Buried20KLeague
Well-Known Member
If I pay to take a Lamborghini around a track and it's broken down for the day, I'm not gonna be pleased if they try to stick me in a souped up Honda.
-
Welcome to the WDWMAGIC.COM Forums!
Please take a look around, and feel free to sign up and join the community.
Disney Genie and Genie+ at Walt Disney World
- Thread starter wdwmagic
- Start date
If I pay to take a Lamborghini around a track and it's broken down for the day, I'm not gonna be pleased if they try to stick me in a souped up Honda.
el_super
Well-Known Member
It can't be that simple. If the only qualification for granting a refund at the end of the night is whether or not Rise went down for some period of the day, the refund would almost be guaranteed and again, people would be encouraged to book reservations they only marginally intend to keep. Too many cancelled reservations at the end of the day means that people who potentially wanted to ride are shut out for no reason. That's what they're trying to avoid here.
I do like the idea of offering a refund at the exact return time, if the ride is down, but I realize that comes with it's own problems. What happens if the ride comes back up 10 minutes later and the guest changes their mind on the refund? They just end up back as Guest Relations.
I don't like the idea of just granting another experience though. That would be entirely based on a scheduling and ride capacity and an assumption that the person didn't already have access to the roster of Genie+ Lightning Lanes.
Buried20KLeague
Well-Known Member
That's why I suggested an "accepted window" around a return time be created (as a policy). If I have a return time for Rise at 3PM and it's down from (for example) 2:30 to 4:30, I should have a "refund" button pop up in the app, or the option to use that LL pass at any point before close. It's not disney's business what I have going on the rest of the day after the window I agreed to purchase the LL for. If it works for me to use it at a different time, great... I'll use it and they can keep my money. If it doesn't work for me to use it at some point later in the day, it's because the product I paid for during an accepted window wasn't available for me to use as agreed to. It shouldn't matter if I can't use it because I'm park hopping, or have dinner reservations I don't want to skip, or if I have a tired kid that's done for the day, or if I just feel like sitting on a bench and counting the number of rascal scooters that pass by me for the next hour.
GimpYancIent
Well-Known Member
If the service can not be provided then refund (as in give the money back), no need to elaborate on what can be done with the other so called options.
Parker in NYC
Well-Known Member
Make it EAR-idescent and the general public would line up.
mikejs78
Premium Member
You're assuming that high demand Genie+ attractions will necessarily translate to high demand ILL attractions. That's not necessarily the case.
We know, for example, that FEA was always a high demand FP+ attraction. It was one of a few to have limited availability after 60 days. Same with 7DMT. But that's when the price was free. What we saw yesterday is that both of those attractions had near-immediate availability thoguhout much of the day, suggesting that the demand just isn't there to pay for those attractions as a one-off.
We don't know if SDD would actually sell ILL$ at a rate any higher than MMRR. It may, it may not. And if SDD were swapped with MMRR, would MMRR go as fast as SDD for Genie+?
Additionally, there's the possibility that if they swap SDD and MMRR, they'll make *less* money because people will not be willing to shell out extra $$ for Slinky, but they also will decide that Genie+ isn't worth it if they can't get Slinky. That's the balance they have to strike.
It's an interesting modeling problem - they can and will sell more G+ than ILL (and they can support more G+ customers, because there's a wider pool of attractions). But not all attractions will generate the same level of ILL$ revenue because they won't have the same demand. If people decide that G+ isn't worth it because of the attraction list, they won't buy it, and that's potentially a larger loss of revenue than that of one ILL$ attraction.
Let's use math to illustrate. Let's say for the sake of argument that they allocate 50% of an attraction's capacity to LL, and that they've determined that G+ should have enough capacity for each person to go on 4 attractions using LL (for the sake of argument). Now let's say a park has 6 attractions, each with a 1500 pph capacity. That means the park has a total LL capacity of 54,000 in a 12-hour day.
Now, if we allocate 4 attractions to Genie+, that means Genie+ has a LL capacity of 36,000 and the two lightning lane attractions have a LL capacity of 12,000 each. Now let's say that each one is used to capacity.
Genie+ will be sold to 9000 people (assuming 4 attractions per person), for a total of $135,000
ILL attraction 1 is top-tier. Let's say $15 each - that generates $180,000 if sold out
ILL attraction 2 is lower demand - let's say $9 per ILL$, so it could potentially generate $108,000
So that's a total potential revenue of $423,000 for the park per day.
But what if ILL #2 doesn't get much demand? Let's say people aren'lt willing to pay $9 to ride it, and it only sells to 3000 people. Additionally, let's say that people aren't satisfied with the attraction selection of G+ for this park, becasue there's only 4 attractions, and so it only sells to 5000 people.
So now we're talking about a park revenue of $282,000/day, which is a big loss of potential.
Now let's say that if you drop ILL$ #2 to the Genie+ level and don't replace it with anything else. That makes Genie+ more appealing to the average guest, and so more people purchase it. In addition, you've increased your capacity of LL attractions as part of Genie+. So let's say that 5000 more people are now likely to buy G+ as opposed to before because of the addition of ILL$.
Your revenue for the park is now $330,000/day. It's not as high as the potential, but it's higher than your initial configuration of LL$ and G+ attractions.
Obviously this is very hypothetical and not real-world, but I think it illustrates the problem. For example, there may be some people more willing to buy G+ in AK if Everest were included, but aren't willing to buy Everest as an ILL$. Same with Space Mountain or Frozen Ever After. Disney has to figure out what the right balance is, and I bet you anything there will be a lot of experimentation with different configurations over the next year as they try to figure out the model to maximize their LL revenue. Obviously things like Rise, Guardians, etc will be huge moneymakers for ILL$ - what's less clear is where the revenue optimization is between ILL$ and G+ for the lower-tiered attractions like 7DMT, FEA, TT, SM, SDD, MMRR, and Everest.
