bunsen_h

This afternoon I heard a young woman grumbling about having gone to an amusement park and having to wait an hour and a half in line for a 4-minute ride.  That, and some of the discussion in Seanan McGuire's recent post about dealing with crowds in amusement parks, got me thinking.  Why do people have to do this kind of thing?

How about something like: You put your ID in a queue for a ride.  When your turn comes up, if you're not present and ready to got on the ride, you lose your turn.  You're only allowed to be in N queues at once, and only allowed to be in a given queue once at a time.  You can check your position in the queues via an app on a mobile device, or with a device that you can rent from the park.  While you're waiting, you're free to wander around, do activities that don't require waiting, buy stuff, eat stuff, rest/relax, whatever.

Now, I must admit that I'm not a fan of amusement parks.  (I don't like crowds.  I really don't like spending a long time waiting in line for a brief ride; the payoff is too small for the investment.)  So my knowledge and experience are limited.  Am I missing some problem?
 

This afternoon, I thought of a telephone feature which would be really nice to have: as long as there was sound continually coming in (and you could specify how short a pause constituted "continual sound"), it would send out silence from your end, and play your choice of music for you (or any other sound you like) instead of the incoming sound.  When the incoming sound paused, you'd go back to normal phone operation.

This would let you replace someone else's annoying phone-system hold music with your own preferred sound.

And it would let you let an annoying talk-talk-talk person run out of steam, then continue a conversation, without your having to listen to the babbling.