Queues, busy, times of the year etc

[MaxThrust]

Hi, My first year in QLD, and I've already got a MW annual Pass. Can someone tell me about how busy/queue are like at the different times of the year, and days of the week ? What are weekends like now, what's it like in the summer Hols.. don't fancy queuing for 2 hr in mid summer etc. In the UK, you'd just use the single rider queues and because big groups went, you often got on even quicker. Ian

[dreamworld_rulz]

Hi, My first year in QLD, and I've already got a MW annual Pass. Can someone tell me about how busy/queue are like at the different times of the year, and days of the week ? What are weekends like now, what's it like in the summer Hols.. don't fancy queuing for 2 hr in mid summer etc. In the UK, you'd just use the single rider queues and because big groups went, you often got on even quicker. Ian

Only DW has that. It's the River Rapids. It's the only ride that has it though.

[Gazza]

To clarify, its not like the single rider entrances you may be used to, basically you still have to go through the main queue house, but a few meters before the loading area the queue splits, and the ops fill rafts from both queues accordingly. It doesn't really save any time as its not like the ones at SFMM, Disney etc where you go in via the exit, and then fill seats with no wait.

[MaxThrust]

Yup, like riding spiderman 4 times on srq while waiting the normal queue. Any clues on how busy the park gets in the summer ?

[T-bone]

The claw was originally designed with a Single Rider entry, however I don't think it was used very long, probably a month if that. Another area where Dreamworld has tried something different was when the Big Red Car ride was brand new, they were trialing a fast-pass style of system. Basically, you had to go grab a ticket from the man standing outside the queue, and he would write on the ticket when to come back. Shame there isn't anything like this for Cyclone or Tower of Terror.

[Gazza]

We really should answer this blokes questions before we get too far. With SW the rides never seem to get long queues, I think the worst I have seen is 45 minutes for Bermuda Triangle, rides like Corkscrew or the Pirate Ship are walk on the whole year. Though the water park can get a bit busy, particularly the 2 body slides. DW Ill leave for others to describe, but it does get the worst queues, some rides like Wipeout and the Claw tend to get short waits, but for everything else, half an hour at least, though often an hour, and sometimes more. The trick is to arrive early and get the low capacity rides done early with no queue (Eg Motocoaster, Giant Drop, Cyclone) Im sure you have some experience with MW already, but when Superman is running 2 trains (should be happening since it is summer) you can get on very quickly (20 minutes). Lethal weapon never seems busy, and most of the looney tunes village rides don't get terribly long waits either, far less than half an hour. WWF and Scooby Doo are busiest, because they are wet and air conditioned respectively, A long queue for scooby might be an hour, WWF can get long lines too, though if they are running at full capacity the queue house only holds 30 minutes worth when full. Its usually a good idea to ride scooby doo first a couple of times early when the park opens, and then progress on to WWF, everybody seems to get caught up with Superman and Batwing Spaceshot first so thats why these stay fairly quiet early on. Wet n Wild gets packed in summer, I have never attempted it, but at night the rides all have pretty short queues when the dive in movies are on, so take advantage of the discounted after 4pm entry. Outside of summer, its not really that bad. Given you would have experience with the UK parks, you will probably be pleasantly surprised by queue lengths actually, we don't get the attendance so you'd never really get 2 hour lines. But with what T-Bone was saying. I think a good measure would be to have single rider queues on the major rides. The claw wouldn't have really needed it since they just count out 32 people, and then calling for people to fill the gaps is easy because they group the next batch while the ride is cycling, so its not hard to see why they ditched the SRQ after a month. But the coasters, and especially rides with small vehicles (Eg SDSC) could really benefit from operating like this. For starters it means single riders aren't clogging up the normal queue, the more single riders there are separate from the main queue and filling gaps, the shorter the waits are for everyone else. This is important because often a single rider gets a row to themselves when they do eventually get to board, so the problem doubles up: you end up with groups not fully filling cars but at the same time single riders having empty spaces around them. Secondly, I think it really is good for customer service, It is mutual advantage for both those operating and the guests, and it would leave visitors with a good feeling knowing they have avoided a lengthy wait.

[MaxThrust]

Expect they'll follow the rest of the world and get premium queue jump tickets for an extra $10 per ticket if the queues ever got big. SRQ are good in holiday periods, when you have big school parties etc ( UK chav group ) , and you can normally get on any ride in 10 mins rather than 1 hr.

[dreamworld_rulz]

When i was last at MW i was on my own. I went on SDSC and had the car to myself even though the line was a 30 min wait. The attendant didn't yell out for single riders. This happened on more than one occasion that day.

[joz]

Sometimes its seriously not worth holding up a car for an extra 2 or 3 people when in that same time you could have sent out another 2 sets of cars. Unless you can get them on in less then 30seconds, it stops being worth it, and slows the whole loading down.

[Gazza]

^I think then station set up becomes important, if they want to hit full capacity there needs to be some sort of way (perhaps like on thunder river, though with the spilt in the queue further back) where single riders are separated off so that way ride ops have a supply of riders they can quickly and easily draw from. My memory of SDSC is a bit sketchy, i remember the queue comes in the station opposite the direction of travel, then U turns and opens up to the area where the 2 sets of gates for the 2 cars are. You could have a single rider division perhaps that starts back in the tunnel that connects the main hall to the station and ends at the area where the gates are (the logic in having a long SRQ is that it could encourage people to split in order to save time if it means they bypass the main line, given they can visually see the difference). The sorter would pull guests from the main queue first, if its a group of 3 then one would be pulled from the SRQ, if it were a group of 2 then they would first check the main queue for another pair, and if one wasn't available then they would pull 2 singles from the SRQ. Im just using SDSC as an example , I know that ride has good capacity already, but hey an improvement on any ride is a good thing.

Edited October 31, 2007 by Gazza