Len Testa Crowd Analysis

[winstongator]

Nope. It all depends on how WDW is choosing to handle the crowds and staffing. Pretty sure someone (@WDW1974 maybe) said that WDW management had determined the magical number of attractions a guest wanted to experience a day to get value for their admission, which I think was 14. No idea if this is true, but I can buy the general theory. Previously WDW handled this to a point by increasing hours during busy periods, and decreasing them during slow periods. Bigger crowds, open longer so guests can still hit that number of rides. Now what @lentesta and the rest of the staff at Touring Plans is postulating is that they are now massaging this more by taking the same concept of tweaking hours, and tweaking staffing/ride capacity. Some rides, specifically the omnimover type, this might be harder to do unless they can just slow down the belt, but others it's much easier. Slow down dispatch rates, run less vehicles, etc results in longer waits, with the same number of people in the park.

If you are running 4 trains, sending one every 8 minutes, and each train can handle 100 people, you should be able to handle 400 people in about 24 minutes. Now if you cut down to 3 trains, it still takes just as long to make the loop around MK, so you are only dispatching every 12 minutes, that same 400 people now takes 32 minutes. Same number of guests, but an extra 8 minutes of total waiting, and WDW saves labor costs and operational costs for that 4th train. These numbers are made up, but the theory applies.

I haven't listened to the pocast, but read the blogpost they did on the subject a month or so ago, when they admitted their estimates with off by a much higher margin than they expected. At the time, @lentesta said they were going to try to count guests/vehicles instead of just waits to see if the staffing/dispatch levels was true, or if they were really just seeing higher crowds.

I use this for ride capacity #s:
https://crooksinwdw.wordpress.com/2013/12/14/theoreticaloperational-hourly-ride-capacity-at-wdw/

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

A decade ago is probably the worst comparison point. The economy was in terrible shape and hotel occupancy was in the midst of bottoming almost 10% below its norm.

Comparing to when I went as a kid, a long time ago, the knowledge to rope-drop combined with fp+ makes for a much more enjoyable day at the parks. I know I'm in the minority with that view.

Rope drop last from 8-9:30 if you use EMH or so...which gets you 3-4 standbys as the standby quickly escalate...

That combined with prebooked fast pass gets you perhaps 4 hours of time where attractions are enjoyable...obscenely long standbys that aren't worth it beyond.

It's doable...but I don't know if that compromises a "good day" anymore...

 

[winstongator]

Guests rate their day as satisfied if they have 7-8 experiences, a category that is broader than attractions and includes parades, nighttime spectaculars and meet and greets. This is that Disney is trying to push. You can also see how it shaped the build out of Disney’s Animal Kingdom, Disney’s California Adventure and Walt Disney Studios Park.


@lentesta has posted about this before.

I was at AK Sunday Feb 10. TP predicted moderately busy, but it was 10/10 (lots of cheerleaders & other school trips). I did Everest, Dinosaur, Navi River Journey and we got to see the baby tigers (highlight!!!). 4 attractions for a half-day, as we were driving out that day and wanted to get home at a reasonable time. 6-8 is probably a very good day for us as passholders. The magic of being a passholder is that you don't worry about how many attractions you get per day.

I'm more curious about whether this is due to cost of staffing or wear and tear on attractions.

 

[winstongator]

Can you show the math for this? For one attraction, linear increases in attendance should have linear increases in wait times, everything else constant.

Still on a plane, so lack of oxygen might be affecting my brain.

This is a nice problem to work on...

 

[Jenny72]

Waiting for 20 min for the Peoplemover was the real shock for me (as someone else noted). I said something to a CM about how crazy the crowds were, and he shrugged and said that it wasn't really a crowded day. ?!

Maybe some people can score 14 rides before breakfast, but for us, forget hitting 10 experiences; we're not hitting 6 because standing in line with two little kids after dropping $400+ just stinks. And I'm pretty park savvy, too. (For instance, I don't wander into the park at 11am and line up for Speedway.) I guarantee that most people are not getting anywhere near the number of experiences some people here are describing.

I can't accept that this is about wear and tear on attractions. So in 2013, attractions needed more rest? And in Jan/Feb 2018, they needed a lot more rest??

