Attendence

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Tanya
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Attendence

Post by Tanya »

I take it that the attendence counts must all be computerized now. Back in the old days....when I was an auditor... it was our job to take hourly attendence. I thought it an old-fashioned way of doing it then. All the turnstiles were connected to counters in the audit office. Every hour you wrote down the numbers for each one. Added all the IN turnstiles and subtracted all the EXIT turnstiles to come up with the current number of guests in the park. Then you called it in to the Rides/Admissions office and they radioed it out to everyone, so they could plan staffing. When you were bored you could sit and watch the counters click away. Life was much more simple then.
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steven
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Post by steven »

At Gurnee we had to take turnstile readings each hour. We wrote them down on the clipboard. Each ride had an aluminum clipboard for the day's paperwork. It was picked up at the rides office each morning and was turned in at the end of the day.

I don't know about Gurnee right now, but Santa Clara has not used turnstiles to count riders for a long time.

Steven
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Tanya
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Post by Tanya »

I forgot about rides turnstiles. I never worked with those. I was talking about total park attendence. It was just so primitive.
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BrianPlencner
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Post by BrianPlencner »

When I worked in the rides department during the 1990, 1991, and 1992 seasons, they still counted attendance the same way (looked at the turnstiles, wrote down the numbers, and added them by hand each hour).

The same was true with the front gate as well.

Even today, they are still doing it that way.

I also remember that about 10 minutes after the hour, the Park Operations Deparment would issue a "1085", which was the attendance counts. They would say them over the radio's that the managers and supervisors would have. I know this as I had a radio for one of the years I worked.

Each hour, it would go something like this.....

"Park Base to Unit 100 and all base stations please be advised.....we have the 1 O'Clock 1085. .6, 12.5, 15.5. Repeating, .6, 12.5, 15.5. The Temperatue is 86 degrees".

The .6 was 600 people into the park during the last hour. 12.5 was the total people in park for the hour (12,500), and 15.5 was the total people to have come into the park for the day (15,500). The reason the last 2 numbers were different is that the park also counted you when you left the park, so they knew how many people were actually in the park, how many had come in a given hour, and how many total people had entered the park. This information was also written on a giant white board in the park operations office.

Unit 100 I believe was the radio code for the GM unit (Park President/vice president, etc). Park Base was the Operations office.
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Mr. Brian Plencner
SFGAm Employee: 1988-1992
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Tanya
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Post by Tanya »

That's right Brian. That was my job to get all those numbers and call them in to the office so they could read them over the radio. I guess they were fairly accurate.
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SFGAmLover
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Post by SFGAmLover »

One thing I've often wondered is why there are counting turnstiles at the exit of a ride in addition to the ones at the beginning of the queue. I've always joked that it's a way for the park to monitor how many guests get on a ride but somehow never come back... :wink:

I can understand when you're looking at a people-moving ride that has more than one station/exit. You may wish to know how many guests are exiting at a certain location.

Otherwise, I suppose that they can be used to calculate roughly how long guests are waiting in the queue (record the number on the entrance turnstile and see how long it takes before the exit turnstile matches it) or to calculate how many guests are in the queue & on the ride at a given moment. Either way, with the way that guests will duck under the turnstiles... or they'll spin them around and add up the count... I can't imagine that they are all that accurate anyhow.

Any other thoughts?
WARNING: This message was composed on a computer in a household where peanuts and peanut products are served.
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JW65
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Post by JW65 »

Speaking of attendance... A friend of mine who read an article in a suburban Chicago paper, told me that SFGAm has reported record number of attendees this year. The number has gone over 3 million. Supposedly, number of attendees this great haven't been reported since 1999. I am sure it has to do with Hurricane Harbor and the fact that admission to this water park for this year is included in the price of admission to the theme park. Also, because it has been so hot this summer, people want to go there to cool off.
segerken
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Post by segerken »

Those turnstiles were fun. One night I was a substitute lead on Loggers run when one of the turnstiles malfunction. The combined total from both turnstiles showed that we had something like 10,000 riders one hour. Not bad for a ride that had a capacity of 1,500 people. That night when our supervisor checked our totals he didn't believe it so he walked all the way from ride ops to the ride to verify the numbers. And he found that the numbers that I had written down. So, maybe we did get 10,000 riders in one night, or the turnstile did malfunction.
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ewilson
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Post by ewilson »

Attendance at rides and shows was kept because that is how budgeting was done. I was told that for every count the show/ride would get so many cents from the general fund. If a ride or show couldn't pay for itself, it would be closed.
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Mr. D.T.
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Post by Mr. D.T. »

To Brian Plencer: I work there at the park now and I have for the past 7 seasons, minus two and a half. I was in Park Services and then in the gap before returning there as a Foods host. I think it's cool giving the park attendance while speaking the radio language. They have added another subpoint which counts as the total Hurricane Harbor attendance, and they say letters before giving out the statistics, such as A, 1.1. I'm around the supervisors with the radios all the time and I have learned about it some and I sometimes follow along when they give the attendance report. If it's ok, I'm making up a fake one for my signature.
"Park Base to Unit 100 and all base stations please be advised.....we have the 4 O'Clock 1085. A. 1.4; B. 23.5; C. 28.7; D. 5.1. The temperature is 77 degrees.
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RLAiello
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Post by RLAiello »

When I worked in Cash Control, we would get a phone call from the Park Ops office after they gave the hourly 1085 report. We would write down the attendance and the temperature on a clipboard and keep it next to the phone so we knew how busy it was getting. If we needed to call more people in, we would go by the numbers in the park.

Amazing how many of these things stick with you after all these years.
Rick Aiello
SFGAm Employee 1988-1999
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