Lightning Lane at Walt Disney World

[HauntedPirate]

Don't build half-assed "lands" with massive marketing campaigns promoting them as the greatest additions ever to drive attendance higher and higher and maybe wait times wouldn't be so high all around? Nah...

Fantasyland expansion - 2 "headliners", one a C ticket and the other a D ticket (IMHO)
Pandora - 2 "headliners", 1 E ticket and 1 C/D ticket
TSL - 1 "headliner" (D ticket) and 1 spinner
GE - 1 "headliner" and 1 motion simulator

Where are the people-eaters? Where are the family-friendly rides, and the other things for people to do/ride that aren't shops or eateries? 2 of those are things I would consider "family-friendly". Then, on top of that, the rip-and-replace strategy does nothing positive in terms of wait times, but that's almost entirely what has been done in the Era of the Bob.

 

[UNCgolf]

In the span of 3 years, HS opened both Toy Story Land and Galaxy's edge, and then MMRT. The addition of 6 major rides should have been enough to alleviate and capacity issue in HS. Has it worked? HS seemed pretty crowed the last 3 times i was there.

If you are looking for a built out of "capacity" larger than 6 new rides over the course of 3 years for a single park, (meaning an average of 2 new rides coming on line per year, for the past 3 years) then you just being unrealistic from any reasonable business perspective.

Well they didn't add 6 major rides. There are only 5 rides in the grouping you mentioned (Toy Story Mania already existed), and Alien Swirling Saucers isn't a major ride by any definition (although DHS does need more smaller attractions like it). MMRR also wasn't an addition; it was a replacement that I think has a lower capacity than what it replaced.

Also, DHS had abysmal capacity before they did all of those things. They were an attempt to get it closer to an acceptable level. The starting point matters -- I think DHS had a grand total of 6 rides (Star Tours, Great Movie Ride, Tower of Terror, Rock N Roller Coaster, Toy Story Mania, and the rotting corpse of the Backlot Tour; am I forgetting anything?) before all of the recent construction.

 

[HauntedPirate]

In the span of 3 years, HS opened both Toy Story Land and Galaxy's edge, and then MMRT. The addition of 6 major rides should have been enough to alleviate and capacity issue in HS. Has it worked? HS seemed pretty crowed the last 3 times i was there.

If you are looking for a built out of "capacity" larger than 6 new rides over the course of 3 years for a single park, (meaning an average of 2 new rides coming on line per year, for the past 3 years) then you just being unrealistic from any reasonable business perspective.

Except your "6 major rides" are actually only two new rides, a coaster and a spinner, and TSM isn't new, either. Neither of the actual new rides is a high capacity attraction.

 

[evenstephan]

Genie + is charged to your on file credit card, not your room charge account. Do you have a credit card on file in MDE?

I would also try uninstalling the MDE app and reinstalling it.

Thanks for the tips, and sorry about the confusion. I figured that the Genie+ purchase is directly applied to a CC and not through the room; and had mentioned that as part of wondering if park reservations made under the old system had caused a mismatch within the system. I did uninstall and reinstall the app on my phone, and then tried it on multiple phones from my family, all with the same result.

The good news is that the problem was fixed, either because of my IT ticket or because it worked itself out. I was able to purchase Genie+ this morning. Hopefully, the problem won't happen again.

 

[Patcheslee]

OK...let's do it this way. Since you want to compare a private all-day Disney tour with Universal, let's compare apples to apples. A similar tour at Universal costs up to $6,699. That's for up to 5 people and does not include sales tax or the cost of admission.

VIP Experiences | Universal Orlando

VIP Tours For the ultimate no-expenses-spared Universal Orlando experience, book a VIP tour of one or both parks. VIP guests

touringplans.com

$6699 for the 2 day, 2 park private tours during peak time. $3999 for the single day 2 park tour. Includes breakfast and lunch.

 

[lazyboy97o]

In the span of 3 years, HS opened both Toy Story Land and Galaxy's edge, and then MMRT. The addition of 6 major rides should have been enough to alleviate and capacity issue in HS. Has it worked? HS seemed pretty crowed the last 3 times i was there.

If you are looking for a built out of "capacity" larger than 6 new rides over the course of 3 years for a single park, (meaning an average of 2 new rides coming on line per year, for the past 3 years) then you just being unrealistic from any reasonable business perspective.

Disney’s Hollywood Studios is not meaningfully larger than it was in 1994 when Sunset Blvd opened. The five new rides all replaced existing areas of the park with Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway reusing an existing show building. Alien Swirling Saucers has low capacity. Slinky Dog Dash is alright. Rise of the Resistance is unreliable.

