ToTBellHop
Well-Known Member
People complained at Guest Services over the 240 min waits, too.
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DLR continues to operate with less than half the number of pre-pandemic staff
- Thread starter Tamandua
- Start date
el_super
Well-Known Member
It technically is still first come, first served.
Sometimes people would wait in line for hours... only to have the ride break down for the rest of the day. Then they would have to stand in line at City Hall for hours to get comp tickets. Ah the good old days...
Still not at bad as getting to the park over an hour before opening to get through parking, security, front gate just to have the app glitch and deny you access to the one ride you care about. The audible groans of frustration day after day should have been enough to make them change the policy. I think the reason they started splitting the distribution into two times and allowing people to do it from outside the park is to mask the frustration. It's not like they increased the capacity through that policy change.
shambolicdefending
Well-Known Member
I understand the point you're making. I really do. But, understand that a lot of us former or non-locals are absolutely thrilled with the idea that Disneyland might have fewer "I only came here to ride one ride today!" types.
If the result of the boarding group system (to which there is no great alternative) is more tantruming by entitled "legacy" APs, not only will some of us not care. .. we may even enjoy the subsequent Twitter meltdowns.
My whole point is that the Boarding Group system gives an advantage to the people who have gone often and know the system... Because they've gone before and failed and now they know exactly what to push and when. But if you aren't a regular visitor and you pay a fortune to visit the resort once every few years, and you don't know that if you don't push all the right buttons within a second of the clock turning over, then you won't get to ride the latest and greatest rides.
I don't know why APs or former APs matter. It's not like the lack of APs has fixed this problem. Boarding Groups still sell out in seconds. You still get meltdowns on social media, though now they're more like "We spent $1500 on a Disneyland vacation and couldn't even get on Web Slingers or Rise of the Resistance." A friend of mine told me the other day that someone he watches on YouTube that isn't a theme parks vlogger made that exact complaint when going to Disneyland for his anniversary. They spent a ton of money to go to the parks as a special occasion and they didn't understand how the BG system works, so they weren't allowed to go on the two rides they wanted to go on the most. The result was a "Disneyland basically stole $1500 from us" rant.
el_super
Well-Known Member
I don't think this is the problem you are making it out to be. If I spent $1500 on a day at Disneyland, I wouldn't want to spend 5 hours in line for one ride. Sure it might sting to miss out on a Ride boarding pass, but after the initial shock wears off, you're still in Disneyland and have ALL THE OTHER rides and attractions to visit.
shambolicdefending
Well-Known Member
You're not wrong. I'd only add that I've made an identical point about several other things in the past. It's really true of just about everything and every system Disney could use. Frequent visitors will know the shortcuts and loopholes. Everybody else has to get lucky. It's just the way it is.
Boarding groups aren't perfect. There are plenty of reasons to complain about them. But, bring another system in and you're probably not going to make it any better, overall. You'll just switch out one set of complaints for another. There's no way around it as long as demand exceeds supply.
CaptinEO
Well-Known Member
They just have to let people wait who are willing to wait.
I went plenty of times to Disneyland when a new ride was open and we were 100% OK with not going on it that trip because the wait time was not worth it for us.
To all the people who wanted to wait 4 hours for nemo the first year it opened, I hope they enjoyed it.
Even though no one likes long waits, it's the most fair approach. It gives people the opportunity to decide if the wait is worth it to them, instead of finding out after they've paid for their ticket/hotel/etc that they won't be getting what they thought they were paying for. It is also beneficial to the people that don't care about the ride, as the other attractions see less demand the more people that wait in the standby queue for the newest attraction.
If Disney could guarantee a Boarding Group when booking tickets then it might be another story, or even if they could tell people that they can not experience the new attraction as all Boarding Groups are booked when they book their tickets... But having the customer pay for the experience only to find out the day of that they can't ride it is not a fair situation.
shambolicdefending
Well-Known Member
I understand that's the preference for a lot of people. But, again, from Disney's perspective, it's just trading one set of complaints for another.
"I spent $1,500 and didn't even get to go on the two rides we went for!"
vs.
"I spent $1,500 and had to waste 10 hours in line, just to go on the two rides we went for!"
You may say the former is worse. Others will say the latter.
CaptinEO
Well-Known Member
I'd say the former is way worse. You are denying the most passionate/determined people the ability to do what they want and instead leave it up to chance for everyone.
I should be able to buy a ticket and wait all day for the new Web Slingerz opening week if I want to.
No one has to waste 10 hours in line, but I'd guarantee you that people would at least like the option to wait in line and not have it be a lottery only event.
milordsloth
Well-Known Member
I would way rather deal with a little boarding group stress than have to waste half a day in line for a ride. For me, it gave me a chance to ride something I would otherwise skip due to the line. Ideally they would just go to maxpass or something and have the standby line also, but if I had to choose between standby only or boarding groups, I vote boarding groups.
el_super
Well-Known Member
No they don't.
Not really. There are a LOT of reasons why someone can't physically stand in a line for 3 to 4 hours. If you know about Flight of Passage's opening, you can probably guess 1 or 2 of them.
Nothing is guaranteed though. You can end up waiting 4 or 5 hours and STILL not get to ride due to breakdowns. In this scenario you have the worse of both scenarios: you've committed time AND still walk away empty handed. At least with the boarding groups you will know right away whether you can ride or not, without wasting hours of your life.
This isn't new in any way shape or form. Lot's of people paid money to go to Disneyland to ride Indiana Jones when it opened, but just like any other attraction, the capacity is about 1/3 of what the whole park can hold. Sure people were disappointed they couldn't wait 5 hours for the ride, but they did other things and went about their day. The lack of capacity isn't a new problem at all.
What Disney has solved for though, is eliminating all the downsides to keeping people locked up in one place for a long time: physical queue space, heating/cooling, custodial cleanups, bathroom breaks, vandalism, line cutting, medical exceptions, backdoor grift ... Keeping 5,000 people locked up is harder than it seems and Disney wants no part in it.
shambolicdefending
Well-Known Member
Same. And I'm one of those out-of-staters who'd be spending an arm and a leg to be there.
I'll take my chances with the boarding groups every time, over a guaranteed line of unmanageable length.
MoonRakerSCM
Well-Known Member
Serious question, what do you do if you have NO cell phone? I know two people who do not have one, and while they'd never be caught dead near a Disney facility, what if they did go?
I don't know if they still do this, but when Rise opened they had a place where you could go to get a boarding pass manually, but it was pointless because the passes would be sold out before the first person could get one. Basically, you're SOL without a smart phone.
milordsloth
Well-Known Member
With fastpasses it was still fairly easy to ride RSR with a short wait while keeping the option to just wait standby if you wanted. I really hope maxpass comes back either the same or similar to how it was. I don't see why webslingers or ROTR can't do the same thing with fastpasses.
shambolicdefending
Well-Known Member
With ROTR, it's transparently a case of poor reliability and capacity. The standby demand for that line would be high enough that they could not keep an open queue and still clear it out at the end of every day. If they tried, some people would literally stand in line for hours on end and still not get to ride.
I would assume that peak Avengers demand is more temporary, and they'll be in a position to open it up to standby at some point in the near future.