DisneyDodo
Well-Known Member
Maybe, but this could also backfire, by preventing families with small kids from buying G+
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Lightning Lane at Walt Disney World
- Thread starter wdwmagic
- Start date
Patcheslee
Well-Known Member
While everyone would agree waiting less than displayed is desirable, it is only to a degree. If I were to see a 120 minute wait on SM and choose to purchase the ILL available at the time, I would expect wait to be half that. If I found out actual standby wait was only 60 minutes it would make me feel a bit ripped off. IMO actual wait should always be within 10-15 minutes of displayed.
I can say Cedar Fair parks have yet to have legal issues with their wait time discrepancies. I've seen reported waits showing over 60 minutes and ride literally being walk on and no operator telling people which row to sit in.
Patcheslee
Well-Known Member
Think there's too many rides or shows with no height requirement in the Genie+ lineup to backfire.
ChrisRobin124
Active Member
If I paid for ILL on SM and still had to wait 60 minutes even if the standby was 120, I would NOT be happy.
FantasiaMickey2000
Well-Known Member
He’s talking about the IAS attractions not the Genie+ attractions. BTMRR is not an IAS attraction.
Chi84
Premium Member
Why would they limit the amount of reservations if a park is not at capacity?
flynnibus
Premium Member
The problem is more complex then that. This is a good example of "The most precise answer is not always the best answer".
Note what Touring Plans does is very different. Touring plans makes plans with PREDICTED wait time based on historical models and data input, and constantly measuring things based on crowd sourced data. They also report current wait times based on crowd sourcing and prior data. They basically are posting predictions based on modeling and refine that model all the time with crowd sourced (and measured) data.
Customers expect Disney to be showing the 'current wait'. The problem is any wait you measure is actually in the past - it is not actually what a new person getting in line will experience. So the most precise answer, may not actually be a good indicator of future waits. Posting wait times is always an estimation game because you are not explicitly counting people getting in line, especially with extended queues.
There are legitimate reasons for over-estimating - like
2) customer psychology. Customer sentiment will be better if waits are lower than expected then they will be if waits are under estimated
3) over-estimating reduces probability of missing targets due to variations and disappointing guests
4) Just like TP, Disney maybe building anticipated factors into the wait time. 5mins after the park opens, the line is growing far faster than any count makes reasonable. Should the wait board say 5mins, then keep climbing every 30 seconds? Or does it make more sense to estimate the line will quickly get to 60mins and post that knowing that will happen.. and some people wait less.
5) Just like TP, Disney can know through modeling what the demand will look like for an attraction and build that into the prediction, rather than waiting for the result.
If you just relied on measured waits, your results can be an hour or two stale!
Instead estimating wait times is more about reliable prediction.. with limited measured points. And the penalties for under estimating are far greater than for estimating too long.
flynnibus
Premium Member
Because Disney Ops doesn't actually run the park at full capacity all the time, and right now certainly can't.
If I staff and stock the park based on a 50% target... I don't want 80% of capacity showing up and causing even more dramatic shortages.
Also, offering different availability to different pass types shapes what my demographic shows up for a date.
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CaptainAmerica
Premium Member
The Mountains are not IAS attractions, which is exactly my point.
MickeyLuv'r
Well-Known Member
Six Flags, Cedar Point, Universal, Legoland... every theme/amusement park that posts estimated wait times would potentially have the same problem, especially the ones that sell some form of reduced-wait pass.Let's be clear...
Actual waits being long, even tho they COULD be shorter, and selling passes based on that... No one can say squat about it! There is no regulation that says "you must run rides as hard as you can!". And Six Flags/Cedar Fair would have been crushed ages ago if that were the case
So the only legitimate area of concern is how wait times are shown vs actual wait times... NOT that actual wait times are long. No one can force Disney (or another operator) to run attractions at higher capacities even if they sell line skips.
Well, except that all of the above have always said the posted wait times are 'estimates.' WDW (and I think all of the above) print detailed disclaimers on their tickets. On any day, customers are never guaranteed a ride on any of the attractions. Attractions stop for thunderstorms and myriad other safety concerns. Entire parks close when there's a hurricane, or some other imminent danger.
