EPCOT Cosmic Rewind testing new preshow procedures to help with guest flow

[JohnD]

I like this change. Even when I had LL or VQ I went to the far left anyway so I wasn't caught in the middle of the stampede. Standby shouldn't see this as a downgrade. Everyone is separated out by either standby or LL now with LL on the right. You'll just be in the back of the current group which suited me fine previously.

 

[Stupido]

Went through the queue twice today (ride evaced the first time), and this wasn't implemented either time we rode. It was still a stampede. Maybe they're just testing on the heightened crowds weekends?

 

[AVP407]

We did the standby. It said 90 minutes. It took us 138 minutes. Saw at the pre-show room how they admitted way over 70% of LL guest, versus regular. It is discussing! The pre-show should be at least 50/50 and the line wait times need to be corrected.

 

[dmc493]

Don’t disagree that it’s frustrating but there’s a lot of variable in play in these instances. Obviously one is that’s there’s inevitably preferential treatment involved since it’s a paid service. But the other reality is that the ride could’ve been down earlier and this is returning guests that are impacting length of the lightning lane and they need to purge it plus a couple other things.

Trust me I hate standing at the front of standby too and watching them pour in it can be rouuugh

 

[FerretAfros]

Or guests could just chill out and not rush, but obviously that won't happen

There are two major factors at play contributing to the problem, neither of which are the guests' fault.

First is the geometry of the space. Most other pre-shows empty out either into a wide corridor that's more or less aligned with the direction of travel so guests can easily move out of the space and into the next (HM, ROTR Rey room, ROTR transport into trooper bay), or one that has tight turns but the bottleneck (typically doors) is located before the turn, letting guests stay in the preshow room as they funnel down and re-form a queue (Dinosaur, M:S, TOT, RNRC, ROTR trooper bay into hallway). The Cosmic Rewind pre-show has a wide exit from the room (presumably to allow the long-cycle time preshow to begin its next group without having to wait for the prior group to rejoin a queue) that makes an immediate sharp turn into a much smaller corridor that continues to narrow the farther it goes. It's not a natural crowdflow movement, so parties routinely get separated while trying to navigate the chaos; the narrowing hallway only serves to extend the turmoil, since the obvious bottleneck isn't the actual one.

The second is the storyline and mood of the preshow itself. The preshow's story is literally "there's an emergency, we all must quickly evacuate," complete with flashing red lights and tense music. With Disney self-aggrandized emphasis on "immersive" storytelling throughout the parks, it's no wonder that guests buy into it, whether conciously or not. The mood mellows out by the time guests get to the loading station, but there's always a mild sense of panic leaving the preshow, exactly as Disney designed.

It also doesn't help that the pre-show uses it's two "wow moments" within seconds of its start, followed by long, overly-chatty, aggressively un-funny dialogue. There's nothing engaging after the room transformation and cosmic generator tricks, so guests naturally they start to work their way toward the exit. If the script were crafted in a way that held people's attention equally throughout (Dinosaur and M:S both manage this well, despite no flashy tricks), they wouldn't feel so compelled to find the exit before it ends.

None of this is the guests' fault. They're simply reacting in completely normal and predictable ways to what Disney created.

 

[Touchdown]

Dinosaur/Countdown to Extinction style...


This was bound to happen one day. They should put up a railing/themed low wall, that would work as well. Think ET Adventure's 3 small sections in the pre-show room, sort of.

And Rise, Websligners, ToT, the list goes on.

 

[Wall-e]

Any time we’ve rode Guardians the line after the pre show rooms is always backed up. Why not decrease the amount of guests you load into the pre shows to match the actual amount of guests being moved down that hallway? I’m not terribly claustrophobic but there’s been more then one time we’ve been in that hallway thru multiple preshows running behind us and the crowd surge was real.

There has to be a Goldilocks number of guests that you can move thru the pre shows to allow continuous movement down the hallway.

As much as we all wish people didn’t have a me first mentality it only takes a few people to have that attitude to cause a cascading effect of others doing the same.

