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Best Park Throughputs & Availability

bob_3_

bob_3_

Giga Poster
I'm currently doing a project about ride availability and throughputs and I thought I'd reach out to see what the general consensus is with which parks deliver the best results and what procedures and systems that are in place work the best.

But also what areas cause bad throughputs and availability, whether this is a weather policy or just general maintenance, or just cumbersome procedures put into place. I think its fair to say some really beloved parks do struggle with these things sometimes.

For example which park has the best locker and loose article systems and policies? But the more examples the better I'm wracking my brain at the moment trying to think of all the aspects that are at play but theres loads of parks especially in america that I haven't been to, so I'm reaching out to all you lot.

Please dont focus too much on the negative.
 
bob_3_ said:
Whats the reason for this do you think. I have heard that a lot with their operations. Is their customer service good as well?
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I always thought it might be to do with how they pay/train their staff too. Europa, like the Disney Parks, often have a lot of older staff who look like really know what they're doing, rather than the seasonal teenage staff you get at a lot of UK parks.

Also the better parks seem willing to run multiple trains on coasters, even on quiet days, keeping the queues exceptionally smart.

One day at Europa Blue Fire was sitting at a 5 min queue all day, just after lunch it crept up to 10 minutes and they immediately put another train on. As opposed to Plopsaland where we were there on a fairly quiet day and they were running Ride to Happiness on one train, making the queue way longer than it needed to be.
 
Europa.

I couldn’t believe how fast people get seated without faffing and the staff batch and check restraints so quickly. Also, not sure if it’s still the case but on certain rides they didn’t check ANY restraints at all, saving on dispatch time. That paired with having their coasters on multiple trains frequently and a great staff cohort is a pretty good set of reasons why their operations are so good.
 
Always been operated consistently on point with zero faff & maximum throughputs
Blue Fire usually always has a train over the tophat before the train in front hits the brakes, Wodan usually dispatches before the train infront has done the station fly through, Eurosat & Euromir usually have 4 trains on the lift at once, Poseidon 2/3 on same lift.
Its a masterclass in operations and over 13 visits I've done 430 rides, average of 33 rides with a max of 43 rides in a day
 
This is not a new opinion, but I can back up Europa. I have seen one breakdown in 7 days spend there in my life, and it was Poseidon, which was down for a whole 3 minutes. Rides at Europa are beyond reliable, i never seen anything like it. Cedar Point and Phantasialand both gave me a fair slice of downtime, and it seems like downtime will always be a part of the industry, god knows how Europa evades this.

The dispatches also are stupidly good. Euro-Mir trains enter the station, you take a seat, you blink and its dispatching. Silver Star will have a disgusting looking queue, but you'll see it moving at a stupid pace due to three train OP's and large trains. Oh, and there is no fastrack/Genie+/annoying skip the queue rubbish.
 
Ok so maybe I’ve read this thread too fast but having been an operator there I can explain why Europa has some of the best ops in the world.

1. It’s essentially a showroom for Mack. If the rides don’t run well here, where they’re often prototypes, why would anyone invest in them? They have to show off how good their rides are so the level of care for upkeep is unprecedented.

2. Interesting about what people say about the ride ops being older and more experienced, it’s not always the case. Europa does treat their employees well at pretty much every level in terms of staff benefits, but I think the way they train you (at least when I worked there) meant you HAD to use your common sense, or you just weren’t worth the cut. Training at merlin parks is waaaay more intense than Europa, but when you’re mothered into every intricate detail of a role you lose autonomy over what’s the right of wrong thing to do if something goes tits up. The level of trust you have for your team on a ride means you have waaay better chemistry and are more likely to deal with something quickly and properly, however which way you choose, when something like a breakdown happens.

3. The park has a huge capacity and is now an established contender in sparring against the likes of Universal and Disney, which the Mack family LOVE. They’ll do a lot to keep this level of prestige, from weird operating pieces of hardware, and ultimately keeping queues moving is a fundamental way of keeping your clientele satisfied. During my season there I saw 2 Evacs off the ride I worked on. 2. I had more Evacs during a single day on multiple merlin attractions.

That’s the kind of power you have when you literally design and build every element of a ride for your park.
 
In the States, Disney and Uni generally have the best operations of any park I've been to. Disney's ops are pretty hands off when it comes to safety checks making it far more efficient to check each vehicle. Uni has standard ride checks, but they're known to be pretty efficient.

For regional parks, I've found Dollywood, GAdv and Knoebels have the best operations across the board.

Dolly has tons of people on platform checking trains at any given time as well as someone handling loose articles. That really helps with throughput for sure. GAdv has really pushy operators that basically yell at you for going too slow. That combined with a fairly strict locker policy at the flagships means there isn't much time to slow operations down. Lately they've been doing extremely well operations-wise. Also I've heard they pay their staff really well compared to most other parks. Knoebels is just super efficient. It helps that they get rides that are easy to check.
 
It probably also helps in Europa's case that Mack's manufacturing plant is just 40 minutes away. Wouldn't take long to get new parts on site.

mack.png
 
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