Frozen Ever After opening day

[flynnibus]

Of course, lengthening the flume and adding even more scenes to increase capacity would have helped, but no.

Lengthing a ride does not increase capacity... Just how many people are on at once.

Min spacing is the constraint and being able to load and dispatch in that interval

 

[marni1971]

Of course, lengthening the flume and adding even more scenes to increase capacity would have helped, but no.

Lengthing a ride does not increase capacity... Just how many people are on at once.

Min spacing is the constraint and being able to load and dispatch in that interval

Another reason why this is the wrong location. You can add all you want (they didn't) but the legacy ride system is constrained by the blocking from top of the switch down to the old North Sea.

 

[Kylo Ken]

Amazed how many frozen breakdown videos there are on youtube. I guess it is happening quite frequently.

this one is pretty cool



I guess they were too focused on getting people off the ride to stop them from recording

This video was awesome. I LOVE seeing the behind the scenes "magic," like a Norwegian cast member pushing a shopping cart full of stuff

 

[ThemeParkJunkee]

FEA is certainly not the only Disney attraction that has had lengthy closures after opening. I went to DL/CA for one day 10 weeks after it opened. When the RD crowd flooded in to RSR, we were met with covered FP machines and CMs giving out stickers. It was down from open until close. I had one day. We ran into some APer's who paid for a one day admission to ride this one ride because it was a blackout day. Not happy campers. I enjoyed myself anyway and have yet to experience RSR. I understand the disappointment.

 

[Donaldfan1934]

Been on it for sure 10 times and nothing for me so far. Not saying that it doesn't happen, Splash Mountain has had a couple of broken animations broken last time I rode it, not to mention pooh , but it is just not as frequently as some people think it is. All rides have issues, but they usually address them quickly unlike they have for AK's attractions.

Agreed. Pooh's definitely has issues with breaking down so that should get a refurb soon. Splash Mountain still has animatronic problems here and there, but the big 2013 refurb did wonders for it overall. You're also right about AK having the worst all around maintenance. Although the upcoming Dinosaur refurb does look more a bit more involved than most recent ones.

 

[Rich T]

The breakdowns made Yahoo News today...

 

[JediMasterMatt]

I know the solution to the problem! In about 10 years they should just add another track! Problem solved

They can use the lessons learned from NFL and have dueling Frostrom's. All they need is Norway to "annex" it's friendly neighbor in Mexico and problem solved and say hello to the new Grand Frozen Tour *now featuring slightly less Fiestas.

Coming soon to World Showcase - WWIII as nations begin invading each other.

 

[Matt_Black]

The breakdowns made Yahoo News today...

That's unbelievable!


... People still go to Yahoo News?!?

 

[Rich T]

That's unbelievable!


... People still go to Yahoo News?!?

LOL. Popped up at the top of a "Disney" google news search. Otherwise... no....

 

[180º]

Lengthing a ride does not increase capacity... Just how many people are on at once.

I agree with you, and I absolutely do think FEA is in need of a higher hourly rider count. I'm just going to go off on a tangent about capacity based on your statement. Hourly rider count is the only thing that determines the speed of the attraction's wait, and that's what Frozen desperately needs.

But broadly speaking, THRC alone does not a high-capacity attraction make. Though you usually see a correlation, there are exceptions. The amount of people an attraction can hold at any given time is a virtue of capacity that I think is under-appreciated. For an extreme example, if FEA were a fifteen second long ride dispatching boats at fifteen second intervals and running two boats at a time, you'd double the theoretical hourly rider count but also cut the amount of guests it can hold to about a fifth.

Now for a real-world example. Kilimanjaro Safaris is a high capacity attraction with a modest hourly rider count. With a theoretical 1400 riders per hour, it's not one of the fastest loading attractions. However, the ride is 22 minutes long, and therefore can hold nearly 520 guests at any given time. Compare this to POTC at the Magic Kingdom which has a THRC of 3200 but with an 8:30 duration holds 450 guests at any given time in the best conditions. Kilimanjaro Safaris, while loading not even half as fast as POTC, holds more guests. However many guests are not riding one attraction at a given time are guests that are not otherwise taking up space in the paths or in line for an attraction. High THRC is good for the ride, but high overall capacity of a ride is good for the park. There's more to capacity than THRC.

