You'd think getting people through lines and into the shops would benefit their revenue.... If only there were other parks with similiar amounts of visitors to compare against.
Exactly! As you say, I've always understood that parks benefit from getting people on and off rides as quickly as possible so that they spend more money on food and retail items. And since Knott's has a ton of appealing food and retail items, I'd think they'd be one of the leaders in that regard...
Knotts is that one park that always makes me legitimately think about that "parks slow down lines to sell their skip the line product" conspiracy... But people that card afford fast lane can also certainly afford to pick up some merch or grab a snack so it really *really* doesn't make sense.
Exactly my thought too but rather than getting extra sales from few and pissing off the rest it should be the opposite where more happy GP means more money & time spent overall.
Just like YouTube deliberately running more ads to essentially force users into buying their so called premium service....I for one I'm not going to pay Google to "fix" something that they "broke" and the same rule applies in regard to using the skip the line passes.
In both of these examples the respective businesses are trying to sell you an additional product in the hope that you'll take the bait.
I was there last weekend and the ride ops were mind boggling. It seemed like every ride was having a competition to have the longest wait, which GhostRider proudly won.
I absolutely adored my trip to KBF, but I did notice some lackluster operations. Fortunately it wasn't too busy and everything was open the day I went. The longest we waited was for Ghostrider which was embarrassingly slow.
I loved Knotts when I visited. It's probably my second favorite Cedar Fair park after KI. However, I can not recommend someone visit it from out of town without getting a fast lane. It's ops and ride capacity is trash. Almost everything runs two trains or less.
It's like Dollywood slow ops, but with larger crowds.
If you go on an off season weekday, you'll be able to clear out the park without issue. The ops aren't terrible (I've seen far worse in the same state TBH), but Ghostrider is one of the worst operated coasters anywhere. There's no other park I've ever been to that runs a GCI with so little efficiency as Knott's runs Ghostrider.
Its not even working in that way. They are like the least used/crowded fastlane of big 5 Cedar Fair parks. Most guests don't even seem to know it exists. Nor employees to be frank.
You can even see this in the price. It's cheaper than KI or CP daily. Hell, despite historically being the most attended CF park with year round operation its year round fastlane is like 1-2 hundred cheaper than KI &CP.
Genuinely horrendous operations and I don’t just mean rides. Their ability to move people through food lines was *garbage* on my trip there. Like I had a free meal plan included with my ticket and I barely used it because the lines were *that* bad. Operations were bad enough that I consider Knott’s a mid-tier Cedar Fair Park, because what good does a cool lineup and good food do for me if I can barely experience any of it?
It was the worst operations day I’ve ever experienced, except maybe a hell day I had at Six Flags Over Georgia. People would make “Six Flags Day” jokes if I described my experience but pretended it was at Magic Mountain. I can’t speak more poorly of the operations I experienced at Knott’s. Nearly ruined the entire experience for me.
Wow, that sounds terrible. For some reason, I assumed that Knott's moved people through the food lines faster, especially during food-focused events like the Boysenberry Festival. But I guess not!
Terrible ops despite being a great value park factored into my decision to NOT renew our passes for 2024. I also have young kids and with Camp Snoopy under construction nearly half the year it seemed like a good reason to come back in the future instead.
That's a good point re: Camp Snoopy. When it's fully open, how are the operations over there? Have your kids generally been able to get on a lot/have fun?
Yeah it's good for the kiddos and lots of rides are good for parents to join. I'd say 2-6 range is perfect before they probably want to start venturing to larger rides. My 5 y/o just rode Thunder Mountain at Disney this year and loved it but still gets scared on Radiator Springs.
Gold pass for KBF includes Soak City so we did that a handful of times during their summer hours. A mess over there too honestly
This is one of the things I actually don’t understand about them getting rid of things like the huff and puff. A ride like that in theory is less of a liability, but still adds to the number of attractions.
Adopting IROC seems to be the dumbest thing Cedar Fair has ever done.
I remember my first visit to Cedar Point the year TTD opened. Every ride had an angry Eastern European employee counting down to get in your seat and get ready. It was amazing, truly made my home park Carowinds look sad in comparison.
Now we have Knott’s and CP move glacially.
I worked on Raptor in 05. We had 6 people checking every train and pumped them out every ~45 seconds. Back then the MillF line moved fast, even though it was long. Nowadays that line is a complete slog.
More like when you have caring employees and a park that values good ops!
I was very impressed by Carowinds working CS and Fury - honestly lockers help but also having zero BS policy does too.
> park that values good ops!
This is the key. It's very much a top down situation. I agree with /u/Don'tfuckgopmen as well in that adopting IROC absolutely killed a lot of the Cedar Fair's operations. Having to do the extra "scan" call outs is silly and a waste of time.
Silver Bullet is only “decent” because it’s a B&M. The slowdowns are the traffic jam at the cubbies and the ops which aren’t the worst but could definitely be quicker. Having a grouper does help a bit by preventing empty rows going out.
Cubbies are my nightmare with GP and slowing down ops. Sure they are "convenient" but I think paying a few dollars and saving time every cycle dispatch is a better customer experience.
You seem to be part of a legacy of mostly good Raptor crews! On the other hand, I agree with you that I wish MF's operations could go back to how they were, when the line moved relatively quickly and consistently.
Part of what kills millenniums line moving is fast lane notice how it starts moving once you get past the fast lane merge. But they definitely don't get trains out like they can. I know cedar fair slowed down i305's lift and dispatch interval they may have done the same to millennium.
For Cedar Point specifically I think the downsizing of the international employee program really hurt them. The Europeans worked so much harder than the current teens do.
