lazyboy97o
Well-Known Member
A longer wait is not necessarily indicative of larger capacity and more people experiencing the attraction.
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Len Testa Crowd Analysis
- Thread starter GeneralKnowledge
- Start date
the.dreamfinder
Well-Known Member
TSL and Galaxy’s Edge have to make up for the following
Backlot Tram Tour
Lights Motors Action
Net capacity loss from GMR—>MMRR
They have to dig themselves out of a hole and that’s before the crushing demand GE will bring.
At MK, there’s been a lot of closed/underused dining facilities like TL Terrace, Tortuga Tavern, Diamond Horseshoe with the former Veranda coming back as the TSR Skipper Canteen. In terms of attractions, it’s not just 20K. The Skyway, Mike Fink Keel Boats, and Davey Crockett Canoes were all removed without capacity replacements. At the same time the park has seen increased attendance. Basically, Tron is cleaning up the capacity deficit NFL was supposed to solve, but didn’t.
UoE/EEA was a high capacity attraction, GotG will be a typical WDI 4-5 minute, low capacity thrill ride putting FW even deeper in the hole.
Always worth repeating; wait times =/= popularity.
I have a post just a few above yours that shows how a small percentage increase to the overall attendance can lead to explosive growth in the lines once you're past the tipping point.
Len believes that the correlation between overall growth and waiting in line is a linear correlation, it isn't. He has the right numbers, he doesn't have the right mathematical model.
Calmdownnow
Well-Known Member
Adding a 2 hr wait to a customer's experience does not add capacity to the park as far as that customer is concerned -- it just reduces the number of experiences that the customer can have in the time that he or she is there. It is a very cynical poke at the customer -- particularly when customers are being charged more for less.
FigmentForver96
Well-Known Member
Yea but when Disney gets away for being "Disney" people will shrugg it off and go back. That's what's happening. Disney has people in this mindset that large crowds and long waits are the new norm. This is why they can push FP so hard and people fall right into it. This then rolls into people needing to book early to get in their Must-Dos so they stay on property. It's a cycle
Nick Pappagiorgio
Well-Known Member
It wasn't motivated by guest experience. Fastpass was created to get your butt into a store or restaurant (or anywhere that you can spend money), and out of a line where you cannot. It definitely improved the experience, but that is not the reason that they spent the money to put the system in.
"An attraction with 1,000 pph capacity will take 66 minutes to get through 1,100 people."
Correct. However, this means in the first hour, there will be 100 people still waiting to get on. In the next hour, when another 1,100 people show up, they all have to wait for the 100 people left over from the first hour. And when the second hour is done, there will now be 200 people waiting in line. Once you pass the tipping point, the queue backs up hour over hour.
If it's 1,320 people per hour showing up, then for each hour that ride can not accommodate 320 of those 1,320 people. Hour by hour, 320 people unaccommodated is 320% more than 100 people per hour unaccommodated.
Let's look at a 10 hour day. If 1,100 people show up per hour, that is 11,000 people. A 1,000 pph capacity will take 11 hours to get through.
If 1,320 people show up per hour, then that 13,200 people. A 1,000 pph capacity will take 13.2 hours to get through.
So, yes, that's a 20% increase in pph and a 20% increase in time.
But... people aren't going to show up after the end of the 10th hour, let alone during the 13th hour in a ten hour day. The time to deal with the people that arrive each hour can't be solved by extending the time (actually, that's exactly what WDW does occasionally). But, if you're going to consider the case of a limited set of hours for the park's opening and closing, you have to consider the impact of everyone showing up within the park hours and not after the park has closed.
With 1,100 pph, the ride needs to accommodate 11 hours worth of guests in 10 hours. That's 1,000 people more in the line during the day, and not showing up for the 11th hour.
With 1,320 pph, the ride needs to accommodate 13.2 hours worth of guest in 10 hours. That's 3,200 people more in the line during the day, and not showing up after the park closed in the 11th-13th hours.
