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Horizons....
- Thread starter Tomi-Rocket
- Start date
kaos
Active Member
and if you just eliminate any other adjectives to the attractions (mission space v. horizons), Horizons wins again! So there ya go- horizons CLEARLY must be better- the "internets" says so...
wbc
New Member
Incorrect. It very much does. It shows how long people are "willing to wait" (demand) for an attraction. Most people would wait much longer for a good attraction then a bad attraction. One could say that the popularity of an attraction is based on the maximum number of minutes you would wait. Personally, I would wait no more than 15 minutes to ride JII. However, I would wait up to an hour to ride Space Mountain. Thus, Space Mountain is a better attraction IMO.
Now, that's just on a personal level. When you combine everyone's personal wait times, you get aggregate wait times. We'll call this aggregate willingness to wait. This is why you see attractions like Space Mountain, Test Track, Soarin' etc having wait times of up to two hours. When is the last time Country Bears had a wait time of two hours. Thus, we can now say that wait times are indeed a measure of the popularity of an attraction.
Ride capacity has nothing to do with it. That would be on the other side of things. Ride capacity is the supply side, not the demand side.
Perhaps tonight I will draft up some simple graphs and explain the theory behind Theme Park Economics. It's simple supply and demand.
kaos
Active Member
Incorrect. It very much does. It shows how long people are "willing to wait" (demand) for an attraction. Most people would wait much longer for a good attraction then a bad attraction. One could say that the popularity of an attraction is based on the maximum number of minutes you would wait. Personally, I would wait no more than 15 minutes to ride JII. However, I would wait up to an hour to ride Space Mountain. Thus, Space Mountain is a better attraction IMO.
Now, that's just on a personal level. When you combine everyone's personal wait times, you get aggregate wait times. We'll call this aggregate willingness to wait. This is why you see attractions like Space Mountain, Test Track, Soarin' etc having wait times of up to two hours. When is the last time Country Bears had a wait time of two hours. Thus, we can now say that wait times are indeed a measure of the popularity of an attraction.
Ride capacity has nothing to do with it. That would be on the other side of things. Ride capacity is the supply side, not the demand side.
Perhaps tonight I will draft up some simple graphs and explain the theory behind Theme Park Economics. It's simple supply and demand.
While I agree with your theory, you're forgetting the "X,Y,Z" factors. If all things are equal, then the equation is an accurate assessment. However, since there have been wait times of 5 minutes for M:S, and 5 minutes for Horizons at times, and 120 minutes for M:S, and 120 minutes for Horizons, then it is more advanced. Perhaps string theory would need to be applied here to gauge an accurate wait time. And before you ask, yes, I have waited 2 hours for County Bears (not sure why). And I would agree, 2 hours for Country Bears is absurd- but the wait for Country Bear was so high at one point that the three buildings directly to the left of the theater were the original queue for the show. In fact, when they added CBJ to DL, 2 identical theaters were built, and CBJ still carried wait times of 60 minutes or more... Again, you need to look at wait times when all variables are even to really gauge, and that is why it cannot be an accurate assessment of popularity. There have been wait times of 2 hours to ride the PeopleMover at times also... And can someone tell me why Peter Pan has a 2 hour wait time for a 2 and a half minute ride???
Oh, and GoogleFight must be randomized, because for S&G I did it again, and then Mission:Space won... so it would appear that the internets is against me!
kaos
Active Member
Martin's post is correct. The sinkhole that doomed the Horizons show building was on the other side of the service road. However, the area where the water table shifted was under the show building. The show building was not in danger, but to backfill the sinkhole on the other side of the service road, the removal of the show building was required. The show building caused the shift in the water table, which led to the soft sand creep, which caused a very small 2 foot sinkhole. If there had been no need to repair and support that sinkhole, the show building most likely would have been saved, or portions of it would have been saved, so TDC would be able to call the construction a "re-model" as oppsed to new construction at a significant tax savings.
You were completely right. (And I don't say that very often, ask my DH, lol!)
You're claiming Horizons was demolished because the company was worried about a 2 foot sinkhole backstage (on the opposite side of the service road)?
CDavid
Well-Known Member
Wait times have nothing to do with how popular (defined as the number of people) a given attraction may be. So long as every seat has a warm body in it, the ride will carry the same number of guests per hour no matter whether it is a walk-on or two-hour wait. The Peoplemover (TTA) is typically a walk-on or something close to it, but that doesn't mean it isn't 'popular', nor can we make such a conclusion based in Horizons queue times. The place may have looked absolutely deserted, but that would have given you no idea how many people were onboard.