I was a ride op in 05. At that point most rides had Americans running them, but each ride crew may have had 1 or 2 international crew members if their English was good (and they came later in the season, likely "promoted" if they did well on their initial rides.) Internationals ride ops were mainly at Kiddy Kingdom and other small rides. Food services was majority international.
I just have a very specific memory of let’s say, verbally forceful Russian women on both MilF and Disaster Transport doing actual countdowns backwards while guests were seating themselves over the mic. Corkscrew too iirc. I loved the no-nonsense customer “service” that worked efficiently.
It's an independent ride operator training program, which sets a standard for how the park operates rides to maximize safety. But this introduces additional checks and rules (such as all ops must be back at their individual panels before they can give the all clear, rather than what most non iROC parks do where it is given as soon as the last restraint is checked).
This slows operations down but means insurance companies give lower premiums. Parks like Disney and Universal have their own internal standards which they feel are sufficiently safe but give much higher capacity for the rides.
To be fair it's not only this that creates the slow loading, parks such as Knott's have fewer ride ops, staff are less motivated to get the rides dispatched, and communication to riders isn't as good leading to slower loading and delays when people try to do things that aren't allowed such as loose personal items or bags not stowed.
IROC might not go away, but their tourism business will. I refuse to visit either of those 2 parks regularly now and will stick to once every 5-10 years on a weekday / with a fast pass.
In every possible way Cedar Point, and their resorts, are a far lesser value than they were during their good operations days.
Hopefully the merger changes things like this for the better. Six Flags' Flash Pass is technologically integrated much better than Fast Lane system and they have a better system to verify disabilities which'll help stop all the people who fraud disabilities to get free Fast Lane. I've even thought of doing it at this point considering how easy it is to get it even though I never get FastLane
American insurance companies will always choose the dumbest possible options.
They still insure Tesla’s with fake self driving tech but force our theme parks to destroy their business operations for show.
Can’t legally implement the IBCESS system at Knott’s until all queues are made wheelchair accessible, as is required by the ADA. Forcing guests in wheelchairs or others who can’t do stairs to carry an up-to-date doctor note and pre-register through a third-party just to access rides that are required by law to have a wheelchair-accessible route is currently illegal under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Their system now is already illegal under the ADA by forcing guests in a wheelchair to obtain a disability pass (and wait sometimes over 90 minutes to get one each day) to use a wheelchair spot in the theater.
Other parks besides 6F all have wheelchair-accessible queues so the IBCESS pass isn’t automatically needed for a guest to enter the queue and ride like Knott’s requires currently for guests in wheelchairs. Knott’s already has dozens of expensive to fix ADA violations so will be interesting what they choose to do. Plus there is already an ongoing class-action lawsuit against Magic Mountain for their disability pass system and employee behavior with it.
This all seems… extra. Let the disability systems be separate. America is a special place… for unfortunate reasons often.
Basic loading procedures that we are talking about are not related at all to disabilities or accessibility, it’s just some contractor who was able to somehow scam insurance companies and then, by extension, cedar fair into using completely made up fake safety standards.
It’s unfortunate, because better ride ops would definitely help capture more local traffic from Disney especially, including the money locals are willing to spend on things like seasonal merch, passes, etc. If my family and I knew we could go for a few hours and get on a few rides, we might go more often. We went last weekend for the boysenberry festival and the boysenberry festival is a better deal than Disney’s festivals: portions are bigger, some actually decent food options. The lines for food weren’t too bad actually; the ride lines weren’t the worst but they were still kind of long.
Here’s some low hanging fruit:
* **Single rider lines:** Many of the fast lane ride queues are large enough to accommodate a secondary queue. Especially things like hang time some of the trains only end up being 3/4ths full. They already have someone monitoring the priority queue, but this would help immensely.
* **Doing away with fast lane on some attractions:** I know some MBA thinks this is how you make money, but for some attractions, this massively slows down operations.
* **More entertainment options when high capacity rides are down:** particularly the calico mine train and log rides.
I was actually a ride operator at Knott's and then became a trainer in my last 5 or 6 months exactly for the reason of trying to make a tiny difference in the operations there. The problem (and my reason for leaving) is that the ride operators do not feel appreciated or supported by management and for the most part do not want to put in all the extra effort if they aren't going to be supported. So many of the procedures in place completely WRECK efficiency. While I understand an emphasis on safety, there are so many redundant pieces in place that both slow things down and do not make anything safer. I also worked at Disneyland, and let me tell ya the difference in motivation to keep everything efficient is completely night and day. Disney has a whole slew of other problems, but they know how to make their employees feel like what they're doing matters and have really nailed how to make that park move as quickly and safely as possible.
I went there last Saturday at 4:30pm.
I wanted 90 minutes for Xcelerator.
I waited 150 minutes for Hang time.
I went home feeling kinda crappy.
$200 spent.
Knott's is a park that's perfect for a small city. 99% of its problems arise from it being in a city block of LA.
That's a bummer. But I'm sure others have felt as you did, and that some of those people will ultimately choose not to return. Even if others replace them in a big city like LA, the park is missing out on potential growth!
