Are waterparks really that packed as we think they are?

Think about this when you think the waterparks are crowded, and the amusement parks aren't. How much attendance does SFOG White Water waterpark get, and how much attendance does SFGAdv get? SFOG White Water water park is the most attended Six Flags water park of them all. Basing this on the attendance I can get (inaccurate by a little), it gets 464,000 compared to SFGAdv 2.73 million.

Let's look at why water parks seem like there are more people in them than there really are. Everyone says that water parks are always really packed! At SFGAm, it looks like the water park at Hurricane Harbor is really packed. Let's look at the slides first. Tornado is really packed. Why? Is it really packed or not? You need at least 2 people per raft.

They bring the rafts up the stairs, and those rafts take up a lot of space. On water slides, you only can send one raft down at a time, and you have to wait until the other people are out of the water, and the raft has been cleared until you send the other person down the slide.

These are what I get for Tornado: (4 people per raft)
12 people for 1 minute and a half
24 people for 3 minutes
36 people for 4 minutes and a half
48 people for 6 minutes
In a minute and a half, maybe you can send out a wooden roller coaster with 24 people. Who knows? There could be a lot of two people riding the Tornado, or 3 people. It's not always 4 people. So, that's why the Tornado seems packed.

http://flickr.com/photos/rollerfan/1389975462/
For a wooden coaster with 2 trains, it should take about 4.5-5 minutes to get on the ride within 3 cycles. A 5 minute ride for a wooden coaster is NOT a long line at all. For the Tornado in which it looks like it's packed, it's only a 10 minute line with about 20 rafts on the stairs in that picture.

For a wave pool, people are spread out in a wave pool. A roller coaster line however is not spread out. One person is back of another person. I would love to know the capacity of a wave pool at one time though.

For the Skull Island, I don't see many people on that thing. They are usually just under the bucket. For the slides in the back, the line is usually not long at all. These are dark slides in a tube. They have 4 slides, but they don't always usually all 4 because they have to hire more workers. The area in the water park isn't that big, and thus it looks more packed than it is. The waterslides are very close to one another, and there isn't a lot of walking room. So, people are squished. They have a family raft ride which does have a long line. It's a long course of both sides (of the ride), and it is a whole lot harder to get out of than your typical smaller tube raft slide.

Than, there are the bowls, the 2 tube slides, and 2 body slides. Those aren't that packed usually. Usually, they are only 5 minutes with the bowl slides being a little longer. When the water park is really “packed”, they don't have enough tubes (because they you want you to buy them), and the line can be a little bit longer.

For the lazy river, they don't have enough tubes, and thus it makes the line longer than it is. The lazy river does have people in it, but tubes aren't on top of each other at all. They are well spread out until you bump into someone. Remember, that each tube only carries one person, and thus I would imagine the capacity might only be 300 people at most. They never have enough tubes on purpose. This is maybe a 10 minute ride. For Raging Bull with 3 trains they run, there are 108 people on that ride alone, and it could be a 30 minute wait.

There is that mat racer slide, and that's never that long. It's the same thing with the other water slide though. They don't have enough mats.

The point is that the water park fools everyone. You think the Tornado is “packed”, and compared to roller coaster, it's not. A Enterprise can do better than a Tornado (Enterprise has 21 cars with maybe 2 people in each car under a 2 minute ride.)

Is the water park a smart addition at all? It's not open all year, it's only open from 12-8, and sometimes it's only open from 12-6, it takes up a lot of space, and the rides have low capacities. Sometimes, not even all the rides are open in the water park. It's also pumping that water all the time. It also adds a lot of employees. I think there are 14 employees just for the wavepool. The lazy river also has a lot of employees. I would say at least 10.