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Longest wait times for rides?


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Longest = 1 hour for Cyclone, in its early days. Was freaking hot in that indoor spiral waiting area too, middle of summer. OVER an hour for Terror Canyon at WnW, the night it opened. Shortest = Lethal Weapon. Walked straight on numerous times during the year it opened. Sometimes we'd ride it, then run around to the entrance and get straight back on and ride again :D

Edited by OceanGirl
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Dreamworld back in '09, I waited half an hour for the Giant Drop, then they told us it was going to be closed for another half hour. We were still way back in the line, so we left and went to WWW for a bit. Came back, waited another hour and a half, and finally rode it. Shortest was on the same day. It was after the park's closing time, so we went over to ToT, where we got straight on. The person next to me said they had waited for hours that day and never got to ride it.

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When a line keeps moving at a steady foot shuffle pace your wait generally won't seem too painful. Operationally, these rides are called 'Continuous Loaders' and we love our Parks for building them! Green Lantern will have double the seating capacity as Scooby but with it's dual car dispatch I reckon they will be about the same. Depending on the number of cars in service, they can bank up in the station with each car occupying it's own block until the one in front has cleared allowing the next one to safely cycle forward. The restraint locking system on other versions plugs into the cars from behind, sending a charge to the restraint system to unlock and cut the power at Load to lock. This hydraulic locking system on other versions seems to be the cause of most problems when it fails to engage and trap riders till the problem is fixed. The countless number of proximity switches is a bit of a headache too - if just one switch fails the ride will shut down automatically until the switch is replaced. Lucky the modern systems tell Engineers where the faulty switch is so it can be replaced quickly! Lethal Weapon has just 5 blocks. It's a relatively simple design compared to the others and rarely breaks down. Scooby on the other hand has shit loads of switches/blocks,way more than every other coaster in Australia combined. Green Lantern will have lots too but mostly through the station area with a few on the lift hill and for the 2 other trimstation breaking points along the circuit. Ideally by the time a car reaches the first trim brake you want the next block to be clear or the ride will keep applying breaks when you want it to build momentum. For the one in France, either the dispatch intervals are not set right or they need to ease off on the trim brakes pressure. The car speed is too controlled and I think this is what will make the difference between our version turning out good or great! Sorry I went on a bit of a tangent there, just love these systems - kind of like a human conveyor-belt! Expect the greatest threat to Green Lantern's rider capacity is breakdowns - mainly in the station area. The new restraint system shoul overcome most issues and I hope it was designed in house. Back on topic.. the longest wait I have experienced for an Australian ride has always been at Dreamworld on one of their far too many Cycle rides where waiting in line is a chore because you move say 5 paces. Stop. Wait another 3 or 4 minutes, move another few paces. Stop and so on... UGH!! By the time you get to the end of a moderate crowd day you have spent more time in queues than anything else and how does that make you feel about your day at the Park? Walt Disney really didn't like having too many cycle rides in his Parks. Continuous loaders kept the patrons happy. Over 55 years their company has created an entire psychology around the way the guests enjoy the experience from the moment they step into line. Right now they are moving into a new era of virtual and no line queues and always offer some visual entertainment as you stream your way through the switchbacks. One of the few exceptions the finding nemo sub ride.. reckon i aged a whole year waiting for that one! My worse wait time ever was the Batman suspended coaster at Magic Mountain.They were only operating 1 train and it took over 3 hours and after nearly 2 hours waiting I nearly gave up Edited by MickeyD
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Shortest = Wild West Falls has always been under a 15 minute wait for me...such great capacity that ride has. Nearly always a walk on. On my latest visit to MW, at one point in the day Scooby Doo was a walk on; only by luck though. We were walking past scooby to see the "we are experiencing technical difficulties" sign be pulled away from the entrance, and let people in. We walked straight on, and we were the first people to ride.....good timing i guess :P Longest = 1 hr (sometimes 1hr 15 mins) for Superman Escape. I've had this wait multiple times actually :/ And it's only because they run one train on days when they should be running two; really annoying. Many years, i have visited MW the week before the September school holidays...which is not an extremely busy time, but busy enough to cause 40 minute waits with one train. However, this year I went on a Saturday (which was the first day of official school holidays in September), and they were running 2 trains...why run it anyway else!!!?????? Max wait all day was 20 mins. So there you go, wait times were less during a peak period -_- wtf?! ToT in the early 2000's (04/05) i remember waiting around 40 mins to an hour. Longest I have waited for a waterslide would be around 30-35 mins for Super Tubes when WWW first opened. ------------------------------------------ On the topic of wait times, I noticed that the gc themeparks this year didn't have long queues. Went to MW, DW and SW in September (week before school holidays): The parks were not very busy at all. Compared to 3 years ago (when i visited at the same time), wait times have decreased. Which I found very strange, considering how cheap it is now to visit the parks. At DW all rides were a 15 minute wait or less all day...with the exception of Buzzsaw (just opened) and ToTII; both having 30 to 1 hour waits. Giant Drop was pretty much "wait one cycle, get on" all day. So plenty of re-rides there. We comfortably did DW in one day...with MANY re-rides. Even a ride op i talked to commented on the lack of visitors during this period. weird. I then visited Movieworld first on a weekday, where the lines were as expected; SE 30 to 50 mins all day except the early morn, scooby 15 to 30, WWF 20 mins max, Batwing 25 mins to 30 mins. Second visit was on a Saturday, where everything was so much better; SE 20 mins max (running 2 trains), scooby 15 max, WWF 15 mins max. Seaworld. Both coasters were only a 10-15 min wait at most. Jet Rescue broke down an hour into my day at Seaworld, so it made the line longer at Sea Viper. But still only a 15 min wait or less.

