That makes sense!!
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Boarding Groups are confusing
- Thread starter Djsfantasi
- Start date
That makes sense!!
Trackmaster
Well-Known Member
And what happens when only half of the group gets a BG and the rest get a back-up? Or nothing?
You tell the rest of your group about how much fun you had on the ride! You could re-enact it for them as well.
Trackmaster
Well-Known Member
No doubt wait times have gotten worse. FP+ gets about 80% of the capacity. I went to Not So Scary, and despite Space Mountain having a full queue stretching out to the entrance, it was eaten through in 20 minutes because 100% of the capacity was used on stand-by with no FP+.
Disney also used to have higher capacity attractions, and people used to load faster. Most of the attractions used to be omnimovers, but they've moved towards attractions with lower capacity, plus guests seem more oblivious and slow when they board.
ninjaprincesst
Well-Known Member
Yes I would go for boarding group as 1 group. From what I have seen the size of the group has nothing to do with you getting a boarding group.And what happens when only half of the group gets a BG and the rest get a back-up? Or nothing?
PTPGrad
New Member
It’s actually a lot easier than it sounds. Get to the park prior to park opening. Exactly at park opening, in the my Disney experience app, click on “join a boarding group”. That will give you a group that will be your boarding group. Then go about and enjoy your day. You will get a notification when your boarding group is available. Then you will get two hours to head back and get in line to ride the ride. Honestly, unless there’s a major breakdown, you’re off the ride in less than an hour. So you should be able to work this around all your fast passes and dining reservations without an issue. I did it three different times when I was there, and either was in the park till our boarding time, or went to another park, such as Epcot, and enjoyed my time there until it was time to head back. It really worked well.
Group 26 boarded about an hour after the ride started running, group 126 was about 6 to 7 hours after the ride started. But there’s tons of leeway and it’s really worth itGroup 26 boarded about an hour after the ride started running, group 126 was about 6 to 7 hours after the ride started. But there’s tons of leeway and it’s really
Group 26 boarded about an hour after the ride started running, group 126 was about 6 to 7 hours after the ride started. But there’s tons of leeway and it’s really worth itGroup 26 boarded about an hour after the ride started running, group 126 was about 6 to 7 hours after the ride started. But there’s tons of leeway and it’s really
Michele Godinez
New Member
We are from CA and are operating on PST. We have never made rope drop (the earliest we have ever gotten into a park was 10) so this Boarding Groups feature will mean that we won't be able to ride any of these rides our entire trip 
danyoung56
Well-Known Member
So there are all these reports of people getting there 15 minutes before rope drop and then getting put in a BG that opens up at 8pm. What I need to know is, assuming park opening at 9am, when do I need to get there to be in a BG that gets in before noon? Thanks.
Emmaleighg728
New Member
I just went on RotR yesterday and it is a little frustrating not being able to plan out your day, but if you’re a big Star Wars fan then it’s worth it. You have to be in HS to join a boarding group, and then you have a two hour time window to head to the queue. But trust me, If you haven’t ridden this ride then it is beyond worth it, the ride is worth building fast passes around. And I would recommend getting fast passes and then using them afterward. I had a fast pass for Toy Story Mania at 2:10 and our boarding group was called at 2:05. We got on RotR and were still able to use our TSM fast pass afterwards because the ride plus the queue we waited in was collectively 20-25 minutes. The only thing is it’s hard to make dining reservations. Have fun!
nickys
Premium Member
The problem is it is a lottery as to what BG you get. As long as you are tapped into the park, everyone then has an equal chance of getting BG #10 or BG #98. Or even a back-up BG.
danyoung56
Well-Known Member
Are you saying that they don't fill in the earlier BG's before starting to fill the later ones? That I could get there as early as possible and still get an evening BG? If that's the case, I guess I'm not gonna see Batuu this trip.
dreamfinder
Well-Known Member
They do, but the BG assignment has no correlation to your arrival/park entry time. If you are in the park when BGs open up, everyone is mashing the register button at the same time. First person who gets accepted by the server, gets into the first BG, then the second person, etc. If your hair trigger is 2 seconds faster than someone who got there 30 mins before you, you get in a BG before them. You show up, try to get a BG, and see how your luck holds that day.
You could be the first person in the park, but your phone crashes on you, and you get assigned the last backup BG by the time your phone reboots as everyone else mashes "Register" before you do.
Yeah, like I see what they’re trying to do, but IMHO it’s a terrible solution.
I would have divided all BGs into neighborhoods. Each neighborhood would be like early, morning, mid-morning, etc. A BG could be in multiple neighbors. Then, based on registration time, a BG would first be randomly selected for a neighborhood in the appropriate time. No backup boarding groups for early registration! And no simple 1,2,3 round robin assignment that means you could be early and get a late BG.
Mathematically, this is possible and seems to be a fairer way of assigning BGs. (for the mathophiles, you only need a PRNG that produces a uniform distribution. It can be simulated with a qsort routine and a LFSR).
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nickys
Premium Member
I don’t understand. Neighbourhoods? Registration? Everyone is “registering” at the same time, right as the boarding groups open up. And if they run out of boarding groups, then what?
