The single line serving multiple destinations is the fastest, fairest way to move waiting people. The biggest influence on our feelings about lines has to do with our perception of fairness.Īccording to the NY Times, the universally acknowledged standard is first-come first-served. In some theme parks, long quelines have video monitors, posters, or views of the attraction. Mirrors are often installed next to elevators - if people have something to do (checking their appearance) the wait for the elevator seems shorter. Unoccupied time (standing still) feels longer than occupied time (moving). The time waiting in line remains constant whether there is one line or two, but movement is faster in one line.Īccording to Richard Larson of MIT, considered to be an authority on lines, the psychology of queuing is more important than the statistics of the wait itself. It worked well - it improved the guest experience in this que house. We used the whole area for a single line. They agreed and decided to rearrange the lines in that que house (right figure). I explained the rationale and let them witness the difference. Seeing that the new configuration was successful, I asked the Operations Supervisors to come take a look. This sped up the process of boarding the elevators. The turnstile slowed people down as they entered into the elevator and moving it allowed people to get through it and gather in the last row. I also moved the turnstile from the very end of the line to the second-to-end row. At the end of the line, we positioned the host who would guide the guests into one of the two elevator holding areas. At a theme park, people would rather move forward than to stand and wait. Even though the line was longer, I sensed that people didn't mind the length as much since they were almost constantly moving forward. The line also moved twice as fast - it was feeding two elevators, not just one. Bingo - it solved all the above problems. During the times when the que house would not fill up, I closed off one line and used the other line to service both elevators (middle figure). We would go tell entering people that there were two lines but that made it more frustrating as those people would then be in a much shorter line and people at the back of the long line would see them move to the front of the que house. I also saw that, at the entrance, people were not sure which line to get into - were they both open? Which was better? Do they both go to the same place? Many people would just follow the crowd and often line up on one side only. I noticed how this frustrated some people. But the elevators would travel at different speeds and one line would invariably move slower than the other. One of our tasks was to monitor the line as people waited for the elevator to the deck at the top of the orange Tower.īelow left: There were two identical, mirror-image quelines for the two elevators. I was Assistant Ride Foreman at the Tower - both a superslide and an observation deck. My introduction to the psychology of queuing people in linesĭuring one summer years ago, I worked in ride operations at Six Flags over Texas in Arlington. The concept that aided reading efficiency was later used to maintain order in lines of people. The Etruscans developed this style of going back and forth when writing text by hand. The word, roughly translated 'as the ox plows' is boustrophedon. The concept of arranging a line in a back and forth motion could be traced back to the inspiration of watching oxen plow a field in about the 6th century BCE - the farmer would plow a row, turn the oxen around and plow the next row. That trail, or line, evolved to people waiting in a line that trailed down. An old British word, from the French, a queue is a braid of hair hanging down from the back of the head. The origin of the name queue is pretty bizarre. The lines we wait in are called queue lines, or quelines. We often feel excitement when we get someplace and there's no line. As population and consumerism increases, this becomes a fact of our times - we just have to wait in lines.
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