Disney testing Virtual Queues at its Walt Disney World water parks

[raven]

Disney came up with fast Pass and fast pass plus.

And we see all the great things that's done for guests now, haven't we @marni1971 ?

It also isn't July 24. But neither of those is relevant. The notice said it was happening "until April 7". Perhaps a language barrier, but both Steve and I seem to believe that means "from now through April 7", not "beginning April 7".

Because of this:

Checked late in the afternoon. Still nothing. Ride was up and down all day from 11 am on, though, so they might have canceled the test due to technical difficulties. We rode 3 times from 10-10:30 with literally no wait. But after that, it was hit or miss due to intermittent downtime.

We are back to "Disney Time" here. Their record of deadlines and opening dates speak for itself.

And isn't this still the Spring Break period? "Literally no wait" for a new slide in a peak season kind of shows that maybe this system isn't needed.

 

[DisneyFan 2000]

So, anyone here remember when Disney used to act, and not just react to competition?

 

[matt9112]

HIGHLY doubt that will happen. Waterparks run on such low capacity to begin with. In order for this to work, it would have to cut a significant number from capacity. Works for a theme park, but not a waterpark.

Works for a theme park? Have you seen the line for pirates?

 

[Chape19714]

Works for a theme park? Have you seen the line for pirates?

Yes, quite familiar with it. But Pirates has a large extended queue that went largely unused for years. There was room to allow the line to grow. It may be longer than most of us would like, but on most days, the line can still be contained in it's designated space.

 

[wdisney9000]

"Innovation"

Water "Theme" Park

Your facts do not concern the marketing dept at Orlando's water parks, nor do they concern some of the posters around here.

Personally, I'd like to just have a few kiosks at the base of each Disney water park in strategic areas where I can tap my magic band to reserve a return time even if they do or/don't eliminate standby queues. Add the requisite terminals at the top of the mountains and you're good to go. No need to be paged when the slide is ready, just come back between 2:15 and 3:15 thanks. No need to go beyond that.

Universal can stay "ahead of the curve" on this one. I'll just take my return time thanks.

Would that not basically be the same as Legacy FP (sans paper ticket)?

 

[wdisney9000]

Whether its Disney or Universal offering random queue solutions, is it still not playing musical chairs? Moving guests bodies around the park is not exactly solving any problems. If a virtual queue removes the guests from the line, their physical body is still in the park, just somewhere else. I dont see how it lowers wait times or controls crowds. Building a new "play area" (like Dumbo did) just takes up space that could be used to build an actual attraction to add to the capacity of rides which is the only true way to disperse crowds and lower wait times. It all seems like a "rob Peter to pay Paul" scenario.

 

[wdwmagic]

Update on this. So far it has been running on one slide at Blizzard Beach. A simple paper ticket is being handed out with a return time.

 

[wdisney9000]

Update on this. So far it has been running on one slide at Blizzard Beach. A simple paper ticket is being handed out with a return time.

So they are back to Legacy FP, basically? Or am I missing something?

 

[wdwmagic]

So they are back to Legacy FP, basically? Or am I missing something?

At this point it is a one month test. FP+ came out of something similar, so don't take pieces of paper as being the final product.

 

[wdisney9000]

At this point it is a one month test. FP+ came out of something similar, so don't take pieces of paper as being the final product.

Thanks for the reply, Steve. What does this new style of "virtual queue" say about their faith in the FP+ system? I only mentioned Legacy as it seems the difference between "Virtual" and FP+ is simply that you can not reserve the FP ahead of time with the virtual system, which is in essence Legacy but just using a pager instead of paper. Why not simply add it to FP+ on MDE?

 

[cheezbat]

I Find this humorous.

Hey Disney...if you're that worried about Volcano Bay taking business and stealing your thunder, how about actually adding new rides to BOTH water parks every few years?

 

[wdwmagic]

Thanks for the reply, Steve. What does this new style of "virtual queue" say about their faith in the FP+ system? I only mentioned Legacy as it seems the difference between "Virtual" and FP+ is simply that you can not reserve the FP ahead of time with the virtual system, which is in essence Legacy but just using a pager instead of paper. Why not simply add it to FP+ on MDE?

It may well end up that way, although it seems that at the moment they think people will not want to 180 day reserve water park slides, and a return to something like the old system may work better.

 

[MrPromey]

Thanks for the reply, Steve. What does this new style of "virtual queue" say about their faith in the FP+ system? I only mentioned Legacy as it seems the difference between "Virtual" and FP+ is simply that you can not reserve the FP ahead of time with the virtual system, which is in essence Legacy but just using a pager instead of paper. Why not simply add it to FP+ on MDE?

Since this is just a test, I'd imagine that they're not yet ready to pay for the development, testing and app update to the entire public just to see if the concept will work in these two water parks.

