Star Wars Land announced for Disney's Hollywood Studios

[marni1971]

Not exactly a new idea to open this way... Universal did the same thing with the Harry Potter rides. Both were built with Express queue's (and single rider) but Express wasn't used for years.... (in the case of Forbidden Journey).

Mermaid also opened with just standby. Worked a treat.

 

[yensidtlaw1969]

Reservations in CA are a simple function of many hundreds of thousands of APs Disneyland has within driving distance of the park. You simply cannot have even a hundred thousand of them showing up on the same day trying to get into SWGE - there's no infrastructure to support it. WDW doesn't have that problem.

Totally true, I just didn't want to make the claim that when DL's MF comes online it will be a pure, unadulterated return to Standby when that doesn't quite show the whole picture.

 

[The Empress Lilly]

Or these modern design princesses could be told to give preference to guest experience over their wish to fill their portfolio with flash, by telling them to once again build E-tickets with 2700+ capacity.

EPCOT's E's swallowed Pandora's, Dwarf's and Toy Story's crowds for breakfast.

 

[sedati]

Or these modern design princesses could be told to give preference to guest experience over their wish to fill their portfolio with flash, by telling them to once again build E-tickets with 2700+ capacity.

EPCOT's E's swallowed Pandora's, Dwarf's and Toy Story's crowds for breakfast.

Yes they had capacity, and yes they had lengthy ride-times, but I think there is a justifiable expectation that something built today that is deserving of "E Ticket" status needs to be more than a sit-down walk-through. I believe the need for physical sensation in rides has gone up while the need for length has gone down.
Let's say Horizons, UOE, WOM, LWTL, TLS, ERDT, for whatever reason had terrible capacity resulting in regular waits in excess of two hours. Would they have sustained the demand beyond their newness in the way Pandora, Dwarf, and Toy Story had? Would the average guest have found them as re-rideable despite those longs waits?

 

[yensidtlaw1969]

Yes they had capacity, and yes they had lengthy ride-times, but I think there is a justifiable expectation that something built today that is deserving of "E Ticket" status needs to be more than a sit-down walk-through. I believe the need for physical sensation in rides has gone up while the need for length has gone down.
Let's say Horizons, UOE, WOM, LWTL, TLS, ERDT, for whatever reason had terrible capacity resulting in regular waits in excess of two hours. Would they have sustained the demand beyond their newness in the way Pandora, Dwarf, and Toy Story had? Would the average guest have found them as re-rideable despite those longs waits?

There is of course room for E-Tickets that take the physical sensations beyond "sit-down walk-through", but there's room for those kinds of rides in the parks too. It's not like the unfathomable, unwavering 50 year popularity of Pirates, Mansion, and Small World comes from their ride systems - it's because the attractions are just darn good, and blessedly feature ride systems that can handle that popularity while also serving the attraction.

The key is balance - those three rides exist in a park with Splash Mountain, Big Thunder, and Space Mountain which much less fit the description of "sit-down walk-throughs". They offer great physical experiences, and more, but none of them have the hourly capacity of Pirates, Mansion, and Small World.

Pandora made a nod toward this balance by building Na'vi River Journey alongside Flight of Passage, though many feel the ride doesn't hold up its end of the deal. The big, long waits don't seem to help its image - you expect more after waiting an hour+. Would the ride be better improved by physical sensations or by greater length? Hard to say, but if you're trying to strike balance in the park then my vote goes towards greater length. Guests can get their thrills next door, but both rides last a similar amount of time. If Na'vi River Journey was closer to Small World or Pirates in length (and perhaps in scope - a few cool-looking animatronics scattered through that lush environment wouldn't hurt anybody) I bet guest satisfaction would easily be higher. And for a park that doesn't want for thrills, a few more "sit-down walk-throughs" would help eat some serious people. Na'vi River Journey is the sole attraction of that kind in the park, and it can't do all the heavy lifting by itself.

DHS is in a similar state - Tower, RnRC, and Slinky are surely popular, but outside of them where's the slow-moving people-eater to help balance out the park? The big one closed in 2017 because Disney felt they could build a more financially appealing replacement, and Toy Story Midway Mania is left as the highest capacity ride in the park. Toss in 2 or 3 more good rides of that style and DHS' forthcoming capacity issues would be greatly relieved.

 

[HauntedMansionFLA]

Can anyone make sense of why this is happening?:

View attachment 355804

The Star Wars Land-facing side of the Muppet Vision building has been half-painted gray for months, but now they seem to have turned their attention to the Muppet Courtyard Grand Avenue-facing side and are painting over the Muppet Vision "Gone With The Wind" Mural.

