There is little that is more frustrating than waiting for two hours to ride a roller coaster for the first time at a park you’ve never visited before, only to reach the station and get told where you have to sit. They take away your freedom of choice and tell you where to sit, but what if you don’t want that seat, or you’ve ridden from that location before and want to try something different? Too bad, so sad, you’re out of luck.

It’s a policy that some parks have been implementing more and more lately (I’m looking at you Carowinds and other Cedar Fair parks). Sometimes, it’s completely understandable and won’t heavily affect your ride, such as a trip to Disney World. Disney assigns seats to avoid issues, run things at full capacity, and move lines as efficiently as possible. Not to mention, most of their rides are set up so you will have a great ride regardless of where you sit, and the rides don’t tend to focus on the pure thrilling sensation as much as the story and effects that go along with the ride. Fair enough. If it weren’t for Disney doing this, lines would surely be a bit slower and less efficient, and with Disney’s capacity, it requires some sort of order like this to keep things moving (pun intended).

My problem is at the smaller parks, or less crowded parks, or rides with short lines. Sure, at Carowinds, I don’t really care that much on Nighthawk if I’m assigned a seat, as I’ve found no seat that is much better than any other…they’re all rough and uncomfortable, but provide a moderately fun flying experience. Intimidator, I can’t complain because I’ve gone on it so many times, I have probably tried nearly every seat by this point…but I do have my favorites. I’ve found the front and back seats to be the best, because in the front you get a sense of speed with the wind blowing in your face and solid floater airtime, in the very back you get the best airtime with some nice floater and slight ejector airtime. From my experience though, sitting anywhere else on this coaster only gives some floater, no ejector, airtime and makes the ride a bit more “meh” compared to other hypercoasters.

I don’t mind as much being assigned a seat anymore just because I’ve been on it so many times already that a slightly different experience each time could make it more re-rideable for me. It would be very frustrating, however, if I had to wait in line for this coaster and I only had one opportunity to ride, only to be stuck in a middle seat, where the airtime is relatively minimal. If I never got to experience the front or back of this coaster, I would likely not regard the coaster very highly because of the relative “forcelessness” of the ride in that seat compared to my experiences with similar hypercoasters. It would reflect badly on the coaster, and the park, especially if I heard other people raving about how good the front/back was, since that’s where I wanted to ride.

Let me choose where I want to ride! I’ve seen parks assign seats even with a virtually empty queue and half-empty train. Why? What’s the point? Unless lines are really long and it’s necessary for throughput and crowd control (i.e. Disney), it’s pointless (i.e. Carowinds). Let’s face it, if I go to ride Intimidator and there’s a 20 min wait for the front or back, but an empty row in the middle, I’ll take a ride in the middle since I’ve already ridden the other spots plenty of times…and most others would do this too. The times the park (and other parks) do run things like this and don’t assign rows/seats, guess what? I always see the same result…mostly full trains, and guests get the satisfaction of choosing their seats, both parties win! Why then do some parks insist on “assigning” seats?