A lot of people here have concerns about the parks being able to handle the extra guest loads on other areas. This may concern Disney too which may explain the primitive test method. We're so used to the idea of a "test" really just being a dry run of the final product but if they're still early in development, this test may tell them that it won't work and they may never implement it permanently or that they need to add capacity elsewhere before they can implement it and thus, delay it until something can be worked up.

Steve also mentioned the whole booking in advance issue and if that's the case, they need to think out how to differentiate this to not create guest confusion. We all keep an eye on this stuff but for "regular" guests, variations like this can create a lot of confusion so something like this needs to be thought out.

 

[rushtest4echo]

I Find this humorous.

Hey Disney...if you're that worried about Volcano Bay taking business and stealing your thunder, how about actually adding new rides to BOTH water parks every few years?

Adding a guest service feature to the parks doesn't really demonstrate that Disney is concerned about their thunder being stolen. If anything, their lack of investment into the parks probably demonstrates the opposite. Water slides (even for Disney) are relatively cheap and easy to install. They got Miss Adventure Falls done over one off season essentially. If they wanted to do more to react to Universal's water park, they would have. It's probably more likely that Disney's already figured out a long time ago that their water parks are essentially revenue neutral when it comes to food/drinks/merch compared with the cost of running the parks since admission is practically woven in to multi-day stays. The overhwelming majority of visitors to the parks don't spend whole days there, and they're visiting as a "perk" or "add on" with heavily discounted tickets.

The Disney water parks are there to make sure that stays are longer- they're not major revenue drivers. If they went on a building spree and really upped the offerings there, perhaps that might change. But for now, every theme park, every hotel, and even Disney Springs brings more revenue to the company than the water parks do. Heck, the Golf Courses probably have better margins and return on investment. Disney doesn't spend much on capital expenditures on the water parks, and in return they have a stable offering that's plenty popular (they are the top attended water parks). I don't see why they'd consider changing that unless Universal truly does cut into their attendance (which is highly unlikely). Universal's new offering will probably draw a bit more than their previous offering did. Margins, guest satisfaction and length of stay at the entire resort will likely be higher when compared with Wet n Wild, and that's really what Universal is gunning for. It's not to upstage Disney's offerings (well Universal lives to do that, so I'm sure it's a little bit of the motivation), but in the end VB is really about making Universal more appealing for lengthy visits.

Paper tickets at a water park where most people don't have pockets is ridicubad though. Please just attach it to magicbands when you're ready to roll this stuff out.

 

[mm121]

I wonder if part of the closing of Shark Reef was to build some high capacity water play area in that area (one of those big multi-level structures with the dumping buckets and the water spraying everywhere where there really isn't any sort of line). Something like that (on a large enough scale) could absorb a good number of guests who would have otherwise been standing in lines.

TL already has a kids play area, would make more sense to just redo that area

would be a total shame to replace unique shark reef with a bucket you see at any water park

 

[rushtest4echo]

Since this is just a test, I'd imagine that they're not yet ready to pay for the development, testing and app update to the entire public just to see if the concept will work in these two water parks.

A lot of people here have concerns about the parks being able to handle the extra guest loads on other areas. This may concern Disney too which may explain the primitive test method. We're so used to the idea of a "test" really just being a dry run of the final product but if they're still early in development, this test may tell them that it won't work and they may never implement it permanently or that they need to add capacity elsewhere before they can implement it and thus, delay it until something can be worked up.

Steve also mentioned the whole booking in advance issue and if that's the case, they need to think out how to differentiate this to not create guest confusion. We all keep an eye on this stuff but for "regular" guests, variations like this can create a lot of confusion so something like this needs to be thought out.

This

My guess is that this is just to see how crowd patterns are altered during a hot Spring Break week before the parks are slammed during the summer. I really hope that if this system is rolled out, it's done properly with magicbands. Nobody has their cell phone on their person at a water park, and nobody wants to carry around a pager or piece of paper. I'm pretty sure Disney comprehends that though.

 

[cr3346]

Update on this. So far it has been running on one slide at Blizzard Beach. A simple paper ticket is being handed out with a return time.

Paper fastpasses at a water park? What could go wrong with that?

 

[RSoxNo1]

Here's the thing, Disney is going to be accused of copying this from Universal, who in turn copied the Lapu from Disney's Magic Band. The big thing is, Universal probably spent less than 1% of what Disney spent on their system.

 

[Rteetz]

Here's the thing, Disney is going to be accused of copying this from Universal, who in turn copied the Lapu from Disney's Magic Band. The big thing is, Universal probably spent less than 1% of what Disney spent on their system.

One could then say Universal copied Disney with the "virtual queue" with Dumbo and the pager system there. Everyone has the same idea but is just executing them differently and I see no problem with that.

 

[raven]

Update on this. So far it has been running on one slide at Blizzard Beach. A simple paper ticket is being handed out with a return time.

Paper? In a water park?

Going swimmingly well so far.