would you consider this "line breaking"?

when i was at SFA last monday(Aug5th), i was waiting in line for superman and noticed a small wait for front. anyone who has been there knows the set-up in the station and that it easily gets backed up.

i was behind 2-4 people who got in line for the 2nd and 3rd row. i was headed for the front. they stopped, taking up the line, and ignored me when i politely said "excuse me". they continued to act like they didnt hear me.

there was nobody on the other side of the hand rails, so i went under the hand rails, around the 2nd and 3rd row, and went back under the hand rails and got in line for the front row. in the process, i didnt:

push or shove through any groups of people.

i didnt cut in front of anyone making it a longer wait for someone else.

after doing this quick process, the ride op got on the microphone and told me to go all the way back and wait again. she wouldnt listen to my explanation for doing what i did, but instead just told me to go back.

so, with me avoiding conflict with any other park guests, i get to add a whole 15mins on to my wait time. also, but the time i got back towards the front, there was another 3-5 trains worth of people waiting.

so, would you consider what i did wrong? it may not have been the best of ideas, but i dont think the way SFA set up that station was a good idea either.

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#1-MF #2-S:RoS #3-WT

Don't know, wasn't there to see what you did.

However... The way the line is set up, the one switch back in the queue is right next to the front seat line. I have seen people jump under the rail at that point and get in the front line. While they didn't techincally get in front of anyone in that front seat line, they may have gotten someone who was still in the queue before it opens into the area at the gates, or even in the gate area and caught up behind a group of people waiting there. I do know that the ride op's will get on people for that, and rightly so.

While I am not one to generally stand up for the ride ops at SFA (I was never that impressed with many of them), I will say "give them a break" in this intance. All they saw was a person going under the rails and around someone else... even if those people were not waiting for the same seat you were waiting for.

What I would have done (and have done in many instances) is been patient and waited for those people to move so I could have gotten around them. If they were blocking the way, no one else was going to get past them either and get into that front seat line. What difference does it make if you wait behind them for a while, or wait in the front queue? If there was no one waiting in the front queue... I would have been a little more vocal in my "Excuse me... coming through..." announcement to them.

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Kind of hard to take a post as objective if a park or coaster name is part of the "user name"

I kind of agree with your statement about S:ROS's station set up not being the most efficient because #1 you've got to go through a whole lot of people who are waiting for the back seat &#2 as you make your way up toward the front you've got to go around yet another corner to get to car #1 row#1.

I'm not sure if what you did could be considered line jumping or not given the circumstances but SFA has been cracking down a bit on line jumpers recently,I know that when I always head for the front that if anyone is blocking the line while waiting for a car such as car#3 I always ask them what seat they are waiting for and then tell them I'm going for the front and I usually get by without a problem.

The biggest problem they've got on that ride is with nearly everyone waiting for the back which blocks others from getting to the other cars which is why you always hear the ride ops every now & then tell guests that if they aren't waiting for the back seat to please keep the line moving ,of course the same thing often happens on Wild one as well.

For some reason S:ROS always seems to have the worst ride ops this season nearly every time I've gone so far.

I guess my question to coasterdude04 would be this: how much longer would it have taken for the length of the queue row those people were waiting it to diminish in size so you could go around them? 1-2 trains max? Doesn't seem like it would have been too-long a wait to just stand there until they moved.

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Matthew "mamoosh" Sullivan
[aka DaDoosh, thanks to pikfanatic]

I wouldn't consider it line jumping. They were in line for a row and you wanted to go to a different row. You didn't cut anybody who was waited to get to wait for a row.

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-Sean

To answer the question: No, what you did was NOT line jumping/breaking/that non-sporting event as called @ CP, etc...