Now, of course, when lines get that long they are self-limiting because guests refuse to wait that long and rather stroll around or eat or shop. And the numbers fluctuate during the day. And there are other limiting factors. But, here's the point: once you hit your tipping point, an overall increase in guests will have an exponential effect on lines.
Are there any CMs out that that can confirm or scuttle the idea that WDW's use of diminished staffing for the winter is new for this year? Or have they always cut back staffing for off-peak times?
tirian
Well-Known Member
Back when I did the CP, the idea was to use as much staffing as possible so that future budgets wouldn’t be cut. The CDS (Cast Deployment System) crew determined staffing based on historical data and present ticket sales, and management would ask us to pick up extra shifts during slow times to make sure they’d have enough hours assigned when the parks got busy.
Once I went full-time and salaried, I lost track of this, but the rumors said NexGen was cutting staffing based on expected crowd control. I myself noticed the quick-service lines weren’t fully staffed, and attractions frequently used only one loading zone even though the queues were an hour or more. Anecdotally, it certainly looked like staffing was cut, because MK days with just 35k or 40k guests felt like 65k.
I’m not there anymore, but based on the complaints my CM friends post to Facebook (and they really should not be doing that!), staffing hours are cut despite the crowds.
xdan0920
Think for yourselfer
I’m holding a sleepy 1 month old right now, so maybe my brain is a bit jumbled....
You’re math is black and white. However. Isn’t it as simple as this.
An understaffed attraction is going to hit a lower pph. That’s just a fact. Slower load times, less trains, etc....
So your 1000pph might be reduced to 800pph based on staffing levels. Which is what @lentesta was getting at this whole time.
mikejs78
Premium Member
Actually I believe @marni1971 has indicated that MMRR represents a slight increase in capacity over GMR as far as guests per hour.
As far as the others, it's not just about theoretical capacity, it's also about utilization. For the sake of argument let's say we are talking about Backlot Tour vs Battle Escape. Now, for the sake of argument (these aren't actual figures) let's say Backlot tour has a capacity of 2,000 pph, and that Battle Escape has a capacity of 1500. Now let's say that Backlot tour isn't very popular and only averages attracting approximately 1000 guests per hour. That means that even though Backlot Tour has a higher maximum capacity, the net effective capacity of the park once Battle Escape opens is +500 pph, because Backlot tour had approximately 1000 pph of *unused capacity*, which doesn't do the park any good.
Again, not real numbers, just trying to illustrate how swapping one attraction for another of lesser capacity but higher utilization of capacity could be a net benefit.
My numbers don't even touch the issue of understaffing. It's just a model to show there isn't a linear correlation to overall attendance to line waiting. Perhaps the current jump in line waiting is combination of increased attendance and understaffing.
Len is puzzled at a 60% jump in wait times. Can the rides that can be understaffed, which is not all of them, and maybe even a small minority of them, account for such a jump?
Len is discounting attendance, when that is a very good possibility and has the potential to lead to exponential growth in wait time.
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Jenny72
Well-Known Member
I think this mathematical model thing is kind of moot (although interesting), because people don't behave that way. If you have a 25% spike in attendance, and a ride has low capacity, you're not running 25% people more through it, because you'd have to keep the park open 25% longer to get through all the people. People don't just line up forever (well, at least not usually). The best way to know what actually happens with humans, as opposed to abstract numbers, is to measure what happens with a certain increase in attendance. As far as I know, that's what Len Testa does.
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@lentesta First as you have said obviously something changed to make your modeling (which is wonderful work and a great job that you have done) off this January and February. Now getting down to cause obviously gets tricky as there are a number of inputs.
So you have shown that capacity was throttled down before 2/21 as compared to after that date of this year. I think the point @mikejs78 has made is the big point and really the determining point on how this throttling of capacity is interpreted. Without historical context, sure it looks like Disney has throttled down a bunch and of course this could explain the differences. However, I would humbly say though that this data (a one year look pre and post 2/21) is shaky when trying to figure out why your projections were off as it has no comparison to previous years, and I think you would admit as much when you say the numbers should be viewed with skepticism. Perhaps Disney has always decreased capacity during these times by similar percentages or maybe they haven't. That is the missing piece of data, and I am not sure if you have capacity (actual exit counts) for the same time periods in years past or not. That is huge and has huge effects, especially depending on the magnitude of any decrease in capacity from prior years.
