Frozen Ever After opening day

flynnibus

Premium Member
so its just simply going to be down for large chunks every day for the foreseeable future, will be lucky to ever get on it.

No - it's just teething issues as they work out the optimal running config of both the boats and sensors. This is normal in any reworked ride system.

The unknown here is if they are stopping the ride to reset the aa figures. And if they can get those optimized without significantly reducing what they are doing today (imagine them forcing Olaf to be stationary vs ice skating for instance).

If the ride still shuts down for 3-4hrs a day 4months from now... Then we should be worried

I would expect a steady state within 60 days
 

Brian Swan

Well-Known Member
Of course, lengthening the flume and adding even more scenes to increase capacity would have helped, but no.
But as has been pointed out many times, the length of a ride does little to effect "capacity" at least in how it's used here as a measure of number of riders/hour. The flume could be 2 miles long, and although there would be a lot more people riding at a given point in time, the "capacity" is still a function of how many people fit on a boat and how frequently the boats depart. The only way to increase capacity is to decrease the amount of time between launches. But this ride has the bottleneck of the backwards section.
 

Mike S

Well-Known Member
What kind of fool concludes that "(they didn't)" when they obviously heavily modified the ride's blocking system. You're smarter than that. It's not like they just plugged everything in from Maelstrom and left it as is when the ride no runs two more vehicles and has a combined load/unload. The ride control system was modified to carry more boats along the course, to combine the load/unload portions, to change the timing for the block zones during the backwards portion and to modify the last show scene's block zones in order to accommodate more boats before a cascade is triggered.

The capacity is low, but it's not abysmal. 1000 an hour is WAY beyond the majority of rides in every Fantasyland across the globe including all of the "classics" that people are comparing this attraction to. Of course I'd love to see it closer to 1500 an hour, but I'm also glad it's not closer 500 an hour or below like Pan, Pooh, Snow White, Pinocchio and Alice.

For anyone upset over the length of the queue- it's a complete fallacy to equate hourly throughput with queue time. A big new ride, regardless of it's capacity, is going to dictate a 4+ hour queue on opening day and a 2+ hour queue for at least several months. The only exceptions are the capacity monsters like canal rides and omnimovers.

Think about it this way: right now Frozen can do around 1,000 an hour X 12 hours, so 12,000 riders per day under optimal conditions. Epcot averages around 30,000 visitors a day. They could double the throughput of the ride tomorrow and there are still going to be LOTS of people that don't have the opportunity to ride. Of course, it would mean more people being able to ride and I'm totally in favor of that. But to assume that the queue time would NOT be 2-3 hours right now is just ignorant. It's the reason that Soarin can now tear through 50% more people per hour yet the queue time is currently sports a 225 minute wait according to the app. If you do the math (which I'd done extensively, I'm a sucker for theme park analytics regarding capacity), there only only a few attractions across all of Disney/Universal that can accommodate the daily attendance. For the Magic Kingdom parks, the number of attractions (beyond the train and HKDL's Small World) is ZERO. The vast majority can't even do half of the daily attendance.

Go throughout the Disney/Universal chain and look at capacities vs queue lengths- there's really no correlation. Unviersal's Studio Tour in Hollywood is the highest capacity "attraction" besides transport at any park across the globe and it commonly garners 2-3 hour waits. 99% of the public is completely oblivious to hourly throughput anyway, which is why Universal can get away with running Forbidden Journey, Mummy, Spiderman, and Transformers at half capacity for a large part of the day with 60+ minute waits and nobody bats an eye. Same reason places like Six Flags can have 120 minute waits on rides that have a theoretical capacity of 1800 an hour yet commonly average below 800.

I'm not making excuses, Disney clearly should be the industry leader when it comes to capacity- but pretending that Frozen is some disaster with regards to capacity is just silly. The downtime (which will be sorted out) is the main contributor for the lack of daily throughoutput right now. But as stated, doubling the ride's capacity would not shorten the queue time by a single minute. People will line up for 135 or 180 minutes for a new ride whether the ride does 500 an hour or 1500 an hour. More people will see the ride, but the queue time will remain the same- there will just be MANY MANY more people in the physical queue when it's a higher capacity ride.
This is what we've been meaning all along that higher capacity would equal more people getting to ride. Not just wait times.
 

psuchad

Active Member
There are a lot of armchair engineers here. Without even a hint of how the attraction works and what the issues are, all opinions and recommendations should be limited. Wild speculation gets us all nowhere.

