I don’t know if any such system has been implementer. But what would be the most practical and fair system for mostly eliminating queues using smartphones?
What first comes to mind is an app where you choose a ride and then you get a message that you can go on the ride within a certain time.
Maybe also some option for queueing for different rides at the same time. Should that then just act as independent queues, or should there be some kind of limit?
Disney and Universal do this for some rides:
https://disneyland.disney.go.com/guest-services/virtual-queue/
But they probably don’t want to make it TOO easy. Their “jump the line” add-ons are hundreds of extra dollars of profit for them, often more than the cost of the actual ticket itself.
There’s a whole branch of computer science on this topic.
It entirely depends on what you mean by “best”. It’s trivial to move the physical queue into an app. If all the customers have and use it. But that doesn’t change the waiting. It just changes where you wait.
As mentioned above, the parks have figured out that charging for queue-jumping is a goldmine. And can be done whether the queue is physical, virtual, or a mix.
So OP, what are your ideas for what would constitute “best”? What are your measures of merit?
Yeah. They would charge out the ass for this service.
Plus it would ruin the serendipity of catching the line short.
My egalitarian streak hates the idea of queue jumping. What I could get behind is virtual queues where people could be doing something other than standing in line while waiting for their turn. We have had this technology since butchers started telling customers to take a number.
I hate the lines as much as anyone, and it’s part of the reason I try to never go to those theme parks. But presumably they’ve done all the research they needed to model all sorts of different queueing systems, and the reason they don’t switch to something else is because it’s less profitable, not any technical inability.
They want you to stay the whole day at the park, buying overpriced drinks when you’re thirsty, overpriced hats when you’re hot, overpriced meals when you’re hungry, overpriced snacks when you’re bored in line, etc. You’re a captive audience while you’re there, and the longer it takes you to move from ride to ride, the longer you’ll stay at the park. And if it’s a a big enough park, the lines help make sure you’ll stay at the even more overpriced hotels and do it again the next day.
With efficient lines, everyone would be in and out and done in a couple hours, and not only not spend as much money loitering, but probably feel like the experience was too short and they didn’t get their money’s worth…
Ultimately, the problem is that in an amusement park, you’ll have 800 people wanting to ride a rollercoaster that seats 50. You can take a number, but it’s not like you’re going to ride a different rollercoaster while you wait for your number to come up, because all 750 extra people are going to look for another ride to get on and all the good rides have way more riders than seats.
don’t go to Cedar Point in Sandusky Ohio–once you’re in line with your group NO ONE can leave without going to back of line
It’s an ill-defined problem. For example, at Disneyland many of the rides have a fast path for single riders, since most people are in groups that leave gaps here and there. Often no line at all even for popular rides! Great for me, but a sophisticated app system would optimally pack groups together to leave no open singles. That’s bad for me, but good for everyone else. Who do you prioritize?
A sophisticated app would pair up singles…Like Tinder.
But if they were doing other things, that they wouldn’t otherwise be doing, wouldn’t that make the lines for those other things even longer?
Would it depend on whether or not all the park’s attractions were already full to capacity? Because it seems to me that, if the park is running at full capacity, there’s only so much available Fun to divide among all the park-goers, and changing the system of queueing wouldn’t increase the amount of available Fun.
What do they do about no shows?
Back to swiping?
Yes. One of the best ways to visit Disneyland is to go by yourself. Once I had an extra day on a business trip in Anaheim and decided to see DL (again). It was wonderful, since I could walk quickly through crowds, get good viewing of parades and fireworks, eat whenever I wanted (same with bathroom breaks), and best, no whining from others in your group. The fast ride lanes were a bonus.
Or a group of adults that are comfortable with splitting up from time to time. It’s nice to meet up for lunch and the like, and a few of the rides really are better in groups. But there are a lot of advantages to spending some time on your own, for all the reasons you say. Especially as someone that’s usually the quickest and most energetic in a group.
I think some museums with special exhibits have timed entry slots. So that you might be told to arrive at 2:40pm to see the special exhibit.
Maybe not - I’ve been to plenty of amusement parks where there might be an hour plus line for a couple of roller coaters, 30-45 minute lines for a couple of other rides and a bunch of rides and shows that you can practically walk-on ( or into). Plus some of the other things you can do don’t even involve long lines - while I’m standing in line, I’m not buying a snack or shopping. The park might even have an easier time with accommodations because some people won’t need accommodations if they aren’t literally standing on line.
I worked for one of those museums, on a team that helped implement those systems.
The timed entries were useful for actually timed events, like movies, and also for social distancing during covid and crowd control in general.
But it’s a somewhat simpler system than a theme park, because an exhibit doesn’t have a hard cap (well, except fire laws)… if an exhibit is designed for 50 people at a time, it can probably fit 55 OK and 60 slightly cramped, etc.
But the times were still useful for spreading people through the day so they don’t all try to go to the exhibit at 9am. If someone missed their time slot (usually because they just forgot it was timed or weather or whatever), the ticket checker could use their judgment to either let them in right away or just tell them to come back in 15 min. 99% of the time they’d get in fine. That sort of lax system probably wouldn’t work for anything that actually limited seats, like rides or movies etc.
Then again, it doesn’t stop airlines from overbooking…
Of course if customers always showed up, there’d be no incentive to overbook. It’s an arms race between two teams gaming the same system to opposite ends.
As far as I’m concerned the best system for amusement parks is: Just Don’t Go.
Disney etc have become nosebleedingly expensive. Presumably because they are banking on the fact that a lot of people are flying in to go to them, so compared with the air fares & hotel, it’s “not really that much more for the whole holiday”?
I’ve done the obligatory visits with my kids. Never again. Humph, bah humbug, and all that…
That strategy certainly worked to shorten lift lines at ski resorts. I mean, it’s nice to get in twice as many runs than I used to…but at four times the price?