I can understand getting rid of the old Muppet Vision Hot Air Balloon if it was going to cause a visual intrustion from Star Wars Land, but what on earth is the point of painting over something park-side like this? As I recall, they haven't even yet finished painting the side that actually faces Star Wars Land.

With talk being that Muppet Vision is safe and isn't going anywhere despite all the rejiggering going on at the studios, why do they keep making moves like this and the redress of the Theatre's exterior and signage that don't impact Star Wars Land but continue to shrink the Muppet's presence in their own area?

Retheme to another IP?

 

[Lensman]

So here's a question - what would happen if this works, and Millennium Falcon ends up with relatively reasonable Standby Lines that inflate massively when FastPass comes online?

If a 2-3 hour Standby line turns into a 5-6 hour Standby against FastPass, any chance that guests could revolt and get the FastPass taken offline?

A dream, I'm sure, not to mention the "appeal" to many guests and the company of long lines -- how many times have you heard people cite the length of a ride's lines as a measurement of its popularity, when it usually has more to do with loading speed and capacity?

I seem to recall someone here saying that 80% of ride capacity is allocated to FastPass+. So if the throughput of SR is 1800 guests per hour (as quoted from Bob Chapek in this post), that would be 1440 allocated to FastPass+ and 360 allocated to "Standby-". If the standby wait time does inflate from 3 hours to 6 hours, what is the FastPass+ "effective wait time" that will give the same average wait time per guest? 1440x + (360)(6) = (1800)(3); solve for x; x = 2.25 hours.

So if 80% of capacity is dedicated to FastPass+ after SR converts to FastPass+ after a few months, and Standby times before FastPass+ were 3 hours and Standby times after FastPass+ are 6 hours, then wait parity is achieved if FastPass+ wait times are 2.25 hours. But FastPass+ wait times will likely not be 2.25 hours and will more likely be 0.25 hours. So average wait times will go way down but people here will still complain that things are worse because they don't like having to play the 60+ day lottery at 6 am.

I suspect that making SR standby-only is more of a specific customer-satisfaction decision based on the fact that there will be 2 kinds of guests going to DHS in the opening months of SW:GE - the ones coming specifically to ride SR no matter how long the wait times are and the ones who are not. And Disney's decision is to optimize for the former and not the latter by dissuading as many casual/non-hardcore visitors as possible from riding SR during the opening weeks and months.

But I don't think Disney's decision on SR marks a concession that FastPass+ is a complete failure.

OTOH, I do think that it does illustrate one category of super-attractions that are not served well by FastPass+, just like FoP probably wasn't well served by it for it's opening months and maybe even years. And it does point to the possibility that there might be another solution for this category of attraction. And unfortunately this solution may involve upcharges. I hope not but this is what I'd be worried about. Note: This is purely my own speculation and isn't based on any inside information, just based on what I've absorbed from you learned people!

Edit: Now that I've read the MaxPass thread, I guess we can draw our own conclusions based on what we want our own narrative to be.

 

[yensidtlaw1969]

From what I can gather, it’s an attempt to make the area more Grand Avenue style.

Note to Disney: When given the option to make something either more like Grand Avenue or make it more Muppety . . .

It still baffles me that they turned the area to "Muppet Courtyard" for three whole seconds and then decided it was all just Grand Avenue, whatever that is. Build the Tap House if you want, by why on earth does the nothingness of that "land" need to take over the fun, richer area that is Muppet Vision?

I can't think of any way the park is better for replacing Muppet theming with white-bread, store-brand Grand Avenue decor. They totally feed the park's identity crisis with stuff like this. The easy, better answer for improving this part of the park would have been to lean into the Muppet theming just a little harder and make the area pop a bit more. At least then it wouldn't feel like they were stuck in a limbo of indecision about what to do with the area.

I'd love for them to go to town and really give the Muppets their due, but I feel like the least they could do is not try to pretend that a gray wall is somehow better than a well painted Muppet mural on the Muppet attraction. Totally boggling that someone thought this was worth spending any money on.

 

[tirian]

Of course the Standby line inflates when you add FP. You add in all those people who get to ride the ride with little wait (the thousands of people with FP), which means Standby moves slower. But when you only look at the Standby line and ignore the thousand of people who didn't wait long, you're going to have a skewed idea of the effects of FP. With FP, thousands of people scheduled a time slot and had relatively little wait.

Ideally, a popular ride should be FP only, thus, no one waits in a 5 hour line. But then you have the problem of equitably distributing those FP.

