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Timed Ticketing to avoid lines, multiple attractions

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  • Timed Ticketing to avoid lines, multiple attractions

    Hey everybody, I'd really appreciate some help and any ideas. Here's the situation.

    We have a farm with a corn field walk, a hayride, and a big midway. We have a ticketing system from gatemaster where we can program different groups to be sold in order at different times, etc. The capacity for the corn is about 2800 and the midway/hayride is something like 4500 but we never get even get close to that. Right now we sell tickets, and group people in 20 min increments to go into the corn and they can go on the hayride whenever they want. The longest the line has ever been is 25 minutes, and the hayride 30 minutes. We want to keep lines at about that level. During the Day we have a fall festival which is the main part of our business so we are committed to closing at midnight so we can all work the next day. Our business has a guarantee that anything we sell (including services) if people are not happy with they can get a refund. So we're pretty committed to not making them wait in long lines and making sure they get to do everything before we close the events.

    We are planning on opening another attraction next year, a walk in the woods. We figure the capacity will be the same as the corn and assume that most people will want to do all three events. To schedule everyone to get through the corn, through the forest, and on a hayride I've designed a ticket schedule that I think is feasible, but Its a little complicated. I figure we'd print tickets with all of the possible times on them and the tickets sellers will just highlight the correct times for them to go into the attractions. So to program it, it'll be a bit complicated but presented to the customer it will just be a time to enter, pretty straightforward. We'd use a punch system on the ticket so they only have 1 thing to carry. There is leeway built into the entrance times so people can go to the bathroom or get a drink or something between events. I'm preparing our people to be flexible about the times and rules, we'll tell the customers we're very strict about it but the employees at the entrances, if there is no line they can let people go early, if 1 person out of a group is the later time they can let them go with their friends etc.

    I feel like I'm reinventing the wheel here, I'm sure I'm not the first person to do this. I'm worried people won't think its fun if its too scheduled. If anyone has any experience with doing this or designing a ticket system like this I'd love your thoughts and feedback. Any other ideas would be great too. I would love some help from anybody with any experience at this. thanks in advance!

    --Lucas
    Lucas Cox
    Cox Farms
    www.Fieldsoffear.com
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