Lightning Lane at Walt Disney World

[lazyboy97o]

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.

And unless you are actually there in the theater, you can’t declare how many people are visiting based on the wait time listed in the app. A continuous show isn’t continuously loading, it’s big pulses at spaced out intervals. The wait time listed in the app is usually less than the cycle time (Touring Plans gives a 17 minute cycle while the app often says 10-15 minute wait). There is no incremental increase from 15 minutes to 20 minutes to 25, it’s a sudden jump in 15 minute increments from 15 to 30 that may or may not last into the next showing, so you’d be a cycle or two in before really knowing.

Wait times also are poor because they don’t necessarily reflect capacity. Velocicoaster spent the summer hovering around 60 minutes for its wait times because it’s a reliable machine that moves people through, not because it is a dud. Just looking at pictures on my phone, Muppet Vision 3D seems to have at least 15 rows with about 30 seats each for a total of about 450 seats. A 17 minute cycle means it’s doing 3.5 shows an hour giving it a THRC of 1,575. The show has high instantaneous and high (for the park) hourly capacity. Even with half full theaters cycling every 20 minutes, the attraction would be seeing more people than [“major new addition”] Alien Swirling Saucers at peak efficiency. And as you said, that efficiency is something people learn, they generally don’t have to wait multiple cycles and so they are not going to endure that wait at the risk of another wait becoming worse.

 

[Trauma]

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

BTMR was down all day yesterday and today also.

 

[mightynine]

Here comes Olivia Rodrigo...

I think Ed Sheeran's "Bad Habits" might be more appropriate after the last two days.

 

[MrPromey]

They advertised the **** out of TSL they legitimately wanted people coming on vacation for that land alone. It was plastered at airports...on buses....big fancy tv commercials.

There was a friggin' Super Bowl commercial just for that "expansion"!

 

[Patcheslee]

And unless you are actually there in the theater, you can’t declare how many people are visiting based on the wait time listed in the app. A continuous show isn’t continuously loading, it’s big pulses at spaced out intervals. The wait time listed in the app is usually less than the cycle time (Touring Plans gives a 17 minute cycle while the app often says 10-15 minute wait). There is no incremental increase from 15 minutes to 20 minutes to 25, it’s a sudden jump in 15 minute increments from 15 to 30 that may or may not last into the next showing, so you’d be a cycle or two in before really knowing.

Wait times also are poor because they don’t necessarily reflect capacity. Velocicoaster spent the summer hovering around 60 minutes for its wait times because it’s a reliable machine that moves people through, not because it is a dud. Just looking at pictures on my phone, Muppet Vision 3D seems to have at least 15 rows with about 30 seats each for a total of about 450 seats. A 17 minute cycle means it’s doing 3.5 shows an hour giving it a THRC of 1,575. The show has high instantaneous and high (for the park) hourly capacity. Even with half full theaters cycling every 20 minutes, the attraction would be seeing more people than [“major new addition”] Alien Swirling Saucers at peak efficiency. And as you said, that efficiency is something people learn, they generally don’t have to wait multiple cycles and so they are not going to endure that wait at the risk of another wait becoming worse.

I don't personally care for the 3D shows. Partially because the glasses don't always work for me. By the time I get through pre-show, seated, and part of the way through the show, I'm just ready to move on. If it's a 20 minute cycle, I'm automatically assuming 40 minutes between pre-show and show invested in something I'm not a fan of. Now Indy, I'm a fan of, and the assumed total time invested is worth it.

 

[lazyboy97o]

I don't personally care for the 3D shows. Partially because the glasses don't always work for me. By the time I get through pre-show, seated, and part of the way through the show, I'm just ready to move on. If it's a 20 minute cycle, I'm automatically assuming 40 minutes between pre-show and show invested in something I'm not a fan of. Now Indy, I'm a fan of, and the assumed total time invested is worth it.

And this is a big part of the problem with the 7.3 attractions per day parks and why they are called half day parks. Part of being able to spread people out is having a variety of offerings that appeal to different people.

Tangent: I’m surprised the parks don’t offer 2D glasses for the 3D experiences. It’d make the attractions more accessible.

 

[seabreezept813]

@marni1971 @lentesta @wdwmagic. Quick question to help a planning obsessed mom out. Is it worth learning all the Genie info now for an August trip or do you see this system changing over the next few months? For someone who had our last trip planned down to the minute in 2019 (thanks personalized touring plans) this trip has me totally unsure how to approach planning. @lentesta do you anticipate unofficial guide coming out with genie plans etc this year? Just putting out feelers, I know none of you can really know, but you still always know more than me so figured I’d ask. Thank you!