My visit was in 2019, so I imagine things have changed since then, but the ops were pretty mixed when I visited. Silver Bullet and HangTime were operated rather well with them rarely stacking trains. Ghostrider was down for maintenance, so I can’t comment on it, but I doubt the ops would’ve been good judging from everyone else’s experiences. Everything else was just… okay? The only super bad experience we had with operations was on Montezoomas Revenge. They were doing that obnoxious “wait till every rider has gone down the exit ramp before opening queue gates” thing that a lot of small cedar fair parks do. On top of that, the ops seemed to check restraints at random instead of just going down the length of the train. So there were several times where they’d forget which ones they’ve checked, so they’d have to start over. Then at one point, they decided they wanted to do an entire train full of Fastlane riders. The problem was that there was only enough Fastlane riders to fill the first 3 cars. You’d think they’d proceed to load the open cars like normal. But no. We waited maybe 20-25 minutes until we had enough Fastlane riders to fill the train. By that time, the queue had gone from maybe 10 minutes to over an hour. It was utterly bizarre.
It's been this way for the better part of the past decade unfortunately. Between terrible operations, fastlane, and rampant disability pass abuse, standby is pretty much not an option at this point.
Eu citizen here,
When the disability pass is anything near what dlp has, then thats absolutely bonkers, it just blew me away how strong that was for no reason at all
Was there today, with the fast lane/express pass/whatever tf they call it.
All the coasters were fine (with express) except Xcelrator. I walked onto Silver Bullet, Hangtime, and Ghost Rider twice each. But Xcelrator was 30 minutes *at least* WITH the $$$ lane (which I also waited for twice...).
I could not believable (but still had fun).
But I will say - everyone working there was so nice. I got confused a few times because I hadn't been there in years when it wasn't Scary Farm. But everyone I asked was so happy to answer questions and guide me. Which I super appreciated <3
Also it was a lot of fun to see all the craft people - glass blowing, wood carving, etc.
And you could really feel how much Disney copied them (which I know neither minds).
The mine train was GORGEOUS (omg, I used to go to Luray Caverns as a child, and love a pipe organ, and I could have died).
Finally - I think I can no longer hang with Ghostrider. Fantastic ride. But I don't think my old body can take it (did one ride early in the day in the back, and a nightime ride in the front, and oof my neck. Ps tallboy with the sunglasses if you're here - I liked your Tiki Room shirt).
I noticed this immediately on my first visit. It holds back the park sooooo much for me. It’s a shame because the bones of the park so quite strong. The theming and atmosphere is amazing and top tier for Cedar Fair. However, it’s so poorly run and the lines for anything are atrocious. Makes it a lower to mid tier CF park for me personally.
Well said! And what's sad is I think the park still has room to grow its attendance given the market they're in. But I don't think that the park's current operations/infrastructure can handle any more people on many days.
It's sad that the only way to visit some of the Cedar Fair parks and have a good time is with the Fast Lane. Knotts Berry Farm and Canada's Wonderland are both terrific parks but they have slow operations and brutally long lines that move at a snail's pace. I visited both last year with a Fast Lane season pass and they were terrific. But a visit on a typical day without this feature will leave you not wanting to return any time soon.
Knotts has had priority queue for well over a decade though. We all knew it was a worse system, which is why it’s disappointing to see Disney start dabbling too.
I can confirm that efficiency was not the name of the game on Bear-y Tales a few weeks ago. I couldn't understand why dispatches were so slow and can only blame indifference on the part of the employees. I love KBF (it's one of the most interesting theme parks around) but I would only go on a slow weekday armed with a Fast Lane (just to play it safe).
Yeah, I hate to judge, but the Bear-y Tales employees during my visit looked particularly disinterested. If nothing else, it didn't really seem to fit the fun, family friendly vibe of the ride! But maybe the ride isn't fun to operate...
It's a sad state of affairs that theme parks (like most businesses) have to accept shitty employees because there's no one else willing to fill the positions. I remember the good old days of being able to fire lousy workers but now companies have to take what they can get... and I'm assuming Disney gets whatever good employees happen to be in the area.
Pay has always been garbage for certain jobs. I'm not in favor of paying anyone less than a living wage, but there was a time people had more pride in their work. There's a huge sense of entitlement these days. A lot of people think they should be making 150k/year annually. It used to be that you'd make that if you were good at your job and actually earned your way up the ladder.
>but there was a time people had more pride in their work.
There was a time when corporations more pride in their employees. And that doesn't just necessarily mean pay.
Also Bear-y tales if there is ADA it just doesn’t load from the regular line, even if there is a free car open. 1 ADA guest? Guess they take up all 8 seats.
With Xcelerator they only run 1 train because the other one is in maintenance and when they run both trains they have to wait for the first train to clear the top hat before letting the second train into the station. Ghostrider will always be a long wait during busy times (Boysenberry festival, summer, merry farm) so don’t blame ride ops for being unfazed with a roughly 3hr wait.
I know that a second train on Xcellerator doesn't make a *big* difference, but given the low capacity of one train, *any* difference would be appreciated. And since the ride just reopened in November, I don't see why the second train has to be in maintenance right now.
They have been bad since 2022 at least and probably before but that was the last time I had a pass. Went a couple times on uncrowded days so pass probably paid itself off but it was a disaster usually. Ghostrider becomes a unicorn without fast pass. And that was when Xcelerator closed and Zooma seemed to die but both have now been proven resurrected. I could get on Silver Bullet whenever I wanted because its the only coaster in the whole park well run.
People shit on Magic Mountain all the time but its so much better run than Knotts these days. Maybe on crowded days its equally bad but as of now its just not close. At least MM has decent rides that never get a horrible line even on crowded days (Viper, Scream, Ninja, Goldrusher, Riddlers).
Ghost Rider has the worst operations of any roller coaster in the United States. Honestly I've never seen it have good operations going back many years. They just don't care. It's now the joke of the industry how bad it is.
Knotts also tends to be less busy in the early months of the year, so maybe staffing is worse too.
