LA Fleet Week draws great weather, kudos for cutting down wait times

With the 10th annual LA Fleet Week over, it’s time for all the planners and organizers to take stock — and start planning for next year.

Among the take-aways was a new ship-tour system that organizers said Tuesday, May 27, cut down on lines and wait times.

“We moved a lot of people,” said David Canfield, chief information officer for the Battleship Iowa, adding this year’s four-day LA Fleet Week saw between 15,000 to 16,000 tours of the four visiting ships.

Overall fleet week attendance won’t be known for sure until final calculations are in, through several comments throughout the weekend suggested attendance appeared smaller than last year’s, which hit an estimated 100,000.

Last year’s fleet drew large interest due to a visiting aircraft carrier — a large stand-along draw in and of itself.

Lengthy ship tour wait times in 2024 were anywhere from 4-6 hours just to board that particular ship, organizers said.

Typically, tours of the active-duty ships are limited and can only accommodate about a third of the overall attendance at LA Fleet Week each year.

While there was some confusion with a couple of aspects of this year’s new ship-tour system alone, Canfield said, overall it worked much better than earlier systems and will be used again next year but with some fine-tuning, applying what was learned from this year’s first-run use.

Last year’s lines stretched for some six hours to board ships, he said. This year the longest waits appeared to be about two hours.

This year’s ship-line system used a mobile phone queue and QR code — combined with two locations, one near the Expo promenade and the other at 22nd Street where the ships were located in the Outer Harbor — which made lines and boarding more efficient.

“We’ll streamline it” for next year, Canfield said, making it more of a single-step process than it was this year.

Jonathan Williams, president and CEO of the Pacific Battleship Center, in an email sent out on Tuesday, commended this year’s event for addressing the long lines with a two-entry plan that improved the flow and the ship tours’ “virtual queue project” that helped tackle the long-line issues.

Elise Swanson, president and CEO of the San Pedro Chamber of Commerce which manned the information booth for the eight year in a row, said having the two locations was a big help in crowd management.

“Having the two entry points for ship tours created a better visitor experience,” she said, “because people could park remotely and come back and enjoy the expo.”

Guests, she said, “seemed very happy.”

Canfield echoed that.

“I’m an engineer, but anecdotally, I think people just had a good time,” he said. “There’s a lot to do at the festival and it’s all free.”

Very significantly when it came to the more efficient ship lines, he added with a laugh, “last year I was yelled at more.”

Lines moved more quickly this year, Canfield said.

Crowds also just seemed less compact and cramped, Swanson said, as they were divided between the two venues.

“The lines moved well so we didn’t have people upset or standing in (any) line for very long, it worked well,” Swanson said. “Last year we had the aircraft carrier which is an attraction in itself and we didn’t have that this year.”

Several visitors, Swanson said, also noted that the trolleys offered by the Business Improvement District also carried folks throughout the downtown area and were packed. Next year, an added attraction for Fleet Week’s Memorial Day visit will be the West Harbor waterfront which will be open by that time along the waterfront.

New this year was the Esports tent. Final winners of that were Chatsworth High School which competed against the Navy’s Goats & Glory team. Members won scholarships to the colleges of their choice.

Galley Wars — the lively cooking competition between representatives from the L.A. port police, L.A. County firefighters, U.S. Navy, Coast Guard and Marine Corps that’s taped for TV airings — was won by the Coast Guard once again.