However, if I was a ride ops, it would sure appear that you were trying to defeat the hand rails. I've seen many people duck under them to get to the front (hell, I've done it myself...when the station was empty). Like others have said, the most prudent course of action (and the one you should take in the future) is to either a) be more forceful in your requests to get by or b) (and my preferred action) simply wait a train for them to move up. Let's be real, you were not going to get to ride any faster and you might just save your blood pressure a little stress :)
lata,
jeremy
--"If patience is a virtue and ignorance is bliss, someone who is dumb and doesnt mind waiting around could have a great life!"

I've never been to SFA but I think I understand what you did and I can't see anything wrong with it. In fact, I'd say it was a good move given the situation (you at least avoided disrupting other lines). I don't know how much effort you put into getting the attention of those statues that were apparently oblivious to anything going on around them, but I would have given up after a while myself and probably did the same thing.

But I'm guessing the ride op didn't see it all and figured you were cutting in line. Although given the layout (as I picture it) she should have been able to easily figure out what happened....any way I look at it this one's going against that ride op. But people make mistakes...too bad you were on the receiving end of that one though.

I've been in that situation before (Legend comes to mind) and it sucks when people clog up the loading platform like that.

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PLEASE READ: This post wasn't meant to offend or anger anyone; I apologize in advance if it does. So please don't post a reply just to rant about it. :)

I think some six flags parks have a policy where you have to walk through any open cues they have en route to the coaster or ride. (not climb, jump, or whatever). Though this rule does not have any bearing on line jumping, it does affect safety.

I was at SFWOA earlier this year and almost every ride was walk-on. I saw several instances, on different rides, where people thought they would take a short-cut through the cues by climbing over, or under the bars.

In almost every circumstance a ride-op, security, or some other personal would ask the riders to exit and re-enter the cue line, even though it was a walk-on day.

In fact, on Superman, two people were not allowed to ride after they ingnore the repeated requests over the loud speaker for them to re-nter the cue line after they had jumped some bars.

(from what I have hear lately, this is rare for SFWOA, apparently, there line jumping security has been a bit lax as of late?)

*** This post was edited by James K on 8/8/2002. ***

Speaking of S:RoS and strange Queue set ups.

Darien Lake has SFA beat. There, if you want go get into seat #2, you also have to wait in the front seat line. The front seat queue starts and then at the last minute it breaks off with a little line for seat 2. When we were there, the line for 2 was empty, but no one realized that because they saw all the people waiting for seat 1.

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Kind of hard to take a post as objective if a park or coaster name is part of the "user name"

No, that definitely wasn't line jumping. However, as Mamoosh said, it would've been just as easy to simply wait for one or two trains to load, then walk around them. I also say give the SFA ops a break...I mean, it isn't often that you see an SF ride op actually enforcing the line jumping policy.:)

One additional point. SFA is pretty tight about going under or over railings in general even when it is very clear that no line jumping is intended. I think they are worried about injuries as well as line jumping.

Yeah SLFAKE: I noticed that when I was @ DL last week. I wondered if they were going to force people from the 1st seat queue to get in the 2nd seat. But me and T just excused ourselves around all the folks and went for 1.2. Now how the ride actually went...well you'll have to wait for the TR!
jeremy
--who is only writing a SFDL TR because T asked him too

Well coasterdude, you're alot more polite than I am! If some dumb ass is gonna block the way, I will ask them once nicely. After that it's something like, "HEY HOME-BOY YOU GONNA MOVE OUT THE DAMN WAY OR DO I GOTTA MOVE YOU MYSELF?!" Sorry, but I have no patience for people who have no consideration for others. I don't want to come off as pushy, in fact, I try to go out of my way to be polite, but when someone doesn't show me the same consideration I get REALLY ticked off. I wouldn't have gone back, either. I would have stayed right there until a ride-op came up to me. I would have then tried to explain the situation and then ask why they weren't doing anything to control the line situation, and why I was being penalized because they didn't know how to manage a line. If they still tried to make me move I would ask to speak with a supervisor. Like I said, I never go looking for trouble, but if someone wants to give me some, they're gonna get an earfull! Anyway, props to you, coasterdude, for showing so much restraint.