End tangent. But as I said, yes, Frozen Ever After only desperately needs higher THRC to cut down that massive wait.

 

[aladdin2007]

anyone there today know if the new exhibit opened in the stave church?

 

[aladdin2007]

Another reason why this is the wrong location. You can add all you want (they didn't) but the legacy ride system is constrained by the blocking from top of the switch down to the old North Sea.

Im not a mechanics person or anything but truly what will it take to fix it or can they at this point? I mean whats done is done right

 

[flynnibus]

I still think this attraction will settle down to Peter Pan levels once the initial rush dies down after the first 9m-12m

It will pull 60-90min waits on the high side and probably never really drop under 30-45 on average days. Of course the 10of10 days it will probably go 120-150... Just like the other headliners

 

[marni1971]

Im not a mechanics person or anything but truly what will it take to fix it or can they at this point? I mean whats done is done right

Capacity wise? Nothing.

Can't get a round peg in a square hole.

 

[rushtest4echo]

What kind of fool concludes that "(they didn't)" when they obviously heavily modified the ride's blocking system. You're smarter than that. It's not like they just plugged everything in from Maelstrom and left it as is when the ride no runs two more vehicles and has a combined load/unload. The ride control system was modified to carry more boats along the course, to combine the load/unload portions, to change the timing for the block zones during the backwards portion and to modify the last show scene's block zones in order to accommodate more boats before a cascade is triggered.

The capacity is low, but it's not abysmal. 1000 an hour is WAY beyond the majority of rides in every Fantasyland across the globe including all of the "classics" that people are comparing this attraction to. Of course I'd love to see it closer to 1500 an hour, but I'm also glad it's not closer 500 an hour or below like Pan, Pooh, Snow White, Pinocchio and Alice.

For anyone upset over the length of the queue- it's a complete fallacy to equate hourly throughput with queue time. A big new ride, regardless of it's capacity, is going to dictate a 4+ hour queue on opening day and a 2+ hour queue for at least several months. The only exceptions are the capacity monsters like canal rides and omnimovers.

Think about it this way: right now Frozen can do around 1,000 an hour X 12 hours, so 12,000 riders per day under optimal conditions. Epcot averages around 30,000 visitors a day. They could double the throughput of the ride tomorrow and there are still going to be LOTS of people that don't have the opportunity to ride. Of course, it would mean more people being able to ride and I'm totally in favor of that. But to assume that the queue time would NOT be 2-3 hours right now is just ignorant. It's the reason that Soarin can now tear through 50% more people per hour yet the queue time is currently sports a 225 minute wait according to the app. If you do the math (which I'd done extensively, I'm a sucker for theme park analytics regarding capacity), there only only a few attractions across all of Disney/Universal that can accommodate the daily attendance. For the Magic Kingdom parks, the number of attractions (beyond the train and HKDL's Small World) is ZERO. The vast majority can't even do half of the daily attendance.

Go throughout the Disney/Universal chain and look at capacities vs queue lengths- there's really no correlation. Unviersal's Studio Tour in Hollywood is the highest capacity "attraction" besides transport at any park across the globe and it commonly garners 2-3 hour waits. 99% of the public is completely oblivious to hourly throughput anyway, which is why Universal can get away with running Forbidden Journey, Mummy, Spiderman, and Transformers at half capacity for a large part of the day with 60+ minute waits and nobody bats an eye. Same reason places like Six Flags can have 120 minute waits on rides that have a theoretical capacity of 1800 an hour yet commonly average below 800.

