Restaurant capacity and live entertainment restrictions are currently limiting Walt Disney World theme park attendance according to Bob Chapek

[UNCgolf]

IMO, ad-supported should be free unless it's got some other huge benefit (like Hulu's live TV, for example). Vudu has ad-supported free content (and a surprisingly large amount, TBH).

Peacock's ad-supported paid model is incredibly annoying. I know they have some stuff available for free, but they also have a tier that gives you access to everything but with ads.

I have it right now for a year (as a free perk included with something else not related), and I can't imagine paying for this. It would absolutely be worth the extra $5 a month to get rid of the ads.

 

[HauntedPirate]

. It would absolutely be worth the extra $5 a month to get rid of the ads.

Bob will be betting on that.

Anywho… My gut is telling me parking and ticket prices at WDW are going up soon. Standard parking will likely get bumped up $2-3/car, to $27 or $28. Tickets probably $5/day on the low end ($114), $10/day on the high end. AP’s, if they start reselling them, hit $1400 and $1000 for the top 2. No sources, just getting a feeling looking around and at things recently.

“Maximum effort!” - Deadpool
“Maximum cash extraction!” - $lappie

 

[ImperfectPixie]

Peacock's ad-supported paid model is incredibly annoying. I know they have some stuff available for free, but they also have a tier that gives you access to everything but with ads.

I have it right now for a year (as a free perk included with something else not related), and I can't imagine paying for this. It would absolutely be worth the extra $5 a month to get rid of the ads.

We get Peacock free with our cable, but I can't remember ever watching it. (And we've been contemplating cutting the cord for a while now...I just have to put in the work and figure out how deeply we want to cut that cord.)

 

[Nubs70]

We get Peacock free with our cable, but I can't remember ever watching it. (And we've been contemplating cutting the cord for a while now...I just have to put in the work and figure out how deeply we want to cut that cord.)

Hack away with abandon.

Cut cord 2 years ago and do not miss it one bit.

 

[UNCgolf]

We get Peacock free with our cable, but I can't remember ever watching it. (And we've been contemplating cutting the cord for a while now...I just have to put in the work and figure out how deeply we want to cut that cord.)

That's why I have it free for a year too, but they only gave the ad-supported version.

Parks and Recreation is on Peacock and that's one of my favorite shows ever, so that and occasionally the Office are basically the only reasons I ever use it.

 

[TrainsOfDisney]

We get Peacock free with our cable, but I can't remember ever watching it. (And we've been contemplating cutting the cord for a while now...I just have to put in the work and figure out how deeply we want to cut that cord.)

As soon as I finished reading this I began to see ads for Peacock on Instagram. They are watching us!

 

[Diamond Dot]

It's weird here in the UK. I had Disney+ at a discount last year, it was £79.99, but, I had a special offer of £59.99 because I've been a subscriber from the start, I just got an email telling me my next annual subscription will be £79.90, which is a strange number, but, I don't have any other streaming subscriptions and I watch it a lot, so I'm okay with it.

 

[TikibirdLand]

It's weird here in the UK. I had Disney+ at a discount last year, it was £79.99, but, I had a special offer of £59.99 because I've been a subscriber from the start, I just got an email telling me my next annual subscription will be £79.90, which is a strange number, but, I don't have any other streaming subscriptions and I watch it a lot, so I'm okay with it.

based on the current content and what was promised, I'll drop it like a hot potato if they raise the price. I'll go with youtube-adfree with the difference. The "behind the scenes videos are there anyway.

 

[TrainsOfDisney]

based on the current content and what was promised, I'll drop it like a hot potato if they raise the price. I'll go with youtube-adfree with the difference. The "behind the scenes videos are there anyway.

As someone who wasn’t particularly interested in Disney+ when it was announced I bought in at D23 because of the introductory 3-year deal.

At the current price ($80 per year) I would keep it.

 

[seascape]

As someone who wasn’t particularly interested in Disney+ when it was announced I bought in at D23 because of the introductory 3-year deal.

At the current price ($80 per year) I would keep it.

I hope Disney offers another 3 year contract for D23 members. I would be willing to pay upfront for a 3 year plan for the Disney Bundle.

 

[WDW Pro]

All this proves is Disney is conservative Wait Times.. usually about 15-20%. This is not under contention. You're highlighting a condition that existed before Genie+ was a glint in Bob's eye. Your claim is more than just wait times are conservative. You claim there is intent and infer some change in behavior specific to Genie+. Let's see that analysis.

Once you know that your posted wait times are verifiably longer than your real wait times over a long period of time, continuing with that same formula has to be intentional. There's also the issue that @lentesta has demonstrated on the Touring Plans website, which is that ILL attractions have a posted wait time that is far less accurate than non-ILL attractions. If they're using the same formulas for both categories of rides, that would be an impossible mathematical occurrence (the same formula resulting in different results for subjective categories). I don't infer that this is due to Genie+, I just look at it pragmatically and notice there is a change and the change is in Disney's financial favor... simultaneously against the guest's financial favor. Worse, the inexperienced guest is likely to think they've received a benefit which is untrue or overstated at best.

 

[monothingie]

We (touringplans) can‘t convince ourselves this is happening. Looking forward to your analysis.

I’m a little confused by this response. Is it something that can actually be proven true or false, or does the wide variability in wait times and causes for increased or decreased waits make such an analysis difficult.

 

[lentesta]

Once you know that your posted wait times are verifiably longer than your real wait times over a long period of time, continuing with that same formula has to be intentional. There's also the issue that @lentesta has demonstrated on the Touring Plans website, which is that ILL attractions have a posted wait time that is far less accurate than non-ILL attractions. If they're using the same formulas for both categories of rides, that would be an impossible mathematical occurrence (the same formula resulting in different results for subjective categories). I don't infer that this is due to Genie+, I just look at it pragmatically and notice there is a change and the change is in Disney's financial favor... simultaneously against the guest's financial favor. Worse, the inexperienced guest is likely to think they've received a benefit which is untrue or overstated at best.

