Len Testa Crowd Analysis

[GeneralKnowledge]

We all know that they modify staffing and ride capacity to flux with crowd levels. To do it to such an extreme level that January wait times exceeded last Summer’s wait times is quite a departure from the norm. It’s a sign that they’re going to be testing this strategy to really see how far they can push people’s tolerance for waiting in lines. If people are willing to wait 200 minutes for a ride in July, why wouldn’t they be willing to wait that long even when the parks aren’t as crowded?

 

[Master Yoda]

Also what happens a lot of the time, is that Disney’s very own attendance projections, which they base their staffing and operation on for that day can be off, crowds will be much higher or lower than expected some days. When that happens they literally just don’t have the proper staffing and have to make do and that happens and I think weve been seeing that some too.

Yes it’s more crowded than it used to be but there seems to be no rhyme or reason for the crowd patterns these last few months.

I think that is absolutely a factor. It is not as click bait worthy as "Disney is cutting staffing because the hate you" so it is not likely to get talked about as much.

In reality, I think we are seeing a combination of several factors. Increased crowds, changing travel patterns and Disney trying a little to hard to keep staffing at a perfect Goldilocks level.

 

[drizgirl]

There is no more slow season.

Yep. Disney is seeing to that.

Interesting that a visitor in January didn't have the same problem at UNI though:

Should probably get that darn trip report up, but I was at WDW in January and can attest to the ridiculous crowding at the parks. By contrast, most UNI attractions at both parks had waits under 30 minutes or were walk ons.

 

[nickys]

It's also possible that crowd calanders haven't been useful for two or more years. They guy makes millions of dollars per year off of subscriptions. I know I wouldn't be happy if Disney is leveling out crowds artificially, but is be even more upset if I paid for a useless product

We used Touringplans for planning our trip to WDW this past January and found their predictions were not accurate, wait times and crowd sizes larger than they estimated.

And Len goes into why they were not accurate in the podcast.

And the chances are that, even if the wait times were too low, a touring plan will still result in a much better result than trying to second guess things.

If you want to go to attractions A to L, and create your touring plan accordingly, even if the wait times for each one is 25% higher than anticipated, the optimiser will likely still find the quickest way to do those attractions with the minimum overall wait times. Even if it takes an hour longer than the plan suggested, I suspect their algorithms still work better than winging it or trying to check wait times constantly on the MDE app.

It's far from a useless product. Whether you like to do the parks commando style or at a more leisurely pace, a TP can still be very useful. And they have a lot of useful free stuff too.

 

[xdan0920]

With all of the information available on the internet and elsewhere, I am still surprised as to why people pay money for others to plan their trips or provide information you can generally find on your own. Those "crowd calendars" arent worth the paper they are printed on. Highly inaccurate as things change so often. Park hours change the day before, added hours, special events, etc. Its silly. Quit wasting money and plan your own trips.

Imagine, this ^^^ is your takeaway from this thread. Smh

 

[CaptainAmerica]

They guy makes millions of dollars per year off of subscriptions.

I find that extremely unlikely.

Interesting that a visitor in January didn't have the same problem at UNI though:

Now that's a hot take. Universal is doing better than Disney because Universal is less popular than Disney. Brilliant.

 

[Bender123]

Ive found Len to be accurate the vast majority of time, but, as we all complain over and over and over, WDW has definitely been falling off on the service and staffing side compared to where they were. I am amazed some people can complain on one and then argue the opposite when it comes to the Guide.

Over the past decade we have all seen the this occur. Its not some secret. I can, honestly say, that it isn't just a reduction of staff, its that the staff on hand are very inefficient at load on many rides as well. Average dispatch time on many rides has noticeably increased, which only makes a reduced capacity even worse. Average dispatch on Pirates on my trip last year was over 1.5 minutes, which is absolute insanity for a ride that has no seat belts/restraints.

 

[wendysue]

With all of the information available on the internet and elsewhere, I am still surprised as to why people pay money for others to plan their trips or provide information you can generally find on your own. Those "crowd calendars" arent worth the paper they are printed on. Highly inaccurate as things change so often. Park hours change the day before, added hours, special events, etc. Its silly. Quit wasting money and plan your own trips.

Agreed. The trips that we took with friends that subscribe to the crowd calendars and trip planning always showed that the planners were wrong. They no longer shell out the money for those.

 

[Horizons '83]

I just listened to a podcast from DISUnplugged featuring @lentesta discussing the crowds so far in 2018. I highly recommend listening to it, his information was very interesting.

Apparently his wait time projections were significantly off for the start of 2018. Particularly, wait times in January were worse than almost any month in all of 2017. The thought of wait times in January being close to Christmas level is insane.

After analyzing the data from many angles they came to the conclusion that Disney is running the parks with reduced staffing, and consequently reduced attraction hourly capacity, resulting in longer wait times even though there might be fewer guests than normal.

He goes on to mention a few different motivations Disney may have for doing this, including the obvious reason being that they are simply saving money to the more complex thought that they might be trying to artificially control apparent crowd levels in order to justify price increases and ticket price yielding.

I hadn’t seen this being discussed anywhere on here so I thought I’d mention it. Hopefully Len will chime in, I think it’s a topic worthy of discussion.

I know personally the increased crowd levels over the past decade have really made my trips less enjoyable. We used to enjoy visiting in the off season and with the seemingly constant crowding there is now, I find my trips less enjoyable. Disney is going to reach a breaking point somewhere with this kind of management. I know for me, that point is rapidly approaching.

I can attest to this, I saw Christmas Crowds for out stay Jan 18 - 22. I was shocked, I mean I know WDW isn't slow anymore but January is typically a slower month. The Tour Groups played a large factor in that along with the incredible weather I am sure.

