Clipper/Loggers Drop Hills

[NightRider785]

So I was at GAm last week and rode Yankee Clipper for the first time in many years. I now notice a lot more stuff then I used to as a kid, which brings up so many questions. Like, there are two drop hills on the rides. I got this caption from a phot on greatamericaparks.com, which helps get me to my question:
"Boats alternated going down the left and right chutes on the Yankee Clipper. This allowed a higher throughput. Years later, most double-chute flumes closed one chute and use only one side now."
Ok, so my question is how did this work? I noticed the chutes combine back into one almost immediately after the drop. How does this make them able to put them through faster? It seems to me that they'd have to wait the same amount of time either way to let boats drop. It only takes a second or two for them to hit the bottom.

[guitarhero119]

Like coasters the flumes work on a block system. You still would have to wait for the next log/boat to clear the bottom before the next one dropped, but you would have the next one ready to go instead of waiting for the next log/boat to arrive at the gates. The last time I was on clipper we hit both sets of gates so there would be no point in having 2 drops if the boats are ready to go anyway. I imagine with old rides like those the less moving parts the better.

[Ilovthevu']

My theory on the higher capacity is this. You have the boat going down the drop on Loggers (let's say), and the other boat is stopped at a gate. Well, here comes yet another boat, and it can go into the other side (where that log just left to go down the drop), but it still has a gate in front of it. Than, the boat clears on the bottom, and they send one of them.

The capacity increases somewhat. Maybe, you can send one more log than you could before because you are able to fill another slot on top. So, I would say maybe it would be 48 more people per hour which doesn't seem like much. That's if people are only going 4 in a boat which they don't always.