Elevator lines at conventions

[sparr]

I'm tired of waiting 10, 20, even 40 minutes for an elevator at Dragon*Con, Frolicon, etc. I've seen convention ops or security try to deal with this problem on many occasions, but often the steps taken are not enough, or come too late. That is not to say that I'm not appreciative of their efforts, but I'd like to help. I'm going to lay out a few ideas here for mitigating this problem, some of which might not have been considered before. The ease of implementation, manpower requirements, and effectiveness of these vary, but I think they are all good ideas.

1) Empty the elevators at the top and bottom floors. No going up to go down or vice versa. The process of emptying them won't directly speed things up, but as people figure out what's going on and stop misbehaving then the decrease in elevator misappropriation will improve efficiency. This idea requires 2 staff per bank of elevators.

1a) Put an attendant in each elevator to stop people from riding the wrong direction in the first place. This requires one staff per elevator.

2) Sort the waiting line/crowd by destination floor. You can't control which floors an elevator gets called to from outside, but if you only put even numbered floor people on elevator A and odd numbered floor people on elevator B then you will decrease the number of stops of each elevator by about 25%. This idea requires 1 staff per primary elevator boarding floor (such as the three bottom floors in the Dragon*Con Hyatt).

3) Designate one elevator for special circumstances. Wheelchairs, large carts, etc. Put an attendant in that elevator, and give them a fire key. This way they can decide exactly which floors to stop at, without the elevator stopping for calls along the way.

4) Ask the hotel to disable elevator calls and destinations for floors that are served by escalators. Put an attendant on those floors with a radio, so that the special circumstances elevator can come down to pick up people with carts or wheelchairs on those floors. This will reduce the number of stops of each elevator by 5-10%, weighted towards "sorry, elevator is full" sorts of stops. This idea requires 1 staff per disabled floor, and either an implementation of idea #3 or some other override.

5) Incentivize use of the stairs where possible. Something as simple as a raffle ticket for each walk up the stairs, even with an expected value of a few cents per ticket (that is, $100 worth of prizes after giving out 2000+ tickets), would have a significant impact. This requires 1 staff per stairwell.

I'll edit this post as people make further suggestions, and hope to send it to various convention staff members when it is "finished".

Comments

[cos]

#1 - first and foremost, never hold a con at a hotel where stairs access to or from the event floors is restricted!

[joshuazelinsky.livejournal.com]

Most of these suggestions require personpower from either hotels or from constaff. Both are very limited resources.

[kdsorceress.livejournal.com]

I would volunteer to do any of these jobs for some length of time (1, 2, 4 hours) as part of my volunteer hours. Hell, I'd volunteer for an hour to do any of these jobs for no benefit whatsoever, except minimizing the stupid-long lines.

~Sor

[stylishgeek.livejournal.com]

Brilliant! Good thoughts about something that doesn't appear to get much attention at all. I think education to attendees about these policies would be crucial as well. I mention that because at some point one person on staff was enforcing #1, and I was shocked about being asked to get off the elevator as I had the intention of continuing to ride it to get to my destination.

Um a word

[jolefay.livejournal.com]

#2. We tried that already. The year it was done made it way way way way way WORSE. It also caused congestion at the escalators which in turn had the Fire Marshall there.
That would coincide with why #4 will not work either.
There was also a time when you had to show your room key to ride the elevator past the convention floors. Again caused to much area congestion FIRE MARSHALL.
Here's the thing. Dragon Con should limit the amount of passes sold. They should also check badges at the doors like most conventions do. It's unfortunate that we can't have nice things but--looky lou's are a serious issue.

Re: Um a word

[sparr0.livejournal.com]

If you tried #2 and it made things worse, someone was Doing It Wrong. Seriously. Can you explain to me how #2 could possibly result in it being worse? Even if you screw up the idea completely, you've still got the same number of people getting on random elevators, just like if you hadn't tried in the first place.

An escalator can handle 10-50x as much traffic as elevator. Stopping elevators to the escalator floors would only result in 2-10% more escalator traffic.

A lot of people keep objecting to these ideas (in various places, I cross posted this to facebook and elsewhere) with a "we tried that, it didn't work". I refuse to accept that. Tell me WHY it didn't work. If you can't, then I have to assume the answer is poor implementation. Like communism, all of these ideas are sound :)

Re: Um a word

[jolefay.livejournal.com]

Ok I have been going to Dragon Con for 16 years. I have worked 3 of those years.
It did not work for the reasons I told you. It clusters the people traffic waiting to get on the elevator. CAUSING a break in the FIRE CODE LAW and a ticket from the Fire Marshall. This has happened repeatedly with all your suggestions that have been tried. If the people can not move at their own pace it cluster fucks everything causing the Fire Marshall to be a happy ticket writer. THE ONLY THING that will stop this is to decrease ticket sales. Dragon Con refuses to let that happen. So till then you are going to have to wait. OH and by the way they do have a disability services elevator I used it last year. But ya know what do I know I have seen the con grow from 1 hotel to what is it 5 now?

Re: Um a word

[sparr0.livejournal.com]

Why do you assume this whole post is about Dragon*Con, and the Hyatt specifically? Many cons have this problem. I even named another one in the post. Your whole response seems to be predicated on how the Hyatt at Dragon*Con works, and poor implementations of my ideas.

Re: Um a word

[jolefay.livejournal.com]

I know you named other cons. However, I am only familiar with one con that you named. Dragon Con. I like to speak from experience. Not out of my ass. Hope you can understand that. So specifically for that con I am telling you we did it almost the EXACT way you wanted it. It did not work. I then told you why. I experienced it first hand. That is all.

Re: Um a word

[sparr0.livejournal.com]

If the way you did it (#2) resulted in congestion at the elevators, then it bears little resemblance to my idea.

Re: Um a word

[jolefay.livejournal.com]

We did exactly #2---why are you so annoyed that it did not work? Seriously, volunteer-maker the suggestion and watch everyone freak and yell WE TRIED THAT.

Re: Um a word

[sparr0.livejournal.com]

I'm dense. I need you to explain to me what happened when you did #2 and it didn't work. My suggestion wasn't very specific on implementation, so I don't know what, precisely, you did. Did you have pre-sorted lines, or were you sorting people out of the crowd as the elevators were waiting to be filled? How many and what sort of groups did you split into (even/odd, top/bottom floors, etc)? Were you doing the splitting just on the Lobby floor or also on the floors below? Was the splitting handled by people on the floor or in the elevators or both? Where did the congestion form (if you had lines, did they run toward the registration desk or toward the escalators)?

Re: Um a word

[miketodd13.livejournal.com]

Did it cause congestion at the escalators, or did there simply happen to be a lot of congestion at the escalators? Because I can't really see how this would actually cause congestion at the escalators, and simply saying that there was congestion there when this idea was implemented does nothing to prove that this caused it. Logistically speaking, you're actually not adding much traffic to the escalators -- I can do the mathematical breakdown for you if you want, but I can guarantee it's a negligible amount of traffic compared to what the escalators normally service. Also, where exactly was the congestion? I assume it was at the drop-off point, but I'd be interested to know.

I am also curious as to exactly how this idea was implemented, and what year (I can't recall this being tried in the Hyatt or Marriott in the past 8 years). The specific details of "how" are very important as well -- making a bicycle with square wheels doesn't mean that the idea of a bicycle is inefficient.