Apparently MM+ is being tested at Disneyland right now

[hopemax]

Does Fastpass increase the number of people that want to ride an attraction in one day? If not, I have a hard time seeing how FastPass slows wait times. Without FastPass there would be longer stand by lines, right?

Sort of. Ever since 1955, the number of people who have thought "I really wish I could ride X but I don't want to wait that long" has been larger than the capacity for X. Fastpass gives the non-riders the "means" to accomplish it. I wrote this for the DIS, but by the time I finished I hit their down time (so that's why I make certain references). But theoretical example.

If you have an attraction with 2000 people/hr capacity, to experience a 90 min wait, you need 3000 people willing to wait that long in the queue in front of you. And to maintain a 90 min wait, that flow of people has to be continuously that high. That's a lot of people. But then lets say you divert, as easywdw says up to 70% of the seats to "reservations" ie FP. Then as far as the standby line is concerned there are only 600 seats, so a 90 min line only needs 900 people per hour, continually. A heck of a lot easier to obtain than 3000.

And you could see this in practice when something would happen on a ride, like say Tower of Terror when operating one drop shaft vs two. The line can get out of control, quickly. Seats diverted to FP are no different than taking vehicles out of service, as far as the standby line is concerned. FP effectively turns high capacity attractions into low capacity ones like Dumbo or Peter Pan for anyone not holding a FP.

Wait times are only partially dependent on ride capacity, and partially dependent on the thought bubbles over people's heads ala Roller Coaster Tycoon of how long they are willing to wait. It seems like someone thought that it was a simple thing to move people out of a standby into a virtual queue, and if that is what really happens, things might be okay. In practice, the virtual queue is partially filled with a bunch of people who were never in the standby queue to begin with (which is WHY some people like it so much). In order to accommodate these "new" riders, somebody has to either lose their seat, or the wait time has to go up, since ride capacity hasn't changed.

So to take our 2000 people per hour ride. 1400 slots get distributed via FP, but lets say 30% of those are new riders. That means 420 are new, and therefore only 980 can move from standby to FP. So as far as standby people are concerned, they've dropped from 2000 people to 1020. But we've dropped effective capacity from 2000 to 600. So for those 1020 people they went from a 60 min wait to 102 min. Some people in standby will just get frustrated by that (and why some people hate FP so much) and bail, and some people holding FP won't return and so standby can move a little faster, so the actual equilibrium wait time might only be 80 min.

Now, those 420 new riders came from "somewhere," so you might think that there's a smaller line wherever "somewhere" was. But we've also freed 980 people from standby (plus the people that got frustrated and bailed) and they can now go "somewhere" too. And not only can they easily replace those 420 people, there's enough people to double that, with some more left over. So wait times at "somewhere" can go up too.

 

[Deleted member 107043]

I think the primary objectives of FP was twofold: provide a service that gives guests the option of bypassing long lines at the most popular attractions, and redistributing traffic across the property to shops, shows, food service locations, and lesser attractions. FP isn't perfect, but it's hard to imagine how the MK and DL would be able to manage their current enormous demand without something like it.

 

[JediMasterMatt]

FP isn't perfect, but it's hard to imagine how the MK and DL would be able to manage their current enormous demand without something like it.

That genie is long been out of the bottle and can't be put back ever.

Virtual ride queuing is always going to have impact to the physical world. You can't take a ride with 1000 guests/hour and magically get 1500 guests/hour out of it by adding some flavor of virtual queue.

The proper way to think of an amusement park's lines as an election. You walk inside the gate and all of the candidates are trying to get your vote. A guests votes by getting in line. The thing is all of the candidates aren't the same. Some are more popular and attract a bigger crowd and others don't (I'm staying FAR away from using any actual people as references as I'm not going to engage in a political discussion). The most valuable currency in an amusement park to a guest is time. When you vote, you are committing your time dollars to an attraction.

The real issue at Disney parks is popularity. If all guests could vote the way they wanted, the majority would vote for the same few candidates. This would create far more time commitment from every guest at one of those popular attractions because of the number of people voting in line.

