When you’re on holiday, you end up queuing quite a bit. Queues for tickets, queues for the train, queues to buy a coffee… it’s almost like you spend most of your holiday lining up, waiting for something to happen. This is never more apparent than when you’re at a theme park of some sort. The one in question this time is Disneyland Hong Kong, although I’d say that this applies equally to all theme parks worldwide.
What I always think about (while I’m queuing for something of course) is the inherent ratio that exists when queuing. At what point is it worth queuing for something, and how far do you push that ratio? An example, to break up the theory – if you queue for 30 minutes, for a ride that lasts 30 seconds, are you getting good value? Of course, it depends on what you’re queuing for – we were in the queue for the Dumbo ride for about 40 minutes, for a ride that was over within 40 seconds, so I’d argue that it didn’t represent the best value. At the other extreme, I went on Space Mountain by myself, because Mrs Firehouse wasn’t too keen, and as a result I was able to bypass the hour-long queue as a solo rider, and queue for less than 5 minutes for a ride that was about 2 minutes long – brilliant value there in my opinion, especially given the ride in question. Then you get those shows which you wait 30 minutes for, but then the show itself goes on for 30 minutes – that’s still pretty good value I’d say (what’s even better is sneaking in at the last second, but that’s another story).
What always amazes me is how we all fall into a trap of going for a ride/amusement/activity that may not really pay off once you actually get there – during a normal day you wouldn’t willingly wait for 40 minutes for something that will be over in a blink of an eye, but you’ll happily submit yourself to this on holiday. Of course, I had plenty of time to think about all this while waiting for my 40 seconds of flight with Dumbo…
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