Theme Park Queue Line Times

In this thread, you can talk about the coaster lines at your home park!

Which ones are efficient, which ones you hate, which are the longest...

I have my own format, but you can just state it in words and numbers.

So in my format, the first numbers are the queue wait times before 11 o'clock between opening, the second is from 2:00 and through the afternoon, while the last number is from 6:00 to closing time.

Here is mine for Six Flags Great Adventure:

Kingda Ka - 30, 60, 60: Loading generally is very slow. Usually only runs two trains so a Flash Pass is very helpful waiting for this one. Also this is one of the coasters people dash to once the park opens.

Nitro - 30, 25, 20: Pretty popular ride, but with being a B&M Hyper, the lines are VERY efficient and dispatching goes by fast, and for some reason people don't generally seem to re-ride it so wait times go down throughout the day.

El Toro - 30, 60, 90: What I have to say would be the first thing you dash to once the park opens. On some days it is a walk on until the lunch crowd, but that's usually only on weekdays. The real decider of how long you will be waiting in line is which seat you choose to sit in. That is especially hard when you want night rides, because it's ok in the morning but just gets worse as the day goes on.

Bizarro - 0, 5, 5: Seriously, it's really nice. Between fast dispatch and always having short lines, you can come whenever you want. If everything else is filled up, people might come and have it randomly bump up to 20 minutes.

Green Lantern - 15, 45, 60: After your first ride (whether it be KK or ET), this is one of the rides you are gonna want to head to afterwards. This and Superman, being at the front of the park draw the most attention

Superman - 15, 45, 75: Read above

Batman - 10, 25, 40: Usually has short lines for most of the day, but people love their night rides, and this is one of the GP candidates for riding at dusk.

Runaway Mine Train - 0, 15, 20: Another one that's always short, when people come to the general area of this, they get distracted from Bizarro to ride this, somehow the lines are still this way.

Zumanjaro - 0, 60, 90 - Makes a jump after the lunch crowds kick in (at least at the times I have visited)

Skull Mountain, Dark Knight, Road Runner Railway, and Harley Quinn's Crazy Train are always walk-on so no need to describe them further.

How are they at parks you have visited multiple times before?

I don't think anyone really cares that much to discuss waiting...We all (well, almost) get pay to cut.

I have actually never gotten pay to cut (and the only time I've used it was when you guys were here at SFoT). That said, I also don't particularly care to discuss waiting unless it's to discuss tip on avoiding it (though having become a fairly seasoned park veteran, I feel like I know just about everything there is to know).

Can we talk about ATM Machines too?

Don't wait times vary by day of the week, and time of the year, and whether or not there are a lot of school or church groups visiting that day, and whether or not rain is in the forecast, and if there are bands playing on the stage in the park, and whether or not they are popular of not popular, and if it is a year in which the park debuts a new high-profile attraction, so on and so forth?

I take my imaginary machine gun and shoot down the daydream, floating around in the cloud above your head, and I laugh.

If I'm visiting a "home park" - I can find things to do if they're too busy.

If I'm visiting a park far from home, and already spent $1K or more on flights, rental cars, and hotels, then I'd be infinitely more likely to spend on a virtual queueing system....

I asked a similar question a while back, and of the parks I go to, the lines don't seem to be that different no matter what time of the day it is. The only thing I will say is that early entry with a season pass has been the only times I have found lines to be shorter then during the day. Most of the popular rides fill up first.

At Cedar Point, most of the coasters will have an hour wait from the get go. The only ones I have seen to have short lines in the morning are, Blue Streak, Raptor, and Wicked twister. that is if the park decides to open wicked twister in the morning, I have been there a few times, when it did not open until noon. Mean streak is probably the only coaster in the park that stays under an hour all day every day, only because it is crap.

In the last few years that I have gone the shortest lines are on a thursday, when most coasters stay under the hour mark, with Maverick, M-force, and Gate Keeper being closer to 2 hours or more than 2 hours. Even fast lane on those rides is over an hour wait. So, much for being fast.

Great America in Chicago has much more reasonable lines. The lines there used to be horrible, but the last time I went no coaster had a line over an hour, but there is a lot more to do there than there is a cedar point, and for some reason, crowds don't usually stay as long, and you can get on rides at night fairly quickly. But, I have not been there since they added the water park, so I don't know if that is true or not. Almost every flat ride is a walk on, or little or no wait. While at Cedar Point, very few flats have a wait less then a half hour, unless you are in Camp snoopy.

Michigan's Adventures lines are getting longer every year. Though the coasters can be from no wait at all to 45 minutes for ST, an hour for thunderhawk, an hour for mad mouse, and up to 2 hours for the Wildcat.

No.
I was at Cedar Point on Thursday and it was the best. day. ever. I took advantage of early entry and started with Valravn. Then I hurried to MF before 5000 high school students charged down the midway at 10. No need, as it never happened. Most coasters that day were station waits, Maverick, GK, and Raptor included, and the flats were walk-ons. The weather was gorgeous, there were no bugs, and I rode so many rides I lost count.
If I had visited the following Saturday it would have been a totally different story. I know that and I avoid it. Weekdays in May can be hit or miss and this time I lucked out.

Really, this is a ridiculous topic and I stayed away until T-R, who apparently hasn't been to SFGA since at least 2004, (when SF had "more to do" than CP) (<?) showed up with the usual sweeping generalizations. Every park on the planet has their share of slow days as well as busy ones and seasoned visitors, like we find here on this forum, already know that.

So from my last visit I'll go with
Raptor- 30, 0, 0
TTD- 15, 10, 5
Gemini- 0, 0, 0
Blue Streak-0, 0, 0
MF- 5, 5, 5
Gatekeeper- who cares?
Valravn- it's brand new, so yeah.

There.

What RCMAC said.

Timber-Rider said:

... the lines don't seem to be that different no matter what time of the day it is.

Every week when I go to McDonald's at 8 am and 6 pm the lines are always crazy, so clearly McDonald's lines never go down.

Great America in Chicago has much more reasonable lines.

Conceding that my viewpoint is likely skewed since I mostly go to enthusiast events with their shorter waits* and only visit GA because I get free tickets each year. Their waits the past few years were generally consistent with what I've seen during regular operating hours at many other parks.

*Years ago ACE had a conference that included the long gone Williams Grove. ACE's ERT line on the Cyclone? Well over half an hour. Once the park opened to the general public? Not only a walk on, but a walk on, choose a seat, put your feet up and wait until enough people were on the train for it to run safely.