Massive Jungle Cruise Wait Times

[celluloid]

Trader Sam, from the ride.

There is no Trader Sam ior Chief Namee in the ride anymore. There is only a lost and found reference. It was a joke.

 

[Club Cooloholic]

I was on a bus to Animal Kingdom early because the park opens at 7am for resort guests a few times this week and we literally had people standing on the bus on their phones in one hand and holding on with the other scrambling to book something at 7. Made me wonder how many driving to the parks had a phone in one hand doing that too. Great design

Sounds like a wonderful vacation for all! Seriously this is going to alienate more and more guests. I had enough trouble explaining fastpasses to friends in the past. I don't even understand this current system.

 

[Club Cooloholic]

Not to be glib about a moment of global tragedy, but going to a Disney park in 2021 was like stepping back to the good old days. I was lucky enough to visit in the small window between the end of boarding groups and the rise of Genie, and I literally WALKED ONTO RotR several times and could have kept doing so. I took more days from Universal to go to Disney parks then I have in over a decade just because the crowds felt like the 90s again. It was glorious.

I agree. While Rise did have the virtual line when I went in 2020, I loved the standby for all. The longest line we waited was about an hour and that was in pandora. Did we do everything? Nope but I didn't tfeel cheated, I was in the same boat as everyone else.

 

[Ayla]

There is no Trader Sam ior Chief Namee in the ride anymore. There is only a lost and found reference. It was a joke.

Sorry, my internet sarcasm font is broken.

 

[MagicHappens1971]

It’s mostly because of lightning lane. In peak times the ratio for standby to LL is 1:14. The boats only fit so many guests

 

[Henry Mystic]

I agree. While Rise did have the virtual line when I went in 2020, I loved the standby for all. The longest line we waited was about an hour and that was in pandora. Did we do everything? Nope but I didn't tfeel cheated, I was in the same boat as everyone else.

While I agree that’s ideal for fairness & that you’re always moving in lines (I adored summer of ‘21!), the original Fastpass successfully distributed crowds throughout the day, maximized queue capacity, and was easy to understand and use.

It didn’t affect wait times as much which allowed you to also go Fastpassless if you went for 1 day and were oblivious to Fastpass. Guests that weren’t aware could quickly learn it if they stayed multiple days. Early birds were rewarded, but it wasn’t necessary. It also meant even if you waited a long time for Space Mountain, Haunted Mansion and Pirates were reasonable waits you could go on in between.

A digital Fastpass “MaxPass” style system would be the best since it would avoid running around the park while keeping the benefits of the original.

True paid Fastpass per attraction like Individual Lightning Lane or a very expensive ($100+) ride everything but the newest ride pass like Universal’s Express Pass would give guests options while minimizing standby lines for those who opt-out. This has the added benefit in preventing frequent visitors and locals from using Fastpass everyday since they know how to use it that could instead be used by those once in a lifetime or infrequent vacationers.

Fastpass+ was an operational and financial disaster, but trying to mimic its ‘select available time’ for X number of attractions component would be way easier than the convoluted mess it is, or even better, cut out some rides, raise the price to bring down demand/use, and try to mimic MaxPass. They are oddly capping the number of people using it instead of just raising the price to curb demand. It’s bizarrely generous of them, but honestly hurts everyone with the current system since it’s overloading attractions and not good bang for your buck for most people since it has weird quirks.

If they’re opposed to changing it entirely, why not allow booking at park opening instead of 7am, or maybe even 8am even if the park opens earlier similar to the rope drop rush for Fastpass back in the day. They could even open later and close later if that’s an issue. 7 o’clock is way too early. One day a trip to get up early and try to get a virtual queue for a brand new ride is reasonable. Doing that for more than that hardly feels like a vacation, and is why I won’t be using Genie+ at all on my next trip.

Defunctland did a flawless job explaining the situation and is absolutely worth a watch.



(Seriously, Watch It!)

There is so much demand for WDW that the obvious solution is to add another expansion round like the past 5 years to better accommodate (especially for HWS) demand, but I’d bet that’s unlikely to the extent we’ve recently seen. Even if induced demand happens, that’s a good thing for the company, not a bad one, so it’s what they absolutely should do, but they clearly don’t believe in their product enough. Frankly, for the parks themselves, AK & HWS finally feel like true theme parks and MK & EPCOT haven’t been this good in decades. Hopefully that trend continues despite the continuing operational problems.

 

[GhostHost1000]

Also, why not allow booking at park opening instead of 7am, or maybe even 8am even if the park opens earlier? 7 o’clock is way too early.

That would be even worse. Rope dropping walking fast in the herd to the first attraction with everyone on their phones

 

[bcoachable]

Now that it is here and generating cash flow, some form of Genie will be around forever-
The only viable answer for line issue is to build more things to do into the parks… and that won’t happen till they see a drop in our spending habits.

 

[erasure fan1]

The only viable answer for line issue is to build more things to do into the parks… and that won’t happen till they see a drop in our spending habits.

Yup. There are 2 solutions. Like you said, building more attractions. Or limit the amount of people into the parks. And I think we all know, neither of those things will happen any time soon.

 

[UnPocoLoco]

Now that it is here and generating cash flow, some form of Genie will be around forever-
The only viable answer for line issue is to build more things to do into the parks… and that won’t happen till they see a drop in our spending habits.