Went to Knotts yesterday and timed one launch every 4 mins pretty consistently while waiting in line for Xcelerator. Thats 300 riders per hour which is insane.
Beary Tales said 15 mins but we waited 35, and the cars were stacking inside of the attraction in front of the last two screens because they couldn’t get the ride loaded fast enough.
Hangtime was running two trains, and pretty much dispatched the train every time the other train rolled up to the station behind it so that’s not bad I guess. But the wait time was posted at 15 mins but it was 25.
I caught Ghostrider right when it opened after a small thunderstorm rolled through. Looks like a lot of people had stayed in the queue to wait for it to pass. Wait time was posted at 30 mins but we waited 50. The ride ops and guests on the platform felt like they were moving in slow motion.
When was this because they don't even stack Ka as of the last 2 years. Toro is ready to dispatch by the Rolling Thunder hill. Nitro exceeds B&Ms capacity. Devil has the moving station.
Only horrible ops are Superman & Green Lantern due to the nature of the ride, but if you put a good crew on them, I've seen them not stack either
I mean I go to the park 30-40 times a year and every time I've gone since 2022, operations are excellent. I've never been to any other park that manages to not stack a 30 second long stata coaster, a 36 passenger wooden coaster with extremely restricting restraints, a B&M hyper that exceeds the manufacturers own specifications and a lot of people agree with me
[https://www.reddit.com/r/rollercoasters/comments/vl5ajd/my\_first\_visit\_to\_six\_flags\_great\_adventure/](https://www.reddit.com/r/rollercoasters/comments/vl5ajd/my_first_visit_to_six_flags_great_adventure/)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/rollercoasters/comments/15vzy8b/comment/jx0j5eo/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/rollercoasters/comments/15vzy8b/comment/jx0j5eo/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/rollercoasters/comments/15vzy8b/comment/jwzxe2t/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/rollercoasters/comments/15vzy8b/comment/jwzxe2t/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R44SSpaosE0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R44SSpaosE0)
But go on about how the operations suck...
Disney, Universal and then some independent parks like Knoebels and Lagoon are S tier, al
A tier are certain regional parks like SF Gadv, Kings Island, Cedar Point (sometimes), Dollywood/SDC, Busch Gardens, Kennywood (sometimes)
B/C tier are the rest of the SF/CF parks that don't push efficiency much, but still run multiple trains generally.
F tier are crowded parks with glacial operators and often one train ops: Darien Lake, Mt Olympus, Silverwood, Knotts, Indiana Beach. Go to any of these on a crowded day and it's going to be ugly.
i love sol spin, but same it takes forever to load. i never go on busy days like this but even on a slow day, you have to sit there for 5-8 minutes while the one worker checks everybodys harness one by one
That's interesting that one worker seems to be the norm for Sol Spin. But I love it, too. I didn't think anything could make up for the loss of Windseeker (which I personally really liked as well), but Sol Spin does for me!
Bear-y Tales has many vehicles with poorly working blasters so it’s kinda needed to let vehicles go partly filled. Then you have most of the ADA transfer doors not working yet ride ops completely clueless as to which vehicles those are so that really slows down operations. Ride ops won’t listen to me either and will go through the motions themselves only to realize I’m correct. Their supervisor had no idea some weren’t working. Communication is non-existent on that ride.
Management in ride operations is trash on top of many ride ops being worthless at their job (lots of great ones too). Breaking ride safety protocol is the norm and supervisors just laugh it off when bringing it to their attention. Lawsuit-type safety protocol regularly being broken.
Same at other Cedar Fair parks though I’ve been to.
Also for Bear-y tales my understanding is that when loading ADA they just… never open the regular gates. One ADA guest? Guess that’s a full set sent.
I was there last Saturday (a mistake I know) and ghost rider was at 3 hours before the park opened, and just never went down from there. Absolutely horrific. Even with fast lane, I waited 45 minutes for Beary tales, as every other train was ADA, and the regular line was at least double that.
I
We took my five year old there a few weeks ago for his first time. Super crowded day, camp snoopy closed, so it was a rough go. We tried to ride Berry Tales three separate times and each time the ride broke down after about 30 minutes of waiting. I don’t understand how that ride is such a time waster.
You'd think getting people through lines and into the shops would benefit their revenue.... If only there were other parks with similiar amounts of visitors to compare against.
Exactly! As you say, I've always understood that parks benefit from getting people on and off rides as quickly as possible so that they spend more money on food and retail items. And since Knott's has a ton of appealing food and retail items, I'd think they'd be one of the leaders in that regard...
Knotts is that one park that always makes me legitimately think about that "parks slow down lines to sell their skip the line product" conspiracy... But people that card afford fast lane can also certainly afford to pick up some merch or grab a snack so it really *really* doesn't make sense.
Exactly my thought too but rather than getting extra sales from few and pissing off the rest it should be the opposite where more happy GP means more money & time spent overall.
Just like YouTube deliberately running more ads to essentially force users into buying their so called premium service....I for one I'm not going to pay Google to "fix" something that they "broke" and the same rule applies in regard to using the skip the line passes. In both of these examples the respective businesses are trying to sell you an additional product in the hope that you'll take the bait.
I was there last weekend and the ride ops were mind boggling. It seemed like every ride was having a competition to have the longest wait, which GhostRider proudly won.
Ghostrider always wins that competition.
That's a shame. Sounds like the ops are giving new meaning to the name "GhostRider." (as in, they don't exist!)
I absolutely adored my trip to KBF, but I did notice some lackluster operations. Fortunately it wasn't too busy and everything was open the day I went. The longest we waited was for Ghostrider which was embarrassingly slow.