 

[winstongator]

Can you show the math for this? For one attraction, linear increases in attendance should have linear increases in wait times, everything else constant.

Still on a plane, so lack of oxygen might be affecting my brain.

Space Mountain. Assume all fp+ used (if there are fp+ available, someone should snag them). OHRC=1800, FP+ 1260. Only FP+, say zero wait (maybe it's 20 min, but we're looking for excess or marginal wait). The first 540 guests per hour (9/min) should have a negligible impact on waits, as they are still just getting to capacity. Adding 180 guests (1/3 of 540) is adding 10% to the load, but adding 20 min to wait times. 360 guests is adding another 10% to load, and another 20 min.

The equation is linear when you look at guests added above load. It's probably also somewhat linear up to load, but has a much lower slope. Going from 0 guests per hour to 60 would have near zero effect, as would 60-120...

My point from looking at the capacities is that you need to look at non FP+ capacity not overall capacity.

 

[winstongator]

Are you suggesting spending 5 hours in line isn't a MAGICAL experience??

2 hours is. I have not done 3 yet, and probably won't. Until SWGE opens. Then whatever it takes.

 

[winstongator]

Just to add my $.02 on the idea of 7-8 experiences:

I think that number is reflective of the guests who leave the hotel at 9 or 10 for the Magic Kingdom with the intent to get fastpasses when they get there and then leave right after the fireworks, not what we think of.

If you rope drop a park and/or stay till closing and/or get decent fastpasses, there’s no way you’re not getting into the 10s. Heck, we were at MK for four hours a few days ago and we did 7 ‘experiences’ in that time.

I've rope-dropped to closing with my kids once. It is very hard to do with kids. I usually rope-drop, fp+, take an afternoon break, then return for the evening.

 

[winstongator]

Pay the man.

95% of public schools were in session in January 2018. 95% of public schools were not in session in Summer 2017. January's wait times were higher. What are the odds that tens of thousands of parents suddenly decided that truancy was okay, all at once, independently?

I felt a great disturbance in education, as if millions of parents pulled their children out with shrieks of excitement, only to see long wait times. I fear something terrible has happened.

 

[winstongator]

I'd say this is a major point...and the big outlier is fastpass 2.0...

Many people don't realize that they don't pull these kinds of shenanigans at disneyland...unless it's raining, those rides are OPEN and they have staff all over the place.

The difference to me is that they have the prebooked reservation in Orlando:..and I'd bet dimes do dollars that they are using the predictive nature of the data to try and shave minor operational costs. Reinventing the wheel...basically...to squeeze the grapes more and be generally miserable as the TDO thug squad tends to be anyway.

What's the other difference between WDW & DL? ~2500 rooms at DL, 31000 at WDW. They need to fill those rooms.

 

[ford91exploder]

Rope drop last from 8-9:30 if you use EMH or so...which gets you 3-4 standbys as the standby quickly escalate...

That combined with prebooked fast pass gets you perhaps 4 hours of time where attractions are enjoyable...obscenely long standbys that aren't worth it beyond.

It's doable...but I don't know if that compromises a "good day" anymore...

Not in my book at least

 

[winstongator]

I'd say it this way: there are no more days with low wait times at WDW. (Still happens at Disneyland and Universal.)

How do expected wait times/crowd levels impact hotel occupancy? Does expecting a down time increase someone's likelihood of traveling then? I'd imagine the more crowded, the higher occupancy, and the higher average room rate. Given fixed investment in hotels, there has to be a lot of effort into managing the parks so that they can keep hotel occupancy high.

 

[winstongator]

Rope drop last from 8-9:30 if you use EMH or so...which gets you 3-4 standbys as the standby quickly escalate...

That combined with prebooked fast pass gets you perhaps 4 hours of time where attractions are enjoyable...obscenely long standbys that aren't worth it beyond.

It's doable...but I don't know if that compromises a "good day" anymore...

We go back after our break, usually. Say 1-2 more rides and a nighttime show.

My younger daughter LOVED Harry Potter World. Number of rides she went on: ZERO. Magic comes in many forms.

 

[Disneyhead'71]

All I know is as being a local AP holder, popping over to a Disney park for the day is functionally useless.

