A Spirited Perfect Ten

flynnibus

Premium Member
Free dine, or dining plans in general?

More of the same... free dining is going to lure more people into locations by driving them to ensure to have all their credits used. DP itself is more of the same just without the accelerant on top. My point is again that wait times and crowds are not direct mappings to actual attendance. When you increase or decrease capacity, or funnel people to common places, all these things impact crowding and waits.

The need to keep numbers trending up instead of demonstrating healthy sustainability is going to be the death of the place.
 

PhotoDave219

Well-Known Member
I would disagree... people aren't going to be in the same number of table service w/o dining plans.

You gotta stop drawing a one to one between wait time tracking and 'crowds'. Wait time can be inflated or reduced with the same crowds in the parks. They are related, not equals.

That came from one of my bothan spies, not crowd levels....
 

truecoat

Well-Known Member
When I see a film, I'm only thinking about THAT film. I don't want to ponder the next 11, which is why I didn't need the SECOND added scene in the credits (yeah, the one way at the end!)

Odd that you stayed til the end if you don't like those extra scenes. Is it because you wanted to see who sang "Love Theme from Ant-man"?
 

flynnibus

Premium Member
Disagree. Flat attendance and higher prices is much "better for business" than constantly growing volume.

I'll say again.. the need for growth vs demonstrating healthy sustainability.

The difference between steady healthy return... vs 'always promising more'. If I'm in a business that returns 60% gross margins and 30+% profit... can we not find a happy medium that says 30% return is fantastic and let's stay there. And forget about 'how do we get 30% of a bigger number...'.

If you aren't growing.. you're dying.. should not be a universal rule.. yet we seem to believe that of every public company now.
 

SYRIK2000

Well-Known Member
More of the same... free dining is going to lure more people into locations by driving them to ensure to have all their credits used. DP itself is more of the same just without the accelerant on top. My point is again that wait times and crowds are not direct mappings to actual attendance. When you increase or decrease capacity, or funnel people to common places, all these things impact crowding and waits.

The need to keep numbers trending up instead of demonstrating healthy sustainability is going to be the death of the place.
I think the dining plans are what locks people on property. They don't won't to waste the credits. Since rack rate is really over-priced, saving with free dining is an illusion. Plus you still have to cover another meal.
 

CaptainAmerica

Premium Member
If you aren't growing.. you're dying.. should not be a universal rule.. yet we seem to believe that of every public company now.
Except when the market is growing, you need to grow with (or ahead of) it. Management works for the shareholders and the shareholders demand maximum returns, not "good enough" returns.

I think the dining plans are what locks people on property. They don't won't to waste the credits.
The dining plan helps, but DME is a much stronger protector of the bubble.

Since rack rate is really over-priced, saving with free dining is an illusion.
Depends on your party. Two adults and two teenagers staying in a value or moderate would likely do much better with free dining than with a room-only offer. Conversely, a single guest in a deluxe room would be just the opposite. Everyone else is somewhere in between.

Plus you still have to cover another meal.
What?
 

SYRIK2000

Well-Known Member
Except when the market is growing, you need to grow with (or ahead of) it. Management works for the shareholders and the shareholders demand maximum returns, not "good enough" returns.


The dining plan helps, but DME is a much stronger protector of the bubble.


Depends on your party. Two adults and two teenagers staying in a value or moderate would likely do much better with free dining than with a room-only offer. Conversely, a single guest in a deluxe room would be just the opposite. Everyone else is somewhere in between.


What?

The dining plan they give you covers two meals per day. Unless you skip a meal you have to cover third. I use the DME and still go off property. It's the dining plan that limits us. Allows us to do some signature stuff. But I bet most would not want to cover more meals.
 

CaptainAmerica

Premium Member
The dining plan they give you covers two meals per day. Unless you skip a meal you have to cover third. I use the DME and still go off property. It's the dining plan that limits us. Allows us to do some signature stuff. But I bet most would not want to cover more meals.
The dining plan allows you to do signature stuff? You know you'd pay way less if you just went to the signature restaurants and paid with actual United States currency, right? You need to order about $37 worth of menu-price food per table service credit to get your money's worth on the dining plan. It would be extremely difficult to get to double that ($74) with your entree and desert at any signature on property.

ETA: And I don't think many people plan a traditional breakfast-lunch-dinner when they're in the parks all day.
 

SYRIK2000

Well-Known Member
The dining plan allows you to do signature stuff? You know you'd pay way less if you just went to the signature restaurants and paid with actual United States currency, right? You need to order about $37 worth of menu-price food per table service credit to get your money's worth on the dining plan. It would be extremely difficult to get to double that ($74) with your entree and desert at any signature on property.

ETA: And I don't think many people plan a traditional breakfast-lunch-dinner when they're in the parks all day.

