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Coronavirus: Impact on Theme Parks

Alv said:
I had the chance to visit Walibi Holland today and see first hand the measures introduced.

The park was extremely empty, with very few people walking around, although there was little to do while waiting in the virtual queue. The virtual queue worked quite well, with a timer telling you how much longer you had to wait before your 30 minute slot. Walk-on rides allowed you to check in immediately and gave you 15 minutes to join the physical queue. The physical queues had markings on the ground to separate groups, and were a maximum of 30 minutes long.

A few areas around the park and some queues had fences with plastic to separate the people at closer distance, making the entrance building rather claustrophobic. All narrow (less than 3m wide) paths and bridges had one way markings on the floor. Curiously enough, the queue for Haunted Holidays (a scare attraction during Fright Nights) had marking on the floor!

The ride’s capacities were atrocious, as expected. They were leaving empty rows between groups (and empty rafts in between at El Rio Grande), staff would then ask you to push and pull your restraints while they watched a row at a time and asked you to stay seated after the ride. After the ride, people had to stay seated and were asked to leave a row at a time. The trains were then disinfected.

It was a rather pleasant day, and good to see the park running rather efficiently despite the situation. There were one or two measures that I felt were rather strange, such as the empty rafts at El Rio Grande, or cleaning the back rests on Untamed, but overall everything was very logical and organised.
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:confused:
This is what I think the UK parks will be like
I’m so discombobulated about it all. Would really like to go to a park soon. But if ride ops are so abysmal will it ruin the day.
 
JammyH said:
Apparently Matt Hancock has said that holidays will be possible in July... so it doesn’t seem like the quarantine is going to be held for very long. Seems really pointless having it in the first place to be honest.

In terms of places we can go... Netherlands and Germany have dropped all quarantine measures to EU citizens.

Italy reopens to tourists 3rd June.
Spain reopens to tourists 1st July
Iceland reopens 15th June (although no theme parks there-but the landscape is like one).
More countries like Poland are expected to reopen from 15 june too.

So it looks pretty likely we can start travelling soon... but I don’t really want to be breaking the law by leaving the country, but like many of us on here I’m keen to get to the parks ASAP! Hopefully the rules are changed in that we can go away as long as we agree to the quarantine or something along those lines when we get back, and then the quarantine will probably be scrapped after a few weeks anyway.
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There’s only 5 and a bit weeks until ours open... We got this ?

Interestingly, I had a Wizz Air flight to Poland rearranged to the end of June... After the expected date for Poland to reopen their borders (June 12-15th) This has now been cancelled, and I don’t know for sure why. Seems there’s no word on any potential extensions to Polish border restrictions... So I’m guessing they have assumed people won’t want to fly due to the quarantine on return, and are limiting their losses... But honestly who knows? I’ll go when I go, be it July, August or whenever... Both Wizz and Western Camp resort are brilliant about changing dates :)
 
Nicky Borrill said:
So I’m guessing they have assumed people won’t want to fly due to the quarantine on return, and are limiting their losses... But honestly who knows? I’ll go when I go, be it July, August or whenever... Both Wizz and Western Camp resort are brilliant about changing dates :)
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It's a bit strange as normally Wizz are the first to fly if they can... they must not have had enough bookings due to the quarantine and therefore have had to cancel some flights.

Interestingly, Ryanair is fully advertising being able to go on holiday from 1st July with them, with over 1000 flights a day(I think?). And they are flying to Krakow and katowice so they are a good backup option if Wizz hasn't resumed service. (although I would imagine they will have- every time I have been with Wizz they have been very "on it". When I went to Iceland and we had storms in the UK, all the Easyjet flights were cancelled yet Wizz still took us. My easy jet flight for the return leg was cancelled too, so I rebooked onto Wizz and they took us despite it being past midnight and returning back to the UK at 3am).

I hope to be able to get back to some European parks in the next month or so, but quite honestly not sure where I'd start, and also depends if I can land myself a job here. Germany/Austria is probably at the top of my priority list but with Spain reopening to tourists portaventura world doesn't sound like a bad summer holiday.
 
I really appreciate the honesty “with the fanfare they deserve.” Can’t explain why, but, I’m surprised they didn't make some other reasons up. I think it’s a sensible business decision, for several reasons... Not least the ability to launch something new next year without additional capex and the reduced staff costs not running a whole new area of attractions whilst capacity is reduced this year.
 
Wonder if the Black Mirror thing will even open at Thorpe Park eventually or just get cancelled altogether.
 
