Acknowledging that the discussion has moved on beyond ride times, but thought this bit of ride-time scheduling experience might add something. (Took me this long to read the thread! 
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Ride times are magical, IMO as someone who loves having them – but the scheduling and assignment of times has to be done with care to avoid chaos. Especially when more than one division is running at the same time. The scheduler has to avoid time conflicts across rings, and does have to respect the customer’s needs, otherwise the schedule will fall apart on the day.
I’ve done a lot of warm-up stewarding at horse trials and a few dressage shows, as well as riding in them myself. IMO the ride times keep everyone sane, so long as the show can stay fairly close to those times. The event I worked with the most on event-prep and stewarding was almost always running on the time. It was one of the things that made it a premier event in that Area.
In comparison, in another eventing Area that I also showed in, most of the events fell behind, with ride times drifting later & later throughout the day. (That often happens when moving jump judges between divisions isn’t efficient. Or start-box doesn’t stick to the start times.) If a rider had later ride times, the constant question throughout the day was “how far behind are they now?” The rider with multiple horses and, of course, the pros with students, were constantly re-juggling their own actities against the changing time schedule.
Where the events tended to not run on time, it was typical for student riders to not have a trainer available in warm-up, due to the fluctuating conflicts. Whereas in the Area where events typically ran on time, students almost always had their trainer available to school them in warm-up.
A well-scheduled, on-time event means more income for trainers, because schooling students in warm-up is paid time for them. Conversely, trainers who miss meeting their students in warm-up can end up with angry students, because the student can’t wait for the trainer to arrive. They have to ride at their time regardless.
In recognized eventing, anyway. Dressage was often more flexible in my limited dressage stewarding experience. And sometimes in eventing, a steward & td could be nice about a change requested in the warm-up ring, if the schedule allowed. Schooling horse trials tend to be as accommodating as the time schedule allows.
The event that I worked with behind the scenes the most, and that did a sterling job of accurate ride times all day long at event after event, had an experienced organizer who hovered over the ride time scheduling. She knew that the trainers that were her largest sources of entries depended on being able to time-manage between warm-up rings to do their own rides and also school their students.
The scheduler and the organizer also knew from the entry forms which riders were with which trainer. Plus, the organizer was on the phone with trainers to cooperatively figure out what would work best for everyone during the event. Trainers generally expressed a preference to do their own rides first and then school their students. So, in a division such as Novice, the open & horse (mostly pro riders) sections ran first, then the junior & amateur sections.
As all riders in a division like Novice rode the same dressage test and jumped the same course, it wasn’t necessary to strictly schedule riders entered in the same section to ride sequentially. (Division sections: open, horse, junior, amateur.) Adjustments in the order within the division could be made to avoid time conflicts across other rings/divisions running at the same time. And to allow trainers to finish their rides first, then school their students in warm-up.
Of course avoiding time conflicts for busy pros couldn’t always be perfect. The trainers bringing the largest contingents got the most consideration from the scheduler.
However, on just one occasion, this venue had a disastrously instructive ride-time fiasco for the LL cross-country, due to poor scheduling. That time the scheduler was a first-timer for this event, and the organizer was unwell during much of the preparation time and did not oversee the ride time scheduling as she usually did.
As usual for that event, a UL division was still running when the Novice cross-country division was to begin. But this time the scheduler had given the pros almost the same ride time in both divisions, creating untenable time conflicts for all of them. She put the pros at the beginning of the Novice order of go, even though she knew that they would still be riding in the UL at that time. And even though the Novice division was much larger and it would have been easy to give all of the pros later times that didn’t conflict with the UL, and still allow their students to ride even later in the Novice. As had always been done prior to this one time.
That day I was the warm-up steward for the Novice cross-country. As soon as I arrived and took one look at the ride order, and saw all the pro names at the top, I knew this was going bad fast. The first pro riders scheduled to start weren’t in warm-up at all because they were still on their UL division rides. And very few other riders were there either since their times were later, and none were ready to start early. (How no one clued in on this ride time conflict and raised the alarm earlier is a mystery to me.)
Chaos. Start-box didn’t have visibility to warm-up or the other rings, and didn’t know why they didn’t have any horses to start the division. They were anxiously filling up radio time insisting that horses be sent over from warm-up to start.
But as there were none ready to send early, no horses started during the first ride times for the Novice. So then the TD was also on the radio trying to figure out what was happening. It is very difficult to explain over a walkie-talkie to anxious people why the time schedule was rapidly falling apart, when those people are not expecting to hear anything like that at this normally superbly-organized event.
And then when junior/amateur students did start showing up in warm-up and their trainers weren’t there, some were reluctant to warm-up or go to start-box without their trainer. Parents were urging the juniors to begin their warm-up, riders were freezing in anxiety … it was a sad mess. Some riders were self-sufficient, but not all.
We puddled through. Announcements were made for riders to volunteer to warm-up and start earlier than their times, to fill the vacant ride times - but the notice was so short, few were able to do that. I was negotiating on the fly with riders in warm-up on changes in times. (Confiscated the free donuts and traded donuts for some of the changes.) Then more negotiations when the anxious pros finally showed up on antsy green horses, figuring out how to work them into the schedule to do their own rides and still get back in time to school their students. And after all of that, the riders down the order of go ended up having their ride times delayed due to working the pros in ahead of them. So some people were going early, some late, none on their actual ride time. As much as 10 to 20 minutes off their original time, which is a big change in a warm-up routine.
Plus lots of radio time with start-box on when riders were coming over and when they weren’t. And finally when there were no riders left in warm-up, madly ticking through the list to see if we missed anyone. It was my least fun day in warm-up stewarding ever (other than the donut negotiations, which were kind of fun). But everyone survived. And I think they all got their ride in!
Start-box was creative to try to make up as much lost time as they could. That also figured into the ride time negotiations back in warm-up, as the original time schedule for starters was just nullified. (The original schedule was a start every 2 minutes.)
The Novice division did end up running considerably over its scheduled end time. So that had a domino effect against subsequent divisions running out of that warm-up ring later, and delaying their ride times for the rest of the day. All due to bad ride time scheduling of conflicts across rings. A learning experience, one that was never repeated at that event.
