Virtual Queue Implementation to Reduce Waiting Time at Theme Park Attraction Rides to Increase Revenue Mirnalyn Castro Lozada Master in Manufacturing Competitiveness Dr. Rafael A. Nieves Castro Industrial and Systems Engineering Department Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico Abstract ⎯ Several times individuals visit with this research is to increase customer satisfaction their family amusement parks and they spent 45 and profits. minutes to 3 hours of waiting per attraction. Since The implementation of this design project the amusement parks implemented seasonal would provide a large contribution to the industry attractions such as the Halloween horror nights to of amusement theme parks by decreasing the increase the visits from patron which extend waiting time that the regular customer invests in waiting times all year round. To address this each attraction. As consequence is expected that the problem Kanban methodology techniques can be workload per attraction would be reduced, leaving implemented to achieve customer satisfaction. This room to use the available resources to ensure can be achieved by considering the customer as a customer satisfaction by achieving operational material and the task would be to plan for Y efficiency. Also, the implementation of this design amount of material to be processed in less time project would increase the profits by preserving the throughout the entire park for which virtual queues actual cash input from the customer such as the come in place. The methodology was implemented park admission cost while is increased the sales and tested before & after the SARS-Covid-19 from neglected areas such as retail and dining. restrictions were lifted during holidays which is the Customer Expectation V. This have led to an high demand. During the implementation and increased number of academic studies that evaluate testing period of the Waiting Time Reduction at the experience related to theme or amusement Theme Parks Methodology it was observed a parks. positive impact of the Beta Test. Physical facilities and the quality of the Key Terms ⎯ Enhancing customer experience on provided service are characteristics of the theme parks, theme parks waiting time, time amusement parks that motivates visitors to visit reduction at theme parks, virtual queue. theme parks, the quality of a service have the capacity of connecting particularly with the INTRODUCTION euphoric performance and influences the perception of the leisure experiences of visitors. The main goal The amusement parks used to be a summer and of every amusement park is to appeal as many Christmas entertainment for the families, however, visitors as possible, however, this goal can lead to several amusement parks have implemented over-crowdedness which can deter of prevent more seasonal attractions such as the Halloween horror people from visiting those parks. nights, or Food and wine fest amongst others to The SERVQUAL structure has been broadly increase the visits from patrons. This research functional to inspect service provisions and the intends to analyze how to optimize the operations quality management of amusement parks. Given the and resources of amusement theme parks by characteristic thematic and creative service implementing techniques commonly used for environment of amusements parks, and the manufacturing purposes. What my research will relatively enduring experiences of services, the develop is an analysis of the current and existent expectation aspect of the customer is an important data of those amusement parks. The expectation of consideration.[1] The SERVQUAL structure is an appropriate tool to study the service quality in To address this problem Kanban methodology theme parks.[2] The SERVQUAL model and the techniques can be implemented to achieve customer gap methodology, nevertheless, have yet to be satisfaction. The way that this methodology can be applied and adapted to theme park settings. employed is if the customer is considered as a Based on the initial SERVQUAL model material and the task would be to plan for Y proposed, this research implements most of the amount of material to be processed in less time suggested dimensions with significant throughout the entire park. Meaning, by scheduling modifications to adapt in a Chinese framework.