Logistical considerations for re-opening: How will you determine overall capacity?

Rosita Bradham

Some great discussions were started using the Chat forum on a recent webinar.  In an effort to expand those topics to include as many folks as possible, we're beginning new threads here in the Community along those same lines.  So...


How will you determine overall capacity?

Has your state/city offered guidelines?


Please include your organization's name and location.

Melissa Maney

Turtle Bay Exploration Park in Redding, CA


We are meeting with our Shasta County public health official tomorrow to go over our plans and procedures, so I might come update this then with more info if something changes.


As of now when we get the go-ahead to reopen, we will be doing online "Admission Reservations" as a scheduled program through Altru in which people can sign up for an allotted timeslot on a specific day. Then when they check in at the desk with their confirmation/reservations, they'll pay for their tickets (we use USB card swipers so we've mounted them where they'll swipe their own). We're planning on doing two-hour increments for the timeslots (it takes about two hours to visit the museum, playground, and animal area on average) with a max of 50 people per timeslot. When they check in they'll be getting a wristband (put on by themselves) and we'll be changing the color every two hours to easily monitor which timeframe people are in. We're also going to have a staff roaming and keeping a running count/estimate of how many people are in the museum since it's the building we're most concerned about going over in. Depending on what our public health dept says, we'll be adjusting our capacity accordingly. At the moment we figure we'll need to work out kinks about what to do if there's a bunch of folks who want to stay longer than two hours, or those who arrive with only a half-hour of their timeslot left, etc. We'll likely be keeping our capacity in Altru a tad under what our actual max capacity is just so that we can make some exceptions without going over.


Up here in Shasta County we're fast-tracking into "Stage 2" and if things go well hopefully moving into Stage 3 in a couple weeks, which would likely allow us to reopen (we're hoping!).


Melissa Maney

Diana Turner

CuriOdyssey in San Mateo, CA

We are still finding out from our county officials what the guidelines will be for capacity and what parts of our zoo and science center can be opened to the public and when.


Our initial ideas:

We measured the distance from our entrance through the zoo, in a one-way path, to our modified exit.  We took the number of feet and divided by 6 so that we could determine the maximum number of folks that could be in the space with social distancing.  

We are determining which of our current exhibits are enjoyed without touch.  If we have approval to open the indoor science area, we will reconfigure the space to include the exhibits that are more visually and auditory interaction instead of touching with hands.  We will then adjust our capacity up slightly based upon the number of feet available.

We are also going to do timed ticketing in Altru.  We've decided that they will have a 1.5 hour timeslot and allow for 30 minutes of cleaning before the next timeslot.  We will not allow people to stay over their allotted time and will make that clear on the ticketing information that is sent to people.  

We are very curious how this will all go when you have toddlers and young children visiting - modifications will most likely be made to our plans once we get underway.