Express Pass GOne by 12 pm

[scauzilloc]

As a Annual pass holder I decided to make the rounds of the parks yesterday. I got to IOA at 12pm and got the biggest shock of my life. All the rides we packed to the hilt! 80 to 90 minute waits on HULK, DD, Spiderman was 2 hours. Everything! So I thought that I could get a Express Pass. Boy was I wrong! All the EP's were no longer printing out passes. They had already been taken. I went and asked an employee and his reponse was that they were gone about 11:30 am. It seems the express passes aren't working too well he said. They had over 45 groups in the park at one time and they all ate up the passes. I think they need to change the way they give out the passes. They might want to do it the way WDW does it. I think it woould be much more effective. One teen that was there was bragging how he went from pass machine to machine getting passes. He said he loved to see all the other adults mad when they couldn't get the time they wanted anymore. What was even worse is that these groups that were there also have passes to USO and went over there as well and got passes. After I left IOA I went there. It was dead. MIB was about 20 minute wait. And a lot of the rides had no waiting time. But if you wanted to get a Express pass, you were out of luck. I wanted one just so I could go eat and then ride MIB but nope, No express! Something has to be done to fix the problem. Hopefully next week won't be so bad!

 

[Cora]

as you know this is the biggest week for school vacations. Passover, Easter and Patriot's Day (for us Mass & Maine people) all fell on the same time period. I imagine as of today it should be much better.

Good luck
Cora

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[CoasterFEV]

I assume you are speaking of Saturday, April 21st.

Well, that day will go down in history as the first full weekend chock full of school groups, and the day the Express computers crashed.

First off, be aware that for the next 5 weekends, IOA has TONS of school groups already prebooked for Fridays and Saturdays. Remember, it's that time of year for end-of-year class trips, and IOA is at the top of every school kids wish list.

Second, IOA does hand out Express passes just like Disney hands out Fastpasses. The only difference is that those with multi-day passes are allowed to hold up to 3 at a time. We compensate for this difference by offering Express at every attraction, not just a few rides at each park.

and finally, what happened on Saturday:

To be point blank, the entire Express system crashed around 10am. We tried to reboot several times between 10am and 12noon, all without any success. In the meantime, we had to give out manual tickets (colored pre-printed cards) to all guests wishing to use the Express system. Unfortunately, the "manual" system does not allow for as many cards distributed per hour as the computerized sytem allows - so we run out much quicker. So yes, Marvel ran out of tickets by 11:15am yesterday, Toon around 1:30pm, JPRA around 12:15pm, Trike never ran out, Unicorn never ran out, Dueling Dragons ran out around 2:30pm, Poseidon (sniff...good bye old friend) around 1:00pm, and Seuss never ran out.

The system is up and running today with no problems. It's back to it's old (somewhat) reliable self.

Sorry to hear you were dissapointed yesterday - it was a tough day for everyone. Of course, Spidey and Hulk will ALWAYS run out by 1pm, but come back and give us another try using the Express system!

 

[gschmerl]

Nothing is perfect! I've been to WDW when they've run out of fast passes by noon. You have to expect crowds. Get there early to see it all.

 

[scauzilloc]

I use my annual passes all the time and to be honest I wasn't expecting this. I am a school teacher and I can understand about the groups since I did book my field trip with IOA but during the week. It was just so frustrating when you try to get on the rides and can't. I was not bashing IOA/US, I am just used to WDW. Its a different theme park at IOA/US and a lot of the employees were playing favorites with the tickets they were handing out. It seems that most of the staff at IOA are teens still in high school and to be honest they don't have enough patience to handle groups that size. They were handing out the tickets you mentioned to all the teen girls and guys. I went up to one employee standing at Hulk and asked what he ws handing out and he point blank told me drink slips to all the groups on the premises. As I was talking to him he said that the machines were done for the day and that there were no tickets to give out. I guess when you hire teens to do a job you have to expect them to let their hormones take over. I only wish they were so eager to please the adults as much as they are with the teen grirls and teen boys. Something needs to be done!

 

[scauzilloc]

I also noticed you said Poseidon is going good-bye. Is that thrue? i love that ride. I hope not. Not until I can figure out how they do all the tricks. get rid of the Sinbad show before poseidon.