Comments along the lines of it worked before it should work now are ridiculous. It could easily be assumed that the vast majority of the ride system is completely new. Safety standards would most likely be different with the modified ride than before. Most likely, the ride has all new sensors, which could be malfunctioning or just more sensitive than before. Only Disney knows the problem and I am sure they are working on a solution.

Search YouTube for Disney ride malfunction or breakdown. There is a really good one of Tower of Terror where the maintenance staff talk to the riders while waiting for full ride shutdown. When asked what was wrong he stated that the sensors are very sensitive. If the vehicle is one millimeter off, the ride shuts down. He also said that it is typically due to a little drop of liquid from a rider dripping on the floor. If the elevator casters hit that water and slide just a bit, the ride stops.
 

aladdin2007

Well-Known Member
No - it's just teething issues as they work out the optimal running config of both the boats and sensors. This is normal in any reworked ride system.

The unknown here is if they are stopping the ride to reset the aa figures. And if they can get those optimized without significantly reducing what they are doing today (imagine them forcing Olaf to be stationary vs ice skating for instance).

If the ride still shuts down for 3-4hrs a day 4months from now... Then we should be worried

I would expect a steady state within 60 days

makes sense,,,,, yes lets hope the bolded does not happen.
 

rushtest4echo

Well-Known Member
This is what we've been meaning all along that higher capacity would equal more people getting to ride. Not just wait times.

The "not just wait times" is the part that makes zero sense. I'm all for more guests being able to experience the attraction. Still, besides Small World, more people will be riding Frozen every day than any of the Fantasyland classics around the globe- nobody seems to care about that fact despite all of the comparisons. In fact, when you have a ride like Mr Toad maxing at 330 riders per hour, that means that on a typical 16 hour day there are a maximum of 5,000 riders- less than 1/10th of the daily attendance on a busy day.

Disneyland's Splash Mountain was constructed with a skid pad at the bottom of the runout in order to provide a block zone. It's only active if the boat is overspeed or if there's an estop/cascade. Why couldn't there be a system like that on Frozen? The answer is that they felt it wasn't needed and were comfortable with the ride's current throughput. It's not really a question of money or difficulty- this would have been a simple/cheap modification far easier than adding the new bend on the ride (which again, changed timings and guaranteed that they didn't just plug in the old ride system). It's just silly to assume they showed up one day and plugged in the existing 30 year old ride system and hit start. Just lunacy.

Dispatch intervals x vehicle capacity is the ONLY determiner of capacity/throughput- why is this difficult for people to comprehend? Adding a block between the two 20 second track switches would have enabled them to massively cut intervals at minimal cost/programming changes. Intervals on Frozen are ONLY limited right now by the length of the track between the two switches- not how long they take to operate. Much like 7DMT, 1000 an hour was fine for their projections for popularity/queue times. Increasing the capacity of Frozen isn't limited by track switches or block zones or the ride length.
 
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Bob Harlem

Well-Known Member
What's the cause of the majority of the breakdowns? If I were to guess based on recent history, they probably need to raise their buffet prices even more.
 

psuchad

Active Member
it does look like he is suppose to rise up but doesn't. Also with the olaf skating in the palace scene, it looks like there was suppose to be something else there too, just seems like a lot of blank space.
The Olaf skating scene screams of filler. I also wonder why the lift hill isn't decorated like the staircase.

oiJF81s.jpg
 

flynnibus

Premium Member
The "not just wait times" is the part that makes zero sense. I'm all for more guests being able to experience the attraction. Still, besides Small World, more people will be riding Frozen every day than any of the Fantasyland classics around the globe- nobody seems to care about that fact despite all of the comparisons. In fact, when you have a ride like Mr Toad maxing at 330 riders per hour, that means that on a typical 16 hour day there are a maximum of 5,000 riders- less than 1/10th of the daily attendance on a busy day.