I think it would be very hard to prove intentional misrepresentation, especially when WDW offers myriad entertainment options, and safety is always a factor when running attractions. WDW can only load so many people into the IaSW boats, Safari trucks and Astro Orbiter Rockets.
Just thinking about AO alone as an example, rockets sometimes hold 1 person, sometimes 2, sometimes 3. There will always be variability between potential and actual throughput.
MickeyLuv'r
Well-Known Member
flynnibus
Premium Member
Yes, I didn't go there for some chance at reducing the wall of text
As you mention, other parks already sell line skips and also advertise wait times. And as I elaborate in a post above this, wait times are always estimates, estimates there are legitimate reasons to err to the cautious side instead of the aggressive side. Thus it really makes a high bar to meet to complain about accuracy as part of a consumer protection complaint.Now, the Evil Corporation angle is... don't lie, just don't work hard and get the same result. Instead of inflating wait times, just naturally let wait times get high... which will increase the 'value' of your line-skip. While nefarious, there really is nothing illegal about it. And there will always be some element of this because it's not in the park's benefit to run attractions at full capacity all the time on all dates. Heck, there are cross-over points where they can argue running full bore hurts more than they want to accept (wear, labor, risk of cascades, etc) so they don't.
So reality is there will always be some element of 'inflated value' -- The question is simply MOTIVATION. Are they doing it because it makes the most objective sense.. or are they doing it to artificially benefit from new sales. That's the Dr Evil distinction and frankly there is little customers can do about it except for speak with their wallets.
The company itself has to make its own determinations of what tradeoffs work best.
nickys
Premium Member
Just to point out though that the Touring Plans app allows you to re-optimise (or adjust) your plans throughout the day with actual wait times. They get those from people posting their measured wait times and their own people in the parks recording actual wait times themselves.
So yes they use predicted wait times based on historic data to create the plans initially. But then adjust the plans in real time based on actual wait times.
Chi84
Premium Member
Right, I know capacity for purposes of the park reservation system is not necessarily full capacity, but my concern is how often they will block out parks for specific days during non-peak seasons. I'm less concerned with Genie+ than how the park reservation system may restrict the ability to change parks last-minute. For example, if I plan to go to HS in the morning and hop to a different park for the evening - then decide to go to a water park instead - how hard will it be to drop HS and get the second park? Losing that kind of flexibility would be an issue for us.
MickeyLuv'r
Well-Known Member
In most cases though, people can't be in two places at once. If the posted and actual wait are off, and you buy/use ILL, you wouldn't actually know the posted standby was inflated 10 minutes. The only way you'd really know the wait times were inflated was if the posted wait was extremely off. (like the example in your last sentence)
Even still, have you ever gone to AK for FoP or MK for 7DMT at rope drop? The queue goes from zero to 60+ in a matter of seconds. When the Frozen sisters were first in Norway, that queue went from zero wait to 3+ hours in less than 2 minutes. It was crazy!
What about the Buzz queue just before/after the parade/fireworks end? It goes from 5 to 30 in mere seconds.
Just because you only waited 5 minutes to ride FoP doesn't mean the posted wait time is not a valid estimate of the wait time, because of the way Wait times often rapidly fluctuate.
I think it would be very hard to prove intentional misrepresentation.
DisneyDodo
Well-Known Member
Not in DHS - there are exactly 2 rides (TSM and MMRR) with no height requirement, one of which is excluded from G+. And nobody purchases line skips for the shows. G+ at DHS for a little kid essentially amounts to $15 IAS for TSM (plus maybe A.S.S. if they're over 32").
flynnibus
Premium Member
I'd wager that this will not really be an issue in normal practice.. especially once staffing stabilizes. I see this more as a modeling and safety cap and less about actually turning away regular ticketed guests. Events and special circumstances could be different.
flynnibus
Premium Member
Doubtful - no reason for the two passes to be blocking to each other at all. Your paid IAS should likely be completely independent from your Genie+ activity except maybe for avoiding direct timing conflicts.. and they might even allow that.
pdude81
Well-Known Member
Should, yes. And I know that fastpass was a different animal, but when you could pay for 3 additional fastpasses at concierge level (any tier, any resort) they still had to have their own exclusive time window and couldn't be the same as any of the "free" ones. Hopefully they are independent of each other.