Adding attractions is only unrealistic from a business perspective because Disney’s costs are incredibly out of control.

 

[Chip Chipperson]

I don't think they have a choice anymore. I think one of the key issues here, part of the reason the models are failing, is that the disparity between headliners and non-headliners is widening. Rather than there really being a range of experiences (A, B, C, D and E), everything is getting boiled down into "must-do" or "skip." That's putting way more pressure on the headliners to perform in a way that traditionally they were never meant to.

Case in point: Muppet's still being empty when all those attractions went down yesterday. People are so driven to get the headliners done, that waiting in a 100+ minute wait for Tower of Terror seems like a better option then wasting any time visiting Muppets or seeing a show.



Well I think another angle on this is that, ultimately, people would rather wait in long lines than be excluded from visiting. My solution would be a simple price increase across the board to curb demand and reduce the overall wait time everywhere. For Disney though that's a terrible solution because pricing people out would have a greater negative impact on the brand image than long wait times.

Secondarily, if attendance was brought back down, you would see a lot of attraction demand dry up, to the point that Disney would be forced to close a lot of their older, more historical attractions. That's not really something I think anyone wants, and especially not Disney. In a weird way, having a 90+ minute wait for Mine Train, justifies keeping Tiki Room and Country Bears around for another year.

I don't think it's a matter of people preferring a 100+ minute wait for Tower of Terror over waiting for the next showing of the Muppets as much as it is a fear that the line for Tower of Terror or some other ride will be even longer once they get done with the Muppets show. People tend to think, "If it's 100 minutes now, what will it be in 30 minutes? 120? 150?" Nobody expects the Muppets to have a 60-minute wait, so it's something that can always be done later, which makes it a more efficient use of your time to wait the 100 minutes for the headliner now rather than waiting even longer later, especially if you're already closer to that ride than the Muppets theater.

 

[larryz]

I’m an AP and DVC member why would I not be here?

Maybe because you're so disappointed in how the experience quality has declined that you sold your DVC points and decided to not renew your APs?

 

[el_super]

People have explained it to you ad nauseum. The only issue is that you refuse to accept it.

Likewise right? We've been talking about the crowding issues with regard to individual attractions, and the lack of availability for the specific experiences, and continually offering up a generic solution like "add more capacity" just ignores so many details of what the situation on the ground is really like. It boils down all attraction experiences to these generic interchangeable products, not at all unlike bathrooms.

A new ride creates demand for that new ride. It does not create enough new demand to outweigh the capacity addition (especially if they are also adding shop, entertainment, and dining capacity, all of which are needed) -- even Galaxy's Edge did not do this.

The new attraction will have long lines, but the other attractions will have correspondingly shorter lines.

It's the long line for the new attraction that people are most complaining about.

You're essentially saying that if an attraction had 2.5 hour lines, and two new attractions open that get a 3 hour line and a 1.5 hour line, and that decreases the wait time at the previously existing attraction to 1 hour, that does nothing to help the park. Of course it does -- people can now ride that previously existing attraction while waiting an hour and a half less, and that would cascade throughout the whole park.

We literally just saw this in action yesterday, when people complained about the headliners being down, but no one bothered to check out Muppets. There's a lot of unused capacity in the parks that just gets ignored because people want to see the headliners. You think that having a headliner with a 3 hour wait is a solution, it's not because then people would need to wake up at 7AM to get Lightning Lane reservations for that ride. They would need to be at the park at opening to rope drop that ride.

The problem isn't whether a wait goes from 2 hours to 1 hour, it's that you have a 3 hour wait in your park AT ALL.

 

[el_super]

In the span of 3 years, HS opened both Toy Story Land and Galaxy's edge, and then MMRT. The addition of 6 major rides should have been enough to alleviate and capacity issue in HS. Has it worked? HS seemed pretty crowed the last 3 times i was there.

To be fair, it's pretty easy to see Star Tours now... I guess that's a win... for someone?

 

[el_super]

Adding attractions is only unrealistic from a business perspective because Disney’s costs are incredibly out of control.

Yeah see... I still agree with you on this. I also agree that the individual attraction capacity needs to increase.

At the same time though, in the context of crowding, this isn't a problem that's really unique to Disney. Hagrid's was supposedly the most expensive coaster ever built (I think around 200 million?) and it still opened with technical problems and 10+ hour lines. At the point that you have a 10+ hour line for one ride, it doesn't matter how much shorter any other line in the park is, because the entire experience is going to be dominated by that 10 hour wait.

