Coaster Rider Statistics 2005

Interesting to see that the only two rides which gained ridership form 2004 to 2005 were Sky Ride and Disaster Transport... Maybe those 3-D glasses really did help them out ;)

I am bored, and have been looking at the percentages (that is, percentage of total rides given for each ride), and comparing rides given in 2005 versus 2003, 5 rides showed a significant (greater than 1.5% +/-) drop in ridership.

Raptor's "popularity" decreased by 1.6%, Gemini's by 1.7%, CPLERR by 4.3%, Millie's by 2.2% and Corkscrew's by 1.8%. That leaves only Maggie (-0.5%), Sky Ride (+1.0%), Iron Dragon (-0.5%), Mantis (-0.3%) and Disaster Transport (+0.3%) with relatively insignificant changes.

Corkscrew's seems somewhat obvious, as it dropped significantly in 2005 from the previous 2 years (7.7%,7.5%,5.8%). Millie's numbers were fairly steady in their drop (10.5%,9.0%,8.3%), while Raptor's numbers were steady between 2003-04, and dropped from 12.3% to 11.8% from 2004-05. And Gemini saw its numbers drop from 11.8% to 10.2% between 2003 & 2004.

Its hard to tell what exactly qualifies as a "significant" change in ridership, but it would seem that any deviation that spans a few years in any given direction could be deemed as such. Of course, there are sometimes factors which make it easy to discern why these numbers change. Corkscrew & MF are good examples of this.

It would be interesting (to me, at least) to be able to examine the changes in the park attendance and ridership as a whole, including weather, geography (where people are coming from), as well as all kinds of seemingly unrelated factors, to try and find if there is some sort of explanation or reasoning for some of the changes. I'm sure CP's management is already on top of that though. If not, hire me!!! ;)

It would be interesting (to me, at least) to be able to examine the changes in the park attendance and ridership as a whole, including weather, geography (where people are coming from), as well as all kinds of seemingly unrelated factors, to try and find if there is some sort of explanation or reasoning for some of the changes

My guess is that the majority of ridership changes are due to (1) policy (operational, safety, staffing) or (2) crew (efficiency, competence).

I probably has little to do with ride "popularity", weather or geography.

Considering that the GP makes up about 99.999999999% of the park visitors, I highly doubt that policy would have a noticable effect on ridership. However, efficiency is a likely candidate.

TTD, I think you are right. 2001 Magnum is a great example. With attendence of only 3.1 million that year (almost 500,000 less than some of the figures of the early 90's), we had 2,130,604 riders - the second highest in the ride's history. In '04, we again had 2,080,903 with attendence of 3.2 million, but this was after Dragster which sucked away even more of our early morning riders and implementation of a strict no loose articles past the entrance policy halfway through the season. Both of those crews were tremendous. I hate to say it, but the '03 crew I was also on couldn't compare. That year saw a lot more empty seats and a lot more missed intervals - thus the lower numbers.

*** Edited 5/31/2006 12:24:55 PM UTC by MDOmnis***

I highly doubt that policy would have a noticable effect on ridership.

djDaemon, by "policy," I mean things like adding seatbelts, shortening seatbelts, making ride ops walk to dumb places before a train can be dispatched, etc. The general public typically doesn't notice those, but they all affect cycle time.

What I'm saying is that cycle time is a very important driver of the ridership numbers. So is crew efficiency.

For instance, Top Thrill Dragster might be the most popular ride in the park, however, it will never achieve numbers like Magnum or Millennium Force. The problem is the small trains, the fact it seems to go down for 10-15 minutes every hour, and cycle times which often approach or exceed 2 minutes. It's mathematically impossible to move so many people through the turnstiles, even if everyone wanted to ride it.

It's no surprise that numbers weren't published for TTD. I'm sure they were very poor, even though the ride was technically operational almost every day last year.

*** Edited 5/31/2006 1:27:14 PM UTC by TTD is sinking too!***

TTD is sinking too! said:

djDaemon, by "policy," I mean things like adding seatbelts, shortening seatbelts, making ride ops walk to dumb places before a train can be dispatched, etc. The general public typically doesn't notice those, but they all affect cycle time.

Yeah, I totally agree with that.

...the ride was technically operational almost every day last year.

But definitely not with that. Are you trying to say it was operational every day that it wasn't down?

???

