Lightning Lane at Walt Disney World

DisneyfanMA

Well-Known Member
Keep in mind that those are probably inflated. Touring Plans estimates the actual wait for those attractions currently are:

TT: 83 minutes
SDD: 77 minutes
MFSR: 63 minutes
RotR: 76 minutes
MMRR: 57 minutes
RnRC: 53 minutes


That is good to hear. I have gotten the sense the app usually inflates the standby time?
 

Disney Glimpses

Well-Known Member
That would be unfortunate. I know you say they do care about guest satisfaction. I do believe they do but at the same time they don't seem to get it. I know they are the highest attended park in the US but that shouldn't make much of a difference in how to run a park. Universal is right up there in attendance and they seen to do things well in day to day operations.
The lever is there, so I’m hopeful they will land on the right limit; but I wish they’d start conservatively.
 

crazy4disney

Well-Known Member
In the Parks
No
The lever is there, so I’m hopeful they will land on the right limit; but I wish they’d start conservatively.
question i have is they claimed 30+% of guests were using genie & even if that number was ONLY genie not including LL to inflate those #s for shareholders.... the system was a disaster how much more reduction can there be? I was there a month after it went live & parks were not at the capacity they are at now and from overhearing plenty of plaids they all claimed the numbers they were hearing were in the 80-85% range which im again guessing is higher now... you have stated they dont and will not raise prices just yet but still dont want to lose the revenue stream just cant see how they can do both and make this system much better where it shows any significant guests satisfaction surveys.... almost to a point where they should include everything and charge 25-30 and call it a day.. Cap the sales to what they feel would make the product worth it and move on from there... they still in theory get paid for the LL people feel they are getting more for the extra money spent and adds to the much needed inventory... is that even on the table if you can speak on that?
 

Purduevian

Well-Known Member
I thought someone had commented much earlier in the thread that the LL to standby ratio is much higher than it used to be, but there are less skips overall. Hard to find anything in this sea of verbiage but perhaps someone else might know who discussed the ratios.
You can't have both a higher LL to standby ratio and less skips being used... the two are inherently linked. Lets go to the hour example. If under fastpass the old ratio was 4:1 and they got through 800 FP an hour... then upping the ratio to 5:1, but only giving out 600LL would cause the LL to empty out. With no one in the LL, the standby would have all of the access and the 5:1 wouldn't hold anymore for the whole hour. If you change the number of skip the line passes, you have to change the ratio accordingly.

It's possible the lowered the ratio to like 3:1 and are now only giving out 750LL instead of 800.
Plus we know that LL/FP usage is very low in the first half hour of park opening as people try to hit other rides before using their first pass if they could even get one for 9am.
Very true, but the only way a line builds throughout the day is if more people enter the LL queue in a fixed amount of time than exit the queue and go on the attraction. You can't have that happen every hour throughout the day or the line would keep getting longer and longer and longer. For most of the day input and output has to remain the same or the line breaks. It doesn't matter if the line is 30 minutes or 2 minutes, so if the same ratio is used for LL as it did for FP, the passes given has to remain the same.
Also you have a math mistake there as if there were 800 skips per hour you'd have 66 and 2/3 skips every 5 minutes.
You are correct, somehow I was thinking there where 100 minutes in an hour not 60... whoops

TLDR: All I was trying to show is that the ratio of skip the line to standby is absolutely related to the number of LL/FP+ given out. The length of the skip the line queue is independent of those 2 factors as input(people getting in line)=output(people getting on the attraction no matter how long the line is. If input does not =output there will either be times where there is 0 line for LL (in which case the ratio is automatically changed) or the line will continue to grow and grow and grow throughout the day.
 

Disney Glimpses

Well-Known Member
question i have is they claimed 30+% of guests were using genie & even if that number was ONLY genie not including LL to inflate those #s for shareholders.... the system was a disaster how much more reduction can there be? I was there a month after it went live & parks were not at the capacity they are at now and from overhearing plenty of plaids they all claimed the numbers they were hearing were in the 80-85% range which im again guessing is higher now... you have stated they dont and will not raise prices just yet but still dont want to lose the revenue stream just cant see how they can do both and make this system much better where it shows any significant guests satisfaction surveys.... almost to a point where they should include everything and charge 25-30 and call it a day.. Cap the sales to what they feel would make the product worth it and move on from there... they still in theory get paid for the LL people feel they are getting more for the extra money spent and adds to the much needed inventory... is that even on the table if you can speak on that?
It's really two part. The major changes (including price increases) won't come until next year, AFAIK. The interim changes are temporary just to get them from now through the holidays; so I wouldn't look too deeply into them as to their relevance for what Genie+ looks like a year from now.
 