[3] the customer and planning ahead of time it can be stablished the itinerary to be run. In order to METHODOLOGY achieve that, an assessment of attractions duration and capacity per hour should be made in order to The main goal of this research is to assess optimize the workflow by setting up different time existent operational and customer satisfaction data schedules per attraction eliminating waiting times. from theme or amusement parks in order of For example, if an attraction has a capacity of 1600 determining their operational bottlenecks. By customers per hour, then schedules of 400 determining those operational bottlenecks, process customers every 15 minutes should be made with improvements techniques can be implemented. the goal of converting a 180 minutes waiting time Consequently, this would result in customer into just 15 minutes. That way if the customer is satisfaction increase and more profitability. aware of the time that they should be spending on Normally, when the term bottleneck is each attraction they can plan for that spare time to employed in a production facility is referred to an enjoy other activities such as dining or shopping activity that limits the capacity of an entire system. which would increase the profits. Another If this technique is observed from a standing point advantage as consequence of this reduction is that it of a theme park environment, then it can be X would not be needed the amount of the square attraction or ride limiting the capacity of the footage that is actually employed per attraction customer enjoying other ones due to a time since is not needed the actual waiting area for constraint caused by X attraction.[4] For instance, it which the space could be repurpose on attractions can be used actual data from Disney Animal or activities to increase the customer experience Kingdom. Figure 1 shows that the ride Flight of and business profits.[6] Passage have a waiting time around 180 minutes, This proposal supports the establish problem with the highest waiting time, while the triceratops statement by having a clear introduction, literature spin only has an 8-minute wait time. review and methodology. Is important to note that The reason for that is that one of the attractions there are no gaps on the exposed arguments, hence, is currently in more demand than the other. But that there is no need to fill the proposal with doesn’t mean that is more important than the other information or additional research since all the is just that since is in more demand the customer points had been properly supported. Since it was would be more invested in spending 180 minutes evaluated potential gaps, also, were evaluated on the currently popular attraction than 8 minutes in potential irrelevant information during the literature a regular one. As a consequence, the customer ends review. There weren’t findings of unnecessary dissatisfied due to the fact that 180 minutes were information during the literature review. This invested, leaving less time to enjoy other activities. proposal has supported opinions, hence, there are In order to solve this situation, the use of not unsubstantiated statements. coordination and available resources needs to be In the writing techniques employed during this implemented to decrease the time that the customer proposal, there was a sentence variety in order to invest on the attractions shown on Figure 1.[5] avoid redundancies short and long, complex and Figure 1 Ride Waiting Time vs Ride Duration Time declarative sentences were used. Of course, those to a low season Table 1, Figure 1. Waiting times writing techniques included the avoidance of average from a sample size N= 2000 per day. Each wordiness or non-necessary phases. Starting from attraction was measured at 10 am which is the park the selection of the research topic for this proposal opening time, 1 pm which is the park rush time, and through the methodology, this research proposal 3 pm after park rush time. The schedule and contains concrete examples and key terms. coordination methodology were implemented on During the writing process of this research the attraction Star Wars Rise of Resistance and then proposal all the efforts were made to develop compared to the rest of the attraction on both sentences in a gracefully and cohesive way. The testing period of time. After the 2,000 samples were first-person use, colloquial language, slang, jargon collected per each test the invested time was or any type of dialect was avoided. calculated by using the average equation denoted as: RESULTS A= X1 + X2+X3+ . . . . +Xn/ n (1) The initial data was collected during the week For the time slot of 10 am Table 1 it can be that the methodology was implemented, and it was seen that the average waiting time for Star Wars considered as low season due to park limitations Rise of Resistance which is referred as the Beta due to the pandemic which led to lack of customers Test is of zero minutes during low season and 5 and low demand. Afterwards, it was measured and minutes during high season. compared the functionality of the methodology After determining the average revenue per after the SARS-Covid-19 restrictions were lifted customer attendance to the park it was observed a during holidays which is the high demand. The 42 percent revenue growth Figure 2. highest demand holiday until the present was Labor Day weekend 2021 for which even when the admission to the park was closed by 11 am the functionality and waiting times decreased compared Table 1 Waiting Times Average from a Sample Size N=2000 per Day Attractions waiting times Kick off date (Nov. 3rd-9th, 2021) Labor Day 2021 (Sept. 3rd - 10 AM Time (minutes) 6th, 2021) Time (minutes) Lightning McQueen’s Racing Academy 0 15 