Oh I know I lose money on the signature restaurants but it uses up credits so I don't lose them from going off property and will generally do Hoop Dee Doo or one of the other dinner shows, so those are actually saving money.
 

doctornick

Well-Known Member
The dining plan helps, but DME is a much stronger protector of the bubble.

I think the "there's much better value for food/hotels off property" crowd doesn't realize is how much people just don't want to have to drive on vacation. For a lot of folks, the "convenience" of not having to rent a car and figure out how to drive to where you are going is a big part of their "relaxing" vacation. DME really was a massive addition because it made it that guests didn't have to worry about transportation at all once they get to the airport in their hometown.
 

JediMasterMatt

Well-Known Member
I've witnessed a LOT of wait inflation the past 2-3 years. ToT is a classic example where I've seen it listed at 30 minutes when no one is in the park and it winds up essentially being a walk-on. ... That's why wait times should only be one factor in determining how crowded a park really is. You just can't trust them much of the time.

You know, I'm suspecting more and more that "crowd steering/shaping" is multi-layered at WDW now with FP+ impacting what they are trying to shape in the Stand-by lines. The display signage updates at the rides is controlled by the swipe cards on the lanyards that they periodically provide to guests, so the updated information is not some "mistake" made by a Cast Member punching in the wrong numbers.

What I suspect is that the formula's for estimated wait times the display signage taps into also connects with Skynet, er... I mean MM+ so it can factor in the anticipated number of returning FP+ reservations in the next update time period for the display boards. If there are a high percentage of valid returning FP+ reservations outstanding, it likely factors in to the estimated impact to Standy-by. So, the seemingly ever increasing delta between actual wait times to anticipated wait times simply could be the continued problems is trying to control the masses with FP+. Since theoretically, all of the valid FP+ people could show up at the same time the Stand-by line would see a significant bump in wait if this happened. This perhaps is the buffer mechanism at play to factor in the anticipated return rate vs. the worst case scenario.

An additional possibility that I also think is at play, as it's always been a part of the high demand low capacity attractions expected Stand-by time reporting is the artificial inflation of the expected time in an effort to make someone not wait and go elsewhere. With FP+ now on most everything at the resort, the consequences of doing this now simply floods the streets more than ever.

I noticed on my June trip what appeared to be a "steering" initiative at the FP+ kiosk. This one seemed to discourage repeat visits to an attraction. We had already used our 3 pre-planned FP+ return times. At about 3:00 in the afternoon, I went to make a reservation for Splash Mountain (one of our earlier FP+ times was for Splash) and while waiting, I watched two groups in front of me make their reservations. One group at 2 people and one group had 3. Both sets of people had Splash pop up available for them with return times around 6:30. When I used our Band, Splash was missing from the list. I backed out of the transaction and tried again. It still wasn't an available selection. I called a CM over and told her and she said that it must be because of my group's size (there were just two of us) and that there weren't any times available. I mentioned the two previous groups had Splash as an option with return times at 6:30 (the park closed at 1:00 AM that night), so I doubted it being out of return times was the issue. She then swiped her RFID card, then my band and then Splash appeared with the expected 6:30ish return time. Very suspicious to say the least.

Bottom line result from all of this... don't trust signage boards 100%. You can't even always trust your eyes in observing how full a queue is as all it takes is a ride vehicle out of service to throw off that estimation.
 

Travel Junkie

Well-Known Member
Agreed. It always is overshadowed by JTTCOE or Pooh's Hunny Hunt whenever anyone talks about Tokyo. Another that is up there for being under-appreciated is 20k Leagues.

Did you ever have a chance to ride the original Sindbad?



Sorry @WDWFigment - I'm with the Spirit on this one. Time for StormRider to take a hike.


20K was the ride surprised me the most at TDR. I had heard a couple people rave about Sinbad so I was sort of expecting something good (though it even exceeded my expectations), but I hardly ever hear anything about 20K.

I’m glad I got to experience Storm Rider for an only in Japan kind of experience, but it’s time has come. I wish Nemo wasn’t the replacement.
 

ford91exploder

Resident Curmudgeon
The average American vacation is decreasing in length, not increasing. Unless and until that changes (don't see that happening anytime soon), a 5th gate would cannibalize the other 4 gates to too great of an extent. Because of that, you do not add another gate, you add capacity to the ones you already have. That's the cheaper solution to dealing with crowds.

What is this 'Vacation' you speak of - Usually I can grab a long weekend before I go back to fight the corporate wars and family stays without me. The US is the ONLY first world nation without mandated vacation and let's face it if you USE your vacation you are not seen as a 'team player' at most companies in Corporate America.

Yet Germany outperforms the US on most economic measures and has functioning heavy industry and their workers get 4 WEEKS of vacation in addition to being better paid than their US counterparts, Yet to hear the titans of industry a couple of sick days for employees will cause immediate bankruptcy for their enterprises.

For crying out loud CHINA has two weeks mandatory vacation!
 

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