2015 Crowd Level Analysis: Final, Wrapup Edition

[Kevin_W]

Basically, its just done by manipulating the flik cards and holding one longer than they should before giving it to the guests. Its a psychological thing, if the posted wait time is 35 and you only wait 15, you feel great. If its posted as 15 and you wait 35? You're unhappy.

I've always wondered about this - why aren't they using the Magicbands for wait times instead of the cards? They can easily track when a person enters and exits a line.

 

[Kevin_W]

Any psychological benefit to skipping a line with FastPass is also greatly limited when you discover that the "FastPass" line is somehow still brutally long lol

True, there are many rides where the wait time has been 10-15 minutes for us even with a FP.

 

[tirian]

Don't forget the only attraction that actually closed at DHS was Backlot tour. American Idol got replaced with Frozen show and Animation with Star Wars but the general attraction count only went down by one.
The main issue for repeat guests is that things didn't change and the shows at the park are old and stale.

The Frozen Summer campaign helped a bit.

 

[Jon81uk]

I've always wondered about this - why aren't they using the Magicbands for wait times instead of the cards? They can easily track when a person enters and exits a line.

Because only resort guests get magicbands. Off-site guests have to pay for them or just use the RFID ticket card. Asking a guest to remove their to card from a pocket, scan it and then remember to scan it at the other end wouldn't work.
I guess you could ask all magicband wearing guests in standby to touch at the beginning and end of the standby wait but that would slow the queue down with so many people touching in.
The current system works as it prompts a card to be given out every 15? minutes and the bright red cards can be spotted easily by the cast at the station end. Simple is usually better.

 

[Simon ODonnell]

thx PhotoDave219 very interesting.

 

[PhotoDave219]

Ok thanks - I think I got it!

To me, the important metrics would be number of rides averaged per guest as well as total time spent in queues per guest. Standby line times go up with FastPass, clearly - the real question is, what is the effect on those other two metrics?

It would seem Disney is betting on an increase in number of rides and a decrease in total time spent in queues - I would wager that FastPass just shuffles everything around without fundamentally affecting either of those metrics. Granted, there may be a psychological benefit to skipping 3 lines per day even if it means waiting another half hour for every other ride, but I'm not sure about that. Any psychological benefit to skipping a line with FastPass is also greatly limited when you discover that the "FastPass" line is somehow still brutally long lol

Or are there variables I'm not thinking about here?

The only metric we have easily available is wait times they 3rd parties.

I'd love for them to release actual attendance figures.

 

[ford91exploder]

Anyone who doubts FP+ has wreaked havoc on standby wait times needs to look no further than Haunted Mansion. No matter when I go to MK now, that ride almost always has a 30 minute or more wait. In the not so distant past, it would hardly surpass 10-15 minutes during the 'slow times'.

HM was designed as a people eater attraction with low wait times FP has decreased the capacity of the ride because of the merge time

 

[Kevin_W]

Because only resort guests get magicbands. Off-site guests have to pay for them or just use the RFID ticket card. Asking a guest to remove their to card from a pocket, scan it and then remember to scan it at the other end wouldn't work.
I guess you could ask all magicband wearing guests in standby to touch at the beginning and end of the standby wait but that would slow the queue down with so many people touching in.
The current system works as it prompts a card to be given out every 15? minutes and the bright red cards can be spotted easily by the cast at the station end. Simple is usually better.

I wasn't envisioning them using touchstyles, but the longer range scanners like they use for the ride photos/MemoryMaker. The system just picks a guest and essentially follows them through the queue, it wouldn't haveoot be every guest so non-MB wearers wouldn't affect it. But perhaps the long-range technology is to vague on position to find the beginning and end of lines.

Regardless, my DD loves it when we get handed a card.

 

[RSoxNo1]

HM was designed as a people eater attraction with low wait times FP has decreased the capacity of the ride because of the merge time

"The Merge Time"? The capacity of The Haunted Mansion should remain unchanged. The same amount of people should be going into the stretch rooms pre and post Fastpass+. Historically this would be a bottleneck prior to Fastpass+ so I'm inclined to think that not much has changed.

 

[PhotoDave219]

Believe what you want, you'd be wrong, but before FP+ I never remember HM having a constant wait for 30 minutes or more.

The wait time has increased, yes. But the OHRC hasnt changed one bit; youre still getting 2000+ guests (or whatever the right number is and I'm too tired/lazy to look it up) thru an hour. There are just more people in line....

 

[Jon81uk]

Believe what you want, you'd be wrong, but before FP+ I never remember HM having a constant wait for 30 minutes or more.