Then comes a question: Do you want to miss out on a ride because you couldn't get a FP, or do you want to miss out on a ride because you refuse to get on a five hour line?

Plus, as Martin and I have pointed out many times, Disney utilizes FP+ to control crowds by understaffing and artificially creating long waits on otherwise slow days. That’s the real problem.

For example, when the MK has only 35k guests, IASW and HM shouldn’t be posting 30–45-minute waits. In the paper FP days, they didn’t have FP* and therefore didn’t have crazy wait times. But now they do. BTMRR shouldn’t have an hour-long wait, but because only one load station is operating, the standby inflates. Since almost everyone has three pre-booked FPs and can’t get more until those first three are gone, all guests get stuck in long lines at some point in the day. Execs in Florida don’t seem to care. Execs at the other resorts refuse to accept the NextGen system.

So now with SWGE, the company is operating the attractions without the FP+ system to keep hourly capacity high and allow guests to experience the attractions as quickly as possible.

* At one point, Disney did experiment with paper FP at HM, and they removed it because it lowered hourly capacity.

But back on topic, the land looks great.

 

[peter11435]

Furthermore, as Martin and I have pointed out many times, Disney utilizes FP+ to control crowds by understaffing and artificially creating long waits on otherwise slow days. That’s the real problem.

For example, when the MK has only 35k guests, IASW and HM shouldn’t be posting 30–45-minute waits. In the paper FP days, they didn’t have FP* and therefore didn’t have crazy wait times. But now they do. BTMRR shouldn’t have an hour-long wait, but because only one load station is operating, the standby inflates. Since almost everyone has three pre-booked FPs and can’t get more until those first three are gone, all guests get stuck in long lines at some point in the day. Execs in Florida don’t seem to care. Execs at the other resorts refuse to accept the NextGen system.

So now with SWGE, the company is operating the attractions without the FP+ system to keep hourly capacity high and allow guests to experience the attractions as quickly as possible.

* At one point, Disney did experiment with paper FP at HM, and they removed it because it lowered hourly capacity.

Pause.

Fastpass and Fastpass+ do not lower hourly ride capacity. They don’t. The capacity of the attractions is the same with or without it. Fastpass causes many operational challenges which is why it will not be implemented at open for Star Wars, and it is why it was originally removed from the haunted mansion. It does not lower the capacity of the attractions.

No attraction has capacity that is designated as only FP.

The issue you are referring to regarding attraction capacity being reduced on slower days is not a fastpass problem. It’s a problem with the culture of leadership at WDW. It existed before paper fastpass, it existed with fastpass plus and it will exist forever and until there is a cultural shift with how the parks are operated. Fastpass makes it worse and more noticeable since there is a defined group that must be provided access to the attraction, but fastpass itself is not the cause of the problem.

 

[HauntedMansionFLA]

Furthermore, as Martin and I have pointed out many times, Disney utilizes FP+ to control crowds by understaffing and artificially creating long waits on otherwise slow days. That’s the real problem.

For example, when the MK has only 35k guests, IASW and HM shouldn’t be posting 30–45-minute waits. In the paper FP days, they didn’t have FP* and therefore didn’t have crazy wait times. But now they do. BTMRR shouldn’t have an hour-long wait, but because only one load station is operating, the standby inflates. Since almost everyone has three pre-booked FPs and can’t get more until those first three are gone, all guests get stuck in long lines at some point in the day. Execs in Florida don’t seem to care. Execs at the other resorts refuse to accept the NextGen system.

So now with SWGE, the company is operating the attractions without the FP+ system to keep hourly capacity high and allow guests to experience the attractions as quickly as possible.

* At one point, Disney did experiment with paper FP at HM, and they removed it because it lowered hourly capacity.

Will they ever admit defeat and eventually get rid of it for the attractions only?

 

[The Mom]

Just a reminder - this thread is about the opening of a new land in two Disney parks - not a movie discussion. Regardless of the fact that the land is based upon movies. Please keep movie discussions in the appropriate forums so those who are only interested in updates on Star Wars Land do not have to wade through dozens of posts discussing pros and cons of different movies. Thank you.

 

[ToTBellHop]

Pause.

Fastpass and Fastpass+ do not lower hourly ride capacity. They don’t. The capacity of the attractions is the same with or without it. Fastpass causes many operational challenges which is why it will not be implemented at open for Star Wars, and it is why it was originally removed from the haunted mansion. It does not lower the capacity of the attractions.

No attraction has capacity that is designated as only FP.