This is the real solution. Disney has tried and failed at pricing to reduce the crowds. People get upset but still pay the mouse. Disney needs a 5th gate, like opening this year for the 50th. Knowing that’s not even remotely in the (public) pipeline, they need to expand the parks. Add another country to EPCOT. Add another attraction, ride or show (and dining!) to Pandora or Toy Story land. Take out the future/ancient Tomorrowland speedway for something bigger and better. Do anything better and crowd consuming with Dino land. Remy and GotG are definitely crowd consuming things but it’s too little at this point. There’s a lot of fixing up to do that’s needed in addition to creating more to do. The neglect of the parks speed and desire to get things done is really catching up to them, but until it impacts them financially, there’s little reason to care.

 

[James Alucobond]

Disney needs a 5th gate, like opening this year for the 50th.

The last thing they need is another half-day park that won't do anything to reduce pressure on the Magic Kingdom anyway. They should be focused on returning EPCOT to the status of a worthy full-day endeavor, expanding capacity at the Magic Kingdom, and replacing lost capacity at the other two parks.

 

[RSoxNo1]

It certainly got busy after the changes, but not that busy. Seems like weather or a downtime may be the culprit here.

It has consistently been amongst the longest waits at WDW for a while and a top 3 Genie+ reservation as well. I've asked @lentesta to see if he had any insight here as well. To me, I suspect the ride isn't as efficient for one reason or another. Perhaps they're not staffing it as much as they had previously, but there were times during the paper Fastpass days where they would shut off Fastpass for it because it wasn't necessary.

 

[Animaniac93-98]

Time to redo load/unload to be like Tokyo so they can do it faster.

 

[Animaniac93-98]

Imagine if 20,000 Leagues... were still around for Genie+ and lowered staffing.

 

[DC0703]

When we went last month, Jungle Cruise had terrible waits. The official time said said 50 minutes, but we ended up waiting 1 hour and 45 mins. The culprit seemed to be Genie +, the line for Genie + was crazy long. As a result, many boats were dispatching with only Genie + guests. So standby moved at a snail's pace. It seemed like they overbooked Genie +.

Another factor is that ride generally loads/unloads slowly.

 

[mikejs78]

When we went last month, Jungle Cruise had terrible waits. The official time said said 50 minutes, but we ended up waiting 1 hour and 45 mins. The culprit seemed to be Genie +, the line for Genie + was crazy long. As a result, many boats were dispatching with only Genie + guests. So standby moved at a snail's pace. It seemed like they overbooked Genie +.

Another factor is that ride generally loads/unloads slowly.

As someone mentioned above, it also could be DAS. DAS also used the LL and slows to a crawl if they have to load the boat with anyone who requires assistance.

 

[EricsBiscuit]

You’re going to need a bigger boat.

Wrong park lol

 

[DC0703]

As someone mentioned above, it also could be DAS. DAS also used the LL and slows to a crawl if they have to load the boat with anyone who requires assistance.

That was another major component. Often someone requiring DAS would require several minutes to assist with unloading, and there seemed to be many that night. I would hear people in line complaining about the boats being stuck at the unloading dock for longer than usual periods (resulting in nobody loading new boats).

 

[ToTBellHop]

It’s been hard to get on for years. We prioritized to get on once this past trip—ran over right at 9 am. Only waited an hour, but, of course, then the lines were longer for everything else.

Jingle Cruise will be very hard to get on at night…

 

[UpAllNight]

I’d love to know the math on how many lightening lanes they’re selling for the likes of Guardians. Are we talking 10,000 a day? More? It’s a significant amount of additional revenue that should help justify spend on (if needed) major new attractions.

They’re still needed in my opinion in all 4 of the parks. DHS and AK are an absolute mess on a busy day to the none Genie + guests. It forces the purchase and even then there’s not enough capacity by like 2pm and you’re down to bare bones.

To credit Disney before my next rant, I think the new rides are great and the parks are in better shape than my last visit pre covid.

In general though, Genie + feeds into that feeling of being ripped off. We stayed in Universal for 10 nights before moving over to Disney for 10 nights. Yeah it’s all expensive, as expected but I’ve never in my life paid for a hotel room to get “light servicing” every other day! I’ve stayed in rooms for £35 a night in the U.K. and they manage to service the rooms daily. To hide behind covid, at Disney, which is a variant in itself is beyond a joke.

It’s almost insulting to be forced up at 6am for early entry so you can make it to AK to return to a room with no coffees and beds you haven’t had time to make because you’re so wiped out. It’s not an enjoyable holiday experience - and I appreciate the hassle free nature of staying on property at Universal much more now (and the rooms that they manage to service every day)

I wonder if all of the components are working together and if anyone at Disney has taken a step back to think of the guest experience at WDW?

Hotel restaurants shut before the parks close. Bars that shut at 10pm?! Early Entrance to AK starting at 7am. Requiring endless planning, to turn up to AK where there’s about 6 people letting masses of crowds in.

Also, sorry I know this is the Jungle Cruise thread but some of the above posts triggered me, but what is going on with the half hour early entry situation? Stampedes of tired pram pushing heal clipping parents looking stressed as heck power walking to skip past people to get to rides that will be a 2 hour queue within 15 minutes of opening (before half of the early entry guests have even made it into the park - despite arriving on time). Give hotel guests that have paid a fortune an hour. I’ve heard “atleast it’s all parks now” - nonsense. The week before last Islands of Adventure, Universal Studios offered an hour to hotel guests, and half an hour to Volcano bay.

The perception of value is warped. To see such moody, stressed, stampeding crowds at 7am - it’s not the “Disney bubble” I expected staying on site. You’ll catch me at Universal next time.