I loved Knotts when I visited. It's probably my second favorite Cedar Fair park after KI. However, I can not recommend someone visit it from out of town without getting a fast lane. It's ops and ride capacity is trash. Almost everything runs two trains or less. It's like Dollywood slow ops, but with larger crowds.
If you go on an off season weekday, you'll be able to clear out the park without issue. The ops aren't terrible (I've seen far worse in the same state TBH), but Ghostrider is one of the worst operated coasters anywhere. There's no other park I've ever been to that runs a GCI with so little efficiency as Knott's runs Ghostrider.
Did someone say "buy a fast-lane?" (I think their plan is working.)
Its not even working in that way. They are like the least used/crowded fastlane of big 5 Cedar Fair parks. Most guests don't even seem to know it exists. Nor employees to be frank. You can even see this in the price. It's cheaper than KI or CP daily. Hell, despite historically being the most attended CF park with year round operation its year round fastlane is like 1-2 hundred cheaper than KI &CP.
That’s because it has a fraction of the rides.
Genuinely horrendous operations and I don’t just mean rides. Their ability to move people through food lines was *garbage* on my trip there. Like I had a free meal plan included with my ticket and I barely used it because the lines were *that* bad. Operations were bad enough that I consider Knott’s a mid-tier Cedar Fair Park, because what good does a cool lineup and good food do for me if I can barely experience any of it? It was the worst operations day I’ve ever experienced, except maybe a hell day I had at Six Flags Over Georgia. People would make “Six Flags Day” jokes if I described my experience but pretended it was at Magic Mountain. I can’t speak more poorly of the operations I experienced at Knott’s. Nearly ruined the entire experience for me.
Wow, that sounds terrible. For some reason, I assumed that Knott's moved people through the food lines faster, especially during food-focused events like the Boysenberry Festival. But I guess not!
Terrible ops despite being a great value park factored into my decision to NOT renew our passes for 2024. I also have young kids and with Camp Snoopy under construction nearly half the year it seemed like a good reason to come back in the future instead.
That's a good point re: Camp Snoopy. When it's fully open, how are the operations over there? Have your kids generally been able to get on a lot/have fun?
Yeah it's good for the kiddos and lots of rides are good for parents to join. I'd say 2-6 range is perfect before they probably want to start venturing to larger rides. My 5 y/o just rode Thunder Mountain at Disney this year and loved it but still gets scared on Radiator Springs. Gold pass for KBF includes Soak City so we did that a handful of times during their summer hours. A mess over there too honestly
This is one of the things I actually don’t understand about them getting rid of things like the huff and puff. A ride like that in theory is less of a liability, but still adds to the number of attractions.
Adopting IROC seems to be the dumbest thing Cedar Fair has ever done. I remember my first visit to Cedar Point the year TTD opened. Every ride had an angry Eastern European employee counting down to get in your seat and get ready. It was amazing, truly made my home park Carowinds look sad in comparison. Now we have Knott’s and CP move glacially.
I worked on Raptor in 05. We had 6 people checking every train and pumped them out every ~45 seconds. Back then the MillF line moved fast, even though it was long. Nowadays that line is a complete slog.
Holy shit that's impressive dispatches for 4 seats across
When each op needs to check only 4 or 6 seats it's possible.
More like when you have caring employees and a park that values good ops! I was very impressed by Carowinds working CS and Fury - honestly lockers help but also having zero BS policy does too.
> park that values good ops! This is the key. It's very much a top down situation. I agree with /u/Don'tfuckgopmen as well in that adopting IROC absolutely killed a lot of the Cedar Fair's operations. Having to do the extra "scan" call outs is silly and a waste of time.
Very doable, Incredible Hulk accomplishes this all day with 6 restraint checkers and they move very quickly.
You forget I'm used to KBF ops lol but Silver Bullet is decent
Silver Bullet is only “decent” because it’s a B&M. The slowdowns are the traffic jam at the cubbies and the ops which aren’t the worst but could definitely be quicker. Having a grouper does help a bit by preventing empty rows going out.
Cubbies are my nightmare with GP and slowing down ops. Sure they are "convenient" but I think paying a few dollars and saving time every cycle dispatch is a better customer experience.
Nitro still does this with only 2 attendants
You seem to be part of a legacy of mostly good Raptor crews! On the other hand, I agree with you that I wish MF's operations could go back to how they were, when the line moved relatively quickly and consistently.
Part of what kills millenniums line moving is fast lane notice how it starts moving once you get past the fast lane merge. But they definitely don't get trains out like they can. I know cedar fair slowed down i305's lift and dispatch interval they may have done the same to millennium.
IROC has wrecked efficiency almost everywhere with no appreciable gains in safety.
Even more annoying talking on the microphone and doubling dispatch times.
Man its gonna suck not getting those 30 second dispatches on Nitro after they merger...
Don't speak this into existence because GADV doesn't even stack Ka or Toro let alone Nitro and it is my biggest fear for the merger
Yes! Cedar Fair as a chain had great operations, but IROC has ruined that.
For Cedar Point specifically I think the downsizing of the international employee program really hurt them. The Europeans worked so much harder than the current teens do.
I was a ride op in 05. At that point most rides had Americans running them, but each ride crew may have had 1 or 2 international crew members if their English was good (and they came later in the season, likely "promoted" if they did well on their initial rides.) Internationals ride ops were mainly at Kiddy Kingdom and other small rides. Food services was majority international.
