THORPE PARK's New Queueing System

[Koolkid]

Thorpe Park has been the subject of a lot of media attention lately with it's Say No to BO campaign.

 

It's causing another uproar with enthusiasts as they've come up with a new queueing system as the park is soon to enter it's busiest time of year, "Fright Nights"

 

I think this is ridiculous, something did need to be done about Thorpe Park's always inaccurate queue time estimate's but this is just going to make the matter even worse.

 

This is a picture taken from someone's facebook who was at the Park today.

 

 

It makes the park of concrete look even more tacky and cheap and 30 minutes is not "quiet"

[jjune4991]

wow. that's gonna confuse WAY too many people. I'm gonna say that there will be more complaints now.

[Guest]

Wait time signs will be innacurate no matter where they are at (at least when its busy).

[Koolkid]

I agree they can never be spot on, but Thorpe Park's are often ridiculously inaccurate,

 

At Disney they are accurate more often than not with there card system thing.

 

Edit: This means on the rides it would say, for example:

 

"Colossus is queueline is currently busy"

 

Stating the obvious, especially at Thorpe Park

[nitrofan]

Why is this supposed to be better than just writing the number of minutes the line is? I don't get the logic behind that at all.

[hobbit]

this is bad!

but you will stand very easy in the line,

the max is 60 minutes... (3)

but the thorpe park quelines are average 120 minutes!

[YoshiFan]

0 - 30 is a huge gap of time. If I was at a park I might be willing to wait 0 - 15 minutes but not 30 minutes. I guess if you are familiar with the park then you can sort of estimate how long the wait will be based on where the line stops without any signs.

[piers]

This is really daft, just like everything at Thorpe...

[matt_g]

I guess they've had complaints that the signs were inaccurate - but just giving up and saying "0 to 30 minutes" isn't any better! Not to mention that the stuck-on sign looks incredibly cheap and tacky, and not something that a major park should be doing.

 

Now they'll get complaints when the paper falls off and the sign underneath tells people that there's a 1 minute wait...

[B&Mmmm]

Yeah, I was in Thorpe park today and was wondering what the hell that was all about. It's way too vague and confusing.

 

Almost everything was 0-30mins all day today though.

Only 1 hour+ rides were colossus (Most the time) and Saw (practically all the time)

 

But overall what an awful system. I hope it's just temporary, any information about that :S?

[Jerrykoala2112]

Wow, when I first saw the sign, I thought it was 1 minute wait. Why not just do 30 minutes instead of 1. That will confuse a lot of people.

 

SFGAM's queue system stuff is really good compared to this.

[RedSpecial]

Can't see any reason why/how this is going to benefit anyone other than generate a lot of frustration. I accept that on some rides and on some days you are going to have to wait but surely its in everyones interests to provide some honest and as accurate as possible info on queue times?

 

If you try and make it sound better by introducing something like this you will simply raise everyone's stress levels and pee off both park staff and visitors.

 

Personally I'd prefer any wait time to slightly over state the actual queue time - this way if I make it through the queue quicker my stress level drops and I feel that the queue wait wasn't that bad after all.

 

Pleased I'm going to Alton Towers in October and not Thorpe. On a recent trip to Thorpe we waited over 2 hours for Saw after it gave a 1 hour 30 wait time but had two goes on Nemesis in under 15 minutes later in the day when it still had wait times set to 40 minutes. It's always difficult to realistically tell. What you really need is some type of count on the entry gates with a wait application that monitors the load / running times on the ride for the day. Wouldn't be that challenging to put together - when you consider how much rides cost to install; it would be a small percentage fee to put together a really useful ride wait time solution.

 

We also noticed on our last visit to Thorpe that people who'd paid extra for a 'fastpass' or whatever they call it were still having to wait a considerable amount of time considering that they'd paid extra to ride without queuing. I'd have been well pee'd off if I'd paid a considerable extra fee to find I was still in a long queue. If everyone pays extra for shorter ride time and the park doesn't limit the number of passes then what's the point? To be honest we were well pleased that we didn't consider paying the extra fee and felt sorry for those that had. They should have been given a free t-shirt with 'mugged' written on the back.

 

What we found interesting and I wish I'd taken a photo of this was after our visit to Thorpe we also had a visit to Legoland and mid afternoon we spotted the wait time for the Jungle Coaster said 25 HOURS on the main park information board. We presume that it should have read 25 minutes. but after encountering up to a 2 hour wait time for some of the kiddie rides at Legoland you never know.

 

Just goes to show that this is a common issue with a lot of places not just Thorpe.

[piers]

We also noticed on our last visit to Thorpe that people who'd paid extra for a 'fastpass' or whatever they call it were still having to wait a considerable amount of time considering that they'd paid extra to ride without queuing.

 

Fastpass does not mean ride with no ques, just a shorter wait than the regular line.

Still dumb though.

[RedSpecial]

We also noticed on our last visit to Thorpe that people who'd paid extra for a 'fastpass' or whatever they call it were still having to wait a considerable amount of time considering that they'd paid extra to ride without queuing.

 

Fastpass does not mean ride with no ques, just a shorter wait than the regular line.