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Coasters and Chronic
What a Combo!

SFA has the dumbest station queues I have ever seen in any park. Whoever was responsible for those queues should be relegated to food service for the rest of their life. Every single queue for their coasters and water rides were set up extremely poorly to handle crowds. I can't understand why any park located in an area as densely populated as that part of Maryland would set there queues up as if they didn't expect anyone to come.

Mamoosh, i understand where you were coming from, but this was one of those situations where you think more clearly when the situation is actually over.

im not mad over this conflict, just curious as to why i was told to go back.

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#1-MF #2-S:RoS #3-WT

I understand, coasterdude, and I hope you don't think I was trying to flame you. Hindsight is indeed 20-20, eh?

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Matthew "mamoosh" Sullivan
[aka DaDoosh, thanks to pikfanatic]

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PointMan said:
"Every single queue for their coasters and water rides were set up extremely poorly to handle crowds."

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ROAR: Perfectly designed queue and station. And it's themed well and looks purty.
Typhoon SeaCoaster: Fully functional queue line for the ride's capacity. Fairly purty too! Only suffers because they only use 3-6 boats as opposed to the SIXTEEN advertised on the website ( [url]http://www.sixflags.com/parks/america/rides/typhoon.html )
MindEraser: Fully Functional queue. Station is actually themed though no one notices.
Two-Face: Fully Functional queue. devoid of themeing though.
Shipwreck Falls: Fully functional queue
Renegade Rapids: Very short queue, but I've only seen it spill out onto the midway on Latino/Latina day 2001.

Batwing, Jokers Jinx, Wild One and S:ROS do truely womp!
jeremy
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"To get inside this head of mine, would take a monkey-wrench, and a lot of wine" Res How I Do

Knotts has done well with queue design on GR and Xcelerator. In fact when you look at Xcelerator the station looks tiny, but the front car queue is HUGE!

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Matthew "mamoosh" Sullivan
[aka DaDoosh, thanks to pikfanatic]

anytime the board op has to tell people HOW to set up the queue by saying something over the loudspeaker, they've already LOST the battle....I hate seeing entire rows go unfilled due to poor queue design, esp. when it really is fairly simple to predict there WILL be more people wanting the front/back rows...Maggie is one that has poor queue design, but it usually just results in shorter waits for 1-2...

I hate those types of staiton set ups becuase it makes so much crowds in the staion you gatta push,and shove,and deal with another line, added to what you already waited... you would think that with all the queue line superman ride of steel at SFA has, they wouldent need to do that....I wouldent have listened to her,and if she still said somthing she would have had my whole family screaming at her,in which that point she would have shut up ,or we would have been kicked out the park or off that ride.... to think of it, getting on that ride is like getting on while being wathced by hungry tigers, you got all this secuirty,and ride operators,etc... its crazy. This one ride attedent told my brothers wife she couldent get off the ride becuase she was already locked down in the train,and she wanted to get off becuase,she was dehydrated,and that mixture with a coaster, makes for a bad ride. Now I dident say anything bcuase I wanted her to ride,and I felt that was an excuse... but I whish I would have said somthing, becuase the lazy attendent who dident wanna check the whole train over was lazy. What you did is semi- line cutting,but in some cases it is understandable, you know, I remember last time I was there, we where walking onto batwing,and there is a little zig zag before the staion stairs,and these ids behind us went under it and ahead of us,and the serciurty made them go back around, I liked that becuase what the kids did was rude,but there is no reason to make a fedara case of it becuase they where jus excited kids ,and two kids in front of me wasent ganna make a difrence, thou there has been times when two people get infront of me ride,then when Im going on the ride breaks down... Oh one qestion.... has Jokers Jinx, queue line ever filled up to the sign? becuase it would prop take all day if it was, and if it was how long was the wait? i know I waited all Batwings last season with one train,and it took 2hrs!

*** This post was edited by WoodenCyclone on 8/9/2002. ***