Cascades, Downtimes, and SGs

[steverails]

Efficiency is perhaps the most essential factor in providing guests with the most seamless experience on any attraction; not only does the queue move faster, the individual ride vehicle moves as it should as opposed to stopping in every break zone. In most instances-from what I have observed both as a CM and as a guest on my off days-the vast majority of CMs tend to move with a sense of urgency when loading a ride thereby working to optimize the OHRC and keep the wait at a minimum. It is ultimately guests who slow rides down, or rather, lead to them cascading and, in some instances, going 101. It starts at any grouper position where the size of a party will start at two and grow to eight since the other part of their group is farther back in line. When they are finally assigned to their rows, they switch seats or seats are left vacant. As guests board a vehcle, they take their time putting their bags away or-my favorite-attempt to cram their giant rolling cooler into an elastic-lined cargo bag while not pulling down their lap bar. Unloading is next where the guests linger on the platform-on the wrong side of the control line-thus preventing the vehicle from being advanced. By the way, one cannot rule out the SG during the ride who finds it funny to stand up or attempt to exit the vehicle thus causing the ride to go down.

Every day, guests complain about long wait times and down times, yet, ironically, they are, in some ways or another, if not fully, to blame! That is why I am starting this post. I want to hear about your experiences with SGs who cause your ride to cascade and go down because of their antics. And specifically for any CMs who work Space Mountain at WDW: Is it true that when your attraction cascades to the point of causing an auto e-stop that there are certain CMs, I believe unload or tower, who get reprimanded? If so, why is this?

[CMGUY89]

I don't know about SM but at Soarin' we are constantly being B****ed at for our dispatch times. The ride itself is 4:50, we then are supposed to take 2:40 to unload and load the attraction. All of this while moving ECVs, checking seatbelts/center straps, moving bags, and making guests take off flip flops. What always pisses me off is when all the dodo parents put their center straps on while they let their children fasten their belts without the strap. And people always seem to jump to different row or carriages during the loading process further increasing our dispatch time. 7:30 is the target, 9:00 is considered at downtime and an explanation must be logged. One day my gate team and I were firing on all cylinders and we were blessed with intelligent guests and were able to get a 7:03 dispatch. It was awesome! Whenever we call in a film cleaning we slow load the theater while they are switching out the film and the dispatch is usually around 11:00. We have different 101 codes for different reasons. 101O-101 due to operations 101G- 101 due to guests 101M- 101 due to maint.
Lines would move a lot faster if guests would pay attention to safety instructions allowing us to do our job faster.

[Euterpe]

There are certain coordinators at Soarin' that are a little too obsessed with efficiency. A flight time under 9 minutes is easy, 7:30 can be tricky. There's always something (i.e. a guest) who's going to hold up a dispatch. The most important thing I think is to hurry them along without showing the urgency. The guests are like little kids. If you show the urgency and stress in your voice or your face or your body language, either they know they're pushing your buttons, and they'll keep pushing them, or they'll get stressed out too, and get confused and sit in the wrong seat, or put their seat belt in wrong, etc.

Like I said in your other Soarin' post, it's more important in my mind to answer guests' questions and make sure everyone's seated safely and that they're all ready to take off than to shave 10 seconds off a flight time. And I'll stand by that no matter what. I'm not going to ignore a guest who's calling for a Flight Attendant just because I'm in a hurry to get the ride of the ground. I feel very strongly about that.

[TalkingHands]

Lines would move a lot faster if guests would pay attention to safety instructions allowing us to do our job faster.

It would help if CM would be more aware of guests with hearing losses. We often don't hear the full spiel. It becomes garbled in the background noise of other guest talking and ignoring you. And if it is over an intercom forget it. I don't understand those at all. I want to follow your instructions but it's not happening if I can't hear you.

[albino_pygmy]

Never been on Soarin so I'm not exactly sure how it's set up as far as loading/unloading goes, I assume it's you're already assigned a row, you stay in that row and move all the way down filling every available seat, like a normal theatre, if it rose 45 feet in the air. I still have no idea how hard it is for people to sit down and shut up. When I was at Jungle, we usually aim for 45 second loads, 30 seconds if we're really busy and have 10 boats on the river. On average, it's a little over a minute because people don't listen to the loaders or the skipper telling them not to cross the crates, or to slide all the way down. "But no, I want to sit here" Well, if you want to sit here, you've just blocked access for other guests to enter the boat and it'll lean to one side and has a chance of popping out of the track, bad idea. What really bugs me the most is when large groups try to make it easier for us to load the boat by saying they're parties of 2, 3, or 4, when in fact it's a large party of 17 that wants to ride all together. You've told me you were party of 2, 3, 2, 4, and so on and this was after I've loaded a group of 10 already, and now the next group of this party of 17 I have to hold back because they can't fit, and they all get upset that we have to split them up, so we have to unload those on the boat because they refused to be seperated, put them on the next boat, and just caused a lovely unecessary backup in the river. "And if everyone can look towards the back of the boat, this is the world's strongest family, look at them hold up an entire Disney attraction all by themselves!"