As before FP+ 2000 people per hour were going in from the standby line. Now maybe 1000 go from the FP line and 1000 from the standby meaning that the standby queue is twice what it used to be.

 

[danheaton]

As before FP+ 2000 people per hour were going in from the standby line. Now maybe 1000 go from the FP line and 1000 from the standby meaning that the standby queue is twice what it used to be.

Good point. You're also assuming that it's evenly split. There's a possibility it's more like 1300 for FP and 700 for Standby. That would really mess with the wait times. We're seeing the same thing at Pirates.

 

[Jon81uk]

Good point. You're also assuming that it's evenly split. There's a possibility it's more like 1300 for FP and 700 for Standby. That would really mess with the wait times. We're seeing the same thing at Pirates.

Yes it wouldn't be evenly split and the ratio can be even worse than that. Just made my example simple

 

[PhilharMagician]

Eh, I didn't need charts to tell me that FP, FP+ and MMB's were going to screw with the wait times and push them UP not down.. then again I don't work in the marble lined halls and I don't put profits before guest service.

So in spite of FP+, and getting rid of GAC's (which some folks were absolutely convinced was going to make a major difference in attraction wait times), wait times are up and not down.

Thankfully, WDW hasn't done away with free ketchup packets, so folks can at least drown out that taste of crow.

While sitting at home watching the WDW app wait times I did see much more even wait times across the rides than in years past. Rides like HM which eats up guests had longer waits with rides like Space reaching the 200 number less. Waits for Soarin' and TSMM during the holidays over the past few years has been 240 minutes or more during the entire week and this year that did not happen. While I am not a fan of FP+, it looks like it spread guests around all of the ride queues better than FP did.

This year it sounded like some of the worst wait times were guests just trying to park @ MK or DHS. Can't even imagine what it was like trying to get out of there at night.

 

[GrammieBee]

Thanks. Most interesting analysis proving what we have noticed first hand---the number of people in the parks during the supposidly slow Fall and late Spring seasons is definitely increasing. Particularly since the free dining packages came along.
We now are forced to schedule our park visits around fast pass times unless we want long waits for the newer and more popular attractions. We very seldom had to use fast passes before this past late Oct. early Nov.visit.

 

[BigThunderMatt]

As before FP+ 2000 people per hour were going in from the standby line. Now maybe 1000 go from the FP line and 1000 from the standby meaning that the standby queue is twice what it used to be.

It's typically a 4:1 ratio. So for every 1000 Standby Guests, 4000 FP+ guests go through.

 

[hopemax]

"The Merge Time"? The capacity of The Haunted Mansion should remain unchanged. The same amount of people should be going into the stretch rooms pre and post Fastpass+. Historically this would be a bottleneck prior to Fastpass+ so I'm inclined to think that not much has changed.

The issue is that if FP simply moved people from standby to a no-wait alternative, it would be fine. But instead people who weren't waiting, select FP and the standby line doesn't decrease at the same rate capacity is diverted to FP people. So with 80% of capacity becoming unavailable, but standby only decreasing by some number less than 80% the wait time goes up. Same as if you had 1200 people waiting instead of 1000.

Just because a pre-FP line was 60 min, didn't mean that some portion of people weren't willing to wait, 80, 100, 120 min. Now with FP, those are the types of people still in the standby line. And they exist in a large enough quantity that when only 20-30% of a ride's capacity is available to them, the wait time gets pushed way up.

 

[RSoxNo1]

The issue is that if FP simply moved people from standby to a no-wait alternative, it would be fine. But instead people who weren't waiting, select FP and the standby line doesn't decrease at the same rate capacity is diverted to FP people. So with 80% of capacity becoming unavailable, but standby only decreasing by some number less than 80% the wait time goes up. Same as if you had 1200 people waiting instead of 1000.

Just because a pre-FP line was 60 min, didn't mean that some portion of people weren't willing to wait, 80, 100, 120 min. Now with FP, those are the types of people still in the standby line. And they exist in a large enough quantity that when only 20-30% of a ride's capacity is available to them, the wait time gets pushed way up.

Standby wait time has increased, but I don't think throughout has changed.

 

[hopemax]

Standby wait time has increased, but I don't think throughout has changed.

My statement had nothing to do with throughput.

Capacity available for standby has decreased
Number of people standing in standby has decreased but by LESS than the number capacity has decreased.
Therefore wait time increases.

 

[RSoxNo1]

My statement had nothing to do with throughput.

Capacity available for standby has decreased
Number of people standing in standby has decreased but by LESS than the number capacity has decreased.
Therefore wait time increases.

I understand that, but the premise of what I was saying was about throughput, not the standby wait time. I'm not disagreeing with you, your post just wasn't pertinent to what @ford91exploder said.