Legacy FastPass was the first attempt at trying to influence the ballot box. Instead of "voting" now and getting in line, the guest gets a guarantee to come back later. The impact to the democracy of the park is that that registered voter is now turned loose on the rest of the candidates and can influence their "election" by getting in line their. Any candidate that has virtual queuing needs to slow the ingress of regular voters to accommodate that guaranteed return time.

FastPass+ changes the above dynamic by adding far more candidates in the virtual vote later method described above and it also adds in the potential for "absentee ballots" that can be submitted from not being in the park at all. Some of these absentee votes may go unfulfilled because the vote doesn't return when they should.

The bottom line is that the guests still vote; but, the methods allowed by the park change the dynamic. The real cause/effect can only be resolved by addressing the root of the matter - the guest's choice in candidates. No matter how hard the park tries to influence guest behavior, the real reason why attractions command a line to begin with is popularity. Guests want to get in in for "that" attraction in lieu of all of the other options. What this really says about the health of a park is more about the options are. If lines are short it usually has more to say about the lack of popularity of the attraction (or sometimes the capacity the attraction has). If lines are long that usually means the attraction is popular (or can be suffering low capacity). It can also mean the park is suffering from an overall lack of candidates to begin with. If guests really had power over the park, we would vote the unpopular attractions out of office and bring in ones that were worth getting in line for.

 

[Deleted member 107043]

Virtual ride queuing is always going to have impact to the physical world.

Of course it will, but what's the alternative? With the old A-E coupon system Disney had efficient control over crowd distribution, and the introduction of pay one price in the 80s probably had a bigger negative impact on traffic flow than FP did. Not disagreeing with anything you said, just making the observation that FP is a tool that helps Disney manage overwhelming demand while giving guests the optional perk of avoiding long waits on some of the most popular attractions.

 

[JediMasterMatt]

Of course it will, but what's the alternative? With the old A-E coupon system Disney had efficient control over crowd distribution, and the introduction of pay one price in the 80s probably had a bigger negative impact on traffic flow than FP did. Not disagreeing with anything you said, just making the observation that FP is a tool that helps Disney manage overwhelming demand while giving guests the optional perk of avoiding long waits on some of the most popular attractions.

The danger is what the impact of virtual queuing has and what form it takes. Aggressive expansion (said in the best Heath Ledger Joker impression) of virtual queuing to rides and attractions that current don't offer any virtual queuing option will significantly alter the landscape. WDW is the case study in this.

DLR would suffer if the same approach is taken. The impact to the resort would be more guests outside of the stand-by queues and more real estate taken up to create FP queues at attractions that currently don't have them. Space is a definite concern for DLR's health.

That is why I hope the plan in Anaheim is to use the FP+ tech only on the existing attractions with legacy FP and new attractions that are built. That was what the most recent plan I heard was.

As for alternatives, more virtual queuing is not a healthy long term solution. The problem of guest choice (the power to vote) has to be addressed. If guests want to experience quality attractions and the only thing available are "alternatives" it doesn't matter if the wait is virtual of physical. The crux of the issue is that the unpopular attraction that either has a short standby wait or a shorter virtual return time or availability may be unpopular for a reason. Guests have already voted and they don't like "ride X". Quit trying to steer them towards it. The more guests that experience bad attractions leave the resort with less than stellar impressions and the long term consequence of that will be interesting.

If guest choice continues to become more and more restrained, then perhaps the next logical step is to have a Disney vacation like a school calendar. You get issued an schedule and you simply go from class to class.

At some point, the quality of attractions has to be addressed to develop more balance between the have and have-nots. Prune the forest and add to the forest are both actions that need taken.

 

[Curious Constance]

I guess what I wasn't thinking of is, no Fastpass doesn't increase park attendance, but it can increase the number of attractions each person CAN experience, so in that sense it would increase the number of people that "want" to experience an attraction in any given day because they have more time to get to more attractions..

 

[Deleted member 107043]

As for alternatives, more virtual queuing is not a healthy long term solution.

Or they could do away with FP altogether, which could make traffic even worse at the most popular must-see attractions and divert people away from smaller rides like Pooh and King Arthur Carousel. Short of a reservation system ticket books, with all their headaches, were the best way to regulate guests at the parks IMO.