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Yeah I had the same concern as well but decided to take the risk. If you're willing to put in some work I don't think they could ever completely lock us out. There would always be the dirty option of an android emulator + gps spoofing software. I've also looked into a couple weather API's for future use. Right now my tentative plan is to collect data over the summer months and start pulling in other sources of information over the winter in order to build a better forecaster for ride times. Once I get to that point getting your data for SFOT could be useful to see how much an additional year of data changes things. I do like the UI you used to show the historical data though!

The issue was actually a bug in my system with how I was uploading rides to the database... should be fixed now!

I'll check it out. Its very possible I missed one. Most of the initial data for that was entered manually via a combination of Wikipedia and the parks websites. Let me know which ones specifically you have noticed and I'll add them. Even if the park doesn't report the times users can still submit them manually (although this method hasn't seen much use yet )

I have a git right now but its private. I could consider opening it up so for people to help with updates to the GUI and such. My biggest fear is that I'm hosting on google app engine at the moment so its not free. Pulling down the historical wait times right now costs me a couple dollars just due to the volume of database accesses. There may be a cheaper way to store the info but I haven't had time to look into it. It may be possible to pull down a snapshot now and setup a canned environment for developers to test with though... let me look into this.

I've had many thoughts along that line. The only issue is for any of that you really need the parks permission to set them up and the phone will need a specific app to detect the beacon. Really IMO the better solution would be an 2 arduino boards with IR distance sensors. Once across the queue entrance to track visitor entries. The second to detect a train as it leaves the station. You could then get a rough estimate of the input vs output of people. This would really give you a much better 'live' view of the system vs an estimate based on how long the line is.

First off, this is amazing and should be a great tool for the coaster community, especially a whore like myself who will try and fly in and out of a city on the same day to get stuff done. Just to try and push the envelope, are you able to get a lens on date, or even month? A Tuesday at the start of the season in May will be way different from say, July 5th. As an analyst in real life I would love to be able to slice the data that way. That is my eventual goal but I've only just started collecting data. Once I get a season under my belt I can start building more detailed data slicing. I also had a suggestion to pair this up with weather data. The "dream" would be an interface where a user could input some sort of date range like Monday, July, Sunny and get a rough idea of what the wait breakdown would be.

For all the whentoride advocates. The first step in a long journey has been made. Historical averages on a day-of-the-week basis: CoasterQueue - Maverick Details

If anyone is still following this thread another update was made to CoasterQueue which allows users to view historical averages on a 'day-by-day' basis. For now you can select the day of the week and see the average wait times across all Mondays/Tuesdays etc. You have to go into the ride details to view it though. This is what it looks like for Millenium Force. The data driving this is a bit limited at the moment so the times may not be a true reflection. As time goes on they should get better.

I'm aware of that. My website just doesn't require you to be in the park to view the data . Also I'm slowly adding in historical data viewing to the site. For example, each ride you can now see the average wait times on a daily basis. http://coasterqueue.com/rides/5716646702350336 The #1 question I always see online is "what will the wait times be like tomorrow". I'm hoping to provide answers to that question in the long run, but I need data first to back it up! So right now what you see in my site is only using data from the last couple weeks.

Yeah I'm trying to get the word out as much as I can and this thread shows up pretty high on google search results so... haha Some of the data comes from user submissions and some I pull from the same source as the mobile apps if they have enabled wait times. So far that's most of the Six Flags parks and the major cedar fair ones. Thus far most of the data comes from the parks. I'm in the process of adding historical data viewing for each ride as well. That is taking a bit longer than I expected it to...

I know this post is old, but it google search ranking is fairly high. Check out CoasterQueue, they have cedar point in their database for wait times. No history yet, but the about page says that is in the works. You can still view the current wait time.

Glad to help. Now just spread the word!!

Correct, Currently I'm just pulling from the respective parks API. However the more data I can get the better!

OR you can go to CoasterQueue and save yourself the hassle of downloading an additional app and spoofing the location! Six flags data pulling went live yesterday. There may be a couple small bugs I will need to work in the next few days, but overall things seem to be working. Not all the six flags parks are open yet, so this weekend will be the real test to see if all the data is coming through.

Next time you're there consider entering your times into my website for others to see. I'm trying to build a wait time monitoring site which would eventually use the data to revive something like the old whentoride.com (which went down in like 2009). Once I have a nice dataset of ride wait time information I can start to build models of the rides and their attendance.

I'm hoping to eventually revive something like this. But right now I'm in a data collection phase. Trying to capture ride wait time data for the major parks to perform analytics on. Please consider entering your wait times into my app as your at various parks that I currently support.

Correct. The cedar fair parks which currently have in-app wait times now have the same data feeding my website. That feature went live late last night.

Its on the docket for my Sunday afternoon. I'll let you know if I get it figured out.

Hopefully I can make your wish a reality! I was able to locate the API that Cedar Fair's app use to pull the wait time. I have updated my website to pull information from this API. Currently I can get wait time information for Cedar Point, Kings Island, Knotts, and Carowinds. Looks like CF hasn't brought wait times to their other parks yet. I'm going to look into doing this for Six Flags as well. Hopefully I can figure it out sometime next week. In the mean time I'm going to keep pushing forward with CoasterQueue. Maybe now with it backed by park information I can gain enough interest to get a user base going.

