Will Pay-to-cut come to Kennywood?

LostKause said:
Not a negative post this time...

Wouldn't it be interesting if the "coaster pass" had time slots to fill, and riders could only ride during their scheduled times? Once they were all filled up, no more would be given out, kind of like how Disney does it.

That's exactly how it works. You have a 15 minute window to ride a particular ride. Unlike Disney though, if you don't show up in your allotted time slot, you lose your place in line. Only exception is if a ride is down when you show up. I assume you'll be given an alternate time in that case.

(I also don't understand how it's complicated. "Show up at the Phantom at 2pm" is a pretty simple concept.)

Why would a park like Kennywood even consider this? They don't need it. I can see some of the larger parks using this system but Kennywood?

I will be surprised if it turns out to be successful.

Complicated wasn't the best word. It is a very easy concept. It is just not needed at Kennywood. If people are being assigned seats with this does Jack Rabbit lose classic coaster status? Don't think it would be very successful, just like they haven't sold out the limited number of season passes. Shouldn't be too big a deal but people coming up the exits of Jack Rabbit and Racer for other reasons can lead to not the most efficient dispatching. I guess things were just way too simple back in the 1920s.

Hate to play politics, as I'm far more interested in coasters. But why is it frowned upon (by some) if - in a capitalist society - I elect to pay more of my legally-earned, tax-paid disposable income than others in order to receive a better/faster service than those others?

Just asking.......

You don't really want to open that can of worms Martin, do you.

I frown on it because in the old days, some TEN years ago, people were expected to wait in line with everyone else. A pay-to-cut scheme is really making the wait times longer for a number of reasons. The two biggest reasons are:

• ineffective dispatches, due to the queues not being designed for the system (coming up the exits),

• and longer lines because more people are waiting in lines than their are people in the park.

So pay-to-cut schemes normally make the wait times for every attraction, even those that do not use it, longer, because people who should be waiting in line for the big coasters are instead in two or more lines throughout the park.

Therefore, it is a fake solution for a real problem, but the solution is really making the problem worse. By making lines longer, more people are, in fact, going to consider purchasing the line-cut system.

Which leads me to consider pay-to-cut to be a form of blackmail. They hold the lines at ransom, and if you don't want to have to wait in the line that has been artificially made longer, you have to pay.

I, personally, prefer to pay to be allowed to cut in front of everyone else too. When I use pay-to-cut, I start to feel guilty, because I am part of the long line problem. If I don't want anyone cutting in front of me, I must buy into it.

A perfect park would have enough for people to do that extremely long line wouldn't happen. It would run all their rides efficiently, and the rides that they have would be high enough capacity that people wouldn't have to wait too long. Parks could even charge more, to make up for the bribe money that they would have made by offering pay-to-cut.

...And when attendance grows, they would expand enough to accommodate for the extra people in the park.

But instead, parks just offer less to the regular guest, and more to people who will pay more. They take what the regular guests used to get, and sell it as an upgrade, thus making the entire park-going experience less of a value.

I've spoke against it for years. You know I could go on and on about it, but that's why I frown upon the whole thing.

LostKause said:

Therefore, it is a fake solution for a real problem, but the solution is really making the problem worse. By making lines longer, more people are, in fact, going to consider purchasing the line-cut system.

It's a real solution to a minor annoyance for me. I don't like standing in long lines to ride roller coasters. Now I don't have to at many parks.

Problem solved. :)

Plus, it's an easy revenue stream for the parks.

The benefits clearly outweigh the negatives - otherwise the system (in all of its countless variations) wouldn't thrive and spread throughout the industry.

Much of what you say in that post is true - or at least an idea based on a truth. I'll give you that. At this point, where you keep going off course is in overestimating the negative impact on the average guest.

If I miss out on just one coaster during my amusement park visit, than it is a negative impact. I guess it to be more than that though.

We recently figured that the normal amount of people using pay-to-cut is about 10%. If half of those people are standing in two ride lines at once (think double ride, if you want), than the impact on the lines is even more than 10% longer, it's 15% longer.

If the park advertised "Now with 15% longer wait times!", people would be furious, especially if the next advertisement was, "Don't want to wait 15% longer? Purchase a line cut today!"