crazy4disney

Well-Known Member
In the Parks
No
It's really two part. The major changes (including price increases) won't come until next year, AFAIK. The interim changes are temporary just to get them from now through the holidays; so I wouldn't look too deeply into them as to their relevance for what Genie+ looks like a year from now.
understood... im their end of August curious to see what this looks like in comparison to when i was their in November... not to mention reviews prior to my trip
 

pdude81

Well-Known Member
You can't have both a higher LL to standby ratio and less skips being used... the two are inherently linked. Lets go to the hour example. If under fastpass the old ratio was 4:1 and they got through 800 FP an hour... then upping the ratio to 5:1, but only giving out 600LL would cause the LL to empty out. With no one in the LL, the standby would have all of the access and the 5:1 wouldn't hold anymore for the whole hour. If you change the number of skip the line passes, you have to change the ratio accordingly.

Well that depends on how you look at it. I agree if you're taking the whole hour as a data point and specifically saying that 800 come from LL and 200 from SB, but I don't think it really is ever that static unless both lines are flush with guests. I believe the ratio for mixing guests is higher, but often the LL queue before the merge point empties out. Just like when FP was 4:1, if there was nobody in the FP line the ratio was lower than that.

My believe based on observation alone is that they are dynamically allocating passes to certain rides based on posted waits to shift demand around, and conversely dynamically increasing wait time if they surge passes to an attraction or if there is a thunderstorm/breakdown where passes are stacked up. Then they can't count on any of those empty LL queue times and the wait for standby gets ugly. Again this is just my guess based on my own experience and usage. I believe MagicHappens1971 mentioned in the Jungle Cruise thread today that the peak merge for it is something like 14:1, which must be a horrible time to wait in standby.
 
You can't have both a higher LL to standby ratio and less skips being used... the two are inherently linked. Lets go to the hour example. If under fastpass the old ratio was 4:1 and they got through 800 FP an hour... then upping the ratio to 5:1, but only giving out 600LL would cause the LL to empty out. With no one in the LL, the standby would have all of the access and the 5:1 wouldn't hold anymore for the whole hour. If you change the number of skip the line passes, you have to change the ratio accordingly.

It's possible the lowered the ratio to like 3:1 and are now only giving out 750LL instead of 800.

Very true, but the only way a line builds throughout the day is if more people enter the LL queue in a fixed amount of time than exit the queue and go on the attraction. You can't have that happen every hour throughout the day or the line would keep getting longer and longer and longer. For most of the day input and output has to remain the same or the line breaks. It doesn't matter if the line is 30 minutes or 2 minutes, so if the same ratio is used for LL as it did for FP, the passes given has to remain the same.

You are correct, somehow I was thinking there where 100 minutes in an hour not 60... whoops

TLDR: All I was trying to show is that the ratio of skip the line to standby is absolutely related to the number of LL/FP+ given out. The length of the skip the line queue is independent of those 2 factors as input(people getting in line)=output(people getting on the attraction no matter how long the line is. If input does not =output there will either be times where there is 0 line for LL (in which case the ratio is automatically changed) or the line will continue to grow and grow and grow throughout the day.
All of that makes sense, but it assumes a constant LL to standby ratio throughout the hour and/or throughout the day. I've read before that cast members are instructed to adjust the ratio they are admitting onto the ride based on the FP queue length. It seems plausible that Disney could have begun with fewer LL given out than FP+ and it helps guarantee that the LL wait is usually very minimal and they can just admit more standby per hour when LL queue is near 0 -- and admit more LL when the line grows. It also seems plausible that the number could have been adjusted over time to try to find a balance between short LL waits and LL reservation capacity so now there are longer LL waits more often.

In your example (if I understood correctly), you're maxing out the FP queue at 30 minutes by providing exactly the number of skips needed to keep the line full. If you wanted to guarantee a short wait it would make sense to give out a smaller number and provide some buffer for ride downtimes or just the ebb and flow of guests arriving during their 1hr window. Apparently Disney really didn't think so many people would pay for it so I'm not sure I believe that they started out allocating 75% of ride capacity to LL. Admitting that percent when both lines have enough people, yes. But allocating it for the whole day from the start? Not sure about that.
 

Chi84

Premium Member
Subscription- but honestly a year's subscription is just a few $ more than one day of Genie+ for one person... And you get a lot more. Totally worth it in my opinion.
I agree. We had success with their free reservation finder and then immediately subscribed as a way of supporting a very worthwhile service. Since then we've been renewing every year; it's very reasonable.
 

DisneyHead123

Well-Known Member
It's really two part. The major changes (including price increases) won't come until next year, AFAIK. The interim changes are temporary just to get them from now through the holidays; so I wouldn't look too deeply into them as to their relevance for what Genie+ looks like a year from now.
Any reason to hope for a pre-reserve option being added, similar to the old FP+ but paid? Or is everything on the table right now?
 

Register on WDWMAGIC. This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.

Back
Top Bottom