Rumor Is Indiana Jones Planning an Adventure to Disney's Animal Kingdom?

[EricsBiscuit]

The Imagineers believe that they shouldn't have to design a church for Easter Sunday according to MS's book dream It Do It. I find this mentality completely wrong because they should be designing attractions that give more people the opportunity to experience them. Sitting in what is basically a barge during PotCBFTST at SDL had 0 influence on my opinion of that attraction. They want a more intimate experience? Fine but it shouldn't be at the expense of a 2 hour line for a C ticket.

“Gary Wilson, making the ultimate statement about meeting capacity demands when designing attractions and facilities for Disney parks and resorts: “You can’t build a church for Easter Sunday!” (11/20/86)”

Excerpt From: Sklar, Martin. “Dream It! Do It!.” Disney Editions. iBooks.
This material may be protected by copyright.

 

[Pixieish]

The Imagineers believe that they shouldn't have to design a church for Easter Sunday according to MS's book dream It Do It. I find this mentality completely wrong because they should be designing attractions that give more people the opportunity to experience them. Sitting in what is basically a barge during PotCBFTST at SDL had 0 influence on my opinion of that attraction. They want a more intimate experience? Fine but it shouldn't be at the expense of a 2 hour line for a C ticket.

“Gary Wilson, making the ultimate statement about meeting capacity demands when designing attractions and facilities for Disney parks and resorts: “You can’t build a church for Easter Sunday!” (11/20/86)”

Excerpt From: Sklar, Martin. “Dream It! Do It!.” Disney Editions. iBooks.
This material may be protected by copyright.

That's extremely short-sighted and if guest satisfaction gets bad enough, they'll be kicking themselves in the teeth for it.

 

[EricsBiscuit]

That's extremely short-sighted and if guest satisfaction gets bad enough, they'll be kicking themselves in the teeth for it.

It also doesn't account for if every single day is Easter Sunday

 

[Pixieish]

It also doesn't account for if every single day is Easter Sunday

EXACTLY.

 

[lazyboy97o]

The Imagineers believe that they shouldn't have to design a church for Easter Sunday according to MS's book dream It Do It. I find this mentality completely wrong because they should be designing attractions that give more people the opportunity to experience them. Sitting in what is basically a barge during PotCBFTST at SDL had 0 influence on my opinion of that attraction. They want a more intimate experience? Fine but it shouldn't be at the expense of a 2 hour line for a C ticket.

“Gary Wilson, making the ultimate statement about meeting capacity demands when designing attractions and facilities for Disney parks and resorts: “You can’t build a church for Easter Sunday!” (11/20/86)”

Excerpt From: Sklar, Martin. “Dream It! Do It!.” Disney Editions. iBooks.
This material may be protected by copyright.

That's extremely short-sighted and if guest satisfaction gets bad enough, they'll be kicking themselves in the teeth for it.

Nobody in their right mind would peg their Design Day to their Peak Day. The problem is Disney lowering what it considers an acceptable attractions per guest per hour. Out of control costs only compound the problem.

 

[EricsBiscuit]

Nobody in their right mind would peg their Design Day to their Peak Day. The problem is Disney lowering what it considers an acceptable attractions per guest per hour. Out of control costs only compound the problem.

I agree but they should be prepared for their peak days. It's a problem when everything has a long wait time. They don't have to run every attraction at max capacity every day, but they should be able to have a max capacity that is ready for busy days. There is no longer an off season. Crowds are bigger, so capacities should be bigger too.

Edit: As an Eagle Scout, the Boy Scout motto is Be Prepared. And while I'm not fully prepared for everything, I try to be as prepared as possible and Disney should be too in order to ensure a smooth guest experience.

 

[DisneyDodo]

That's extremely short-sighted and if guest satisfaction gets bad enough, they'll be kicking themselves in the teeth for it.

The "Don't design a church for Easter Sunday" philosophy itself is not short-sighted - by its very definition. When a ride first opens, it will see inflated demand, and it wouldn't be reasonable to expect Disney to build attractions to be able to handle those crowds seamlessly.

