How long is this going to take me?

With more people being vaccinated around the world, we slowly see people planning holidays and trips to theme parks.  My biggest bugbear with theme parks has always been the wait – and the price elasticity of tuna sandwiches, but that is another conversation.  The wait becomes even more painful when you are visiting the park with young children.

Theme parks have recognized this as a major irritation for visitors, so they have tried to deal with the problem.  For those of us that cannot afford the fast-tracking fee, they have put down wait indicators, i.e. when you are at this point, you will wait 20 minutes to get to the ride.  Theme parks have realized that knowledge is power and that as long as people know the waiting time upfront, they are less likely to get irritated and have negative perceptions about the park.

Most of the parks do two exercises to determine this:  The first is pure math, the second is an observation experiment check.  What do we need to know to work this out:  how long does the ride take, how long does it take people to get on and off the ride, how many people can the ride accommodate and how many people are in the line?  

To make this easier, you want to add the length of the ride (x) and the time it takes people to get on and off (y) together (z), i.e. x + y = z.  You also want to subtract the people getting onto the ride (a) from the people in the line (b), because they are not waiting anymore (c), i.e. b – a = c. 

The equation to do that would look something like this: $$ {(x+y)*(b-a) \over a} $$

You have done all that in your head and shorthanded your way to:

$$ {(z*c) \over a}$$

x = how long does the activity take

y = how long does it take people to transit from the line to the activity and leave the activity

z = x + y

a = how many people can partake in the activity the same time

b = how many people waiting to partake in the activity

c = b-a

We always have to allow for variables – those little things that can change and affect our math.  Remember, we are doing math in a real-life situation, not on paper, e.g. the pandemic has definitely affected how close we are standing to people in a queue, so although it will not affect the waiting time, it will definitely affect where you put your timing boards.  

So, this was looking at the line at the roller coaster, but how many times have you arrived at the licensing department, the tax office or any other bureaucratic building and looked at the line wondering how long this will take you.  Next time, spend the first couple of minutes to time the average time it takes somebody to get help, count the number of counters open for service and the people in the line, plug it into the equation and voila, you have planned your day – or ruined it if that waiting time is forever.