 

[wutisgood]

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.

Can we please get rid of the troll. Can we vote on it and be done? they sound worse than whatever kevin durant does when he is off.

 

[Chi84]

Can we please get rid of the troll. Can we vote on it and be done? they sound worse than whatever kevin durant does when he is off.

It's easy. Just vote by using the ignore feature.

 

[lentesta]

@marni1971 @lentesta @wdwmagic. Quick question to help a planning obsessed mom out. Is it worth learning all the Genie info now for an August trip or do you see this system changing over the next few months? For someone who had our last trip planned down to the minute in 2019 (thanks personalized touring plans) this trip has me totally unsure how to approach planning. @lentesta do you anticipate unofficial guide coming out with genie plans etc this year? Just putting out feelers, I know none of you can really know, but you still always know more than me so figured I’d ask. Thank you!

I'm pretty sure we'll see the G+/ILL lineups change when GOTG and TRON open. Beyond that, it's hard to say whether there'll be specific rules changes. I mean, I *think* we'll see moves around adding capacity during peak periods, but that's just a guess.

We'll have touring plans in the next couple of weeks that make suggestions on which G+ reservations to get (and at what time), as we did with the old paper FP system and MAXPASS at DLR.

 

[DisneyCane]

And this is a big part of the problem with the 7.3 attractions per day parks and why they are called half day parks. Part of being able to spread people out is having a variety of offerings that appeal to different people.

Tangent: I’m surprised the parks don’t offer 2D glasses for the 3D experiences. It’d make the attractions more accessible.

Just cover one eye and you have 2D glasses. I always thought the issue is that some people don't see stereoscopic 3D, not that there is discomfort or an issue caused.

 

[Jeff4272]

Disney already offers a high priced, limited skip the line service.

No they don’t. $4,000 per day isn’t high priced. It’s ridiculous

 

[Diamond Dot]

I saw a video on YouTube that is saying that people have noticed that the Genie+ inflates wait times while the Genie (I think) and the standby line can be a lot less, he showed examples of the Genie+ saying the line was 35 minutes while the Genie said it was 5 minutes and apparently he reported this because people got in touch with him having noticed this. He recommends not paying for the Genie+ at the moment. I nearly choked when he quoted Lightening Lane being $20 for RoTR. Stuff that, I'm there for two weeks, so I'll just download some Disney stuff off Disney+ before I go and binge watch that for the two hours wait time, making sure I go to the bathroom before I get in line as a solo guest.

 

[gerarar]

I saw a video on YouTube that is saying that people have noticed that the Genie+ inflates wait times while the Genie (I think) and the standby line can be a lot less, he showed examples of the Genie+ saying the line was 35 minutes while the Genie said it was 5 minutes and apparently he reported this because people got in touch with him having noticed this. He recommends not paying for the Genie+ at the moment. I nearly choked when he quoted Lightening Lane being $20 for RoTR. Stuff that, I'm there for two weeks, so I'll just download some Disney stuff off Disney+ before I go and binge watch that for the two hours wait time, making sure I go to the bathroom before I get in line as a solo guest.

Be prepared for when Rise does go down. If you stay in line, the wait will most likely almost double upon reopening of the ride due to how LL is prioritized. One standby party for every LL cluster at the merge point.

The 3 times I rode last week:
A 95 min wait became a 120 min wait after it going down while in line.
A 160 min wait became a 195 min wait.
A 180 min wait became a 250 min wait.

For all 3 times, the ride went down (unlucky me ig?) when I was about to enter the caves part of the queue. There’s a big forward movement when Rise reopens because no LL’s have been queued yet, but once they start lining up it’s a really slow crawl from there.

 

[Diamond Dot]

Be prepared for when Rise does go down. If you stay in line, the wait will most likely almost double upon reopening of the ride due to how LL is prioritized. One standby party for every LL cluster at the merge point.

The 3 times I rode last week:
A 95 min wait became a 120 min wait after it going down while in line.
A 160 min wait became a 195 min wait.
A 180 min wait became a 250 min wait.

For all 3 times, the ride went down (unlucky me ig?) when I was about to enter the caves part of the queue. There’s a big forward movement when Rise reopens because no LL’s have been queued yet, but once they start lining up it’s a really slow crawl from there.