MDOmnis said:
TTD, I think you are right. 2001 Magnum is a great example.

Way to service yourself there. ;)

TTD is sinking too! said:
I'm sure they were very poor, even though the ride was technically operational almost every day last year.

In the last 3 months (Aug-Oct) TTD was only open the first week of August (maybe the second, I don't remember the whole down time) and then Labor Day weekend for a few hours. The rest of the time it was down. That is a good chunk of time that it was technically NOT operational.

For the sake of argument, let's say Dragster runs every day of the season (I'll use 150 days & 12 hours per day. That's probably close), only 10 minutes each hour where it's not "cycling", and a 1:45 cycle time average (these are very optimistic assumptions.)

Maximum ridership would be around 825,000. They wouldn't even come close to Magnum or Millennium Force, and it would have nothing to do with "popularity."

That was my point.

Now that you mention it, when I was waiting in line back on May 20th, I was timing the cycles (yeah, I'm a nerd). I was keeping track of how many trains would launch every 5, 10 and 20 (and so forth) minutes. The average was around 1:40 per cycle, which is pretty darn good, especially for TTD. Of course, this doesn't take into account the 15-30 minute periodic instances of downtime.

If TTD doesn't have any downtime lasting longer than a day or two, it will pass a million. It won't to much further though. I think it T & T (I'm not sure) said that TTD got very close to one million right before it shut down last October.

Gomez, it's no longer a "Joe Cool" ride, so I doubt they'll hit 1,000,000. Losing an hour each day will hurt. Even if they do get 1,000,000, it's way below other rides, and that has nothing to do with "popularity."

BTW, you have a real big "IF" in your assumptions (...that they don't have any significant downtime.) The probability of that, based on past experience, is pretty close to zero.

^We'll come back to this in October. :)

Jeff said:

MDOmnis said:
TTD, I think you are right. 2001 Magnum is a great example.

Way to service yourself there. ;)

Haha - yea I admit it - I'm a little too caught up in the whole Magnum thing! :) At this point I don't know if I'll get over it ever. But I would have been doing myself a bigger "favor" saying '04 was the greatest year ever. ;) Just pointing out that I've been a part of both ends of the "crew quality" spectrum. Real good and pretty darn bad.

And on Dragster, when it's running the way it is supposed to be, it hits around 1,000 riders per hour which is in the same ballpark as Millennium Force. I know one time in 04, they hit 10,000 in a day and they were all so happy, but we had to chuckle since we had just a regular old ho hum 18,000 day. I think one time after that, they got to 12,000 and that's about the best I remember. They will go over 1 million if they have better than ~80% uptime. They were probably just under a million last year, so with any improvement, they should finally break the mark this year. They'll never aproach the 2 million of Magnum or Raptor (or like the sign in the queue says they would! :)) *** Edited 5/31/2006 10:36:55 PM UTC by MDOmnis***

Dragster, when it's running the way it is supposed to be, it hits around 1,000 riders per hour

1,000 riders per hour on TTD?

That would mean they were AVERAGING a cycle time less than 58 sec. I don't think I've seen them hit that once, let alone maintain it for an entire hour.

800/hr would be "great." I'm sure they rarely do that.

1,000 per hour means launching 55.5 full trains trains per hour which would be one every 64-65 seconds. I think this is about what they do when the ride is really running the way it's supposed to be. Remember - their loading interval is longer than this, but they are getting two trains ready during that time. I remember it launching every 60 seconds or maybe even a little less on a few occasions. The problem is, it never seems to happen for more than 5 minutes at a time since it usually breaks! :) If they roll the next two up to launch just after the the second train of the previous pair clears the tophat, it's doable I think.

I agree with you that the number of rides Dragster gives is pathetic, but when it is actually running and running well, it moves people at a somewhat respectable clip.

It was running as good as I've ever witnessed recently, averaging about 36 trains per hour. I'd think its a safe bet that it won't get much better than that, ever. I say this because it seems as if the harder they push, the more problems they have. If I were CP, I'd rather settle for a capacity of 600 per hour as opposed to 0 per hour.

In the heart of summer, the crew is fully staff, fully trained, and used to the operations. That is the time where we see the ride running full capacity.

TTD's line seems to move quicker than some other rides at times.

I really don't think the "full capacity" you're referring to is the ride's actual full capacity. It doesn't seem that acheiving such volume is anything more than a pipe dream for now.