At large amusement parks, live shows are used very deliberately to inf

Question

Which of the following best completes the passage below?

At large amusement parks, live shows are used very deliberately to influence crowd movements. Lunchtime performances relieve the pressure on a park’s restaurants. Evening performances have a rather different purpose: to encourage visitors to stay for supper. Behind this surface divergence in immediate purpose there is the unified underlying goal of______

(A) keeping the lines at the various rides short by drawing off part of the crowd
(B) enhancing revenue by attracting people who come only for the live shows and then leave the park
(C) avoiding as far as possible traffic jams caused by visitors entering or leaving the park
(D) encouraging as many people as possible to come to the park in order to eat at the restaurants
(E) utilizing the restaurants at optimal levels for as much of the day as possible

Please help in understanding option (D) and (E) . Thanks in advance

TommyWallach · Accepted Answer

Hey All,

Looks like you're on the right track with this, but I thought I'd weigh in to go through all the answer choices. Basically, the key is not to let your own understanding of amusement parks get in the way of what the passage focuses on.

Premises: Live shows used to influence crowd movements. First for lunch, then for supper.

A) keeping the lines at the various rides short by drawing off part of the crowd
 Problem: Even though this makes total sense, it's never mentioned in the passage. We don't discuss lines.

(B) enhancing revenue by attracting people who come only for the live shows and then leave the park
 Problem: Who would do that? Again, we never discuss money.

(C) avoiding as far as possible traffic jams caused by visitors entering or leaving the park
 Problem: We never discuss traffic.

(D) encouraging as many people as possible to come to the park in order to eat at the restaurants
 Problem: This is the trap answer, because at least it involves restaurants. But the live shows are not created to bring people to the theme park IN ORDER to eat at the restaurants. As we were told, the live shows are used to affect crowd movements.

(E) utilizing the restaurants at optimal levels for as much of the day as possible
 Answer: Now we're on track. The goal is to keep the RIGHT NUMBER of people at the restaurants at certain times.

Hope that helps!

-tommy

egmat · Answer

Option E should be the answer.

https://e-gmat.com/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Celebrating-Milestones1.png We are talking about two show times - one in the evening and one in the lunchtime

Lunchtime shows relieve the pressure on restaurants - This means that restaurants are already quite full during this time and performances take away some of the customers away from restaurants.

Evening performances does the opposite - they increase the customers for the restaurants by making people stay for supper.

So, the unifying theme is rationalizing the number of customers at the restaurants. This is said in other words in Option E.

Option D is incorrect since this cannot be unifying theme because it ignores the purpose of lunchtime performances.

Thanks,
Chiranjeev

Acer1986 · Answer

The question informs us that shows are planned in a way as to "relieve" pressure during lunch times and to encourage people to stay for supper at night.

Option D tends to tell us that the park wants people to come and eat at the restaurant, but that is not the problem since people are eating there as explained by the question that lunch time is full.

Options E on the other hand explains the logic quite well whereby the park wants the restaurants to be fully utilized by planning the shows in a way that people will end up eating at the restaurants.

u1983 · Answer

(A) keeping the lines at the various rides short by drawing off part of the crowd  - sensible but outside information. 
(B) enhancing revenue by attracting people who come only for the live shows and then leave the park   - outside information 
(C) avoiding as far as possible traffic jams caused by visitors entering or leaving the park   - outside information 
(D) encouraging as many people as possible to come to the park in order to eat at the restaurants  - close , But supports only one part ( the evening part ..... kind of contrasting with the lunch part ) 
 (E) utilizing the restaurants at optimal levels for as much of the day as possible     CORRECT    -  the strategy described is likely to distribute the restaurant heading crowed evenly with the intention to have an even customer flow to the eateries throughout the day so that those eating joints can be utilized optimally.

adkikani · Answer

u1983   gmat1393   VeritasKarishma   nightblade354

Are below two different purposes at the amusement park?
1. For lunch, huge crowd is expected at cafeteria. So let us conduct live shows 
at the same time, so people will watch shows and come back to restaurants later.
2. For supper, fewer people come to restaurants. So conduct shows BEFORE the supper,
so that people stay back to first watch shows and then go to restaurants.

Why is the revenue from restaurants / live shows irrelevant to the argument here?

u1983 · Answer

Hi adkikani ...... I think revenue (from the restaurant) is the one of the main point. My take : So.... suppose say there are sitting capacity of 500 at the restaurant and at noon the park is expecting 3000 people to have lunch . So if most of the people go to restaurant .... the revenue will not be maximum ( overcrowding - will definitely prompt people (at least me) to look for alternative options) . But if through some strategy the restaurant visits can be spaced ..... such as ... starting from 11AM every 1/2 hr around 400-500 ppl , there would be maximun traffic to restaurant at lunch - thus max revenue. Now , people generally try to leave around evening ..... but if there are exiting live shows I would stay back .... and ofcourse it will be late .... And I might deciede to have food there at the park instead of making them at home or hunting for them outside ....... I might be sounding too much of a fooodie...... but that's how my mind works !!!!

.. Can't help it ..... really !!