I've always tried to approach this from other than a fanbois perspective. I want to be taken seriously, of course, and I also realize than my personal opinion doesn't matter (though the fact that so many people feel so strongly about Horizons, should be a consideration). More importantly, however, I think I can articulate an objective argument why removal of the attraction was a mistake. It literally didn't have to go. Plenty of other places in Epcot where you could put a new "thrill ride" attraction. Disney didn't have to remove Horizons any more than they had to get rid of figment or the Lights of Winter. They chose the cheap, lazy, unimaginative route to deal with each. They were wrong.
The need to appeal to a wider range of guests is important, but wouldn't you want to broaden your park's appeal without alienating your existing customer base? Horizons and Mission: Space, or World of Motion and Test Track, don't exactly appeal to the same demographic.
LorangeJuice
Active Member
kaos
Active Member
M:S was the first attraction designed for FP queue's, if I'm not mistaken...
LorangeJuice
Active Member
Google only existed for 18% of the period in which Horizons was operational. By then, most people already knew what Horizons was, and most people didn't even know what Google was. Google has not only existed during the entirety of M:S's run, but it was immensely popular by then and became a verb. Since this was a new attraction, people wanted to check it out on Google while trip planning or just for plain curiosity.
A few years back, a small child died on M:S, creating a lot of media coverage and controversy. That probably pumped up the searches a bit. M:S was also parodied when the barf bags were introduced. I remember a lot of people on here thinking it was a joke. Probably got some more Google searches going.
I know a lot of posters came here asking questions about the green and orange versions of the ride once those were introduced. It was basically like introducing another ride. A lot were confused by the color coding and probably conducted Google searches as well.
We'll never know which attraction was more popular. Too subjective. That's precisely how these threads always blow up til this very day, and will likely continue to for a while. :animwink:
jakeman
Well-Known Member
/sigh
Only in a Horizon thread would facts be called trolling.
I really don't want to get into this about an attraction that has been closed longer than my sixth grade son has been alive.
If Horizons was truly as popular as the small fan base that is still mourning it's loss would lead you to believe then it would still be here.
And with that, I'm not posting in this thread again.
wbc
New Member
There's no Z in supply/demand curves
My point is not "what it has been" it's what people will wait. Kind of like how much you are willing to pay for something. Look at gasoline... it's been anywhere from 10 cents a gallon to nearly $5 a gallon. The point is that people are still willing to pay $5 a gallon for gas. So we know their willingness to pay is equal or greater then that.
If someone stands in line for an hour to see Peter Pan's flight, that means that they want to go on the ride so much that they will wait an hour. However, say the time clock says an hour and a half and they think "not worth it". THat's what I mean by "willingness to wait" everyone has a breaking point.
There are externalities that could be involved. For example I would wait in line for hours on a fully enclosed queue like Pirates of Carribean during a rainstorm when I normally wouldn't. However, those should be ignored because that is not rational 99% of the time.
Also, this is not based on historical trends. This is current. That's where I think people are misunderstanding me. I'm not trying to claim that Mission:Space is more popular in general, but I'm trying to say that if they were both there at the same time Mission:Space would be more popular.
Imagine this. If Mission:Space took the place of Universe of Energy and you have Test Track, Horizons, and Mission:Space someone can't honestly be serious to think that Horizons would be more popular than Mission:Space for your average park guest. I think that's the point I'm trying to make this whole time. However, it's something that can't ever be proven since Horizons is gone.
LorangeJuice
Active Member
Wait, I just looked at the link again. Is this based on the number of Google searches or results, because that sounds even worse to me if it is results-based.
As per my post above, the internet was around for about the same percentage of time that Horizons was operational.
For the reasons stated above, M:S made the news waaaaay more that Horizons did. You won't find a dozen press reports on the opening of Horizons.
LorangeJuice
Active Member
Ok. It looks like it's based on the number of people searching then? I just Googled "Mission Space Epcot" and "Horizons Epcot." Here's what I got:
Mission Space Epcot: About 349,000 results
Horizons Epcot: About 338,000 results <---------
How's THAT for an attraction that operated over 80% of the time before the internet, was razed to the ground 11 years ago, and hardly EVER made the news?!??!
Just kidding...although I was still SHOCKED to see that, you would have to compare the types of results found to see if they are even relevant to the search terms, and yadda yadda - you could write a whole dissertation on it.
I have a feeling that the number of results are so even is because of...wait fot it...THESE THREADS lolololololol!!! :ROFLOL::ROFLOL::ROFLOL:
That is still AWESOME though that the two terms have a very similar number of results. You HAVE to admit that! :animwink:
wbc
New Member
I was reading your reply and was thinking the exact same thing.
Horizons camp is small in numbers but extremely vocal.
CDavid
Well-Known Member
How do you know how many people are in the "Horizons camp"?
Just like with Walt Disney World vacationers in general, most people who might profess a fondness for Horizons (or even just a general preference for dark rides over thrills) have never heard of WDWmagic. Even if the "members" are unusually vocal (and what's the basis for that statement?), the attention Horizons gets would appear to orginate from more than just a small group.