JMcMahonEsq
Well-Known Member
How else would you want them to test the system? That isn't meant as a snark but an actual question. I couldn't think of any real effective way to do it other than how it was done. I don't think just simulating the program was going to cut it. Your going to need live beta testing, across multiple rides, across multiple hours, and using a pretty large sample size. I don't see another way to accomplish this other than through actually using vactioners. Taking 1 or 2 rides out of service for a day isn't going to cut it from a sample size, nor do they want to remove the highly sought after LL rides from service for any amount of time. And I don't think opening the park up after normal operating hours to test the system was going to give you the time, or volume of participants to do your testing.
Chi84
Premium Member
If a guest prematurely requests a refund and then regrets it, that's their problem. Once you request and receive a refund, the transaction is rescinded and Disney is off the hook. There's no reason to end up at Guest Relations. Maybe consider it a life lesson on the virtues of patience.
JMcMahonEsq
Well-Known Member
I think the bolded option above ends up being problematic. The LL purchases are supposed to be a finite resource allocation per day, and spread out based on time. The selling point is that you are paying a premium, for no/drastically reduced line experience. If you allow people to simply move their LL ride to any time before close, you no longer have control/predictability over the number of people in the LL. So now you have the people who were inadvertently effected due to the ride closure, but you are purposely effecting all the people who purchased LL spots later in the day, as you are going to be increasing their wait times after their purchase.
Did I pay to use the stall at a specific time and find it to be out of service ?
DisneyCane
Well-Known Member
It's a bit disheartening to read so few posts about how to not pay for a formerly free service and so many posts on strategies to use once it is purchased. I guess Disney research really does know their customer.
This board and social media would explode if Disney raised the admission price 33% but that is exactly what happens if you buy Genie+ and two ILL per day. Even more for longer stays.
This board and social media would explode if Disney raised the admission price 33% but that is exactly what happens if you buy Genie+ and two ILL per day. Even more for longer stays.
LovePop
Well-Known Member
RotR needs to go up to at least $100 by Christmas. $45 sounds right for moderate times of the year like right now.
pdude81
Well-Known Member
You did pay for services at the park in a specific window (park hours), and in that window and location they were unavailable to you. The question I'm really asking there is whether the walk to resolve your issue is worthy of compensation. Personally I think not.
mikejs78
Premium Member
TouringPlans.com.
Virtual Toad
Well-Known Member
$180 to $400 for a family of four to skip the line on a single ride. On top of admission? Even WDW in its heyday wasn’t worth that.
Please tell me you’re joking. Either way, I swear we are living in a very, very strange time.
I'm confused here. LL selections give you the next available time. How are you going to get a 3:30pm return time when booking at 7am?
Slinky Dog has been offering very late return times right at 7am. Today it was doing something like 5pm at 7:05am.
I think they have to thread the needle carefully. If people start seeing big backups as we saw often with FP+ and was the case with LL at SDD for part of yesterday and HM last night, it will keep people from buying the product the next day.
Tom Morrow
Well-Known Member
Just thought I'd pop in to say:
Any person who has ever worked a popular Fastpass attraction (and cares enough about their job to pay attention), especially those who saw the difference pre and post-covid, will tell you that yes, Fastpass absolutely, unquestionably artificially inflates the standby lines to higher than what they would be otherwise. Maybe not three times more, but they do.
Any poster who disagrees is armchair speculating and has not seen the difference from an operations standpoint in person and is flat out wrong.
Do not quote me with TouringPlans data. TouringPlans is a marketing tool from Disney to help spread out crowd flow and they use Disney's officially released posted/actual wait time data. The posted wait times have always been higher than actual, and ever since the elimination of Fastpass, they have been overposting them even more drastically so people didn't catch on to the difference so easily. It is in Disney's best interest, now more than ever, to maintain the illusion that Fastpass does not increase standby wait times. Thus, the official data they release is going to be skewed to enforce that.
Any person who has ever worked a popular Fastpass attraction (and cares enough about their job to pay attention), especially those who saw the difference pre and post-covid, will tell you that yes, Fastpass absolutely, unquestionably artificially inflates the standby lines to higher than what they would be otherwise. Maybe not three times more, but they do.
Any poster who disagrees is armchair speculating and has not seen the difference from an operations standpoint in person and is flat out wrong.
Do not quote me with TouringPlans data. TouringPlans is a marketing tool from Disney to help spread out crowd flow and they use Disney's officially released posted/actual wait time data. The posted wait times have always been higher than actual, and ever since the elimination of Fastpass, they have been overposting them even more drastically so people didn't catch on to the difference so easily. It is in Disney's best interest, now more than ever, to maintain the illusion that Fastpass does not increase standby wait times. Thus, the official data they release is going to be skewed to enforce that.
Last edited:
Buried20KLeague
Well-Known Member
I think it depends on the LL inventory on any given day.
If the percentage of throughput on Rise (for example) that is allocated to paying LL guests is low... No big deal.
If Disney gets greedy and makes a significant amount of that throughput paid LL... Then yes, that's a problem.
So knowing Disney... You're probably right.
What I described is what happened with FP in previous forms, and it still worked out ok. Guests really had no way of knowing how many people in a FP line were at their scheduled time vs. going later because the ride was down earlier in the day. The only people that really had a sense they were getting screwed were the standby folks.
And I ASSUME less people will be using this system than FP, simply because there's a cost to it.