Skipping the line for a theme park ride should not mean that you end up skipping the show. Yet that happens often with the alternate queues that parks have set up for their attractions. The most recent example? An ill-advised single rider queue for Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance at Walt Disney World.
Rise is Theme Park Insider readers' choice as the world's best theme park attraction, heading our top 25 list again this year. It's more than a ride, comprising multiple preshow and ride systems to create its immersive Star Wars experience. Missing any one element of the show diminishes that experience, so it's frustrating that Disney would design a single rider queue that would route guests around two important elements of the attraction.
The single rider queue, which Disney was testing but now no longer offers, had riders skip the Rey preshow and shuttle from Batuu elements, sending guests into a backstage corridor to queue for interrogation room assignments. That's the point in the ride when a single rider queue would be useful from an operations perspective. With any high demand attraction like Rise, you want to be able to fill every seat in order to maximize throughput and bring down wait times.
Traditionally, single rider queues have offered a trade-off for fans - you get a shorter wait time in exchange for riding alone. The park has you wait in an alternate queue with other single riders, from which load operators can pull you when they have an otherwise empty seat ready to dispatch. If a ride's load pattern works so that a single rider queue does not offer a shorter wait time than the regular queue, parks typically do not bother with them. Perhaps they will ask from load if there is a single rider near the station so that they can move up to fill the seat, but otherwise, ops just lets it go.
The trouble with offering single rider on Rise is that there is no way to ensure the integrity of a single rider queue that starts at the attraction entrance without skipping the Rey debrief and shuttle ride, because those are unqueued mass-fill situations. A family could say that they are single riders to avoid the main queue, then just meet back up and go together through the ride from the debrief room forward.
Before this single-rider test at Disney's Hollywood Studios, First Order load ops just went up the short queue on the Star Destroyer and asked if there were any parties of one, two or whatever they needed to fill all the spaces they needed. That's probably the best way to handle maximized loading on the trackless rides part of Rise, because bringing people straight from outside to that point comprises the ride experience.
Sure, maybe that is no big deal for repeat visitors, but let's look at the flip side of that argument. Why entice repeat visitors who otherwise would not bother waiting in the Rise queue? If load ops can pull at least people from the Star Destroyer queue, the net wait time for first-time guests might be lower without filling a single rider queue with people who otherwise would not care to ride.
Beyond that, I think it is time for the industry to adopt the principle that going through an alternate ride queue should not entail a comprised attraction experience. Whether they be Lightning Lanes/Universal Express upcharge or single-rider queues, those guests deserve the same exposition and atmosphere development that the guests in the regular, standby queues have.
I get that older attractions designed before the widespread use of alternate queues might not have the space to avoid literal shortcuts, often through backstage areas. But for any new attraction, a full experience for all alternate queue users - including queues for disabled visitors - should be the new industry design standard.
And while we are at it, let's avoid using unload areas for alternate ride queuing, as well. A spacious unload area plays an important role in guest flow and maintaining high capacity. No one wants to see ride vehicles held because people are backed up at unload because guests waiting to load are blocking their way.
In my perfect world, we would have no alternate queues in theme park attractions. Queues would be accessible to all people with disabilities, and everyone would wait their turn to ride. That perfection, however, remains elusive for a variety of reasons, including the variety of disabilities that theme park guests face as well as parks' new reliance on revenue from selling access to alternative queues.
So for now, let's at least make those alternative queues as close to the regular queue show experience as possible. That means quit trying to hack alternate queues in situations where they are not absolutely needed, such as a single rider queue on Rise.
Previously: Introducing Robert's Rules of Theme Park Operations.
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We once went straight into the flight deck on Rise skipping Rey and the shuttle on an ILL. Not cool. The shuttle ride is one of my personal favorite parts of the attraction. There are also several parts of the queue of Forbidden Journey that I don’t want to miss either.
I was hit by this using LL on Disneyland trip as part of waiting in Galactic Breakdown is the movie setting up the storyline. I get some folks prefer to skip but does seem odd to avoid a key part of the entire ride experience.
I’ve used the Single Rider queue on Forbidden Journey quite often, but have only done so after I’ve experienced the queue first. If i haven’t visited IoA in a while, I’ll experience the whole queue first then Single Ride with my wife for re-rides (well, I used to anyway, in the days before we had a child). We would also take friends who had never been before through the regular queue first so that they could experience the full immersion of the attraction. I love the bank portion of the queue for Gringotts but the forced photo-op / upsell opportunity before the final pre-show grates on me for repeat visits.