Edited by Luke
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We holiday at the Goldy every March and the longest we have ever waited for a ride would have been 15 minutes for Superman and that was for a rain delay. The good thing about that was all the people in front of us left, so we got the front seat. Most lines are really short at that time of the year so we are usually only waiting for the current run to finish so we can get straight on. My kids have been on Road Runner Roller Coaster 7 times without getting out of their seat. They only got out then because they started to fell a bit off!!!

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  • 2 months later...

Around 2 hours for Dragster in it's opening year though it was punctuated by multiple breakdowns. Another similarly long wait was Deja Vu at SFMM in 2001 (before the single rider line). Generally I've never had too many long waits because I pick my visit times very carefully or get any kind of fast pass where they are available. Shortest, Xcelerator on a quiet day. You didn't even have to get off, just stay in your seat as long as no one was waiting for the row.

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The longest i have waited in an Aus park would be 2.5 hours for Scooby Doo... My best friend from Vic was up during school Holidays 2009/20010... we went on the day they posted the highest attendance ever... the queue's were insane for everything we only got on 3 rides and saw Hollywood Stunt Driver. The shortest would be during a work event at both MW and DW all the major rides were walk on. I cant wait to do that again in the future when MW is back at full capacity for rides. But by far the craziest queue i have ever been in was for Top Thrill Dragster at Cedar Point. We had waited hours to get to the front of the queue and it broke... i had front seat. There was no way in hell we were leaving! We were already on the coaster but behind an empty train... so we were allowed to stay sitting in the coaster. We waited so long that i fell asleep on the lap bar... and ended up getting badly sunburnt. After 4 HOURS! They sent the empty train to test... and then it was good to go. After sleeping for about 45minutes it was an interesting experience being launched half asleep!

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Longest would be Manta at Sea World Orlando, 2 hour wait not long after its grand opening. In Australia I've waited for superman on a public holiday for 1.5 hours. Not really that long but when they're only running one train it takes forever to move through the queue. Shortest would be heaps of walk-ons, Superman, Scooby, Batwing, WWF, TOTII, Claw, Buzzsaw, Cyclone, Jet Rescue ETC ETC ETC :) I love quiet weekdays, and the early entry at DW ;)

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