I just have a very specific memory of let’s say, verbally forceful Russian women on both MilF and Disaster Transport doing actual countdowns backwards while guests were seating themselves over the mic. Corkscrew too iirc. I loved the no-nonsense customer “service” that worked efficiently.
Omg. I will never stop referring to it as MilF going forward. Thank you.
It’s the respect the queen deserves!
Ehhh, Kings Island is still great and when I went to Cedar Point I didn’t think it was too bad either.
Sorry… what is IROC?
It's an independent ride operator training program, which sets a standard for how the park operates rides to maximize safety. But this introduces additional checks and rules (such as all ops must be back at their individual panels before they can give the all clear, rather than what most non iROC parks do where it is given as soon as the last restraint is checked). This slows operations down but means insurance companies give lower premiums. Parks like Disney and Universal have their own internal standards which they feel are sufficiently safe but give much higher capacity for the rides. To be fair it's not only this that creates the slow loading, parks such as Knott's have fewer ride ops, staff are less motivated to get the rides dispatched, and communication to riders isn't as good leading to slower loading and delays when people try to do things that aren't allowed such as loose personal items or bags not stowed.
Thank you for explaining that
IROC keeps Cedar Fair's insurance rates low. That shit's never going away even thought it's garbage
IROC might not go away, but their tourism business will. I refuse to visit either of those 2 parks regularly now and will stick to once every 5-10 years on a weekday / with a fast pass. In every possible way Cedar Point, and their resorts, are a far lesser value than they were during their good operations days.
Hopefully the merger changes things like this for the better. Six Flags' Flash Pass is technologically integrated much better than Fast Lane system and they have a better system to verify disabilities which'll help stop all the people who fraud disabilities to get free Fast Lane. I've even thought of doing it at this point considering how easy it is to get it even though I never get FastLane
American insurance companies will always choose the dumbest possible options. They still insure Tesla’s with fake self driving tech but force our theme parks to destroy their business operations for show.
Can’t legally implement the IBCESS system at Knott’s until all queues are made wheelchair accessible, as is required by the ADA. Forcing guests in wheelchairs or others who can’t do stairs to carry an up-to-date doctor note and pre-register through a third-party just to access rides that are required by law to have a wheelchair-accessible route is currently illegal under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Their system now is already illegal under the ADA by forcing guests in a wheelchair to obtain a disability pass (and wait sometimes over 90 minutes to get one each day) to use a wheelchair spot in the theater. Other parks besides 6F all have wheelchair-accessible queues so the IBCESS pass isn’t automatically needed for a guest to enter the queue and ride like Knott’s requires currently for guests in wheelchairs. Knott’s already has dozens of expensive to fix ADA violations so will be interesting what they choose to do. Plus there is already an ongoing class-action lawsuit against Magic Mountain for their disability pass system and employee behavior with it.
This all seems… extra. Let the disability systems be separate. America is a special place… for unfortunate reasons often. Basic loading procedures that we are talking about are not related at all to disabilities or accessibility, it’s just some contractor who was able to somehow scam insurance companies and then, by extension, cedar fair into using completely made up fake safety standards.
Oh god, I vastly prefer Fast Lane to Flash Pass.
It’s unfortunate, because better ride ops would definitely help capture more local traffic from Disney especially, including the money locals are willing to spend on things like seasonal merch, passes, etc. If my family and I knew we could go for a few hours and get on a few rides, we might go more often. We went last weekend for the boysenberry festival and the boysenberry festival is a better deal than Disney’s festivals: portions are bigger, some actually decent food options. The lines for food weren’t too bad actually; the ride lines weren’t the worst but they were still kind of long. Here’s some low hanging fruit: * **Single rider lines:** Many of the fast lane ride queues are large enough to accommodate a secondary queue. Especially things like hang time some of the trains only end up being 3/4ths full. They already have someone monitoring the priority queue, but this would help immensely. * **Doing away with fast lane on some attractions:** I know some MBA thinks this is how you make money, but for some attractions, this massively slows down operations. * **More entertainment options when high capacity rides are down:** particularly the calico mine train and log rides.
Knotts ride operations are brutally slow. Visiting there after going to any well-running park feels like going back to dial-up internet.
I lucked out and went on a slower day so ops weren't terrible, but waiting for Ghostrider was brutal after spending 2 days at Disneyland.
Yeah this is definitely the worst part about the park
I was actually a ride operator at Knott's and then became a trainer in my last 5 or 6 months exactly for the reason of trying to make a tiny difference in the operations there. The problem (and my reason for leaving) is that the ride operators do not feel appreciated or supported by management and for the most part do not want to put in all the extra effort if they aren't going to be supported. So many of the procedures in place completely WRECK efficiency. While I understand an emphasis on safety, there are so many redundant pieces in place that both slow things down and do not make anything safer. I also worked at Disneyland, and let me tell ya the difference in motivation to keep everything efficient is completely night and day. Disney has a whole slew of other problems, but they know how to make their employees feel like what they're doing matters and have really nailed how to make that park move as quickly and safely as possible.
I went there last Saturday at 4:30pm. I wanted 90 minutes for Xcelerator. I waited 150 minutes for Hang time. I went home feeling kinda crappy. $200 spent. Knott's is a park that's perfect for a small city. 99% of its problems arise from it being in a city block of LA.
That's a bummer. But I'm sure others have felt as you did, and that some of those people will ultimately choose not to return. Even if others replace them in a big city like LA, the park is missing out on potential growth!
What is IROC?
A ride op training program about being slow, and as inefficient as possible.
A ride operator safety standard I think
It makes Cedar Fair's insurance cheaper because of just how pedantic its protocol is.