And I totally understand why paying to get to the front of the line is appealing to people. I'm not just thinking about myself here; I am thinking about the overall guest experience.

I've said this before, parks should charge a lot more for it, and make it much more limited in how many they sell. I've never noticed VIP situations being much of a problem.

I will say that Lo-Q is probably partially responsible, at least, for getting SF out of their poor financial situation recently. Bringing money in is a good thing, but the way they do it seem immoral to me.

But what if you missed a coaster because a park got 15% more people than they usually do on any given day?

Or what if you missed a coaster because you didn't know the 'flow' of a park and got in unnecessary lines that were 15% longer than at other times of the day?

Or what if you missed a coaster because a park's operating procedures reduced maximum capacity by 15%?

Or what if you missed a coaster because 15% of the people in a park don't move as quickly as they could and slow dispatch times?

Or what if...

Well, you get the idea.

All of this seems to be based on some magical "perfect" day where everything and everyone in the park is running at maximum efficiency and the goal is to get the most rides possible.

Not only does that day not exist, but not everyone measures the value of their day in the number of rides they get.

tservo said:
Don't think it would be very successful, just like they haven't sold out the limited number of season passes.

To be fair, you don't know what that "limited" number is...

The coaster pass would not exist if it wasn't for season passes. There will, in theory, be more people in the park on any given day.

If you drove to the park and found it busy, but had gotten in "free" with a season pass, would you just leave because it's too busy? I'd probably shell out the 15 bucks to ride the coasters.

LostKause said:
We recently figured that the normal amount of people using pay-to-cut is about 10%. If half of those people are standing in two ride lines at once (think double ride, if you want), than the impact on the lines is even more than 10% longer, it's 15% longer.

If 10% of the people are standing in two lines at once, that's a 5% increase, not a 15% increase (since they're standing in a line they would have been in the first place anyway).

I think the loss to bad operations (multiple load cycles, etc.) by far exceeds the loss to people standing in more than one line at once. If you fix the first, I have absolutely no problem with the second.

I'm no mathematician, but I'm pretty sure that if you add 5% to 10%, you will end up with 15%.

Let's say that there is 100,000 people in the park, just to make it easy. 10% have the "Supercut Line-Jumper Pass", which is 10,000 people. Half of those 10,000 people (which is 5,000 people) stand in double lines at the same time, so they take up the same amount of "waiting in line" space as 15,000 people (because 10 thousand plus 5 thousand is 15 thousand). Just to check my easy math, 15,000 is 15% of 100,000.

And I agree 100% (lol) that bad operations could slow a line down much more than implementation of pay-to-cut. There are many factors that can cut down on how many rides a visitor will get to experience.

Pay-to-cut is just one of my bones to pick with the industry. The main problem that I have with the parks is wait times. They should fix this problem for everyone in the park, and not just the 10% who can afford, or are willing, to be blackmailed for it.

But you're counting the 10,000 twice because they'd be in line with or without the "Supercut Line-Jumper Pass" - the artificial attendance boosts are added when they stand in a second line. (the 5% in your hypothetical example)

kpjb said:
If you drove to the park and found it busy, but had gotten in "free" with a season pass, would you just leave because it's too busy? I'd probably shell out the 15 bucks to ride the coasters.

I would just come back some other time but I also only live 10-15 minutes away.

some TEN years ago, people were expected to wait in line with everyone else.

And thankfully someone along the line came up with a better system for people willing to pay and unwilling to wait.

I'm still after all these years unsure how the argument goes to a moral one. The parks aren't doing anything immoral. They're not stealing, they're not being dishonest, they're not extorting, they're not forcing it on you. In the end, knowing that the parks have this system, you give up your right to complain about it when you decide to pay money to enter a park whose morals you disagree with. Or at least you give up the rights to your argument being valid. IMO, anywho. Because the moment you decide to give in, you no longer have a valid excuse to argue that they're 'wronging' you, because once you pay to go in, you accept their terms of service.

Either you can choose to pay money and give in, or take the moral high road and refuse to go.

