacted that way because you based that opinion simply on the pay for line passing utility.

Ask yourself if this is really a gripe because they have access to the money and you don't?

Then ask yourself this, if they offered a limited number of Gold Q-bots for say, the first 100 people to notice the special, would you take one or is this really a matter of principles and you would decline.

Brian, who says "Hey, I'm a nice guy, but gimme one!"

No it is not about access to the money. It is about Six Flags not giving a damn about their customers. And yes, if it is there I will use it. People are jumping in front of me and the park is helping them. That does not make it okay that they do that.

You misunderstand the concept. The concept is that they are not line jumping but are waiting the same amount of time as you to ride, in theory. They are given a ride time that is supposed to be in accordance with what the current approximate wait is. However, the difference is, they are free to do whatever they want while they wait for their opportunity to ride whereas the non-qbot user is forced to wait in the proper line and is not able to partake in any other activity. The wait, in essence, would be the same as if the person had been in the same line as you. You enter a 45 minute wait line at 2:15. A normal QBOT user is not going to be able to come up at 2:16 and get on the ride before 3:00 as the theory is supposed to work. However, the user could take those extra 45 minutes and use them to shop, ride a ride with a shorter line, or pursue other activities.

As the theory goes at Disney, the standby wait times are supposed to take into account Fastpass distribution. The same would be similar with QBOT. It is not a perfect system and has human limitations in the determination of how long the wait will actually be but the person has waited a portion of time to ride the ride. It appears on the surface that they are not waiting to ride the ride but the application is supposed to work that they have waited a similar amount of time as you. Obviously, the gold QBOT is supposed to work as more of a time reducer. However, it all goes back to people paying for privileges.

On the other hand, the FASTLANE passes are a form of cutting in line because you are allowed to jump into the line immediately after its purchase and are not time restricted. The drawback to those is that you have a limited number of opportunities to use it and once those are exhausted, they are gone for the day. A person has to establish whether it is worth the additional money for the limited number of uses.

I get the concept. But the wording does not change anything. If you are not in line, then you are not waiting to ride. If you are waiting in line in another line, then you are taking up the time of two lines and mooching off the time of others who paid to be there.

I am not the biggest fan of the freeway at CP and whatever it is called at Disney and Universal...but at least they are trying to just create a tool for those who are heads up. Those companies are in business to make money, but they don't want to appear as swindlers to their customers so they give away this service for free. Six Flags does not care how their guests feel so they do a piss poor job running their parks and they sell people's time. In fact, I think that if the lines are not long enough normally to create sales, they make the lines slower by decreasing ride ops and running only one train to create the demand for jump in line passes. Six Flags just blows. *** Edited 6/8/2004 5:25:41 PM UTC by RavenTTD***

Oh, now I get it.

It's a Six Flags rant disguised as a Q-bot rant.

Well at least that explains things a little.

mine is a Qbot rant :)

Hehe :)

I know...I know.

Actually you don't get it. People don't think SF gives bad service because they dislike SF. They dislike SF because they give bad service. If you are right, then why does Disney, Universal, and Cedar Fair all give this service away for free?

Because they choose to.

Hell, you're talking to the wrong person about SF and bad service. Search any of the SFWOA threads from the past 3 years and you'll find be bashing the park and the chain for their subpar offering in all areas.

I 'get it' just fine. You're mistaking disagreement for lack of understanding.

What I don't get is why a free 'line cutting' system is hunky dory but a pay system is the work of evil. THey both do the same thing and if anything the pay system is fairer because its available to all to use all day on all available rides. With Freeway, Fastpass, etc it's dumb luck on whether or not you'll be at the right place at the right time toget a slip of paper or a handstamp allowing you to "line cut".

To me the latter seems way less fair as it truly isn't available to all guests for available rides.

What would you rather have: higher priced admissions / season passes or a Qbot/Fastpass pay system? As much as you dont like it, people are willing to pay for it. A lot of times it isnt good business sence to give things away which people will pay for. Also, a side-note about Universal, they offer both a system like Disney as well as one like Six Flags. They have their free system which will only give you a few rides on a crowded day, and they have their pay system which will let you walk right up to a ride a ride it one time each.

And Coastingthru -- you said that if you had the opportunity to use the Qbot, you wouldn't because you dislike the people cutting in line. If you had gone to the most recent Coasterbuzz-Con at SFGAm where the ERT was rained out and we were given 2 Fastpass tickets each, would you have given those back?

onceler-honestly, i would not have used the 2 fastpass tix. they were stamping hands for TTD when I was at CP a couple of weeks ago. I walked by. I just don't like the whole concept and did not want to participate.

See, I'm just the opposite (and this makes me sound horrible - especially to someone like you who's so against the system), but at Disney you insert your ticket to get a fastpass. This is their way of regulating distribution.

This is back when we lived in Florida and my daughter was still too young to do bigger rides and often my mother in law (there for the family, not the rides) would join us.

Now you have a party of 4 (four available fastpasses at any given time) and many rides that only two want to ride. We'd either double up on fastpasses or get a pair to two different rides. This way we could score double rides on those we really liked or score two quick rides without leaving our daughter with the mother in law for extended periods while we waited in line to ride.

Not really "abusing" the system as mch as taking advantage of it. You can't pull that sort of thing with Q-bot (that I know of)

Heck, Disney's Fastpass is so full of loopholes that with minimal searching you can find whole sections of websites devoted to exploiting their system flaws in little underhanded ways that in comparison make what we did just making the best of a opportunity.

Nothing is perfect and these sort of 'virtual queues' are pretty much here to stay.

Wasn't there an article a while back when FastPass was first introduced where Disney officials mentioned envisioning a time in the future where your whole visit is 'by reservation" with no waiting in lines? For some reason I seem to remember that.

*** Edited 6/8/2004 8:05:11 PM UTC by Lord Gonchar***

I personally like the Fastpass/Fastlane/Qbot/etc. systems. When I was at CoasterbuzzCon at SFGAm, I only used 2/8 rides we had and gave the rest away, but that was because we were playing at my home park. I find it very helpful when you go out of town to a park you have never been, to let you experience the park in a day or less. While it may be annoying at your home park, it works wonders when you only have 1/2 a day to spend at a park.

The people that complain about Fastpass don't know how to use it well. With just a little bit of planning/strategy it can improve your day at a Disney park 10 fold.

What tha hell does this fussing got to do with "Regular vs. Gold, is Gold worth it." *** Edited 6/9/2004 3:58:24 AM UTC by Murphy***