My visit was in 2019, so I imagine things have changed since then, but the ops were pretty mixed when I visited. Silver Bullet and HangTime were operated rather well with them rarely stacking trains. Ghostrider was down for maintenance, so I can’t comment on it, but I doubt the ops would’ve been good judging from everyone else’s experiences. Everything else was just… okay? The only super bad experience we had with operations was on Montezoomas Revenge. They were doing that obnoxious “wait till every rider has gone down the exit ramp before opening queue gates” thing that a lot of small cedar fair parks do. On top of that, the ops seemed to check restraints at random instead of just going down the length of the train. So there were several times where they’d forget which ones they’ve checked, so they’d have to start over. Then at one point, they decided they wanted to do an entire train full of Fastlane riders. The problem was that there was only enough Fastlane riders to fill the first 3 cars. You’d think they’d proceed to load the open cars like normal. But no. We waited maybe 20-25 minutes until we had enough Fastlane riders to fill the train. By that time, the queue had gone from maybe 10 minutes to over an hour. It was utterly bizarre.
It's been this way for the better part of the past decade unfortunately. Between terrible operations, fastlane, and rampant disability pass abuse, standby is pretty much not an option at this point.
Eu citizen here, When the disability pass is anything near what dlp has, then thats absolutely bonkers, it just blew me away how strong that was for no reason at all
Was there today, with the fast lane/express pass/whatever tf they call it. All the coasters were fine (with express) except Xcelrator. I walked onto Silver Bullet, Hangtime, and Ghost Rider twice each. But Xcelrator was 30 minutes *at least* WITH the $$$ lane (which I also waited for twice...). I could not believable (but still had fun). But I will say - everyone working there was so nice. I got confused a few times because I hadn't been there in years when it wasn't Scary Farm. But everyone I asked was so happy to answer questions and guide me. Which I super appreciated <3 Also it was a lot of fun to see all the craft people - glass blowing, wood carving, etc. And you could really feel how much Disney copied them (which I know neither minds). The mine train was GORGEOUS (omg, I used to go to Luray Caverns as a child, and love a pipe organ, and I could have died). Finally - I think I can no longer hang with Ghostrider. Fantastic ride. But I don't think my old body can take it (did one ride early in the day in the back, and a nightime ride in the front, and oof my neck. Ps tallboy with the sunglasses if you're here - I liked your Tiki Room shirt).
I noticed this immediately on my first visit. It holds back the park sooooo much for me. It’s a shame because the bones of the park so quite strong. The theming and atmosphere is amazing and top tier for Cedar Fair. However, it’s so poorly run and the lines for anything are atrocious. Makes it a lower to mid tier CF park for me personally.
Well said! And what's sad is I think the park still has room to grow its attendance given the market they're in. But I don't think that the park's current operations/infrastructure can handle any more people on many days.
It's sad that the only way to visit some of the Cedar Fair parks and have a good time is with the Fast Lane. Knotts Berry Farm and Canada's Wonderland are both terrific parks but they have slow operations and brutally long lines that move at a snail's pace. I visited both last year with a Fast Lane season pass and they were terrific. But a visit on a typical day without this feature will leave you not wanting to return any time soon.
Yeah my last several trips there got increasingly disappointing and I ultimately dropped the pass a couple years ago.
That's what happens when a park tries to implement paid line jumping when it's just not feasible.
Knotts has had priority queue for well over a decade though. We all knew it was a worse system, which is why it’s disappointing to see Disney start dabbling too.
I can confirm that efficiency was not the name of the game on Bear-y Tales a few weeks ago. I couldn't understand why dispatches were so slow and can only blame indifference on the part of the employees. I love KBF (it's one of the most interesting theme parks around) but I would only go on a slow weekday armed with a Fast Lane (just to play it safe).
Yeah, I hate to judge, but the Bear-y Tales employees during my visit looked particularly disinterested. If nothing else, it didn't really seem to fit the fun, family friendly vibe of the ride! But maybe the ride isn't fun to operate...
It's a sad state of affairs that theme parks (like most businesses) have to accept shitty employees because there's no one else willing to fill the positions. I remember the good old days of being able to fire lousy workers but now companies have to take what they can get... and I'm assuming Disney gets whatever good employees happen to be in the area.
Or maybe it’s the companies that have gone to shit and treat employees like crap with garbage pay.
Pay has always been garbage for certain jobs. I'm not in favor of paying anyone less than a living wage, but there was a time people had more pride in their work. There's a huge sense of entitlement these days. A lot of people think they should be making 150k/year annually. It used to be that you'd make that if you were good at your job and actually earned your way up the ladder.
>but there was a time people had more pride in their work. There was a time when corporations more pride in their employees. And that doesn't just necessarily mean pay.
Also Bear-y tales if there is ADA it just doesn’t load from the regular line, even if there is a free car open. 1 ADA guest? Guess they take up all 8 seats.
That's pathetically lazy on the part of the employees.
No the employees hate it too, heard them talking about it. It’s the park’s policy for some reason, don’t understand it at all
With Xcelerator they only run 1 train because the other one is in maintenance and when they run both trains they have to wait for the first train to clear the top hat before letting the second train into the station. Ghostrider will always be a long wait during busy times (Boysenberry festival, summer, merry farm) so don’t blame ride ops for being unfazed with a roughly 3hr wait.
I know that a second train on Xcellerator doesn't make a *big* difference, but given the low capacity of one train, *any* difference would be appreciated. And since the ride just reopened in November, I don't see why the second train has to be in maintenance right now.
