I'm not knocking the indoor part of it, it is quite nice from the looks of things. It's nothing intrinsically to do with a switchbacks being the problem or the enemy here. Forbidden Journey's queue still ranks as an experience, more so than Fallon's. The inside experience is really just two free-roaming pre-show rooms with live entertainment in the second. It's a really good solution that's been under-utilized in recent years. Much more akin to what Universal used to do with older attractions like Disaster.
It's the virtual line that's the issue, they are trying to eliminate the switchbacks before the pre-shows. Those are the people that have to go somewhere. Namely outside. Or they just make the pre-shows longer and longer and then that defeats the point. Unless by virtual they just mean the "pager system" for when you are already inside. That I have no issue with.
All I'll say is we already know the results of this from Disney and these next gen queueless, interactive, explorative approaches are not the pie in the sky solution. You still wait. It works only to a limited point when too much park capacity is involved in the scheme. In the pursuit of queue reduction Disney is a nightmare. Now Universal wants to maybe eliminate them entirely...
There's a multitude of problems with potential queueless parks. Just thinking about a few of them:
1) I mentioned this in another thread, the strangely named "Peace," there's vulnerability of system outages knocking out the wait times system. Imagine nearly 30 Thousand guests suddenly losing their place in line due to a computer failure. Can you fathom the chaos of handling this without proper physical queues? How does a theme park recover without having adequate queuing capacity? Would ride boarding be determined by who's standing closest to the door? Chaos is the word I used on the other thread; and chaos is what it would be. A system without proper contingencies, which despite its controversy FP+ has, is simply ridiculously shortsighted.
2) Lines are limiting, but they're also highly efficient. You can comfortably pack in way more people using traditional queueing techniques than just rooms full of people. People like space. Unless it's a concert or a speech people want breathing room. A queue balances the needs of guests while also being tight enough to ensure space maximization.
3) Queues produce a sense of fairness. A reason FP+/FP is so offensive to many people is the idea that people "are cutting ahead." While in actuality FPs represent people digitally queueing for attractions, they still offend people's sensibilities. Queueless will turn resentment up a notch. The pre shows may be cool at first, but if you want to ride a ride a #Panda is not going to distract you for very long. As guests see people go in ahead of them, they'll almost undoubtably get annoyed. They won't be feeling like they're making any progress towards the attraction. It may be totally offset by the freedom that queueless gives them, but this could be an issue with guest perception. They need to approach the idea carefully.
4) They'll justify ever increasingly shorter attractions. If you look at the queue as a key part of the experience, then the attraction is just merely a part of the whole production. Instead of the queue being a component that enriches the story the attraction is going to be telling, it becomes the story. Honestly I am all in favor of highly detailed queues and pre shows, but the attraction starts when I sit down and ends when I get up. Maybe I'm old fashioned that way, but that's how I view the theme park world.
Pre shows and nicely themed queues are just the icing on the cake.
This seems like another MyMagic+ idea; cool queues and waiting mechanisms instead of adding attractions. Give me high quality and lengthy rides and I'll be a happy camper.
