Details on Universal's Volcano Bay

[beer dave]

Nonsense, It's not that different than a restaurant reservation system. If anything, it is far more difficult in restaurants because of the length of and various options of a dining experience. If a restaurant has a seating capacity of 200 people they don't accept reservations for all 200 people at the same time, serve them, then seat another 200 guest with a new set of reservations. Times are staggered throughout the day in whatever time intervals makes sense and are adjusted as need be. It's much easier to make a reservation schedule when you know each guest experience will only last 90 seconds tops. Of course there will be a small que, but there only needs to be 1 person waiting in line for the ride to operate at optimum capacity. You're right when you say gaps in a que are bad; but, there is no need to have 100's of people waiting in line for no reason. Guest would only need to be trained if they don't already know how to make a restaurant reservation.

Ok there you have it. I have nothing to say to this.

 

[Flyerjab]

What I find it interesting about this is that it isn't that different to me from the FP+ system in use at WDW. We book our FPs, go into the park and fill in the time between FPs with other things as opposed to standing in line.

I look forward to trying it though. I would love relaxing in the wave pools and then being notified that it is time to report for my ride. It is always funny though how the ads make things like this look so idyllic. Reality always ends up skewed.

 

[beer dave]

What I find it interesting about this is that it isn't that different to me from the FP+ system in use at WDW. We book our FPs, go into the park and fill in the time between FPs with other things as opposed to standing in line.

I look forward to trying it though. I would love relaxing in the wave pools and then being notified that it is time to report for my ride. It is always funny though how the ads make things like this look so idyllic. Reality always ends up skewed.

The different part is the actual act of cueing...... At WDW, the FPP line has a short cut to the load area. At any waterpark I have been to, the cue is a long winding up hill walk to the access point of the ride. This is where the buildup will be caused. In order to launch one person each 15 seconds, the walkway will have to be filled with a constant flow of people. The factors in how it will flow are how big of a time space will be allowed to enter at one time, (using FPP as an example it would be 60 minutes worth) (That's 240 people who could enter at 2:59 and 240 people who could enter at 3:01-- that is 2 hours worth of people entering at one time....) how on time the guests are for their window, and how fast the fastest or slowest person walks in the cue. Not as easy as one person needs to be at the access point each 15 seconds and certainly not nonsense. One would have to leave the vacuum world and think real world.

 

[LaidBackDad]

The different part is the actual act of cueing...... At WDW, the FPP line has a short cut to the load area. At any waterpark I have been to, the cue is a long winding up hill walk to the access point of the ride. This is where the buildup will be caused. In order to launch one person each 15 seconds, the walkway will have to be filled with a constant flow of people. The factors in how it will flow are how big of a time space will be allowed to enter at one time, (using FPP as an example it would be 60 minutes worth) (That's 240 people who could enter at 2:59 and 240 people who could enter at 3:01-- that is 2 hours worth of people entering at one time....) how on time the guests are for their window, and how fast the fastest or slowest person walks in the cue. Not as easy as one person needs to be at the access point each 15 seconds and certainly not nonsense. One would have to leave the vacuum world and think real world.

You can't seriously believe there could ever be a real world situation where every person with an hour time frame window to ride would wait until the last minute to get in line; then, every person in the next hour shows up exactly at the first minute of their time window? In the real world people straggle in at whatever time during their window is most convenient for them. Irregardless, that's not even the way a vitual que works. Time frames are staggered. Just for example sake, if a ride has a capacity of 240 riders an hour, maybe 60 riders will be given a time to report to the ride (a max wait of 15 minutes tops) 10 minutes late 40 more riders report for their reservation time, and so on. There is always riders in the que, but there wait time is always much shorter. In the case of an attraction which allows multiple riders at a time (like a raft or a canoe) the vitual que may actually increase a rides efficiency as it will allow single riders or couples to be paired together with other riders before they get to the beginning ride. It's really not that complicated or unrealistic.

 

[beer dave]

You can't seriously believe there could ever be a real world situation where every person with an hour time frame window to ride would wait until the last minute to get in line; then, every person in the next hour shows up exactly at the first minute of their time window? In the real world people straggle in at whatever time during their window is most convenient for them. Irregardless, that's not even the way a vitual que works. Time frames are staggered. Just for example sake, if a ride has a capacity of 240 riders an hour, maybe 60 riders will be given a time to report to the ride (a max wait of 15 minutes tops) 10 minutes late 40 more riders report for their reservation time, and so on. There is always riders in the que, but there wait time is always much shorter. In the case of an attraction which allows multiple riders at a time (like a raft or a canoe) the vitual que may actually increase a rides efficiency as it will allow single riders or couples to be paired together with other riders before they get to the beginning ride. It's really not that complicated or unrealistic.

To plan in a real world situation you have to believe this is a possibility.

Your first 60 riders will still have 20 left in the cue when the second batch comes at the 10 minute mark. If the next group comes early in their window there will be 100 people in line. Max wait 25 minutes. With 40 more every 10 minutes, this could hold for the entire day. With any disruptions it will get longer.

Multiple rider attractions may have a slower load and unload process than the single rider slide-- and then will move more people once loaded--but not really the point here. We're not talking ride efficiency--Just cue and load. The volume numbers don't really matter here-- just backup in the cue.

None of either of our suggestions are unrealistic. However the entire system is quite complicated--- that's why it cost disney a billion dollars to implement.....

 

[Lightsoutx12]

I can't wait for this park, definitely want to check it out ASAP. I feel like it is a good time for theme parks, we have Universal opening it's water park, Avatar about to open up at Disney as well as toy story land and star wars land. There is a lot to look forward to in the upcoming months-years

 

[JohnDaleswife]

When we return after our trip next year, which will probably be like 2020 or 2021, I want to try this place out, no doubt!!!

 

[bsholmes1993]

I have seen this at wet and wild when they were testing this and this is how it went people were given cheap blue wristbands which were prototypes of ones we will get in new park at the front gate then at the front of each ride were these gray boxes which had screen on them you tapped them and it gave you a wait time of lets say 30 mins so you would either get people who understand the system and left to go relax but you had tons of people who just stood in front of the entrance for 30 mins causing new people to not be able to tap in and then their was the employees who didn't know how the system worked after testing it for 3 months and the management told them not to do it on busiest days as park couldn't handle having that many people just walking around park I think this will fail just like it did at wet n wild

 

[bsholmes1993]

Also I forgot to mention the other part instead of having built in scanners like Disney has for fast pass+ they used same technology as express pass so you had another employee who was called redemption and had to scan everyone's wristband which backed up the line some more so this caused there to be no line at the top of the ride towers but their was a long line at the bottom overall it was a mess and they have a ton to fix if they want this to work in the new park

 

[beer dave]

Also I forgot to mention the other part instead of having built in scanners like Disney has for fast pass+ they used same technology as express pass so you had another employee who was called redemption and had to scan everyone's wristband which backed up the line some more so this caused there to be no line at the top of the ride towers but their was a long line at the bottom overall it was a mess and they have a ton to fix if they want this to work in the new park

Huh.... seems to be a little more involved than others might think....