A Spirited Perfect Ten

[bhg469]

Well, The crowds already ARE evened out. About 120 days in, 18 days were 3 or below. 28 days were 7 or above. Everything else was a good 4-6. What Glendale is doing with this tiered pricing idea is ... well its price gouging and pretty messed up. The idea that M-F has low attendance or is "off peak" is ridiculous.

The Data simply does not support that.

You said it man. it's squeezing every dollar they can out of guests. Bravo Disney!

 

[bhg469]

Tokyo was just hit with a 7.8 magnitude earthquake.
http://news.yahoo.com/quake-shakes-buildings-tokyo-afp-114954945.html

Ugh, that's awful. At least that is a country that is fairly prepared for such a disaster.

 

[spacemt354]

Adding scenes doesn't increase hourly capacity. They could run a flume out of the Norway building and connect it with all of Gran Fiesta Tour next door and then send the boats back to the Norway unload area, and it wouldn't increase the hourly capacity. It would just make the ride longer, and give you a view of the employee parking lot.

Hourly capacity is dictated by how many passengers are dispatched in a vehicle at what time interval. Example: 10 Passengers Dispatched Every 30 Seconds = 120 Riders Per Hour.

If Maelstrom dispatches a boat every 45 seconds, they get 80 boats into the ride per hour. If a Maelstrom boat seats 12 people the equation becomes: 80 x 12 = 960 Riders Per Hour

The on-ride YouTube videos available show that the boats are dispatched, and unloaded, roughly every 45 seconds. That gets you the "every seat filled" number of 960 riders per hour for Maelstrom. But since every seat isn't filled, some rows only have two people, and some boats take longer to load or unload, the real world numbers for Maelstrom were likely 850 to 900 riders per hour.

They could add an extra row to the boats, and that would get them up to a theoretical 1,200 per hour. (80 x 15 = 1,200) But probably closer to 1,100 per hour in the real world, with new boats with an extra row.

Otherwise, any additional capacity would require major changes to the ride system. And the track switch mid-ride that sends the boats backwards is the bottleneck there, as that operation requires 30+ seconds to perform. They'd need to engineer a faster track switch operation, or eliminate that and rework the flume to route around it and keep the boats pointed forward, to get any increase in capacity beyond 1,100 per hour.

But if Frozen Flume Ride is just a redressed version of Maelstrom using the same 12 passenger boats and same ride system, then 900 riders per hour is what you'll get. Nothing more.

As a point of reference, Pirates of the Caribbean at Disneyland has a theoretical hourly capacity of 3,400 riders per hour, but the real-world numbers are around 2,800 riders per hour because modern Americans can't fit four to a row anymore.

But 2,800 riders per hour is dramatically more than 900 riders per hour.

"Math is hard!" -Teen Talk Barbie, 1991

See my next post after I had where I mentioned this.

In order to effectively increase capacity in a realistic sense, the ride needs to be longer with more boats on the ride. They can't do much with dispatch time so the only other logical choice would be to extend the ride so that more boats can fit on it and hold more guests at a time. So in a sense, ride length does have an effect on capacity .

 

[ford91exploder]

I can't understand how you're arguing with facts.

Pixie Dust does that to people...

 

[Nubs70]

See my next post after I had where I mentioned this.

In order to effectively increase capacity in a realistic sense, the ride needs to be longer with more boats on the ride. They can't do much with dispatch time so the only other logical choice would be to extend the ride so that more boats can fit on it and hold more guests at a time. So in a sense, ride length does have an effect on capacity .

WDW could gain some loading/unloading efficiency by using parallel tandem loading. This is what McDonald's is beginning to use for drive thru ordering

 

[ford91exploder]

Let's be fair, folks were attacking them for NOT exploiting Frozen enough, or not being psychic and predicting it's runaway success - it's just that folks aren't happy with how they are doing it now, which is valid - but let's not pretend that even people here were pressing for something.

True but we were pressing for something on par with the cultural impact of the movie, Personally I'm meh on frozen but I think it is a new Disney classic because lets face it people LOVE IT, I was in a drive through for coffee and 'Let it Go' started up on Sirius and the girl at the window immediately started beaming she was so happy to hear the song. That says cultural resonance to me. Tokyo is giving Frozen the attraction it SHOULD have in WDW.

 

[MerlinTheGoat]

WDW could gain some loading/unloading efficiency by using parallel tandem loading. This is what McDonald's is beginning to use for drive thru ordering

Pirates at MK used to have parallel loading platforms, though not anymore. I don't know why they did away with it, but I doubt they're going with that for Frozen if POTC lost it.

 

[Bairstow]

Pirates at MK used to have parallel loading platforms, though not anymore. I don't know why they did away with it, but I doubt they're going with that for Frozen if POTC lost it.