[CMGUY89]

It would help if CM would be more aware of guests with hearing losses. We often don't hear the full spiel. It becomes garbled in the background noise of other guest talking and ignoring you. And if it is over an intercom forget it. I don't understand those at all. I want to follow your instructions but it's not happening if I can't hear you.

I am very understanding of guests with hearing loss, but I do need to know how I can be of more assistance. I can turn on closed captioning for the pre-show or personally explain the procedures as long as you communicate with me. I can't help if I don't know there is an issue. ;)

There are certain coordinators at Soarin' that are a little too obsessed with efficiency. A flight time under 9 minutes is easy, 7:30 can be tricky. There's always something (i.e. a guest) who's going to hold up a dispatch. The most important thing I think is to hurry them along without showing the urgency.

I think I know who you are talking about. ;)
Yes, sometimes I would like to remind them about the four elements of Disney show.
1. Safety
2. COURTESY
3. Show
*4.* Efficiency

[Euterpe]

Yes, sometimes I would like to remind them about the four elements of Disney show.
1. Safety
2. COURTESY
3. Show
*4.* Efficiency

Thank you, I'm a big fan of those elements and what order they're in. I think you should feel free to tell then when they're messing with that order.

I think sometimes managers and coordinators get so removed from what we're doing, they only see the numbers on the page telling us that our flight times are slow or that the FastPass line is too long. They forget the human element, that the reason flights might go out late are because there are guest issues, and we're doing our best to make the guests happy.

We're not just sitting around, slacking off. I'm always doing something before a flight. Helping with seat belts, lost and found, a scared child, moving bags, ECV's, getting someone to take off their camera... There is always something that needs to be done, and I think when you become so obsessed with the numbers, you aren't giving the guests the best experience possible.

[TalkingHands]

I am very understanding of guests with hearing loss, but I do need to know how I can be of more assistance. I can turn on closed captioning for the pre-show or personally explain the procedures as long as you communicate with me. I can't help if I don't know there is an issue. ;)

I do let CM know I am have a hearing loss. Problem seems to be that they see the PWC and assume there are no other issues so quickly turn and are off before I can tell them I can't understand them. An example is Indy. The CM will point to a place for me to park my PWC and quickly dart away before I can tell them I need to go downstairs for the interpreting. Then when I don't go where they pointed they become irritated and get upset with me. BTW I have a fairly soft voice except when I am upset or frustrated and then it screeches

[steverails]

Indeed efficiency is the last of the four quality standards. Balance amongst the four is the key to success. I had one trainer in monorails explain that as CMs, we should strive to "maintain safety above all else while being courteously efficient," which hits the nail on the head. I could not agree more that numbers cause all CMs to lose sight of what is imporant. I have noticed this at Soarin'. There is a lot going on before the flight takes and I give the Cast props for doing what they do on a daily basis.

At Everest, guest cooperation is key. Guests constantly tend to employ "selective listening," especially when they are grouped. They have no problems switching rows behind the back of the CM and then proceeding to argue with the CM all the while the train is leaving with an entire car empty. How is this not bad show to the guests who've been waiting in line for an hour when they see empty seats? This is where being "courteously efficient" is key. There is no time to debate when trains need to be advanced every 54 seconds (with 5 trains on). Additionally, SGs who have their entire luggage set with them tend to slow things down while the worst are those who don't fully pull down their lap bar, if they do so at all. These are the actions that cause Everest to cascade, which, again, causes bad show. Cars will stop in eac brake zone until the tower CM clears each zone. Catch my drift?

[purvislets]

I've been a witness numerous times to the seat switching at Space Mountain at WDW and it irks me to no end. It never fails... I always get stuck behind the idiot who thinks that since his wife, son and daughter are in 1, 2, and 3 and he's in 4 that they aren't going to ride together. So he tries to get in 3 ride behind his kid. The CM tries to explain to him that he needs to get back into 4 in order to ride with his family. SG then proceeds to be rude to the CM who is calmly trying to explain that they will all get to ride together.

I had a family in front of me once actually hold up the line for almost 3minutes before finally moving to the side to continue arguing with the CM about their seating. I never saw how it was resolved because we got in line like we were told and were off within seconds.