Still dumb though.

 

I've personally never been a big fan of paying extra for a fastpass - OK at Disney they have fastpass tickets which are OK as they help you plan the day a little and I'd still expect to queue using these - but if you pay a much higher fee and still queue for a long time - I mean really what's the point? I've always found that if you do your homework and plan your day properly you can easily get round everything you want and still have time to spare. If you really really need to ride a particular ride - simply get in the park first and do a runner for that ride. Over the years I normally work on the plan of if a ride wait time is greater than 2 hours - come back later or on another day. Sometimes I can live with a long queue time if the queue is an interesting experience in it's own right - often I've found some of the queues an interesting fun experience getting to chat to other visitors. It also gives you the chance to have a relaxed view of the ride.

 

Each to their own but as long as a queue time isn't too long and stressful I think it adds to the whole experience. What parks need to work on is providing better information and making the queue experience more part of the ride. Simply attempting to make more revenue from fastpass type opportunities isn't the answer. I always love it when you get someone going on that they spent X number of hours in a park but only rode two or three rides - I'd say that the park is either totally out of control or you failed to plan your day correctly.

 

I know people say don't go on busy day's - our visit to Thorpe was on the last bank holiday weekend - I'd imagine one of their busier days and we still got to ride on every coaster and in some cases multiple times. I personally like parks on busy days; it just adds to the experience and doesn't have to be stressful if you know what you are doing.

[FLIPDUDE]

If I didn't know any better I would seriously start to think that Thorpe and the other Tussaud's parks are taking the "No publicity is bad publicity" thing too far and are just making up semi-plausible nonsense to get attention. The only reason I'm saying "If I didn't know any better" is because I doubt changing the signs will really hit the headlines on CNN, but honestly... What is up with those guys?

[nitrofan]

SFGAM's queue system stuff is really good compared to this.

 

What is SFGAm's system?

[WFChris]

I dunno, I kind of like it. I think you guys are being overly critical. It IS more simple, you can more easily narrow down which rides are '1's' and choose from those to ride. It's not like everything needs to be exact in this world. Look at traffic maps; 'green' means 'above 45 mph.' That sure isn't 'green' in my book, but it is what it is.

 

I kind of like the new system. It's dumbed down for a dumber generation.

 

Chris.

[Neogreeneyez]

Why is this supposed to be better than just writing the number of minutes the line is? I don't get the logic behind that at all.

 

I'm going to take a stab at this one...

 

so they prolly had a meeting and were like "if only we could say 0-30 min on the signs so that our line wait time displays aren't always lying..." "OH I'VE GOT IT! let's do some sort of rating system..."

 

So instead of them trying to squeeze 0-30 on a led sign lol, they just put 1,2 or 3... not smart in my book but I get the logic. I think maybe they should have explored other options like: actually finding accurate ways of measuring time and keeping watch of the measurements and update them accordingly.

[RedSpecial]

You can just see the discussions between potential riders - shall I go for a no.1 or should I have a no2. ?

[dubaidave]

I was there yesterday and was tottally confused by the signsx saying 1.

bought fast passes and they were quite usefull. However the single rider lines were amazing. we rode SAW in 5 mins when the main line was over 1 hour. Same thing with Stealth. No one seems to know about them. even a ride op I spoke toi had no idea there were single rider lines.

[duffgun]

I really hate the queue's when I have been to Thorpe Park, Waiting 2 hours for SAW was seriously not worth it, in fact it was so bad we spent almost the whole day standing in a line, I then went to blackpool 2 weeks later and there was no waiting time at all. Next time I go to Thorpe park I will get some of those queue jump tickets other wise it isn’t worth it imo. I could start up my own theme park where the main attraction is queues. people could line up for 2 hours and then I would charge them for it. Maybe £3 per queue with a £1 charge for a fast queue.

[FLIPDUDE]

I was there yesterday and was tottally confused by the signsx saying 1.

bought fast passes and they were quite usefull. However the single rider lines were amazing. we rode SAW in 5 mins when the main line was over 1 hour. Same thing with Stealth. No one seems to know about them. even a ride op I spoke toi had no idea there were single rider lines.

 

You say that as if it were a positive thing, but truth is that when I was there it was so unclear that there was a signle rider line that I ended up waiting 2.5 hours for saw.

[Koolkid]

Apparently this is just a trial before Fright Nights

[ericmichaellucas]

I'll be going to Thorpe Park next Tuesday, so I'll keep an eye on the new queue time system. I usually go mid-late September to avoid all the kids and as a result, shorter queues (hopefully).

 

The way I see it, the day is what you make it. If you go with a bunch of mates and have a laugh then where's the problem, the time goes quicker.

 

IMO, the queue will always be so long, anybody who goes reguarly will know what the queue times are gonna be so whether it says 45 mins or 2 shouldn't make a difference. At least they are putting up signs to explain the new 1, 2, 3 codes.

[MG]

As usual, I must resist the temptation to have a rant about Thorpe Park. Though, this is clearly stupid. I hope, as said above, that this is temporary. However, knowing Thorpe, I wouldn't put it past them.