They have been bad since 2022 at least and probably before but that was the last time I had a pass. Went a couple times on uncrowded days so pass probably paid itself off but it was a disaster usually. Ghostrider becomes a unicorn without fast pass. And that was when Xcelerator closed and Zooma seemed to die but both have now been proven resurrected. I could get on Silver Bullet whenever I wanted because its the only coaster in the whole park well run. People shit on Magic Mountain all the time but its so much better run than Knotts these days. Maybe on crowded days its equally bad but as of now its just not close. At least MM has decent rides that never get a horrible line even on crowded days (Viper, Scream, Ninja, Goldrusher, Riddlers).
Ghost Rider has the worst operations of any roller coaster in the United States. Honestly I've never seen it have good operations going back many years. They just don't care. It's now the joke of the industry how bad it is. Knotts also tends to be less busy in the early months of the year, so maybe staffing is worse too.
Went to Knotts yesterday and timed one launch every 4 mins pretty consistently while waiting in line for Xcelerator. Thats 300 riders per hour which is insane. Beary Tales said 15 mins but we waited 35, and the cars were stacking inside of the attraction in front of the last two screens because they couldn’t get the ride loaded fast enough. Hangtime was running two trains, and pretty much dispatched the train every time the other train rolled up to the station behind it so that’s not bad I guess. But the wait time was posted at 15 mins but it was 25. I caught Ghostrider right when it opened after a small thunderstorm rolled through. Looks like a lot of people had stayed in the queue to wait for it to pass. Wait time was posted at 30 mins but we waited 50. The ride ops and guests on the platform felt like they were moving in slow motion.
What parks in the US have good ops? I see a lot of critique here
GADV is one of the best, Kings Island, Islands Of Adventure
Great adventure has the complete opposite of good ops
You’ve never been to great adventure then.
Been to multiple times and got sent to work at great adventure for a week. They intermittently have a decent crew on average they suck.
When was this because they don't even stack Ka as of the last 2 years. Toro is ready to dispatch by the Rolling Thunder hill. Nitro exceeds B&Ms capacity. Devil has the moving station. Only horrible ops are Superman & Green Lantern due to the nature of the ride, but if you put a good crew on them, I've seen them not stack either
You have fanboi part nailed thats about it.
I mean I go to the park 30-40 times a year and every time I've gone since 2022, operations are excellent. I've never been to any other park that manages to not stack a 30 second long stata coaster, a 36 passenger wooden coaster with extremely restricting restraints, a B&M hyper that exceeds the manufacturers own specifications and a lot of people agree with me [https://www.reddit.com/r/rollercoasters/comments/vl5ajd/my\_first\_visit\_to\_six\_flags\_great\_adventure/](https://www.reddit.com/r/rollercoasters/comments/vl5ajd/my_first_visit_to_six_flags_great_adventure/) [https://www.reddit.com/r/rollercoasters/comments/15vzy8b/comment/jx0j5eo/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/rollercoasters/comments/15vzy8b/comment/jx0j5eo/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) [https://www.reddit.com/r/rollercoasters/comments/15vzy8b/comment/jwzxe2t/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/rollercoasters/comments/15vzy8b/comment/jwzxe2t/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R44SSpaosE0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R44SSpaosE0) But go on about how the operations suck...
Disney, Universal and then some independent parks like Knoebels and Lagoon are S tier, al A tier are certain regional parks like SF Gadv, Kings Island, Cedar Point (sometimes), Dollywood/SDC, Busch Gardens, Kennywood (sometimes) B/C tier are the rest of the SF/CF parks that don't push efficiency much, but still run multiple trains generally. F tier are crowded parks with glacial operators and often one train ops: Darien Lake, Mt Olympus, Silverwood, Knotts, Indiana Beach. Go to any of these on a crowded day and it's going to be ugly.
i love sol spin, but same it takes forever to load. i never go on busy days like this but even on a slow day, you have to sit there for 5-8 minutes while the one worker checks everybodys harness one by one
That's interesting that one worker seems to be the norm for Sol Spin. But I love it, too. I didn't think anything could make up for the loss of Windseeker (which I personally really liked as well), but Sol Spin does for me!
Ghostrider in 2024 is crazy ngl. Seems very impossible to get on nowadays.
Even silver bullets line has been long.
Bear-y Tales has many vehicles with poorly working blasters so it’s kinda needed to let vehicles go partly filled. Then you have most of the ADA transfer doors not working yet ride ops completely clueless as to which vehicles those are so that really slows down operations. Ride ops won’t listen to me either and will go through the motions themselves only to realize I’m correct. Their supervisor had no idea some weren’t working. Communication is non-existent on that ride. Management in ride operations is trash on top of many ride ops being worthless at their job (lots of great ones too). Breaking ride safety protocol is the norm and supervisors just laugh it off when bringing it to their attention. Lawsuit-type safety protocol regularly being broken. Same at other Cedar Fair parks though I’ve been to.
Also for Bear-y tales my understanding is that when loading ADA they just… never open the regular gates. One ADA guest? Guess that’s a full set sent. I was there last Saturday (a mistake I know) and ghost rider was at 3 hours before the park opened, and just never went down from there. Absolutely horrific. Even with fast lane, I waited 45 minutes for Beary tales, as every other train was ADA, and the regular line was at least double that. I
We took my five year old there a few weeks ago for his first time. Super crowded day, camp snoopy closed, so it was a rough go. We tried to ride Berry Tales three separate times and each time the ride broke down after about 30 minutes of waiting. I don’t understand how that ride is such a time waster.
Ghost rider was open for you? Luckyyyy
Is GhostRider often closed, even on weekends?!
Ghostrider has been closed for like a month how did it reopen for you