You still need to have a queue management system to improve the experience for those people who want to ride.

 

[Trauma]

Maybe because you're so disappointed in how the experience quality has declined that you sold your DVC points and decided to not renew your APs?

Well I am disappointed in things currently, I remain hopeful that things will change over time.

I don’t think the company can maintain its current trajectory and survive long term.

I still have good trips overall.

That being said we know all the tricks and how to maximize our days.

If my first trip to Disney happened during this current “era” of genie + etc, I would probably have never returned.

 

[el_super]

I don't think it's a matter of people preferring a 100+ minute wait for Tower of Terror over waiting for the next showing of the Muppets as much as it is a fear that the line for Tower of Terror or some other ride will be even longer.

Sure, but there in lies the problem, they're afraid the line will be longer later, and the option to skip it never registers to them.

The general idea of building more system capacity to alleviate the specific demand is dependent on thinking someone would rather choose to go see Muppets than ride Tower of Terror, so the line at Tower of Terror goes down. Give people more things to do, so that they are willing to give up some of the headliners. But that's not really what's happening because those headliners are /must-do/ attractions and to some large degree, the wait times are irrelevant. The wait times should be a bigger burden to preventing people from joining the queues, but they're not.

 

[Ayla]

($425 * 7) / 10 = $297.50 > $209.99

Don't forget, that bargain price doesn't include park tickets!

 

[Ayla]

RnRC is still down today.

 

[larryz]

RnRC is still down today.

Here comes Olivia Rodrigo...

 

[Ayla]

RnRC is still down today.

I think it was closed all day yesterday, too. It has to be unplanned, considering the date.

 

[lazyboy97o]

Yeah see... I still agree with you on this. I also agree that the individual attraction capacity needs to increase.

At the same time though, in the context of crowding, this isn't a problem that's really unique to Disney. Hagrid's was supposedly the most expensive coaster ever built (I think around 200 million?) and it still opened with technical problems and 10+ hour lines. At the point that you have a 10+ hour line for one ride, it doesn't matter how much shorter any other line in the park is, because the entire experience is going to be dominated by that 10 hour wait.

You still need to have a queue management system to improve the experience for those people who want to ride.

More distortions. The ten hour wait was on opening day. That didn’t persist until Velocicoaster opened and then shift there. The five hour lines for Escape from Gringott’s didn’t persist and then shift to Race Through New York and then on to Fast & Furious. And of course neither of the new coasters nor the two new parks were designed with the idea of a virtual queue being the primary means of access (or even a consideration at the new parks) despite that once being the intended way forward starting with Race Through New York, Fast & Furious: Supercharged and Volcano Bay.

 

[Chi84]

I’m an AP and DVC member why would I not be here?

DVC is a big part of why we keep going to WDW. We’re planning an April family vacation using points for a 2BR and a studio at SSR. With very young grandchildren, having a full kitchen and in-room laundry facilities in a room already paid for with points is a huge plus.

That said, my husband wanted to add to our membership a few years ago and I cautioned against it based on what I was seeing at the time. There’s nothing wrong with continuing to visit while at the same time noting that the experience is declining.

Right now, the value is still there for us, but I’m not sure that will be the case a few years from now if WDW continues on its current trajectory.

 

[Chip Chipperson]

Sure, but there in lies the problem, they're afraid the line will be longer later, and the option to skip it never registers to them.

The general idea of building more system capacity to alleviate the specific demand is dependent on thinking someone would rather choose to go see Muppets than ride Tower of Terror, so the line at Tower of Terror goes down. Give people more things to do, so that they are willing to give up some of the headliners. But that's not really what's happening because those headliners are /must-do/ attractions and to some large degree, the wait times are irrelevant. The wait times should be a bigger burden to preventing people from joining the queues, but they're not.

The issue isn't that nobody wants to see the Muppets show, it's that the most efficient use of their time while doing/seeing as much as possible is to wait on the long line now before it gets even longer and then go see the show that almost always has a short wait. The reason Tower of Terror had such a long line yesterday was in part because so many other attractions weren't operating and Tower of Terror was apparently not running at full capacity for at least part of the day. And if you were in line for RnRC, the only other ride in the area is Tower of Terror, so it makes sense to go there next if it's on your list of things to do since you're already near it. If there was another ride over there then some of that demand could have been absorbed. Had there been another ride available in Galaxy's Edge, for example, then people would have been diverted to that while Rise was down. If there had been another ride in Toy Story Land, then that could have eaten up some of the demand, too, since it borders the alternate entrance/exit to Galaxy's Edge.