This is where it gets tricky, because it's impossible for a park to both offer an immersive themed queue line with story elements and also have a line skipping system that doesn't bypass at least some of that. In the past, this was less of an issue, as most of the queue theming was simply meant to distract those waiting from feeling the passage of time and nothing story critical occurred until the actual ride (or staged preshow). However, in the past decade or so, it has become increasingly common for story aspects to start prior to that, with some attractions (most notably Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey) featuring multiple story critical scenes that the queue simply snakes through rather than pausing for scheduled preshows. Even if the express line runs through the same rooms, guests in that line are not likely to be stopped long enough to see the scenes play out.
Now, I do not think an express line should ever skip something like a preshow, and I do think it should be designed to capture as many of the story critical elements as possible. However, I also feel like those choosing to utilize the express line should recognize that there are tradeoffs to doing so as they are not giving the story the time it needs to unfold, and depending on the design of the attraction it may be operationally necessary to excise part of the experience. I liken it to jumping into a movie at the beginning of the second act...you're skipping the exposition, so you're missing a lot of the expositional elements, but if it's structured well you should still be able to pick up enough to understand the key elements. If you really want to full story, tough it out and watch the film from the start (aka wait in line like was intended).
What about single rider? Personally, I have absolutely zero qualms about a single rider queue skipping everything and going straight to the load platform. What these queues are designed for is increasing the throughput numbers with as little extra work as possible, and any guest who chooses to use one needs to accept that they're trading the detail and depth for a much quicker burst of excitement (this would be like skipping straight to the third act of a film). Using a single rider queue requires accepting a certain set of conditions, and if you're not willing to do that, choose one of the other queuing options available. Nobody should be defaulting to single rider for their first experience on any story-driven ride (for a multitude of reasons), and if the line isn't going to get you on the attraction much quicker than the regular queue, what's the point of using it unless you truly are single?
I’m with AJ in that Express lines should get the full experience with pre-shows (which I can’t think of any that don’t) and single riders just go straight to the load. Single riders skipping the pre-show on Rise bothers me less than guests being taken through actual backstage corridors where the “magic” is so peeled back that employees told them that picture-taking was prohibited. The closest comparison I can think of is Men in Black and Escape from Gringotts, which also skip critical story information. I suppose Rock n Roller Coaster is the only ride I’ve seen where single riders get the pre-show experience as well.
The problem is that on Rise, the story is critical from Rey on. Further, skipping the shuttle ride would be like skipping the elevators on the Haunted Mansion. Rise may just be one of those attractions that shouldn’t do single riders.
Forbidden Journey is similar but different, but you still get the gyst of the story. Single rider on Gringots, Indiana Jones, and other would be fine. I would hate to miss the preshow on Cosmic Rewind.
I with AJ here, but I do think there are ways parks can better integrate single rider lines into the standard queue. For instance, you can still do the Castle Tour at HP:FJ if you want to see all the rooms that you skip in the single rider line. Reading how Disney was managing the RotR single rider queue, they really weren't doing a very smart job of it. Instead of letting single riders experience the 2 critical preshow rooms (though you can legitimately skip the Rey room without missing too much), they were shooting single riders straight to the Star Destroyer. It would have been simple for them to give single riders wristbands or have them tap into the single rider line through the app and have CMs segregate them through each stage of the queue - in fact, it would have been pretty cool for First Order officers to call out single riders coming off the shuttle to push them to the single rider line once they reached the vehicle sorting area. They could have pulsed single riders through each pre-show as needed to make sure the line at the final sort had sufficient numbers to fill empty seats.
When it comes to other single rider lines, I think if you've gone through the regular queue at least once, you really don't need to go through it again to understand the story and set up the attraction. MIB has one of the most efficient single rider lines (mostly because ride vehicles are 3 across), and if you know how the ride works and the story, it's easy to walk down those stairs and get on in a matter of seconds.
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I remember on Indiana Jones at Disneyland you could tell them you were a single rider and they would give you a paper card saying you were a single rider, but still merge you (and the vast majority of time your whole group) in with the regular line in the preshow area. So you could easily just go through the singles then put the card in your pocket or throw it away before you get on and ride in a group. Worst idea ever and somehow went on for years...of course would never work in the social media era lol.