What exactly is a soft opening?

[Belle1962]

We’ll be at USF/IOS June 1-3. Any chance we would be able to do Hagrid’s coaster during that time?

 

[schumigirl]

If you’re at the ride at the exact time they announce they’re doing a soft opening then you have a chance.......they never announce when it might be happening so, it is down to just pure luck.......

Soft openings can be a couple of hours......or more or less.........all depends.

And in your time frame, entirely possible.

 

[skylock]

A soft opening is the way they test a new ride with actual riders in place.

If you have a short amount of time or are an impatient person, personally, I would skip a so called soft opening of any new ride.

The ride is in testing mode, which means they are working on getting it online for a full opening.

They are working on getting the ride up to full speed and want to test if out with actual riders. They announce the ride is accepting riders. That can be for a few min or a couple of hours.

It can mean lots of waiting around with the hope of actually getting to ride. Or you can get lucky and there are very few problems and lots of people get to ride as it is intended to operate, or it can mean the ride breaks down multiple times with riders at various stages in the ride.

It is not unheard of of people having to be evacuated off the ride because of a major problem.

So, as I said, if I only had a short window of time being at the park, I would skip any soft opening.

 

[Squirlz]

They need to make sure the restraints actually work. Lots of waivers, finger crossing etc.

 

[macraven]

Soft openings are fine if you are in The right spot when it happens

I did shrek years ago and caught a soft opening twice on a different day

It’s possible some TM s are aware when they will happen

I ran into a Tm I knew and was tipped off to be at the ride entrance area between 1 to 2 that day
Was told when the stand up billboard sign went up, get in line as soft opening was starting

 

[CPanther95]

Soft openings are done in the down times during testing of a new ride. Usually when they are collecting the limbs and heads of their crash test dummies and reassembling them to their torsos.

 

[Disxuni]

With each new ride, it seems that soft openings are becoming more unpredictable and with longer wait times. I wouldn't recommend it unless you're a massive Harry Potter fan and willing to wait all day for it.

The only way to guaranteed you'll get on is if you wait all day to see whether they say, "yay", or "nay", to open that it that day for testing. It might not happen until late morning, afternoon, or not at all. Then on top of that, even when they give the green light to go, it can and will often break down and cause a delay, which then will increase the wait time for the ride even more so.

The only way to walk on for a soft opening is if they do announce that it's open for soft opening first thing in the morning and it's running right now while you happen to get over there and there wasn't a herd of people in front of you. Even if instead you walk by in passing later and they announce it suddenly while enjoying the park, more than likely there will be a bunch of people that have been waiting to see whether it was a go, or not since first thing in the morning and they'll be ahead of you.

 

[gotomu212]

The other big thing they are testing, especially close to actual opening, is load times and flows. They want to make sure they have the spacing, speed and processing of getting people off and new people in right. Those are nicer because the ride itself is usually perfect and they are trying to move crowds through so there’s less waiting.

We did it for FJ and there was a lot of “whoa the conveyer is going way TOO fast or now it’s going too slow” as they were trying to figure out how many people to bring forward in the staging area (right in front of the belt) to ensure the ride didn’t have to stop or go with empty cars.

 

[Disxuni]

It will be interesting to see what kind of a turn around they will have for this type of ride. As FJ is built like an omnimover and continuously moves, where as this is a coaster and from what I seen in aerial photos isn't that long and there's only a couple of spaces for each row. So, it will not have no kind of turn around like FJ, or even like it's predecessor DC (or DD).

 

[TommyJK]

It will be interesting to see what kind of a turn around they will have for this type of ride. As FJ is built like an omnimover and continuously moves, where as this is a coaster and from what I seen in aerial photos isn't that long and there's only a couple of spaces for each row. So, it will not have no kind of turn around like FJ, or even like it's predecessor DC (or DD).

From everything I've been reading, this ride will have quite high throughput with as many as 10-12 trains (with 14 per train) in continual motion. Load is supposedly similar to RRR where it's moving and you're hopping in as it continues to move forward. Load time is supposedly going to be somewhere between 20-40 seconds. The ride will have lots of slowdowns/stops at the different scenes followed by the many (6) launches, two separate forking drop-tracks to be able to get more cars through that section quicker etc.

Some estimates have guessed it could possibly have an hourly capacity of 2100/hour (which is more than the Hulk, well more than Gringotts, about the same as Spiderman and Transformers, less than Forbidden Journey)

 

[Disxuni]

From everything I've been reading, this ride will have quite high throughput with as many as 10-12 trains (with 14 per train) in continual motion. Load is supposedly similar to RRR where it's moving and you're hopping in as it continues to move forward. Load time is supposedly going to be somewhere between 20-40 seconds. The ride will have lots of slowdowns/stops at the different scenes followed by the many (6) launches, two separate forking drop-tracks to be able to get more cars through that section quicker etc.

Some estimates have guessed it could possibly have an hourly capacity of 2100/hour (which is more than the Hulk, well more than Gringotts, about the same as Spiderman and Transformers, less than Forbidden Journey)

Wow, that's very interesting. I didn't realize it was that much. I'm sure they'll operate a little bit before actually letting people in, as this sounds like a sophisticated system in terms of timing with letting people in and on, as well as the operation of the ride itself.