Automating Ride Wait Times Across Dollywood and Silver Dollar City
Herschend Family Entertainment used Safari AI to publish live wait times and measure ride dispatch and throughput at Dollywood and Silver Dollar City.
Measured from existing queue and station cameras
Posted wait times depended on manual timing and spot checks.
Posted wait times came from timing cards handed to guests or a team member's read of the queue. Across two busy parks and every attraction in them, that was labor-heavy, and the number was often stale by the time guests saw it.
- Posted waits came from timing cards and spot checks, not live data
- Dispatch intervals and net throughput were not tracked ride by ride
- Guests lost trust when the posted wait and the real wait didn't match
Live wait times and dispatch data, every five minutes.
Connected to queue and station cameras via an on-premise server
Existing queue and ride station cameras fed a lightweight on-premise server Safari AI deployed in each park, so video was processed on site.
Measured every queue and every dispatch
Computer vision counted guests entering and leaving each queue, time-stamped every dispatch, and calculated net throughput per attraction.
Published live wait times in 5-minute increments
Wait times refreshed every five minutes across all attractions in both parks, alongside live dashboards for dispatch rate and throughput against each ride's target.
Note: Illustrative data
Wait times guests can trust, more riders every hour.
Posted waits came from measured queue data every five minutes, so the number at the entrance matches the line guests join.
Net throughput was measured at every attraction, so capacity lost to slow loading or partly empty trains shows up while there is still time to win it back.
Operators saw dispatch intervals against target as the day unfolded, so gaps get closed during the peak, not after it.
We were looking to automate ride wait time, and Safari AI had the capability to broaden some really exciting opportunities to help us get smarter around people in our parks. There's just a lot of really cool use cases for us to grow into.
Action Center: From Insight to Action.
Measurements like these feed Safari AI's Action Center, which turns a ride that drifts off target into a specific staff action in real time.
- Real-time recommendations to improve KPIs via email, SMS, robocall, mobile app, Power BI, or API.
- Recommendations grounded in your own written SOPs, not generic best practices.
See this on your own attractions.
Herschend replaced manual wait-time timing with live measurements from the cameras already in its parks. We'll walk through which attractions and queues are the best fit for a pilot on your cameras.