Fortunately as a solo guest who is there for two weeks I can prioritise doing ROTR early on and it's no disaster if it does go down I only have to worry about me and if I want to wait or not. It would be a different story for a family with a couple of days at the parks.

 

[Patcheslee]

Just cover one eye and you have 2D glasses. I always thought the issue is that some people don't see stereoscopic 3D, not that there is discomfort or an issue caused.

For me it's an issue of already wearing contacts combined with the glasses causes eye strain and if worn long, a headache.
Also had to go through 2 years of physical therapy as a kid due to double vision from injury. Retrain my brain/eyes to sync a single image.

 

[seabreezept813]

I'm pretty sure we'll see the G+/ILL lineups change when GOTG and TRON open. Beyond that, it's hard to say whether there'll be specific rules changes. I mean, I *think* we'll see moves around adding capacity during peak periods, but that's just a guess.

We'll have touring plans in the next couple of weeks that make suggestions on which G+ reservations to get (and at what time), as we did with the old paper FP system and MAXPASS at DLR.

Awesome news about touring plans, thank you! I hope we can make it work with RS too.

 

[JAB]

For the sake of my sanity, I had to take a bit of a break from the forums and trip planning, and there've been too many pages to catch up on since I last checked this thread, so please forgive me if this has been discussed; I just wanted to get some verification about changes to G+ that I seemed to have missed during my "time off."

I was already aware that they had closed the grace period double dip loophole, but now I'm reading reports that Disney has changed how the 120 min. timeout works so that you can no longer "leapfrog" LLs.

Ex. - You used to be able to (theoretically) do this:

7 am: Book LL #1 for 10:30 am
11 am: Book LL #2 for 11:30 am (120 min timeout after 9 am park open)
11:01: Tap into LL#1 and book LL #3 for 12 pm
11:30: Tap into LL#2 and book LL #4 for 12:30 pm

...and so on, holding two LLs at a time and leapfrogging them for the rest of the day.


But now, from what I'm reading, it sounds like they'll only let you book more than one LL at a time if the 120 min timeout has expired (i.e. tapping into a LL now only lets you book a new LL if you have no other LLs booked), so the above situation would now look like:

7 am: Book LL #1 for 10:30 am
11 am: Book LL #2 for 11:30 am (120 min timeout after 9 am park open)
11:01: Tap into LL#1 (booking new LL not allowed)
11:30: Tap into LL#2 and book LL #3 for 12:30 pm

...and now you're back to one at a time unless you book far enough out to trigger the 120 min. timeout again.


Is this how G+ is working now? If so, it could certainly have an impact on our park strategy.

 

[nickys]

For the sake of my sanity, I had to take a bit of a break from the forums and trip planning, and there've been too many pages to catch up on since I last checked this thread, so please forgive me if this has been discussed; I just wanted to get some verification about changes to G+ that I seemed to have missed during my "time off."

I was already aware that they had closed the grace period double dip loophole, but now I'm reading reports that Disney has changed how the 120 min. timeout works so that you can no longer "leapfrog" LLs.

Ex. - You used to be able to (theoretically) do this:

7 am: Book LL #1 for 10:30 am
11 am: Book LL #2 for 11:30 am (120 min timeout after 9 am park open)
11:01: Tap into LL#1 and book LL #3 for 12 pm
11:30: Tap into LL#2 and book LL #4 for 12:30 pm

...and so on, holding two LLs at a time and leapfrogging them for the rest of the day.


But now, from what I'm reading, it sounds like they'll only let you book more than one LL at a time if the 120 min timeout has expired (i.e. tapping into a LL now only lets you book a new LL if you have no other LLs booked), so the above situation would now look like:

7 am: Book LL #1 for 10:30 am
11 am: Book LL #2 for 11:30 am (120 min timeout after 9 am park open)
11:01: Tap into LL#1 (booking new LL not allowed)
11:30: Tap into LL#2 and book LL #3 for 12:30 pm

...and now you're back to one at a time unless you book far enough out to trigger the 120 min. timeout again.


Is this how G+ is working now? If so, it could certainly have an impact on our park strategy.

Yes, that is how it’s working now.

Someone descri

 

[BrianLo]

Sorry I keep forgetting, what year exactly was it that capacity was sufficient for there not to be any lines?

2019 at Disneyland. Florida has never even remotely been in the ballpark of sufficient capacity.