Disney obviously knows the amount of downtime. There's a nightly spreadsheet ("Attraction Downtime Report") produced with per-ride downtime across property. And it includes pre-opening "ramp-up" downtime, when the CMs are trying to bring a ride up for the day.
Here's a sample:
View attachment 840744
This survey is measuring the guest perspective of what Disney already knows. So it answers the question "How much of this do guests notice?"
They've run similar surveys for Rise of the Resistance.
Whatever the results are, the internal debate is around the perverse incentive of Lightning Lane revenue.
The last time I compiled those nightly reports into an annual number, Rise was averaging around 2 hours of downtime per day.
But it probably generates $25MM in LLSP revenue.
So the internal debate is "How does Park Ops convince
Jackie Swisher to fail at her annual performance appraisal goal for Lightning Lane revenue by bringing Rise down for the 6 months it needs to fix its issues?"
Jackie, as most people would, has to this point looked at those survey results, looked at her career path and performance bonuses, and decided that the survey results aren't that bad.
Same debate for Tiana's at MK.
This is what I mean when I say Disney doesn't need to artifically inflate wait times to sell Lightning Lane. All it needs to do is not spend the time and money to fix these reliabilty problems.
The downtime, by itself, will convince people to buy Lightning Lane. And nobody's doing a nickle up at Folsom for fraud. Plus they save money on maintenance. It's a win/win.
Also, Tiana's is in the top 3 of highest-rated rides in the MK, along with TRON and Space. It'll be #1 by June.
ETA: Link to WSJ story about internal data from Disney with LL revenue numbers.