The issue you are referring to regarding attraction capacity being reduced on slower days is not a fastpass problem. It’s a problem with the culture of leadership at WDW. It existed before paper fastpass, it existed with fastpass plus and it will exist forever and until there is a cultural shift with how the parks are operated. Fastpass makes it worse and more noticeable since there is a defined group that must be provided access to the attraction, but fastpass itself is not the cause of the problem.

Not entirely true at HM in particular. The use of the graveyard queue in particular has led to points, even on busy days, where the foyer is not fully loaded because guests are holding up the line trying to push books into a wall. They adjusted preshow timing to try and compensate for this at the expense of show, but there are still points (on busy days, even) where not enough guests are present at load and Doom Buggies leave empty. This lowers capacity.

Of course the bigger issue is the parks are more crowded most times of year and just about everyone has three FPs to SOMETHING. It was not the case with paper FP that the AVERAGE guest successfully got three FPs. Us pros may have gotten 7 in a day. Others only managed 1 or 2. By leveling the playing field, they have in fact increased FP usage. This increases lines, especially to non-headliners (eg Figment, which guests might skip but if they have a FP, they’ll ride).

 

[peter11435]

Not entirely true at HM in particular. The use of the graveyard queue in particular has led to points, even on busy days, where the foyer is not fully loaded because guests are holding up the line trying to push books into a wall. They adjusted preshow timing to try and compensate for this at the expense of show, but there are still points (on busy days, even) where not enough guests are present at load and Doom Buggies leave empty. This lowers capacity.

Of course the bigger issue is the parks are more crowded most times of year and just about everyone has three FPs to SOMETHING. It was not the case with paper FP that the AVERAGE guest successfully got three FPs. Us pros may have gotten 7 in a day. Others only managed 1 or 2. By leveling the playing field, they have in fact increased FP usage. This increases lines, especially to non-headliners (eg Figment, which guests might skip but if they have a FP, they’ll ride).

There were many growing pains at HM when fastpass+ was first implemented at the mansion. But there are strategies and adjustments that have made it easily possible to get enough guests into the foyer. The foyer and stretch rooms do not need to be full as their capacity far exceeds the capacity of the attraction itself. No changes were made to the timing of the foyer or stretch rooms to accommodate fastpass.

 

[The Empress Lilly]

The entry to the Mansion is a mess.

The interactive queue is stressful because either the guest has no time to play with anything, or he does take his time and then the line gets restless (Overtake or not? The rest of the line is out of sight, a CM tells people to move on, the FP line might take your place).
Guests are packed too tightly in front of the door. (Please fill in all available space...)
Show is sacrificed for ops in the foyer and elevator.
Too many savvy guests stand right in front of exit doors, refusing to move to the death center of the room
Guests stampede in trampling mode in and out of the elevator. (Partly owing to this being a reaction strategy to overcrowding. A relaxed or gentlemanly pace will see you at the end of the line - which matters less if there are short lines and would then be the default).
The boarding area is uncomfortably crowded.

It is a stressful, not a spooky environment.

 

[Mike S]

Just a reminder - this thread is about the opening of a new land in two Disney parks - not a movie discussion. Regardless of the fact that the land is based upon movies. Please keep movie discussions in the appropriate forums so those who are only interested in updates on Star Wars Land do not have to wade through dozens of posts discussing pros and cons of different movies. Thank you.

Did you move the posts or delete them?

 

[Movielover]

Did you move the posts or delete them?

We can recreate them if you want, let me just get into my Angry Fanboy attire...

 

[ToTBellHop]

There were many growing pains at HM when fastpass+ was first implemented at the mansion. But there are strategies and adjustments that have made it easily possible to get enough guests into the foyer. The foyer and stretch rooms do not need to be full as their capacity far exceeds the capacity of the attraction itself. No changes were made to the timing of the foyer or stretch rooms to accommodate fastpass.

They have sped up the audio timing to get guests into the load area faster because they aren’t getting into the stretching gallery fast enough. And still, I routinely see buggies leaving empty. There is a general lack of “hustle” in modern guests.

 

[NormC]

Capacity remained the same, an empty doom buggy still has the same capacity it is just not being utilized.

 

[MisterPenguin]

They have sped up the audio timing to get guests into the load area faster because they aren’t getting into the stretching gallery fast enough. And still, I routinely see buggies leaving empty. There is a general lack of “hustle” in modern guests.

And all it takes is one slow-down for the buggy room to become jammed pack with guests with the CM screaming for us to fill in non-existent spaces because, for some reason, they can't hold guests back from the stretching room for just one cycle.