How People Counters can Benefit Your Theme Park
January 16, 2023
Every year millions of people visit amusement and theme parks. It is a big business that needs to run like a well-oiled machine. Visitors today have many different opportunities to choose from within a single park or even between different parks. Each facility must run smoothly to ensure that visitors enjoy their time so they return the following year.
There are currently over 500 amusement parks and attractions in the United States, 90% of the parks operate year round. Although the majority of visitors happen to be families with children, all visitors try to make the most of their trip. Visitors often plan each trip ahead of time to guarantee everyone gets to ride their favorite rides while visiting.
Time is valuable to visitors of amusement and theme parks. Visitors don’t want to spend the majority of their time waiting in line. On a good day with low people traffic wait lines can be as short as a minute for simple children’s rides to 45 minutes for some of the more popular rides. However, wait lines can vary greatly depending on the level of traffic. On busier days which often occur on weekends, summer holidays and days with nice weather, ride wait times can be as long as 3 hours for the most popular rides.
In today’s tech savvy environment, three-quarters of visitors carry smartphones when visiting an amusement park. In order to avoid waiting in long lines visitors have started turning to their mobile devices prior to visiting a park or attraction. Visitors now plan out their trip prior to arrival by gathering general park info, buying tickets and learning about the attractions ahead of time through their mobile device. Many amusement parks offer the option of purchasing or reserving ride tickets to bump you to the front of the line at certain times for specific rides. This helps cut down on the wait time of many visitors and helps things run smoother all around.
Many amusement parks and attractions are able to post amusement park ride wait times to mobile apps allowing visitors to properly plan their trip. Based on the number of people waiting in line, the length of the ride time and by installing SenSource people counting sensors, parks have the ability to gather the queue data and process the information through Vea analytics software to automatically post the expected wait time. This data can be highly beneficial to park management allowing them to properly staff the attractions.