However, the problem is that the attractions are being built with capacities that can't handle the average crowds. Continuing to add more attractions to the parks would help alleviate those issues somewhat, but when Disney self-labels coming rides as "E-tickets" (i.e. they expect them to be very popular in the long term) and then they design them with such low capacities, they are asking for criticism.

 

[Absimilliard]

The one thing I noticed after riding Nav'i River Journey: it was shoehorned in the building. Looking over at the water management plans filed by Disney, This occupies the lower portion of the waiting line of Flight of Passage, so they were quite limited in space, both vertical and surface wise.

Using the barges from Pirates of the Caribbean in SDL would have been nice, but there was no space here for that. Compare the size of the show building in SDL versus the one at WDW: you'd have to use the whole show building and replace Flight of Passage in order to use the SDL Barges. Now, say you build the other way and expand the Nav'i River Journey show building toward the main entrance, you'd occupy the expansion pad of the land and completely box yourself in with no ways to expand. Its an interesting question to say the least and Disney went with the option of keeping that land open.

The vertical clearance aspect is important here for one reason: you can't use wheelchair accessible boats on this ride. You'd need to remove most of the hanging scenery as someone using a wheelchair on the ride would be able to reach and touch the various elements. They decided to use a variant of SDL Pirates ride system here where the water is just for show. Instead, they mounted magnetic motors under the water that work in a similar way to the Peoplemover to propel the boats along the way. Due to all the technical things under the boats, you'd have to raise the floor to fit a wheelchair lift and that is impossible. Due to the tight layout, the boats had to be quite short, so you can't fit a wheelchair ramp and can only put in two rows of 4 riders per boat. They load two at once, so figure it is 16 riders per cycle. It is much less than Pirates and Small World, but still more than Winnie the Pooh at the Magic Kingdom.

The scale of the ride I think was meant for it to be a "utility dark ride" similar in scale to a Mr. Toad, Snow White Adventure, etc. Unfortunately, the hype train in a ride starved park give the ride insane waits that it can't manage due to its size.

 

[Timothy_Q]

@Absimilliard

There’s plenty of room to the back of NRJ (red) that could have been used for making the ride longer, without using the expansion pad of Pandora (blue)

 

[EricsBiscuit]

I'm not saying use the barge from SDL. All I'm saying is to have a larger capacity for attractions.

 

[CalebS]

I'm not saying use the barge from SDL. All I'm saying is to have a larger capacity for attractions.

New stuff might get people in the gates once, but people who aren’t good at the fast pass system and wait in full lines all the time and barely get to do anything per day won’t have a good time and won’t be back

 

[larryz]

It's obvious that to the walt disney company, Persons Per Hour isn't nearly as important as "How many people can we draw into a queue for hours on end."

Perhaps the Accountanteers have redesigned the queue to run through the gift shops and restaurants, 'cause we all know guests will have lots of time to kill before getting to the rides...

 

[larryz]

The Imagineers believe that they shouldn't have to design a church for Easter Sunday according to MS's book dream It Do It. I find this mentality completely wrong because they should be designing attractions that give more people the opportunity to experience them. Sitting in what is basically a barge during PotCBFTST at SDL had 0 influence on my opinion of that attraction. They want a more intimate experience? Fine but it shouldn't be at the expense of a 2 hour line for a C ticket.

“Gary Wilson, making the ultimate statement about meeting capacity demands when designing attractions and facilities for Disney parks and resorts: “You can’t build a church for Easter Sunday!” (11/20/86)”

Excerpt From: Sklar, Martin. “Dream It! Do It!.” Disney Editions. iBooks.
This material may be protected by copyright.

Fair use for critical comment.

 

[Bocabear]

in general the parks are seeing higher numbers than I think they ever have....they all seem to be busy , all year round... the quiet season seems to be non existant... Several years after it's debut, 7 Dwarfs Mine Ride is still packed to capacity...as will be FOP and NRJ... Also Frozen Ever After is still always packed... The idea of building new attractions and not figuring for max crowds is naive... The parks are swamped all the time anymore....