 

[Disstevefan1]

Sadly we have not yet rode this we were there just before standby was added!

I am surprised WDW does not know how to do this right after all these years.

Loss of institutional knowledge maybe?

 

[gorillaball]

We did the standby. It said 90 minutes. It took us 138 minutes. Saw at the pre-show room how they admitted way over 70% of LL guest, versus regular. It is discussing! The pre-show should be at least 50/50 and the line wait times need to be corrected.

Perhaps they were catching up LL from prior downtime.

 

[SplashJacket]

Each preshow should have it's own s shaped corral everyone passes through, fifo, no chance to cut. It'll slow down guest movement but is so much better than a free-for-all.

This doesn’t work.

Starting from scratch:

1) Guardians preshow room is empty with switchbacks setup in the preshow
- For this to work, switchbacks need to be filled to have same density as current state Guardians preshow

2) Guests in queued line start walking into room group by group

3) Queued line fills after a couple minutes with low density

4) CMs have to instruct Guests to fill in all available space to increase density of the queue to hit the desired load

5) Guests at front have to move in, which takes time for Guests behind them to respond

6) Guest compacting reaches end of line in of couple minutes

7) CMs send final Guests into preshow

8) Preshow commences

9) Guests in queue start walking out

10) Final Guest leaves

11) Show reset with empty Guardians room

Without even considering the density, let’s just think about this for a second.

Focusing on point 2) assume when walking in a queue, 1 Guest enters per second. In a normal queue, that means a max of 3600 Guests can experience the attraction at the rate they walk through a queue.

Now, the preshow is about 2 minutes. Let’s assume it’s slightly faster to unload the preshow than load from a queue, so if it takes 1 minutes to unload and 3 minutes to load, you’re only loading for half the hour, so on average, one Guest every 2 seconds, soooooooo, that gives a max capacity of 1800 Guests per hour, which is less then the capacity of Guardians according to Google, meaning you’re starving the attraction of 200 Guests per hour.

This is being incredibly generous, it would really take longer than a minute to unload, so the starvation would be far worse than described here.

The difference with a normal queue is you don’t stop a normal queue for minutes at a time, whereas you do for a preshow, so you have to free for all pre-stage (and not have a queued set-up).

In the current set-up, there might be 20 Guests wide, so you might have 10 Guests entering per second, which is needed to account for the time the queue is stopped.

Yes, the pre-show’s final design is poorly designed, but no, there’s not a quick fix.

 

[Disstevefan1]

We did the standby. It said 90 minutes. It took us 138 minutes.

Unprecedented Demand! And Disney CANNOT correctly estimate wait times!!!

 

[Fido Chuckwagon]

Any chance to the preshow room is welcome.

I just had ankle surgery, and right before that, I was in WDW. Obviously, I was using an ECV as walking was out of the question. I'm really, really good at driving those things (as in I can maneuver one onto a bus without driver assistance).

I only hit people three times. First was my mother, who stepped in front of me, laughed, and was like, yeah, I know better. Other two times? Both in that stupid preshow room. And it was both because guests literally climbed over the unit to get ahead of me. Yup, climbed. First time girl got hit from the side, second time the woman who did it decided to walk diagonally in front of me. I'm like, you had to climb over me to get there...you clearly saw me. And the thing is that the unit I had was very good about stopping, but if I had it on the lowest speed, it might roll a bit more and nothing I can do about it.

No issues in any other preshow area besides that one. Beyond frustrating.

If you hit 3 people with your ECV that’s a you problem.

 

[Disstevefan1]

... I was using an ECV as walking was out of the question. I'm really, really good at driving those things (as in I can maneuver one onto a bus without driver assistance). I only hit people three times...

Nominee for the best post of 2025..

 

[StarWarsGirl]

Nominee for the best post of 2025..

Hey, you try driving one and come talk to me when you're done.

First time I drove one (I am injury prone *sigh*) at Hersheypark, I thought I was gonna take out every trash can. Now I'm recovering from surgery and using one around my apartment because it's easier than the stupid knee scooter.

