A Change for the Worse at VelociCoaster

UPDATE: Operational changes at VelociCoaster implemented by upper management have been relaxed allowing the ride crew to excel once again!

Ok I know this isn’t good news to a lot of coaster enthusiasts, but the title scared me so bad. I thought they were changing the ride itself 😭

As a fellow nerd whose life is affected by this, I couldn’t agree more with you Ryan. I visited IoA xmas of 2021, and even with the line all the way back outside, the capacity was so good I never waited more than 50 minutes for a ride. Probably the most efficient crew I’ve seen on a thrill coaster as elite as this one. Idk why the park decided to take one of their best and most important crews and tie one hand behind their backs. Great video as always!

I was there in October and while Hagrid's was ALWAYS at ALL TIMES over 2 hours, Velocicoaster was nearly always 25 minutes or less. I got to walk on to the ride 4 times in a row. The lines moved so freaking fast.

If they checked twice as fast, but twice, that would be less safe than doing it right the first time.

Just want to say that I still can’t get used to this coaster. Visited it in its first month and a couple times after and it is just one of best experiences I’ve ever had at a park in the 21st century. It moves like a swan dance. I can’t believe it really exists. A perfect experience from start to finish. So incredibly refreshing

A possible solution for both safety and efficiency would be to have ride operators check train front to back. The front operator checks seats 1-12 while the back operator checks seats 12-1. This should leave all seats checked twice while still having operators by their control panels with no need to double back. This should in theory lead to more efficient operations while still guaranteeing each seat is checked twice.

As a ride op myself, I’d be so peeved if I had to start from the front, and especially checking them twice!

I was on the VelociCoaster IAAPA Tour on November 14th 2022 and to confirm some of your numbers from what they also told us, their goal is 60 dispatches per hour with their record having been 73 for 1745 people as you said, with other numbers including having done their first million riders by July 17th after it’s opening June 10th, and between opening and our tour they had done over 8 million riders.

Why did I just watch a ~11 minute video on how a ride train is loaded and a change that made it worse. And why did I enjoy it so much??

checking restraints twice is definitely a new one for me. I’m used to doing a visual double check as i walk back to my safe zone but two physical checks is weird

This change reminds me a lot about how many parks put seatbelts on their trains, specifically B&M hypers… not nescessary but done for liability. This on the other hand doesn’t seem like it would help; in the unlikely event an operator makes an error, it’s likely they wouldn’t detect it on a second pass more so than something or someone else being the double checking factor. I get that liability issues may exist for Universal but this really does NOT appear to reduce them.

I’m a coaster junkie and I just visited Universal last week for the first time in many years, got my first ride on Velocicoaster, Hagrids, and Hippogriff. Velocicoaster blew me away, I was expecting it to be good, but god damn, the experience can’t be explained in words. I found that the crew was super efficient and friendly all 4 times I went on it and the lines weren’t too bad.

You mentioned the positive interaction guests have with the ride’s crew. To say I had a positive experience would be an understatement. These guys were awesome. I’m a bigger guy so I fit but not by much and they did a great job making sure I could ride. Then after I got off they had a single rider and these parks prefer to dispatch full trains. So they let me go again and I sat along side that single rider without having to get back in line. Also this is the best coaster I’ve ever been on. Haven’t been on Steel Vengeance yet but it’s gonna have to be really really great to overtake this as my #1

Made a trip to Orlando in mid December. Was absolutely blown away by the ops on Velocicoaster. Wait time never got higher than 40 mins the 4 days I was there and apart from one time that my buddy got stapled, the ops were phenomenal. Fast and efficient. I was worried since the last time I tried riding Pantheon they couldn't get my restraint green to ride, but never had a problem on Velocicoaster in the ~12 times I rode it that week.

I really hope universal management actually sees this video and make changes

I’ve heard about how fast the dispatches on VC are and when I went a few weeks ago they were certainly fast, but inconsistent, and they’re seemed to be a lot of waiting, restraints being checked twice, and some very hard stapling. This is before I’ve watched the video, so I’ll see what matches

The beginning of the video scared me, but once i heard "80 second dispatches" i was realized bc thats still more than twice as fast as iron gwazi lol

Another option could be to have the front and back operators change positions each cycle with one dedicated dispatcher for the train. For example, the front operator would check rows 1-6, waits for the back operator for the hand off, then continues on to check rows 7-12 and wait at the back station for the next train. This way not only are all restraints checked twice, but they're checked by 2 sets of eyes.

From the POV of a plus-sized coaster enthusiast, this change is probably because newer Intamin blitz trains have very finnicky restraint sensors as opposed to coasters like Stormrunner or Maverick. As much as I LOVED Pantheon as a coaster, it ended up kinda being a hassle to ride because I ended up having to switch seats a few times with someone else because I couldnt get a green light on one seat, but I could on another. Apparently its a known design flaw in modern Intamin trains and from what I've been told, causes a lot of downtime for Pantheon.