On the flip side another input is attendance and that is something that we don't know and is much harder to measure. As you have mentioned the economy is better, delayed trips due to hurricanes, and also this is the third year of tiered pricing (??? or around there if I remember correctly). So behavior is ripe to start changing. And here is the other only issue I see in the analysis, that wait times will increase linearly with attendance. I think the issue here is complete saturation of the capacity for the day. @MisterPenguin has laid this out very well above.
I will attempt to bolster this in another way with the area of study I know which are drug metabolism, kinetics, the Michaelis-Menten equation, and saturation kinetics. This is an area where loads of modeling and equations exist and great science. Actually, it is great parallel to theme park ride capacity and attendance modeling. I will not go into all the math and equations etc here to save everyone from that, but it is all available if anyone wants it and wants to hear more. Most basically, for this I will say drug molecules are similar to people visiting a theme park and that rides/attractions are the enzyme that eats them up so to speak for the metaphor. So a ride/attraction has a certain throughput that it can do, of course which is dependent on staffing and the amount of vehicles used, which is the same as the velocity of an enzymatic reaction, and even in nature it is not constant. And as people queue up and wait for a ride (and then, even though not a direct relation as we know, ride wait time goes up) this is equivalent to a drug concentration or number of people waiting for a ride. So if a theoretical ride capacity is 1,000 people per hour or an enzyme can take care of 1,000 drug molecules an hour, the actual rate of people going through the ride will increase until the capacity is reached or in kinetics the enzyme is saturated. Then the actual rate of people going through the ride for a certain time period will not change, but you continue to have more and more line up.
If we look at one ride and assume the ride on this day has a 1,000 pph capacity we can see what happens if the the number of people entering the attraction per hour is higher (assumed with higher attendance) and then goes over the capacity. The actual rate of people going through the attraction increases until capacity is hit. Then as you have said yes it is true that the additional number of people in line has a linear relation to the number of people entering per hour, but there is an exponential relationship between the total number people entering the attraction over a certain time period and the number still in line after that time period. Of course this simplifies things and takes out things like human behavior when a ride line gets so long and avoiding it etc.
So now some pictures for those who are visual. I have just changed the graph axis labels to illustrate the point and the originals and a discussion of the said graphs can be found: http://www.derangedphysiology.com/m...ero-order-and-non-linear-elimination-kinetics
So as can be seen when considering saturation if attendance increases from A to B, and we are not near complete saturation or near complete park capacity at a macro level or at a single attraction at a more micro level there is almost an equal rise from a to b in people in lines or wait times. However if expected attendance C is closer to the saturation point and is further increased to D there is a much larger rise from c to d in people in line and wait times. As saturation or full capacity is reached there will be greater increases in people in line and wait times then expected. Works in nature and works here as well.
To your point Disney can control how that curve looks to some extent with staffing and capacity. I will look at capacity in a macro whole park sense here. Obviously it is far more complex and would be a fun problem to model, but this is most simplistic for explanation.
So three things could have happened here:
On the one hand Disney could have moved capacity from the high capacity curve to the medium capacity curve (the middle curve) or even from medium to low. For explanation and illustration lets say from the high capacity curve to the medium capacity curve. They could have done this and you and your team model you are expecting attendance level A with the high capacity curve and thus wait times and people in line of a1, however as the capacity has changed then you end up in a big difference from wait times and people in line that is a2. This is all just Disney trying to improve margins and save money and decrease capacity and staffing.
Option 2 is that if Disney has always been riding the slow season with the low capacity curve and has been close to the saturation point for that slow season. However, if there was even a small percentage attendance bump from C1 to C2 which could be related to the economy, buying behavior with tiered pricing, the hurricanes, etc then as Disney was always playing close to maximum during this season this modest attendance bump (if unexpected and capacity not increased) created a c1 to c2 increase in people in line and wait times, which is not linear to the attendance increase.