But yeah, if other people step out in front of me and get hit, that's on them, not me. Three weeks I was there and those were the only incidents.

 

[Disstevefan1]

Hey, you try driving one and come talk to me when you're done.

First time I drove one (I am injury prone *sigh*) at Hersheypark, I thought I was gonna take out every trash can. Now I'm recovering from surgery and using one around my apartment because it's easier than the stupid knee scooter.

But yeah, if other people step out in front of me and get hit, that's on them, not me. Three weeks I was there and those were the only incidents.

This is all in fun and your post made me chuckle.

Maybe your post will win. Voting starts in November if I can figure out how to do this poll thing.

And YES navigating with scooters is MUCH harder than on foot! We take for granted how agile we are on foot and how we can change direction instantly on foot and how WE CANT on scooter. Folks who have not used a scooter do not understand.

 

[StarWarsGirl]

If you hit 3 people with your ECV that’s a you problem.

Unless you have driven an ECV as much as I have (two trips to WDW totaling about four weeks, two trips to Busch Gardens, and multiple times to Hersheypark, plus now around an apartment complex) you cannot make that call. There is a significant learning curve to driving them; I didn't even hand mine off to my parents except to briefly move it because they are so challenging to drive and it took me a while to learn.

They are NOT like driving a car. There aren't any brakes. You lift up and are dependent on the machine stopping. Depending on the ECV, the stop time will vary. The ones from Scooterbug and Buena Vista Rentals are very good about stopping. The ones you rent in the park? Solid 2-3 second delay. If you are going very slowly, even the good ones (which the one I had from Buena Vista was solid) will continue rolling an additional 3-4 inches, at least, after I lift up. I (or any other driver) cannot control that.

As a guest, I have NEVER been hit by an ECV. You have to make sure you give them enough space. Yes, there are a lot of rude drivers out there, and I suspect in Epcot there are a lot of drunk drivers (I don't drink and drive an ECV for this reason). But you cannot crowd the device. In other words, like in Guardians preshow as what happened both times, they had been TOUCHING THE ECV. You are too close in that instance, and yes, there is a high probability of you getting hit.

The third time was my mother. She went diagonally in front of me and admitted that was her fault. We laugh about it now.

I usually tried to enter and exit preshows last to ensure I had enough space to avoid this issue. The Guardians one though...it was frustrating every single time to go through that one. Especially if I was one of the first in and then had guests behind me shoving over me. I was by myself a good bit, but it got to the point with my family that they had to make a barrier around me and other guests.

 

[StarWarsGirl]

This is all in fun and your post made me chuckle.

Maybe your post will win. Voting starts in November if I can figure out how to do this poll thing.

And YES navigating with scooters is MUCH harder than on foot! We take for granted how agile we are on foot and how we can change direction instantly on foot and how WE CANT on scooter. Folks who have not used a scooter do not understand.

I figured as much, lol. I have always watched out for them because when I was a kid, we went with another family who brought their elderly parent. She was afraid of hitting someone the entire trip. It made me super aware of them, and because of that, I've never been hit by one. But yes, you don't realize until you've been on one or until you've been with someone that you are so much more agile. And also that your point of view is different on foot verses driving a scooter, just in how you're seeing things. Like, you may see things I don't and vice versa.

But that Guardians preshow was a headache every single time. I was always afraid I was going to hit someone because they were pushing past. But then I got annoyed enough where I was like "if you push past me, what happens is on you."

The fact that this was the only location I ever had issues says something. Fantasmic? No issues; I just waited for the crowd to thin a bit before leaving. HEA? No issues, same deal. MMRR? I learned that unless I was first in, I should hang out by the back wall and be last out and it was a non-issue. Rise? Usually I would be last on the Transport, park parallel along the doors, and then I would be first off (people were more polite about that). Guardians? An exercise in frustration. Every. Single. Time.

 

[TrainsOfDisney]

I’ve only ridden guardians twice so wasn’t sure if what I had seen was “normal” but I guess it is.

It does seem like an easier solution is to just admit less people at a time into the pre-show.