As funfairs are written off for pretty much the whole year in germany, Oscar Bruch has taken it upon himself to set up a “pop up theme-park” in Düsseldorf from 26th June to 27th July to compensate for Düsseldorf Rheinkirmes not being able to take place this year.

The pop up theme park will cost 8 euros to enter on weekdays and 10 euros on weekends, with ride fares at a reduced price as a result.

Of course social distancing will be in place and there will also be a face mask requirement.

The pop up theme park will also feature street artists and shows.


Here are some of the rides attending and a site plan:

Bellevue ferris wheel
Alpina Bahn
Wilde Maus
Flip Fly
Wildwasserbahn
High impress
Viva Cuba funhouse
Breakdance

Attached is the site plan for the new attraction:

Really hope to be able to visit this new event this summer! ?

BE4ECA78-64DC-44E9-B150-4C3F78998A10.jpeg
 
Cedar Fair has revealed more of their plan to leverage park smartphone apps for visit reservation, digital food ordering, and filling out pre-screen health questionnaire: https://www.wkyc.com/article/entert...-fair/95-1efdb4c0-b676-4daf-85d8-12982b8fa4c4

To key things elevated out of the news coverage of intrigue:
- Parks will manage park attendance in real-time, based on current visitors in the park, and require guests to reserve date and time entries. A little known secret about Cedar Fair parks - they have only ever tracked incoming visitors for daily park attendance, and never adjusted for guests leaving the park. E.g. you are scanned in/go through turnstile to enter the park, but never enter a turnstile leaving the park. Historically, this has simply been the case due to parks rarely needing to consider capacity limitations - Cedar Point's throttling of park entry during the Gold Pass fiasco of 2019 was the first time in earnest the park had ever limited park entry due to capacity since the opening of Magnum XL-200 in 1989.

So in the interest of having a more real-time readout of current guests in parks, one would imagine the parks are retrofitting exit turnstiles, in addition to...

- "The mobile app’s mapping and wayfinding modules, which already allow guests to easily find things like restrooms and phone charging stations, are being leveraged to monitor potential overcrowding in various areas of the park throughout the day." TL;DR the park will use the app for targeted tracking of guests, to keep an improved headcount.
 
JammyH said:
As funfairs are written off for pretty much the whole year in germany, Oscar Bruch has taken it upon himself to set up a “pop up theme-park” in Düsseldorf from 26th June to 27th July to compensate for Düsseldorf Rheinkirmes not being able to take place this year.

The pop up theme park will cost 8 euros to enter on weekdays and 10 euros on weekends, with ride fares at a reduced price as a result.

Of course social distancing will be in place and there will also be a face mask requirement.

The pop up theme park will also feature street artists and shows.


Here are some of the rides attending and a site plan:

Bellevue ferris wheel
Alpina Bahn
Wilde Maus
Flip Fly
Wildwasserbahn
High impress
Viva Cuba funhouse
Breakdance

Attached is the site plan for the new attraction:

Really hope to be able to visit this new event this summer! ?

View attachment 8432
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What's the Alpina coaster btw?
 
VonRolland said:
What's the Alpina coaster btw?
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This:

1200px-Alpina_Bahn.jpg
 
owentaylor121 said:
So the pop up theme park is a fair then?
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Yes, it’s to compensate for the fact that Düsseldorf Rheinkirmes, one of the largest fairs in the world cannot take place. But it will be a limited capacity event with social distancing in place, and you have to prebook your entry tickets in advance. Tickets go on sale 2nd June.

Really hoping to be able to go to this personally, would love to combine it with a trip to Phantasialand and Movie Park.
 
cookie said:
This:

1200px-Alpina_Bahn.jpg
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Love Schwarzkopf. Olympia Looping was one of the best new credit coasters I rode last year. I suspect I'd enjoy Alpina too with more focus on airtime than loops by the looks of it.
Sad we got rid of quite a few classics in the UK (or just left them to rot).

Germany seem to slowly get their act together even if it is with the mouth cap thing at the moment in theme parks. I believe there are plans to abandon the 2 metre distance thing end of June.
 
AndrewRollercoaster said:
I believe there are plans to abandon the 2 metre distance thing end of June.
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Everybody has been saying personal distancing is going to be normal for the foreseeable future, until a treatment or vaccine is readily available. So potentially the rest of this year a least. I have seen that they could be thinking of reducing the distance to 1.5m instead though.
 
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