And then the most likely senario would be a bit of both. Disney has had a few years of analytics and data and are feeling confident and looking at margins and have a directive to cut operating and capital expenditures. During the slow season they always believed they had extra margin for attendance level A and they believe that they can move say from the high capacity curve above to the medium capacity curve and have a marginal effect (to them) on wait times and people in line (a1 to a2). Now they have a steeper curve which is much closer to saturation and if that is coupled with a more then expected increase in attendance from A to B and we end up with a b2 level of wait times and people in line. Now if you (Len and team) are modeling this and are expecting the high capacity curve then the attendance bump would have been an a1 to b1 bump which is probably within your error and isn't a big deal. Also if this kind of attendance variability had existed for years Disney had been able to absorb it at the high capacity curve. But now you are seeing with the combination of the increase in attendance and the decrease of capacity to close to the saturation of capacity levels that there is a big swing from a1 to b2 which is way off. Disney is also surprised as they are expecting a more modest a2 level of people in line and wait times but are seeing a b2 kind of level. However, this is after Disney has let go of a bunch of seasonal employees, have lower college program numbers, etc. and turning that ship is hard. So perfect storm. This seems the most likely and while Disney is playing too close to having saturated capacity and are having the good news of better then expected business, it isn't just some nefarious lets make the park seem busy so we can charge more tin hat theory. Also means Disney will see a drop in satisfaction scores and attractions per guest scores and will hopefully adjust for next year.
The big problem is all of the above scenarios depending on the actual curve shapes can all look very much the same in the outcome of increase in wait times and people in line and can be very hard to parse out. It all comes back to if we had the actual capacity and exit counts historically and could trend that. Not that you need any advice from a random internet guy who is bored on a Sunday, but it seems like that would be great data to have especially in the historically slower seasons to have best predictions and real time updating of your modeling.
Sirwalterraleigh
Premium Member
Well...I love this post...but fastpass + absolutely has absolutely affected wait times. I'm not a statistician or rocket scientist (merely an engineer that's trying to save the spotted owl)....but there's no disputing that aggregate waits have gone up with the system and it corresponded with the system and not a massive attendance swell. Remember the climbs continued as disney reported declines in attendance for about two years that just ended.
There's sumpin there...it can't really be talked away
xdan0920
Think for yourselfer
Again, possible slow brain here....
There is a formula that SHOULD be able to predict wait times based on attendance. Not sure yours is the correct one, but that’s irrelevant. Maybe it’s 1-1 maybe it’s 1-5 maybe it’s 1-20 I dunno.
The formula is not working right now though. Why isn’t it working? Because the parks are understaffed. That’s the hypothesis. And for me, it makes the most sense.
mikejs78
Premium Member
This... is awesome. Excellent analysis.
I agree people don't follow numbers and models and have human behavior and it is true if a ride has a long wait time they will shuttle themselves elsewhere and we know Disney manipulates wait times to spread people out using this behavior to their advantage. The problem, however, is if on a macro whole park scale you have put your capacity to a certain level and there are way more people there then capacity of the whole park then every single ride and attraction will be maxed out and people will have to wait or leave. The majority of people on a weekday (where the biggest problem in the projections have been according to Len) are not annual pass holders and will probably not leave so they will have to wait somewhere to do anything. So wait times across the board go up. Human behavior about picking particular attractions is out the window.
mikejs78
Premium Member
It's not that simple. There's multiple inputs and a single output, and the results can be affected pretty dramatically by minor changes in one or more of the inputs (hence non-linear). The problem is we don't have enough data to make a determination on which input was the determining one, or if there was more than one input that changed, or how the different inputs differed from previous years. @lentesta did awesome research and provided one data point. But there are many more we need to properly determine what happened.
xdan0920
Think for yourselfer
Right! And it’s so simple.
Disney lowered capacity. Say from 10k guests per hour across all attractions(made up #) to 8k. That has a destructive impact on wait times, crowding in public areas, lines in QSR. When you try and walk the perfect staffing tight rope that’s hard. When you then try and see how far you can push the lower staffing models, that’s just wrong. They should not be doing that.