HAPPYatHARVARD · Answer

(A) keeping the lines at the various rides short by drawing off part of the crowd - no mention about lines
(B) enhancing revenue by attracting people who come only for the live shows and then leave the park - out of scope
(C) avoiding as far as possible traffic jams caused by visitors entering or leaving the park - outside information
(D) encouraging as many people as possible to come to the park in order to eat at the restaurants - does not support lunch time
(E) utilizing the restaurants at optimal levels for as much of the day as possible CORRECT - the paragraph talks about relieving and optimizing load on the restaurant

kavach · Answer

(A) keeping the lines at the various rides short by drawing off part of the crowd - sensible but outside information.
(B) enhancing revenue by attracting people who come only for the live shows and then leave the park - outside information
(C) avoiding as far as possible traffic jams caused by visitors entering or leaving the park - outside information
(D) encouraging as many people as possible to come to the park in order to eat at the restaurants - close , But supports only one part ( the evening part ..... kind of contrasting with the lunch part )
(E) utilizing the restaurants at optimal levels for as much of the day as possible CORRECT - the strategy described is likely to distribute the restaurant heading crowed evenly with the intention to have an even customer flow to the eateries throughout the day so that those eating joints can be utilized optimally. 
_________________

YASH750 · Answer

great explanation.

My query is a little off topic. i would like to know the difficulty level of this question from Experts point of view.
I know this question is listed in the 700+ category. but is it the same level as compared to the real gmat?

looking forward to your reply.

CEdward · Answer

Which of the following best completes the passage below?

At large amusement parks, live shows are used very deliberately to influence crowd movements. Lunchtime performances relieve the pressure on a park’s restaurants. Evening performances have a rather different purpose: to encourage visitors to stay for supper. Behind this surface divergence in immediate purpose there is the unified underlying goal of______

(A) keeping the lines at the various rides short by drawing off part of the crowd
-We cannot make this inference without knowing any details about how large the lines at various rides are…besides we see two outcomes of what happened: 
a) Relieve pressure on restaurants
b) Encourage people to eat at restaurants 
The answer has to be something that relates to the restaurants.

(B) enhancing revenue by attracting people who come only for the live shows and then leave the park
It’s not particularly clear how the revenue is being enhanced if, for part of the day, performances are drawing people away from restaurants which generates revenues.

(C) avoiding as far as possible traffic jams caused by visitors entering or leaving the park
Clearly out-of-scope…we don’t know anything about traffic jams from this passage.

(D) encouraging as many people as possible to come to the park in order to eat at the restaurants
This runs counter to what the lunchtime performances achieve…we know that the park wants to relieve the pressure so encouraging more people to come increases the pressure.

(E) utilizing the restaurants at optimal levels for as much of the day as possible
Correct. A safe and conservative choice.

Vishalcv · Answer

I honestly don't see how option E is the "underlying" goal. Option E is obvious. The paragraph clearly mentions that it tries to manage restaurant levels etc. How is that "underlying"? Underlying should be something that isn't obvious

Namangupta1997 · Answer

Hi  AndrewN

I agree with this sentiment. Only because of the word "underlying" I chose option A over E. Is there no significance of the word "underlying"? Option E is an obvious contender but I picked A because the question seemed to be asking something that's hidden and not directly stated. 
What are we missing ?

Mavisdu1017 · Answer

Hello expert,
I was torn between A and E cuz they are really the same meaning to me. As the expert above said “The goal is to keep the RIGHT NUMBER of people at the restaurants and other rides at certain times”, and A “keep the line short” means keep the right number of people. So why A is wrong? Thanks in advance.

AndrewN · Answer

Hello,  Namangupta1997  and  Mavisdu1017 . Answer choices (A) and (E) are not by any means  the same , and there is an  underlying  economic factor at work with the two descriptions of  performances  in the passage. Think of the two types of live performances and their goals, one by one, with an eye on  exactly  what the passage tells us.

Lunchtime performances = relieve the pressure on restaurants
Evening performances = encourage visitors to stay for supper

Both performances center on crowd movement and  food , not on  various rides , as answer choice (A) says. To my eye, answer choice (C) is just as viable as (A), since both require a leap in logic to justify. Note that in the description of  evening performances , there is no explicit mention of  restaurants , but we can reasonably carry over this keyword from the earlier description. (I suppose crowds could fill up on amusement park food—e.g., funnel cakes, popcorn, or, at certain parks, deep-fried candy bars—but most people would not think of such snacks as  supper .) The  unifying goal , then, seems to be to get visitors on the whole to spend as much money as possible at the restaurants: they cannot spend money as efficiently if, at lunchtime, they have to wait for a long time or cannot get in to eat, and they cannot spend money at all if, at supper time, they are not interested in staying at the park to eat. Take a look at answer choice (E) again:

Now, just where does the passage say anything about  optimal levels  of anything? This is simply a logical and underlying economic principle at work.

Make sure you understand an answer choice before you either dismiss or embrace it. When you choose something you know is off-base, you will end up with little more than a wrong answer. (Play it safe.)

- Andrew

Mavisdu1017 · Answer

Thanks  AndrewN , I think of the passage again, and found: why the show is arranged only at lunch time or supper time? Cuz the show serves for restaurants, but not other rides. I understand, thanks for your enlightenment.

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At large amusement parks, live shows are used very deliberately to inf

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