Disneyland's Splash Mountain was constructed with a skid pad at the bottom of the runout in order to provide a block zone. It's only active if the boat is overspeed or if there's an estop/cascade. Why couldn't there be a system like that on Frozen? The answer is that they felt it wasn't needed and were comfortable with the ride's current throughput. It's not really a question of money or difficulty- this would have been a simple/cheap modification far easier than adding the new bend on the ride (which again, changed timings and guaranteed that they didn't just plug in the old ride system). It's just silly to assume they showed up one day and plugged in the existing 30 year old ride system and hit start. Just lunacy.

Dispatch intervals x vehicle capacity is the ONLY determiner of capacity/throughput- why is this difficult for people to comprehend? Adding a block between the two 20 second track switches would have enabled them to massively cut intervals at minimal cost/programming changes. Intervals on Frozen are ONLY limited right now by the length of the track between the two switches- not how long they take to operate. Much like 7DMT, 1000 an hour was fine for their projections for popularity/queue times. Increasing the capacity of Frozen isn't limited by track switches or block zones or the ride length.

That and show... It's not a continuous loop like iasw... Each boat gets the full scene played out for them.

Adding blocks wouldn't change that design choice
 

disreport

Member
it does look like he is suppose to rise up but doesn't. Also with the olaf skating in the palace scene, it looks like there was suppose to be something else there too, just seems like a lot of blank space.

That, to me, is the most disappointing part of the entire ride. You're coming off the apex of the lift and expecting anything other than "well there's Olaf again". I also wasn't crazy about the lack of scenery on the right side towards the end of the backwards section.
 

aladdin2007

Well-Known Member
That, to me, is the most disappointing part of the entire ride. You're coming off the apex of the lift and expecting anything other than "well there's Olaf again". I also wasn't crazy about the lack of scenery on the right side towards the end of the backwards section.

agree, a northern lights effect would have been nice on that enormous long black wall, but instead its pretty much nothing.
 

aaronml

Well-Known Member
The "not just wait times" is the part that makes zero sense. I'm all for more guests being able to experience the attraction. Still, besides Small World, more people will be riding Frozen every day than any of the Fantasyland classics around the globe- nobody seems to care about that fact despite all of the comparisons. In fact, when you have a ride like Mr Toad maxing at 330 riders per hour, that means that on a typical 16 hour day there are a maximum of 5,000 riders- less than 1/10th of the daily attendance on a busy day.

Disneyland's Splash Mountain was constructed with a skid pad at the bottom of the runout in order to provide a block zone. It's only active if the boat is overspeed or if there's an estop/cascade. Why couldn't there be a system like that on Frozen? The answer is that they felt it wasn't needed and were comfortable with the ride's current throughput. It's not really a question of money or difficulty- this would have been a simple/cheap modification far easier than adding the new bend on the ride (which again, changed timings and guaranteed that they didn't just plug in the old ride system). It's just silly to assume they showed up one day and plugged in the existing 30 year old ride system and hit start. Just lunacy.

Dispatch intervals x vehicle capacity is the ONLY determiner of capacity/throughput- why is this difficult for people to comprehend? Adding a block between the two 20 second track switches would have enabled them to massively cut intervals at minimal cost/programming changes. Intervals on Frozen are ONLY limited right now by the length of the track between the two switches- not how long they take to operate. Much like 7DMT, 1000 an hour was fine for their projections for popularity/queue times. Increasing the capacity of Frozen isn't limited by track switches or block zones or the ride length.
There are boat skids on FEA, and I'm fairly confident that Maelstrom had them also.
 

Goofyernmost

Well-Known Member
This perhaps is the biggest problem I have with the changes. Obviously world showcase is no longer a focus of the company and they want to cartoonify everything to get people to the other parks but I always held out hope for that possible Brazil Pavilion or even somewhere no one ever thought of..
It's taking you guys long enough to figure out that the mission has changed since 1982. Unless they can get another country to carry a lot of the construction cost it would be a political landmine to randomly decide on a particular nation. Pay assistance equals no political backlash. Put another nation in a Worlds Fair environment with no cash assistance from that country would be a big mistake. One that wouldn't have happened in 1982.
 

EPCOTCenterLover

Well-Known Member
Thanks for the engineering input on what increases ride capacity. I just wish they would have done something to be able to get more folks on the ride. I know- maybe more actual attractions in the park! ;)
 

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