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Your experiences at a park when it was at capacity

kenny cook

Mega Poster
Hey y'all!! As a park goer in Southern California, I have to deal with massive crowds a lot, and if the park's name isn't "Seaworld" "Disney" or "Universal" it can become miserable pretty quickly. So, I'm here to ask, have you been at a park when it was at capacity?? If so, what was your day/experience like??
 

Snoo

The Legend
Only been to Cedar Point when it was packed to the brim and it was hell on earth. I was only there in the morning, left for most of the day, then came back.. so I can only imagine how bad it was midday.
 

GuyWithAStick

Captain Basic
I've been to SFGAm a few times at peak capacity. Although, it really depends on the day. If it's the middle of summer and it's hot as balls, everyone is going to be in the water park and/or in line for the water rides, leaving the actual coasters with relatively short waits. If it's Fright Fest, it's going to be a 45 minute-an hour wait at least for everything. The last weekend is another level of awfulness because the shops stop taking in new merch, so all the shelves are usually half empty.

The one thing that goes for all of the different types of days is that the food lines are going to be the ones you wait the longest in.
 

Pokemaniac

Mountain monkey
Staff member
Administrator
Moderator
Moved to General Discussion, as the question in the OP doesn't really have a definite answer.

The busiest park I've ever been to was Thorpe back in 2009, as we managed to visit during a bank holiday. I think we spent eight hours at the park, and got one ride on Stealth and one on Nemesis Inferno, plus Flying Fish and three of the flats. Luckily, most of the crowds seemed to be tied up by Saw, which had a four-hour queue. The least we waited for anything was half an hour. After that, I learned to look up local holidays while planning park trips.
 

Will

Strata Poster
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Antinos

Slut for Spinners
Cedar Point was close to capacity for the 2008 Live. We were hardly able to ride anything, but after queuing for three hours for TTD and having a few in our party get stapled and complain to guest services, we all got line skippies for Maverick.

I had another trip to CP (post TTD, pre Maverick) where we walked in the gate and saw a sign that read "Millennium Force will not be open today." Back then, Millennium Force wasn't able to share crowd absorption with Gatekeeper, Valravn, Maverick, and Steel Vengeance. Raptor's Line was spilling out into the midway and TTD was surprisingly efficient that day. I think we stayed for three hours and left.
 

Y. Kim

Mega Poster
Not at full capacity in normal, but in 2014, for the school trip, I went to Everland, but too crowded on weekdays. In opening time, ran to T Express, but 40-minute wait. After an hour, wait time:160 min. So I used special FastPass ticket for re-ride with recorded video of our ride with $15 per person and skipped 180 minutes line. Besides, other flats are 60~90 minute wait(pirate ship:100min. floorless topspin: 70min. Night Safari adventure:100min. Arrow looper:90min. ) So just ridden 9 rides ):
However in the minimal capacity, I visited Everland and had 20min wait on T Express, and no line on flats, total 1400 visitors on that day But normal Fastpass was sold out on T Express and had total 32 rides that day(including reride and T Express 8 time)
 

KristofWB

Hyper Poster
Walibi Belgium is in a small country, but during Halloween late night openings, the park often reaches the maximum capacity of 25.000 visitors. I remember being there in 2009, when the park's Halloween was at its full popularity for the first time.

Regular rides had average waiting times of 50 minutes, with 2 hours at max. Haunted houses were even worse, with a minimum waiting time of 2,5 hours and a maximum waiting time of 4 (!) hours on the Zoo Terror haunted house!
 
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