Do you happen to know how they obtain the wait time information? Is it also done via user submissions or do the park staff handle it in the same way the static signs at the ride entrance are handled?

I initially made this post in the "Random, Random, Random" section but feel like it should be here in the parks section. I'm looking for some input from everyone to help me determine if this project is worth perusing. Through some research I've found the most popular "App" was RideHopper and I've also discovered that many parks are starting to add wait times to their official park apps. The reviews for RideHopper were pretty awful on the android side of things so I'm not too confident in using it as a reason to continue or not. So here comes my question. Has anyone used these other apps such as RideHopper before? Did you enjoy the experience (did you submit your wait times)? Do you think you will download and use the parks official app for ride times? Would a one-stop-shop be better for this? Do you even care about wait times while you're at the park? Or you normally have a pre-determined order to the rides and that's how you execute.

There's no way the drop tower is on its way out, I really don't believe this will be a giga. Drop Tower would be a terrible loss to the park. That is one of the best non-coaster rides they have. Vortex is the one that should be on its way out and replaced with something... Maverick 2.0!

That would be fun too, to bring back! Building a 'brand' at theme parks like these doesn't really do much for me. If I want that kind of experience I will go to Disney. If I go to a Cedar Fair or Six Flags park its for the rides not the food/atmosphere. No reason to latch on to nostalgia here... I want more record breaking coasters to hit KI as fast as possible. With CP also being in Ohio I have such a hard time getting friends/family to come here as most would rather go up north where "the rides are better". I was a bit disappointed this year when the new attraction was a water ride. Although... KI does have one of the best water parks I've been to AND you can take a break and go ride some good coasters with the same ticket.

I'll begin with the caveat that nobody really "knows" what the lines will be like on any specific day in the future, as we are not prescient here (at least as far as I am aware of! ) However, yes, your assumption should be pretty accurate regarding shorter lines during that week. I've been going to CP most of my life, and virtually every year for the past 20, and the first week or two that CP is open during the week, in May, is definitely the best time to go! Much shorter lines, and generally, the weather isn't too bad either. I'm actually going the Tuesday of that week (17th), and probably again Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday of the following week. 20-30 minutes for MF, TTD, and possibly even Maverick, are certainly reasonable, and perhaps even shorter times at non-peak times of the day. That being said, if you run into a 45 minute line for Maverick, even on those days, don't be completely shocked... Enjoy your trip to The Point, and if you have any other trip-related questions, feel free to ask! I've been here 3 times before, during what I would call "peak times" and we still had fun. We ran a "front of the line pass cartel" where my friend was really lucky, we put a ton of money into those plinko games and we sold our excess tickets. We used all our remaining tickets during the last hour we had at the park and we rode maverick 6 times in a row when there was an hour and thirty minute line. The first hour early opening is a godsend, we sprint to maverick and even during a VERY crowded day the lines are zero in the morning. You can also have a lot of fun riding the "off" rides like mean streak and gemini over and over again finding the best seats. Does anyone have experience with how physics days change the crowds? I'll be at the park Friday the 20th of May which is during physics week. I expect a spike in crowds from 11-5ish and then very light crowds? Any thoughts? Not too worried though because i'll be staying on property to get early entry... and it's a day at cedar point! I haven't experienced the physics days, but I doubt it would have much effect on the crowds. The average daily admission for cedar point is like 20k+ people, so even if like 5k students come (many of which might not like thrill rides, and 5k is probably overstating it), you will probably only see a MAXIMUM of like 5 to 10 minutes on most of the major rides. I am booked to go there during that time period and I doubt I will have any problems with the crowdedness. Also, you are correct in that the schools will only really be there from 11 to 5. 9-11 is when I usually get all the rides in (early entry) and then during the night crowds die down too, and schools would unlikely still be there. I've had bad luck in the past going during the opening weeks. Not really with lines, but with the major attractions being down for some random reason. It could've been my bad luck, but since then I've associated it with "working out the kinks" after the rides have been shut down all winter. As far as lines go, my best experiences have been middle of the week (Tues-Thurs). If I can get on Maverick in ~1 hour I'm happy. My advice for school days is to watch people. A lot of the time the groups will have on obvious matching shirts and will move in large packs which can swing line times. So just avoid the packs of people! There are a few line tracking apps/websites out there as well. I've yet to find one that seems reliable though (which is why I'm working on one of my own).

Hello everyone. This is indeed my first post, but I've frequented themeparkreview for some time now. The reason I came here is to do research for a good website/app that tracks ride wait times at parks which don't have that ability already (like Disney). I've stumbled upon an couple of them but most seem to be defunct or not in use. So I was hoping to start a thread here where we can come together and find out what everyone uses to do this while they are at the parks. I hope one hasn't been created already.. if it has I missed it. Its also a bit of a shameless plug as I'm a software developer by profession. I've attempted to start my own version of this and would love for people to use it and suggest updates. Right now I've only got parks from my home state Cedar Point and Kings Island. However, I'm going to use the park list from themeparkreveiw to slowly start adding more parks over the coming months. If you have any suggestions feel free to PM me or comment through my site. Since this is my first post I will attempt to keep within the rules and keep the link to my site within the signature section.