I heard it was because the arrangement was fundamentally unsafe.
Kids kept losing their fingers.

 

[biggsd]

I think a portion of Disney and Universal's pricing structure requires a hefty slice of economic discrimination.

$61.00 does seem fair if you're talking about going to a 'Six Flags' style park. Upper tier forms of entertainment will always demand an additional jump in admission.

It's sort of like spending a couple of hours at a movie theater. You can pay $2.00 for a second run theater with sticky floors, or, $18.00 for the 'IMAX Experience'.

So you're saying that the idea of how Disney priced previously was wrong? Have their offerings improved at a rate that demands a 67% premium over the previous pricing model?

 

[Lee]

By removing the backwards section and track switch, I would think Frozen capacity will improve a decent amount. I wonder if that will be one of the moves for this refurb.
.

Nope.

I believe @marni1971 has said the backwards section is staying. However he has also said they are extending the boat path into where the former queue was, so there will be a slight addition to the existing track.

Yep. Slight.

 

[Hula Popper]

price gouging

lol

 

[BernardandBianca]

The new scene, as you indicated, will only occupy the former load/unload area. It would only allow for maybe 3 more boats in the flume....The only things that could possibly increase the capacity would be to either increase the speed of the flume or to dramatically reduce the load/unload times.Neither are likely.

As someone pointed out previously, why stick with the flume-type ride, and instead install an omnimover? That should increase capacity, even if using the same track. You don't have to be concerned with the direction change either.

 

[Mike S]

@Tony Perkis posted this in the Volcano Bay thread and I thought you guys would get a kick out of it as well.

 

[Next Big Thing]

Seems to be picking up in real media: http://time.com/3901243/disney-surge-pricing/

 

[Cosmic Commando]

Pirates at MK used to have parallel loading platforms, though not anymore. I don't know why they did away with it, but I doubt they're going with that for Frozen if POTC lost it.

Coincidentally, I found this article last night when I was thinking about this Frozen throughput problem and trying to find the capacity for Pirates: http://www.themeparkinsider.com/flume/200905/1196/

I was curious because I know that Pirates and IASW have some of the highest capacities of any ride, yet Maelstrom is apparently mediocre at best. As far as I can tell, the differences would be:

-Size of the boats. Can the flume in Maelstrom support bigger boats? I know the flume at DL's IASW was completely replaced recently, just because people were getting heavier in the same boats.

-The track switch. Can it be bypassed?

-Load/unload. We know the old load is going away. Is there space to do an efficient load/unload? The load and unload are both going to be at the old unload IIRC?

IF those things can be addressed, then Frozen should be a fairly high capacity ride. If those things can be addressed, but aren't, Disney deserves the craziness that will ensue.

 

[wishiwere@wdw]

Why am I doing a Data Analysis of the 2014 WDW crowds at 1:40 AM?

Best Observation? Slow days are far and few between. Tiered Pricing wont work; there are simply not enough days that one could categorize as "off-peak"

Spot on and couldn't agree more. Up until a year ago, I was in the area on business travel multiple times a year for 6 years and witnessed this change first hand while using the crap out of my AP. In 2010 I could show up certain times of the year after we wrap at 6pm and almost have a private park all to myself. Through 2012-2013 I noticed a massive change. Even my family noticed this happening and we bailed on going as a family entirely in 2014. I'm also wondering how they'd handle the complaints when say they have an unexpected "light" day (if that were to ever happen lol) and people are paying the premium ticket price. It's a win win for Disney as it isn't like they'd refund the difference and say sorry.

This simply will not work without causing major frustration and edoffness.

 

[Funmeister]

-The track switch. Can it be bypassed?

I do not think this is possible without a total rebuild of a huge portion of the ride. Which they are probably unwilling to do. (Assuming you mean the two track switches during the ride?)

 

[Cosmic Commando]

I do not think this is possible without a total rebuild of a huge portion of the ride. Which they are probably unwilling to do. (Assuming you mean the two track switches during the ride?)

Yes. My memory is a little hazy on the specifics of the ride, but it seems like the switches would be the major bottleneck.

After looking up the layout... Yeesh! I forgot how short the ride was!

 

[Lee]

As someone pointed out previously, why stick with the flume-type ride, and instead install an omnimover? That should increase capacity, even if using the same track. You don't have to be concerned with the direction change either.

Because of practicality and cost.
Again, this is much more of an overlay than a new ride.

 

[ford91exploder]

@Tony Perkis posted this in the Volcano Bay thread and I thought you guys would get a kick out of it as well.
View attachment 94854

OW feel the burn... What's sad is once that would have been said tongue in cheek, Now due to the staleness and lack of maintenance it's becoming reality.