I'm not making excuses, Disney clearly should be the industry leader when it comes to capacity- but pretending that Frozen is some disaster with regards to capacity is just silly. The downtime (which will be sorted out) is the main contributor for the lack of daily throughoutput right now. But as stated, doubling the ride's capacity would not shorten the queue time by a single minute. People will line up for 135 or 180 minutes for a new ride whether the ride does 500 an hour or 1500 an hour. More people will see the ride, but the queue time will remain the same- there will just be MANY MANY more people in the physical queue when it's a higher capacity ride.

 

[flynnibus]

Im not a mechanics person or anything but truly what will it take to fix it or can they at this point? I mean whats done is done right

It would take a redesign of the majority of the flume. Taking out the two pivot points and backwards section and replacing it with turns to stay forward facing.

But you'd still have the block sections due to the drops. And those are constraints too.

Basically... It's never going to change at this point.

 

[flynnibus]

What kind of fool concludes that "(they didn't)" when they obviously heavily modified the ride's blocking system. You're smarter than that. It's not like they just plugged everything in from Maelstrom and left it as is when the ride no runs two more vehicles and has a combined load/unload. The ride control system was modified to carry more boats along the course, to combine the load/unload portions, to change the timing for the block zones during the backwards portion and to modify the last show scene's block zones in order to accommodate more boats before a cascade is triggered.

The capacity is low, but it's not abysmal. 1000 an hour is WAY beyond the majority of rides in every Fantasyland across the globe including all of the "classics" that people are comparing this attraction to. Of course I'd love to see it closer to 1500 an hour, but I'm also glad it's not closer 500 an hour or below like Pan, Pooh, Snow White, Pinocchio and Alice.

For anyone upset over the length of the queue- it's a complete fallacy to equate hourly throughput with queue time. A big new ride, regardless of it's capacity, is going to dictate a 4+ hour queue on opening day and a 2+ hour queue for at least several months. The only exceptions are the capacity monsters like canal rides and omnimovers.

Think about it this way: right now Frozen can do around 1,000 an hour X 12 hours, so 12,000 riders per day under optimal conditions. Epcot averages around 30,000 visitors a day. They could double the throughput of the ride tomorrow and there are still going to be LOTS of people that don't have the opportunity to ride. Of course, it would mean more people being able to ride and I'm totally in favor of that. But to assume that the queue time would NOT be 2-3 hours right now is just ignorant. It's the reason that Soarin can now tear through 50% more people per hour yet the queue time is currently sports a 225 minute wait according to the app. If you do the math (which I'd done extensively, I'm a sucker for theme park analytics regarding capacity), there only only a few attractions across all of Disney/Universal that can accommodate the daily attendance. For the Magic Kingdom parks, the number of attractions (beyond the train and HKDL's Small World) is ZERO. The vast majority can't even do half of the daily attendance.

Go throughout the Disney/Universal chain and look at capacities vs queue lengths- there's really no correlation. Unviersal's Studio Tour in Hollywood is the highest capacity "attraction" besides transport at any park across the globe and it commonly garners 2-3 hour waits. 99% of the public is completely oblivious to hourly throughput anyway, which is why Universal can get away with running Forbidden Journey, Mummy, Spiderman, and Transformers at half capacity for a large part of the day with 60+ minute waits and nobody bats an eye. Same reason places like Six Flags can have 120 minute waits on rides that have a theoretical capacity of 1800 an hour yet commonly average below 800.

I'm not making excuses, Disney clearly should be the industry leader when it comes to capacity- but pretending that Frozen is some disaster with regards to capacity is just silly. The downtime (which will be sorted out) is the main contributor for the lack of daily throughoutput right now. But as stated, doubling the ride's capacity would not shorten the queue time by a single minute. People will line up for 135 or 180 minutes for a new ride whether the ride does 500 an hour or 1500 an hour. More people will see the ride, but the queue time will remain the same- there will just be MANY MANY more people in the physical queue when it's a higher capacity ride.

Kudos!