 

[drizgirl]

Should probably get that darn trip report up, but I was at WDW in January and can attest to the ridiculous crowding at the parks. By contrast, most UNI attractions at both parks had waits under 30 minutes or were walk ons.

That's a very helpful post. Seeing the difference between WDW and Uni during the same trip really serves to highlight that crowds probably weren't substantially different from previous years, but perhaps Disney's park operations were.

 

[drizgirl]

Welcome to the NextGen Experience.

Ding ding ding. We have a winner.

You didn't think they invested all that money so you could schedule FP on your phone, did you?

 

[Coaster Lover]

It really just makes sense from a business standpoint. At most any restaurant/store in the world, labor costs are a HUGE portion of the daily operating expenses, so you schedule lots of people at the times you anticipate it being busy and fewer people at the times you anticipate it being slower. When it comes to an amusement park, you also need to factor in maintenance costs. There are a LOT of moving parts on rides that need to be replaced regularly and if you can get away with running four trains on Thunder Mountain instead of five, you can prolong the time between replacing those parts (especially wheels) with the only negative factor being slightly longer lines. It really just makes sense from a business standpoint.

The big question is what will guests tolerate? As a business, it's best for Disney to spread the crowds out throughout the year as much as possible. The previous incentive for guests to come in January/February/September was the lower crowds, more mild weather, and lower hotel rates, however, to take advantage of these time periods, most families had to take kids out of school in order to go during this time of year. If line lengths are as bad now in January as they are in summer, you have to question if lower hotel rates and milder weather are enough alone to coax families to pull their kids out of school for trips during this time of year and I think it would be...

I think Disney doing what they are doing now will work until the point that Disney starts to raise ticket/hotel prices during these traditionally "slower" periods to rates comparable to what they are during the summer season, but, that's just my opinion on the matter...

 

[drizgirl]

I find that extremely unlikely.


Now that's a hot take. Universal is doing better than Disney because Universal is less popular than Disney. Brilliant.

No post is complete without a snarky insult. Am I right?

My point is using UNI as a basis of comparison. If Disney waits were longer than they were any other time in 2017, you would thing the waits at UNI would be higher than (their) average as well, no?

 

[CaptainAmerica]

My point is using UNI as a basis of comparison. If Disney waits were longer than they were any other time in 2017, you would thing the waits at UNI would be higher than (their) average as well, no?

What does that have to do with the price of tea in China? One has nothing to do with the other. I suppose they're tangentially related with regard to the health of the tourism industry generally, but I think it's just as likely that Avatar has been a tremendous success and the Potter boom is over.

 

[drizgirl]

What does that have to do with the price of tea in China? One has nothing to do with the other. I suppose they're tangentially related with regard to the health of the tourism industry generally, but I think it's just as likely that Avatar has been a tremendous success and the Potter boom is over.

Attendance at both resorts should rise and fall with the season. Not at the same level but at a somewhat similar rate as a reflection of overall tourist numbers in Orlando.

So you contend that wait times are up at WDW because of Pandora? It opened some time ago. Should Disney not have seen that coming?

 

[Amos1784]

This is definitely already happening we stayed at Pop 2/13-2/20. While I understand 2/19 was a "holiday" we paid an average per night of 184 at Pop...a hotel that a few years ago I could get even on a "holiday" schedule for 120-140/night. I told my husband when it eclipses that 200 a night, which I assume is coming soon it's going to be hard to justify and we will have to start looking to plan farther out then a few months and rent DVC for the better value.

 

[CaptainAmerica]

So you contend that wait times are up at WDW because of Pandora? It opened some time ago. Should Disney not have seen that coming?

Of course they saw it coming, but there's only so much they can do about it. Disney could hire 10,000 full time, fully trained cast members just to work Galaxy's Edge when it opens and the rides are still going to have an upper limit on capacity.

 

[Master Yoda]

No post is complete without a snarky insult. Am I right?

My point is using UNI as a basis of comparison. If Disney waits were longer than they were any other time in 2017, you would thing the waits at UNI would be higher than (their) average as well, no?

Not necessarily.

Pretty much everything in the world from attractions, to restaurants to bathrooms has a maximum number of people it can serve in a particular time frame. Exceed that number and waits are going to go up. Exceed it by a lot and they will balloon to insane in short order.

If everything is staffed at a level to support the maximum level of guests but the number of guests exceeds that maximum at Disney, but not at Universal then you will see long lines at Disney, but not at Universal. Considering that MK sees nearly twice the number of guests that US does it is quite possible that MK's attractions are overloaded where US's attractions are not.

This is where it gets fishy. If Disney is trying to cut staff to the absolute bare minimum then they are going to make the problem worse especially if crowds exceed their projections.

 

[lentesta]

Traveling today and have a paper due Monday. Will try to respond shortly.

 

[PorterRedkey]

I thought the point of "cheaper" tickets in the "off-season" was to get more guest to come during that slow time. Well, it's working! It seems Touring Plans didn't think the effect would be as large as actually is.

I am not saying staffing reductions don't have any effect on the feel of the crowd, but I don't think it is causing the majority of the issues. There are just more people.

I think a lot of families do their research and decide they don't want to pay $15 a person, per day for each member of their family, for access to the same things that they could see at a cheaper price on a different date.

Next, people don't like crowds so they pick the dates with the "low-season" prices. They do this thinking that the parks will be slower. Low-season = lower crowds - Right? Well, maybe it did the first year this was in effect, but now people are catching on.

Third, they only have 3 real parks open. DHS is not attracted the same amount of guests it has in the past and when guests do visit, it is only for a few hours to ride the 4 rides. This is pushing guests that would normally be at DHS into the other 3 parks making them feel more crowded.

The economy is good, and the crowds are coming to WDW.