Can you explain what type of seat belts you say are being missed?
Are these the type that go over the waist, or the type that connect into the restraint such as those on premier or B & M trains?
Keep in mind that checking restraints is optional, it's not done at all parks. It is the riders responsibility to ensure that they have secured thier restraint as tightly to them as possible.
Rides are designed to a certain percentage of play in the restraints, sometimes as much as 30% and the restraint fit is still considered acceptable. We only started checking restraints each cycle, when the mechanisms that lock the restraints could not be visually inspected each day. It also provides piece of mind to the guest.
However the level of slowness we are talking about is as much as 50%, even a fresh crew who works using the methods can hit 75% of capacity with out even trying to hard. We are talking about a purposeful and noticeable slow down.
Originally posted by NightwindElf
Looks great, Mikey. Will this find it's way to the desks of anyone with any real power, though? As guests we can rabble and speculate as to why the parks are doing this, but what good does it do unless it finds the ears of people that can do something about it? I know, we as the guests do have power to an extent, as we continually give them our hard-earned money; but the executives and park managers, who can send the orders down the line?
It is not likely to change the ways of the evil empire it directly targets. The reason being this two lines of text pulled from the quarterly report:
"One of our fundamental business goals is to generate superior returns for our stockholders over the long term."
The bottom line they are trying to make an investor power play so that they can get enough liquidity to draw down on the 1.2 billion in debt.
"Our current and future liquidity is greatly dependent upon our operating results, which are driven largely by overall economic conditions as well as the price and perceived quality of the entertainment experience at our parks."
I would guess that they will continue to gut the parks until they find the right formula for the perceived quality vs guest value and attendance drops. The problem is that I think the numbers are a bit fudged, if they are not downright doing this to hide the fact that they are really having a bad year from investors.