 

[marni1971]

in general the parks are seeing higher numbers than I think they ever have....they all seem to be busy , all year round... the quiet season seems to be non existant... Several years after it's debut, 7 Dwarfs Mine Ride is still packed to capacity...as will be FOP and NRJ... Also Frozen Ever After is still always packed... The idea of building new attractions and not figuring for max crowds is naive... The parks are swamped all the time anymore....

The attractions you mentioned have pretty dire THRC given the need and expectations.

 

[Absimilliard]

@Absimilliard

There’s plenty of room to the back of NRJ (red) that could have been used for making the ride longer, without using the expansion pad of Pandora (blue)

View attachment 248633

This was taken during construction and I'd be curious to see what they use the red square land for now. Maintenance? Cast member access? It could serve a back of the house function and that would be a reason why they did not extend the River Journey south.

For the blue square, I don't see much use for a large expansion there. You still need that road for backstage access to Rainforest Cafe and that would exclude that bus loop and road from being used.

 

[Timothy_Q]

This was taken during construction and I'd be curious to see what they use the red square land for now. Maintenance? Cast member access? It could serve a back of the house function and that would be a reason why they did not extend the River Journey south.

For the blue square, I don't see much use for a large expansion there. You still need that road for backstage access to Rainforest Cafe and that would exclude that bus loop and road from being used.

Both those areas are huge.

They weren’t used for budget reasons.

 

[Cesar R M]

Oh dear.

At the very least, design the ride to have high capacity, and choose to run it at lower capacity depending on crowd levels. But don't dig yourself into a hole you can't get out of. Really, what is the logic here? Have they learned from Flight of Passage? Are they just idiots?

Dont forget the random downtimes like it happened with FEA and the mine train.

 

[lazyboy97o]

I agree but they should be prepared for their peak days. It's a problem when everything has a long wait time. They don't have to run every attraction at max capacity every day, but they should be able to have a max capacity that is ready for busy days. There is no longer an off season. Crowds are bigger, so capacities should be bigger too.

Edit: As an Eagle Scout, the Boy Scout motto is Be Prepared. And while I'm not fully prepared for everything, I try to be as prepared as possible and Disney should be too in order to ensure a smooth guest experience.

What you are missing is that crowding is greater by design. Greater capacity is not added to decrease crowding because there has not been a desire to decrease crowding.

In looking at how to reduce the costs of new parks following the opening of Euro Disneyland, Disney identified 7-8 experiences (more than rides and shows as parades and meet and greets can count) per day as the limit for when guests became satisfied with their day. This changes the calculation of how much capacity needs to be added, lowering what you need to add to meet your target. In the case of something like Pandora, the numbers would have been decreased further by the increase in operating hours. Focusing on total experiences per day instead of attractions per hour is not normal and has negatively impacted the guest experience. Building to Peak Day would not fix the greater underlying problem of focusing on total experiences per day.

 

[Pixieish]

The "Don't design a church for Easter Sunday" philosophy itself is not short-sighted - by its very definition. When a ride first opens, it will see inflated demand, and it wouldn't be reasonable to expect Disney to build attractions to be able to handle those crowds seamlessly.

However, the problem is that the attractions are being built with capacities that can't handle the average crowds. Continuing to add more attractions to the parks would help alleviate those issues somewhat, but when Disney self-labels coming rides as "E-tickets" (i.e. they expect them to be very popular in the long term) and then they design them with such low capacities, they are asking for criticism.

That's my point. They're designing rides that cannot handle the "average" day of guests with reasonable wait times. With the amount of marketing that pushes Disney vacations, plus the additions/upgrades going on in the parks, added to the new resorts being built, it is clear that Disney wants to cram more and more people into the parks. What happens when you cram ~100,000 people into a single park and no one can do anything because lines are all 3 hours or more due to short-sightedness? You get angry guests demanding refunds who more than likely won't return.