The question is to reduce the waiting time at popular rides in an amusement park.

Clarifying Questions:

– What kind of amusement park is this? [Land+Water games, Just water/land, full-on adventure games, etc.]

– What would be the total number of rides in the park & what portion of it do we consider popular?

– What defines ‘popular’?

For the question’s sake, let’s consider it’s an amusement park with both land and water games & 20% seems to be a good portion of popular games.

User Persona:

People who go to amusement parks can be categorized into these types

UP 1) Highly adventurous (high-frequency visits, into high-risk games, always up for trying new things)

UP 2) Medium adventurous (people who are into occasional/weekend adventures, want to have a good time & fun)

UP 3) Low adventurous (probably first-time/occasional visitors, kids < 15 can also be considered here)

Popular games could be termed popular due to three reasons:

1) popular because it caters to all types of visitors

2) popular because it’s either too risky (hence people are excited to try | UP1 )

3) popular because it’s too simple (hence adventure-averse/ occasional visitors are drawn towards it  | UP3)

If it’s a weekend, we could assume there would be a good amount of UP3 visiting, but if it’s a normal day UP1 would be the major crowd.

Although since the question specifically asks about waiting time, it makes sense to make the assumption that it’s during a weekend and there’s probably a 20%, 50%, 30% of UP1, UP2, and UP3 split.

Solutions:

S1:  If the game is only open at specific times, we could understand its constraints of it and explore the possibility of extending the timings during peak days (can predict peak days through seasonality, existing data, and ticket sales data of the day)

Cons: Operational challenges.

S2: If the game is fully operational, we could implement a token system wherein users would reach the counter of the game and get tagged to the timing slot where there is bandwidth to accommodate. In this way, the user can effectively plan their time & only reach during their specified time

Cons: There could be cases of users missing/forgetting the event altogether as they were immersed in a different activity.

Could defeat the objective of an amusement park where users tend to be more spontaneous and not much planned.

S3: By batching highly popular games together in close proximity, the UP1/UP2 user whose main objective is to have fun, would probably be more drawn towards the other activities too that they feel would give them the feeling. In this way, we could reduce waiting time by making users engage with other activities during their wait time.

Cons: Structural modification challenges