What was happening before was that there was a race to be earliest, because they opened the BGs at some random time well before park opening. They wanted to stop the need to be there, and have the park fully manned, by 4am.
Sorry, I used terms without defining them. “Registration” is a request for a boarding group. “Neighborhoods” is a concept I’ve defined mathematically to resolve several issues I have with the current algorithm. A neighborhood is a set of BGs, typically close in time. They are chosen by the proximity to the “time” a guest requests a boarding group.
If they run out of boarding groups, what do they do now? I assume that portion of the algorithm wouldn’t change.
When are you going?
Shouldigo12
Well-Known Member
So under your system, people would be picking a time they want to board then get a BG set for that time "neighborhood"? I was under the impression that a big reason for the BGs was because they don't know what time a BG will be called; it depends on how well the ride is performing that day. I imagine that any system telling people they would be getting on the ride at a certain time, even if that time was as broad as "afternoon", it would result in a lot of people frustrated that their group is being called much earlier or later than they wanted.
Unless I'm still not understanding what your system is. I'm still a little confused by it.
nickys
Premium Member
If they run out of BGs they then briefly close registration and then re-open and allocate back-up BGs.
Regular boarding groups can be gone in 3 minutes. Yet you were saying you would have no back-up BGs for early registration. Maybe you can see the problem?
At the moment how quickly you register determines your BG. The term lottery is being used because obviously you have thousands of people all registering at the same time. As I say they can be onto back-up BGs in minutes because all the regular ones have filled.
I don’t understand how your system a) differs from what they have now, and b) how it solves anything.
Especially since the difficulty they have is reliability. They cannot allocate certain BGs to the morning, noon, afternoon etc. Because they do not know how fast they can get through them. If BGs 30-50 are from 11am-1pm, what happens if the ride goes down at 10:55am, and isn’t back up again until 12:35?
The whole point of BGs is they can call them when there is room for the next group of riders. If the ride goes down, those with the earliest BG not yet called will be called in when the ride is brought back up.
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MickeyLuv'r
Well-Known Member
Well...yes and no.
Back when it first opened, Space Mtn was like the RotR of that era...though 20,000 LUtS was also very popular.
WDW had far fewer visitors in the 1970's then it has today. Just for a start, the US population was much lower: 205.1 million in 1970 vs. 327.2 million in 2018. (almost 40% lower)
The Florida population was 6.79 million in 1970 vs. 21.3 million in 2018. (almost 70% lower!!)
Further, people traveled less in 1970 than they do in 2020. When Space Mtn opened - get this - I-95 was still incomplete!
I don't know that people used to load faster or slower in the 1970's. I don't know how we could remotely show that to be true or false: too many variables, and too little data. If anything, WDW probably had more one-time visitors in the 1970's than they have today. So a higher % of folks who weren't familiar with anything at WDW.
Further, everyone's lives moved at a slower pace in the 1970's. There was no internet, no cell phones. People read paper newspapers, and if you wanted information from an encyclopedia....well...you had to go to the library, thumb the card catalogue, walk around the library, find the correct volume, find the correct page. People thought snail mail was fast, and even postal mail was nowhere near as fast as it is today!
Even what we call fast food didn't exist as we know it today. We barely had McDonald's! but there was no drive through, and certainly nothing like the number of different fast food options we have today.
In the 1975 era MK had: Carrousel, CBJ, Diamond Horseshoe Revue, Dumbo, Shootin' Gallery, HoP, HM, IaSW, JC, MTParty, MM Revue, MF Keel boats, Mr. Toad, Skyway, Snow White, SFTreehouse, Tropical serenade (Tiki), Grand Prix Raceway, WDW RR, Riverboat, PP, 20,000 LUtS, Flight to the Moon/Mission to Mars, America the Beautiful/Magic Carpet film, If You Had Wings, WD Story, TomS, Swan boats, Riverboat, PotC, Star Jets, then Sapce Mtn (Jan 1975).
So...about 32 attractions...(I typing quckly, and I'm leaveing some off- like Main St). Even my incomplete list though, most are not omnimovers. I count about 4 of 32+ attractions: HM, Skyway (sorta), PP, IYHWings. (and WEDway Peoplemover came later in 1975)
If YHW became Buzz, and now MK has added the LM (and more non-omnimover added rides). I wouldn't say MK is all that different. in total number of onmimovers from what it had in the 1970's. Certainly, early Epcot had a number of omnimovers. and the newer parks don't have them.
That was also the era of tickets. Tickets were a much bigger limiting factor, IMO. You couldn't re-ride unless you bought another book or didn't ride something that was in the same tier.
Alas, I'm out of time or I'd review/edit this post better...
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Have you ever used a virtual queue? They have them at Universal. This is the same thing. There is no way that everyone who wants to ride this ride could get a fast pass for it. I wish they would have this system for flights of passage too.
Trackmaster
Well-Known Member
Although you could argue at this point that its even more expensive without the ticket books. A single ticket is like $130, and you book three FP+. That's over $40 per crummy ride! I can't imagine why anybody would ever buy a single day ticket, but people do it all the time it seems.