Thank you. And per our old friends at LaughingPlace
(Do they know that's not allowed any more?!? Who started that racist website?!?),..
Random Thursday at 1:40pm Pacific time shows Soarin' ties for the longest wait time in the park in DCA at 60 minutes, same as Midway Mania. But Soarin's Lightning Lanes have sold out for the day, while Midway Mania still has them at 5:20.
Cars Racers has a 50 minute wait, with immediate LL still available. The highest capacity ride at DCA; Chase-A-Baby Coaster (with higher height requirement and thrill ride status that scares away some guests) has a 20 minute wait, and immediate LL's available. Mission: Breakout! has a 45 minute wait with LL's available for 4:20.
Soarin' is a very popular attraction at DCA too. Shame they cheaped out on its capacity with only 2 theaters.
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Have you considered that if the two US Soarins were indeed just as popular as they always were that they might not have needed to debut a Soarin' Around the World?
I mean sure, Shanghai was bankrolling that, so sure, try the free attraction, why wouldn't you? But if Soarin' over California was just as popular as it was in good ol' 2001 (or whenever it was at the peak of its powers), why did they take the OG Soarin' down during the week when they were testing and tweaking the World show? If it was just as popular as it had been, why close your golden goose? After all, they didn't test the Winnie the Pooh vehicle on Haunted Mansion, they did it on Superstar Limo, i.e. capacity on a similar ride that wasn't enough of a draw to make the park hesitate to close it down to help something else use said system to test and adjust. If World wasn't more popular than the original show, SOC probably would have returned shortly afterward and soldiered on, much in the way the original Country Bear Jamboree did at Magic Kingdom for almost 50 years, instead of awkwardly showing up in March and then leaving as it does now.
I'm sure it gets your patriotic juices flowing to think so, but Disney is not a company to do things simply because America. If that was the case, there would still be Star-Spangled Bacon and not Moana & Her Disney Pals as the finale for the MSEP. They are incredibly bottom-line focused, something you are quite eager to point out in basically any other post you make.
The ride has declined in popularity and they know it. Certainly it is not empty or destitute-it has never fallen to Lincoln levels and is unlikely to do so-but nonetheless it is not moving people in a way it once did. They're not debuting a new film out of the goodness of their hearts or love of their country-they're doing it because they believe the attraction needs help in at least one of its two domestic resorts. And before someone else does another "well, at Epcot, the current wait time is...", it seems important to remind everyone that there's a huge gulf in ride capacity between the average DLR park and the average WDW park, something that has been conveniently left out of this conversation yet frequently arises in literally every other opportunity to compare the two is given. Of course the WDW version has a longer line-Epcot only has like 12 rides! So that's not really proof of anything except what we already know-WDW is allergic to building attractions, especially in its second gates.
There's a reason Haunted Mansion Holiday and IASW Holiday continue and yet Ghost Galaxy has bit the dust. Space Mountain doesn't actually
need a popularity boost since it's consistently a huge draw and the number 1 or number 2 ride in the park at any given time. However, the original Haunted Mansion and IASW, classic and beloved though they are, and though they can hold respectable queues during the course of a day, simply don't pull the numbers in that their overlays do. If DLR management was happy with the numbers those OG rides were doing, why on earth would they put money towards the overlays and close them for at least a month each year in installation and removal time?
They wouldn't.
If DCA's Soarin'
really was packing the house, they wouldn't be spending the money on a new film and that third theater would have been built long ago. That neither of those things are true should be illuminating.
