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Initiatives
AKA dealing with the queues you have

	Disney's Fast Pass system is probably the most famous incarnation of the 'virtual queue' - it is free to use, and gives the ticket-holder a time to return to the attraction from which they got the ticket. By allocating time slots, the amount of Fast Pass ticket holders can be controlled throughout the day. Image: 50 Years of Souvenirs

One of the more tempting ways of cutting queues at theme parks is with novel initiatives like Fastrack, Q-Bot and Fast Pass.

For parks, they’re tempting for one reason – unlike high capacity rides and well-planned theme parks, they’re highly marketable. To the guest, it seems like parks acknowledge the fact they don’t like queuing and are doing something about it.

Each of these schemes works slightly differently from company-to-company. Disney’s Fast Pass and Tussauds’ Fastrack until recently were the most easily comparable where guests would put their park ticket into a turnstile and get a timed ticket in reply.

With lots of rides using this scheme, the turnstiles are linked up so that tickets were limited to one per guest, giving you something like a half-hour slot to fit your ride in, meaning you can in theory enjoy other rides until your time.

Seeing the commercial allure of Fastrack, Tussauds have since made Fastrack an up-charge privilege. While they make money out of peoples’ impatience, it means more versatility – Fastrack packages can be sold including certain rides, excluding others, while giving ticket holders an increased feeling of importance.

Disney’s approach to the system varies, meanwhile. While at Walt Disney World in Florida and Disneyland Paris the system is very much alive, at Disneyland in California, many of the Fast Pass machines have been removed.

Q-Bot is a similar, if more cumbersome scheme, that Six Flags have trialled.

Guests essentially hire a Q-Bot, a digital widget about the size of a stopwatch. Like Fast Pass and Fastrack, you have to reserve a time in the queue, then return later at a set time.

To book, you have to put the Q-Bot into a slot, it will beep and give you a time for your party to return. On the time of return, you put the Q-Bot in another slot, then it will again beep to acknowledge your return.

Q-Bot was developed by a British company, Lo-Q, and funnily enough a Tussauds park were one of the first to trial it on Loggers Leap when Thorpe Park were owned by RMC.

The benefits of these systems are largely psychological, especially when – in the case of Disney in particular – you have rides designed around shifting queues anyway.

To accommodate those with guaranteed fast track entry, the main queue – the stand by queue – must first be stopped to let the ticket holders through. While indeed these ticket holders are under the impression they have got onto the ride quicker, it is to the detriment of everybody else in the queue. It benefits a handful and inconveniences hundreds more. Continues...