Alien Swirling Saucers 5 5 Muppet Vision 3D 10 10 Star Wars Rise of Resistance 0 5 Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run 15 25 Star Tours – The Adventures Continue 12 5 Toy Story Mania 20 40 Twilight Zone Tower of Terror 35 30 Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster featuring 45 35 Aerosmith 80 60 Slinky Dog Dash 105 90 Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway8 Attractions waiting times at 1 PM 8Lightning McQueen’s Racing Academy 0 15 Alien Swirling Saucers 20 15 Muppet Vision 3D 50 35 Star Wars Rise of Resistance 5 5 Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run 65 55 Star Tours – The Adventures Continue 35 15 Toy Story Mania 25 30 Twilight Zone Tower of Terror 45 45 Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster featuring 45 40 Aerosmith 75 55 Slinky Dog Dash 85 80 Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway Attractions waiting times at 3 PM Lightning McQueen’s Racing Academy 15 20 Alien Swirling Saucers 25 10 Muppet Vision 3D 15 10 Star Wars Rise of Resistance 5 5 Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run 55 25 Star Tours – The Adventures Continue 15 10 Toy Story Mania 30 10 Twilight Zone Tower of Terror 40 40 Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster featuring 45 30 Aerosmith 60 30 Slinky Dog Dash 85 65 Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway Total time measured for 2000 individuals 1167 965 Figure 2 Waiting Time after Methodology Implementation Figure 3 Revenue Data Pre VS Post Methodology Launch Figure 4 Guest Reservation. Customer Satisfaction Question # 2 In terms of customer satisfaction, a short waiting time on attractions of five percent, a customer satisfaction survey was made in order to company growth of fourteen percent and a revenue establish the efficacy of the “Ride Reservation increase of forty two percent. Also, during the Method” [7]. 100% of the customers that answered Customer Satisfaction Survey was observed sixty the question would recommend the attraction to a four percent of customer satisfaction with the family or member Figure 3. 64 % felt satisfied with reservation tool and 100% recommendations to the guest reservation feature, 20% felt somewhat friends and family members. satisfied and 20% felt neither satisfied nor One of the main challenges during the initial dissatisfied. Figure 4. 6 show how 10 percent of the data collection after implementation was that the customer consider the reservation tool unique, 29 proposed methodology was launched amidst percent find the reservation useful, 34 % considers pandemic SARS-Covid-19 for which the collected that this is a high-quality feature, and 37% values might differ during a regular type of considers that the reservations are reliable. scenario similar to pre-Covid-19 times. On the During low season the parks had an average same path one of the largest difficulties attendance of 20,000 individuals per day versus the encountered throughout this project was the data high season that had an attendance of the maximum disclosure approval from Disney, Aerotek and cap 50,000 individuals each day. Is significant the third-party contractors. improvement that a single Beta Test has caused on The objectives of this design project have been the park, the employment rate increase from met by collecting operational and assessing 155,000 employees to 203,000 which is a growth of operational data of amusement theme parks 14 percent and the maximum employment rate on facilities. A design methodology was designed and this park to the present. implemented, and it was proved an increment of resources efficiency. Customer satisfactions CONCLUSION techniques were implemented, the estimated 20% waiting time reduction was not achieved due to During the implementation and testing period corporate limitations and SARS-Covid-19 of the Waiting Time Reduction at Theme Parks restrictions. Is projected up to a 50% after returning Methodology it was observed a positive impact of to normalcy post pandemic. the Beta Test (Star Wars Rise of Resistance). With Based on the positive progress that could be the implementation of the methodology in one observed from the data collection process the next attraction only it was observed a reduction of step would be to implement the “Ride Reservation Methodology” throughout the entire Disney Hollywood Studio Theme Park and test the effects of this implementation for a period of eight fiscal quarters or two years. Once the reservation methodology is properly tested then for that period of time additional implementations would be performed throughout the rest of the parks. REFERENCES [1] C.-S. Chan, Y. Liu, and C. Yeung Li, “Expectation- perception evaluation of theme park service quality in Zhengzhou Fantawild, China,” Journal of Park and Recreation Administration, vol. 37, no. 2, pp. 99-117, Summer 2019, https://doi.org/10.18666/JPRA-2019-9157. [2] Y. Yuan and W. Zheng, “How to mitigate theme park crowding? 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