CoasterCrazy said:
Plus, I pity the employee who has to repeat the speech hundreds of times a day - and airline crew thought their job was repetitive.
Thankfully they're cycled around about every hour.
It just seems so daft when equally effective techniques are considered:
-A ride safety video playing on the monitors
-A blatant sign on the airgates or on the cars themselves
-The ride operator instructing guests on how to do two simple things. Honestly, it's as simple as tie seatbelt, lower restraint, check, dispatch. Of course, the op needs announce it quickly, before half the guests lower the lap bar immediately without contemplating the existence of a secondary restraint.
-Or even, scrapping the seatbelts and opting for more 'clicks' and more rigorous operating procedures.
Ever been to a park? Bizarro at GAdv has 4 signs in the queue telling large guests that they need to use row 5, we still end up kicking about 20 people off the train in a day because they didn't see, read, or just flat out ignored the signs. It's as blatant as you can get without actually smacking them in the face with the broad side of a barn. You also apparently don't realize that there are multiple systems for restraining riders on a train, hydraulics being one of them. "Clicks" are only relevant for the ratcheting lap bars, which none of the RMC trains use. They instead rely on a minimum down position and sensors to confirm that everything is functioning (which communicate the Operator Panel and allow the train to be dispatched). Trust me the system is fine as it is, no need to bloat it with babble.
In fact, I personally believe guests themselves should be liable for their own seatbelts, so time is saved checking them.
Go to Hersheypark, you'll love them. They're the only park on the east coast that doesn't actively check restraints, instead they just use two fingers or their eyes and tell you you're good to go. On rides like Skyrush it does me little comfort when the harness is barely touched and I'm dispatched out of the station. Six Flags requires attendants to push down on restraints, pull up on them, check the safety belts, and then visually scan and dispatch the train. Making guests liable for buckling themselves in is asking for even more trouble compared to the little good it'd do to just haphazardly dispatch a train.
It's not like they'll ever be needed to restrain a guest, so long as operating procedures are followed.
They're there as a redundancy check and as a method to make sure that the harness is in a minimum down position. Again getting rid of them on any and all rides, especially ones that require them, is a bad idea and will be asking for more trouble than the 'good' it'll bring in capacity.
Everyone is aware of how to do seatbelts - you don't run to and sue the car manufacturer because someone wasn't wearing their seatbelt and was injured in a crash. You could do wonders to the throughputs of millennium flyers with that technique and I would hope the GP would be capable of such basic tasks.
Again go to Hersheypark, you'll love their operating system. Their capacity is absolute garbage.
This leads me to think - how high could the throughput be on an ERT session with enthusiasts securing, and checking their own restraints? Depends on block sections I guess.
Often times even during ERT events people end up holding the ride from dispatching. It's happened at the Riding of the Bull every year when the train doesn't verify for dispatch. You'd think a group of people who know what they're doing would help capacity, but all that's really needed is a fast crew, and as little outside distractions as possible (loose articles, fancy second ride wristbands, people who need to take selfies on the train, etc.).
The current system in place at Six Flags parks is entirely for capacity, and those 'unnecessary hindrances' have a minimum effect on the target capacities on all the rides unless they completely and totally change the ride cycle procedure. Think of Cedar Fair's new Hyper seatbelts, and their system where they have to check the train once for seatbelts and a second time for the lapbars. That's a system that would hurt capacity, but if they just checked the belts and restraints at the same time it wouldn't have much of an effect on capacity even if one guest accidentally pulled the restraint down before putting on the seatbelt.
NTG's system is dumb, I'll give it that much. It's normal operating procedures however, fall on the same standards that every other ride in the chain is under. 3-point check, 5-point visual scan, dispatch. That's all.