There's a couple of things to go through here:

1) On average, the actual wait times we've seen at some rides (like ROTR) are substantially lower than the posted wait times.

I think the ratio is something like 3 overestimates for every 1 underestimate.

2) But there are plenty of times where the actual wait is higher than the posted. If I was Disney and needed to sway, say, 12 impartial jurors, the easiest line of defense is "We're just really bad at estimating waits."

Here's yesterday at ROTR as an example. Actual waits are green dots and black dots are posted waits:

• Three actuals were substantially less than the posted
• One actual was exactly the posted
• Six actuals were higher than the posted waits.

Here's Runaway Railway from last week. Some actuals are higher than posted, some are lower. Could you convince a jury that this is evidence of systemic inflation?

I don't think we could do that. We could be wrong.

 

[flynnibus]

Once you know that your posted wait times are verifiably longer than your real wait times over a long period of time, continuing with that same formula has to be intentional. There's also the issue that @lentesta has demonstrated on the Touring Plans website, which is that ILL attractions have a posted wait time that is far less accurate than non-ILL attractions. If they're using the same formulas for both categories of rides, that would be an impossible mathematical occurrence (the same formula resulting in different results for subjective categories).

smh.. 1 - We know the conservative estimates are intentional - and the intentional action is not new 2 - The logic doesn't have to be uniform across different attractions. You wouldn't use the same logic for an attraction like dumbo as you would a show or a ride like Rise.

You again take observations and draw conclusions that are not supported by the cites.

I don't infer that this is due to Genie+

No? Who is this guy?

Has anyone yet discussed that Disney is (almost certainly) intentionally inflating their wait times so guests feel they've gotten their value out of Genie+... as well as driving guests to purchase the service? I'm pretty darn confident on this one. How long can they keep that up before the shenanigans are figured out?

Your 'analysis' is horrendous and swiss cheese

 

[el_super]

I don't think we could do that. We could be wrong.

You actually had someone wait 230 minutes for Rise of the Resistance? That's wild.

 

[el_super]

Once you know that your posted wait times are verifiably longer than your real wait times over a long period of time, continuing with that same formula has to be intentional.

Yeah to echo what everyone else is saying, it is intentional but it is not nefarious.

In the before times, at least at Disneyland, the attraction leads had the absolute authority to change the wait time posted on the signs at the attraction (and then later uploaded to the app). Those wait times were really just estimates based on the physical length of the line hitting certain markers in the queue. When they adopted the FLIK cards, I think there was still some leeway that the leads had in changing the wait time, since operational status changes wouldn't be reflected by the FLIK cards.

I have no personal evidence, but it seems pretty likely that they are now trying to "calculate" a wait time based on data coming into the server, rather than just having the CMs enter one. Some calculation based on all the outstanding reservations for an attraction, plus the standby wait.

It's a smart move that allows for a better representation of what the wait time COULD be, it just doesn't work... yet.

 

[MisterPenguin]

Once you know that your posted wait times are verifiably longer than your real wait times over a long period of time, continuing with that same formula has to be intentional.

...or just systemically bad at estimating.

As has been pointed out, this type of time inflation has been happening way before Genie+. Claiming that continuing it is a brand new type of 'intentionality' is just a guess... a guess that has no proof. It doesn't *have to* be intentional. Or, if there is intentionality, it existed before Genie+ and continuing it doesn't *have to* have anything to do with Genie+.

 

[HauntedPirate]

It's kind of funny that some guests can look at a ride's line, look at the posted wait time, and know whether or not the posted wait time is somewhat accurate better than Disney can. Well, some guests were able to do that fairly accurately with the socially distanced queues. Without the social distancing piece in place anymore, it's a bit more of a crapshoot.

I was going to go into Disney's penchant for barely-good-enough ride maintenance and why their own actions around that (thus random and more frequent breakdowns) are probably one root cause reason why their wait time estimates suck, but I thought better of it.

 

[Scubacat]

None of this factors in the clearly negligent routine maintenance causing far more breakdowns than in years past. I waited barely 10 minutes for a 40 minute posted wait for haunted mansion a couple of weeks ago, before being treated to the loud, repeating grim grinning ghosts soundtrack for nearly 20 minutes while I was stuck in the graveyard. So by that measure, the upcoming groups waiting to board had about a 30 minute wait which is pretty close to the posted 40.

ROTR has to be the worst case - if it's actually a 200+ minute wait on a posted 120, there's more likely than not a breakdown/evac/reset in that window.

 

[WDW Pro]

...or just systemically bad at estimating.

As has been pointed out, this type of time inflation has been happening way before Genie+. Claiming that continuing it is a brand new type of 'intentionality' is just a guess... a guess that has no proof. It doesn't *have to* be intentional. Or, if there is intentionality, it existed before Genie+ and continuing it doesn't *have to* have anything to do with Genie+.

Except if you're systemically bad at estimating something, it should go in both directions. It seems to only go in one direction according to statistical data.

Imagine that a weather service was only wrong in one direction: they always predicted the temperature hotter than it would be. Now imagine that you could predictably determine that the actual temperature would be between 50-60% of the temperature they predict. That would mean you could actually figure out the temperature if you just reduce the predictable inflation in the forecast. You'd then have to wonder why the meteorologists weren't just doing that on their own.

Let's put it another way:

Could an Annual Passholder who goes to Disney once a week do a better job of determining likely wait times just by eyeballing it? If so, why?