 

[coasterphil]

Is there a chance this is less a case of Disney deliberately understaffing and more a case of them simply not understanding their data? I’m wondering if WDW is overestimating the usage/acceptance rate of MDE and whiffing on how many guests are going to show up on a given day without having used the system. Obviously they can dial things in based on their hotel/ADR/fastpass data, but if you think those locked in guests account for 50% of daily attendance when it’s actually only 30%, then you’re clearly going to be unprepared.

They may have decided that trying to figure out that number of non MDE guests is too much of a crapshoot and are therefore just using a flat projection based on the MDE data. That wouldn’t make sense to me, as you would think they’d be working hard to figure out exactly which guests are opting out of their multi-billion dollar system and why, but maybe they’re buried too far into the MDE data they are getting.

 

[voodoo321]

Our WDW trips have gotten progressively worse over the past 5 years for all the reasons discussed. We went down for a quick trip with a friend that hadn't been since childhood on Feb 13-14. Just no fun at all. Actually it was miserable. Wait times were ridiculous. Even the fastpasses had twice the wait as normal. I've never had the problem with wait times and overcrowding on buses either as I did on that trip. Magic band and app issues, rude staff, and much more.

I've never made a major complaint to Disney but wrote a detailed email when I got home. I stated that I understand problems can and will occur and that wasn't my main complaint. My issue was that it all seemed understaffed and the cast seemed overwhelmed. To my surprise they replaced all of our tickets. I don't know what their normal policy is when receiving complaints but I don't think they would've done that if they didn't know it was a problem. Hopefully they received a ton of complaints.

I'll use the tickets, ride Uber this time and give them another shot. If I don't see a resounding difference then I'm done with WDW until something changes. I'll get my Disney fix in California and Paris. The latter being just as, if not more, affordable(WOW airlines) as WDW with minimal lines and no stress.

 

[Disneyhead'71]

Our WDW trips have gotten progressively worse over the past 5 years for all the reasons discussed. We went down for a quick trip with a friend that hadn't been since childhood on Feb 13-14. Just no fun at all. Actually it was miserable. Wait times were ridiculous. Even the fastpasses had twice the wait as normal. I've never had the problem with wait times and overcrowding on buses either as I did on that trip. Magic band and app issues, rude staff, and much more.

I've never made a major complaint to Disney but wrote a detailed email when I got home. I stated that I understand problems can and will occur and that wasn't my main complaint. My issue was that it all seemed understaffed and the cast seemed overwhelmed. To my surprise they replaced all of our tickets. I don't know what their normal policy is when receiving complaints but I don't think they would've done that if they didn't know it was a problem. Hopefully they received a ton of complaints.

I'll use the tickets, ride Uber this time and give them another shot. If I don't see a resounding difference then I'm done with WDW until something changes. I'll get my Disney fix in California and Paris. The latter being just as, if not more, affordable(WOW airlines) as WDW with minimal lines and no stress.

Disney Rep: "Sorry to hear you had a miserable experience. Here are some comp tickets so you can have another miserable experience."

 

[Jenny72]

Does anyone know if they are using the kind of system that Starbucks, etc. does where they micro-manage people's hours to try to optimize staffing? So that the staff don't know until a few weeks before how many days they are working that week? (Or in the case of Starbucks, sending people home mid-shift, etc.) In other words, are they managing staffing by the season, by the month, by the week, by the day, or by the hour? Does this question make sense to anyone? I'm trying to figure out how the park is getting staffed based on, well, whatever metric they're using.

 

[GrumpyDad4]

I watched the podcast as well and then read a report from Josh at ...(apparently a site that is not allowed to be named?) and had to laugh when he said that touring plans was about 3 years behind in everything including this. The whole time listening to the podcast kept thinking this is not a new revelation is it? I mean has this not been know for a few years now? It was interesting to see though that many of the reductions hover around 25%. That is substantial.

Did Josh offer anything in his post to support his "opinion" that touring plans is 3 years behind in their analysis?

 

[rle4lunch]

Slightly parallel to this conversation is the wait times for dining. I remember going to mgm in the mid 2000's and nearly every restaurant was half empty, all the time. You could walk into sci-fi diner during peak meal hours and get a table in 5 minutes or less. Now you have to book it 3 months in advance or you get laughed at by the CMs at the door.