As you say, it's the tolerance to wait that will make the line huge... Regardless of throughput

 

[aladdin2007]

It would take a redesign of the majority of the flume. Taking out the two pivot points and backwards section and replacing it with turns to stay forward facing.

But you'd still have the block sections due to the drops. And those are constraints too.

Basically... It's never going to change at this point.

so its just simply going to be down for large chunks every day for the foreseeable future, will be lucky to ever get on it.

 

[Brian Swan]

After reading a lot of the responses here in regards to overall satisfaction and location, there are a lot of things to consider. Initially I said this ride "exceeded my expectations," simply because there are AA figures and not just screens. Honestly I thought the ride would be mostly screens of the characters seeing as how gran fiesta is next door and Nemo. So seeing the AAs pleasently surprised me and exceeded my previous expectations. Also I didn't know they were adding more ride space, I thought the original maelstrom layout would be the new layout. I couldn't help but think how upset people would be after standing in line for so long for such a short ride, but with the small addition they made to the layout, I think people will be ok length wise. When you think about it, people line up for hours for some of the most popular roller coasters in other parks. Coaster that are 30 seconds, 1 minute, maybe 2 minutes top. Of course people generally expect a roller coaster to be shorter than a dark ride, but if people willingly wait that long for them, can't blame them for waiting for a dark ride, not to mention a FROZEN dark ride.

With all of that mentioned and out of the way, the obvious two things that have been discussed in this thread before have to mentioned again. It doesn't fit in Epcot, and the fact that it was shoehorned in to a location that has horrible capacity is a huge problem. Epcot needed something to bring more people to that area of the park, but it needed something that would bring more people to that area of the park to check the new ride out as well as riding and seeing other things. Isn't gran fiesta still just a 5 minute wait? People aren't going over there and doing anything else but Frozen. And it looks as if when the line is too long they would just venture back to future world. If they had updated maelstrom enough to spike it's popularity to a manageable 30 or 45 minute wait, maybe other areas would see some foot traffic too. But people are going back there just for Frozen, which makes sense because it's so popular. But I doubt they would stay in WS after waiting 5 or more hours for one ride. They're gonna want to do the popular future world attractions.

Another big problem with the location other then what was talked about above, is the fact that the blueprint for maelstrom was something they couldn't get away from. The short backwards portion made more sense in maelstrom, but makes no sense in Frozen. It was mostly empty with little to look at(except the polar bear) but it didn't really need a lot to look at. With frozen the first part works, seeing Elsa in her castle singing and flinging her hands works, but the backwards portion is too barren with not enough to look at. It's not much they could have done in this space, but overall this part cheapens the entire attraction.

If it were possible for them to have kept maelstrom and placed this ride either way in the back of Norway, or have built an entire new subland in fantasyland, it would have worked much better. The MK doesn't really need a popular attraction like frozen as it's attendance is always through the roof, so I understand their reason for sticking it in Epcot. But if Dumbo could have stayed where it was before new fantasyland and they built an entire Arendale land that totally immersed you like cars land and with a ride that could handle the capacity and 300 minute waits without being too noticeable elsewhere, then we would have a much better solution.

So in all I understand people's gripe when it comes to location. It's not so much that it's in Epcot, but more so because it was built in a space that not only couldn't properly handle the crowds, but also couldn't be as good as it should. The backwards portion couldn't be erased and it's the worse part of the new ride. So like another poster said, it's whats right and whats wrong with current Disney.

Next time I have a dead horse that needs beating, I'll give you a call...

 

[rushtest4echo]

Why are people assuming that additional block systems would not be feasible between the switch tracks? A simple gate/friction pad system would be able to accomplish that feat- and would only need to be active in case of a ride stop. It's not rocket science. Reprogram a few logic controllers and add the block (as was done with the ride-redo anyway). Because this is SUCH an easy modification, I must conclude that WDI and Operations were comfortable with the throughput with the ride system as it is. Again, doubling intervals isn't going to shorten the queue by one second- it will just mean that twice as many people will be standing in the queue for that 135 minute wait.