The thing that LK never seems willing to accept is that a ride can only physically offer a finite number of rides no matter what. Even if the operations are crappy, 500 people per hour is 500 people per hour whether there's one line or a line with a second virtual queue entrance.

Did Kennywood build separate queues for these people to get to the platform, or do they have to work their way up through the narrow aisles the rides already have? I could imagine the average Pittsburgher's response to Martin's idea of "capitalism." Wouldn't surprise me if you got your 2:00 appointment for Jack Rabbit wearing a few sodas and a couple of bruises.

Hmmm... I think that that Gonch, and to a lesser extent, Jeff, just got through to me. Mark this date in CoasterBuzz history.

^^ You don't wear sodas in Pittsburgh. You wear pops.

They should fix this problem for everyone in the park

You know, I just caught this. So, you think waiting in line is a problem that needs fixing? I'm wondering how many parks total you've visited in your life where all you did was ride a couple rides all day because lines were long?

I'm not very well traveled, but I've been to 33 total parks in the US. Of all of those parks, I can only think of 2 times where lines were a problem: My first trip to Cedar Point, and my only (thus far) trip to Magic Mountain.

Cedar Point-Went on a Tuesday in August in 2004, and lines were terrible. Out of then 16 coasters, every one was open. Obviously I didn't get to ride Jr. Gemini, and in the end the only adult coaster I didn't ride was Wildcat, because it closed early. Having spent at least 2 hours in multiple lines thruout the day, I still got all but one coaster ridden that was available to me, plus a re-ride on TTD, a ride on Power Tower, I ate, and I think I may have ridden the train.

Even on a very busy day, when CP had a free cut in line system, It didn't affect my day.

Magic Mountain-Sunday after Solace 05, and I still contend this was the worst day I've ever had at a park, every. It was cold, rainy, and this was when Del Holland was running the park, under Burke's crew. Yes, there were long lines and low capacity. AND I'll admit that FlashPass was being abused, as they were loading half of the Colossus train each time (did I mention they were only running one train on one side?) with FlashPassers.

Of the 16 coasters in the park, Flashback & Deja Vu were closed. Ninja was closed part of the day, and I didn't get it. I can't ride the one Kiddie coaster, and because of the crappy ops, the other one wasn't an option. We left early to go party at Moosh's, and yet I still got on 11 coasters, a flat ride, and got 2 rides on X. We got 2 hours of ERT, but because we were late, we only got about 30 minutes of ERT, which was why I got the 2 rides on X.

I hate numbers, but having a bad day at 2 out of 33 parks is a pretty low number. Oh, and I've been back to Cedar Point where I spent time over 2 days doing the whole park. In 2 days, I got multiple re-rides on everything.

I'm like Gonch, I don't like waiting in line. Which is why I normally go to a park on a day when I know I won't have to. The problem isn't that lines are long and there isn't any other option unless you buy a pay to cut. The 'problem' is that people who do this as a hobby have 3 options, and 2 of which involve either going on a busy day and chancing it (and still probably get to ride most of what you want), or pay extra and get to ride/re-ride even more.

I like the 3rd option, which, as I said was going on a day It'll likely not be busy. I don't do lines over 30 minutes anymore unless I have something to distract me, or I'm at a far away park and really want to ride a particular ride.

But in the end, most people in the park are just happy to be there, and they don't really look at waiting in line as a problem needing fixing. They look at it as part of the price of admission.

And then you have people who want a little more out of their day (or in some cases a lot more), and are willing to pay for it. Why is that wrong? Shouldn't I be able to reward myself if I have a good paying career and can afford to pay to do something I enjoy? Isn't that the supposed American Dream?

LostKause said:
Let's say that there is 100,000 people in the park, just to make it easy. 10% have the "Supercut Line-Jumper Pass", which is 10,000 people.

In my experience, this assumption is HUGELY flawed. At the parks where I've used a paid fastpass system or similar (and that's quite a number, on both sides of the Atlantic) it's never failed to amaze me quite how FEW people opt to take advantage of such systems. The vast majority it seems are entirely content to spend the bulk of their time in parks simply standing in interminable lines. So instead of assuming 10%, in my view it would be much more realistic to assume 1% or probably far less.