Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway confirmed

[matt9112]

What rides do you think they are purposefully running at half capacity when there is demand?

Anything with multiple loads....anything that can run with less humans period. At rope drop you wont see space or thunder running there second load platforms respectively. Mission space regularly is running under capacity even in the middle of the day.

 

[lentesta]

@lentesta - care to weigh in here on Disney creating artificially long waits? I believe it was January 2019 or January 2018 that you had some eye opening data?

You remember correctly.

Based on the data we've collected, I'm reasonably sure Disney (and Universal) has been willing to runs rides at well under capacity even if it generated high wait times and lower guest satisfaction.

Disneyland's Space Mountain is one example. We've counted the number of people exiting Space per hour dozens of times over the years. The highest number we've ever counted is 1,838, at noon on April 2, 2018. And it ran at > 98% of that capacity for many hours we checked on that week, so it's not a fluke.

At 1,800-ish people/hour, the posted wait was between 60-65 minutes when we checked.

However, for many days from February 13 - 28, 2018, we think Space ran at somewhere between 65% and 79% of capacity: we counted anywhere from 1,198 to 1,452 people/hour. The wait times during those hours ranged from 40 to 90 minutes, and averaged around 60.

Broadly speaking, Disney was willing to run Space at 70% capacity even if it meant 60-minute waits for guests during a slow time of year.

We have many examples like this for both WDW and DLR. During the same week of February, 2018, for example, we counted this at WDW:

• 7DMT at 50-70% of capacity
• BTMRR at 58-67% of capacity
• Space Mountain at 60-80% of capacity

The reason why we started counting riders was because the high wait times we were seeing in early 2018, didn't correspond to how many people should've been in the parks.

Later in 2018 we spoke to some friends in the business who said that Disney had tried staff and capacity cutbacks for the first few weeks of 2018. They stopped it around the third week of February 2018 when they realized it was negatively impacting guest satisfaction. I think they (and we) were also surprised by the number of guests willing to shift their travel to the beginning of the year - that trend seemed to accelerate in 2018.

We saw something similar with wait times, on a smaller scale, in early 2019. We still check things periodically.

So yeah, I'm reasonably sure that Disney is willing to experiment with the trade-off of higher wait times and lower guest satisfaction, for reduced labor costs and maintenance costs achieved by shrinking capacity and staff. The question we've always had is what that equilibrium point is for them, and how much they're willing to move it. I think that's a moving target, based on whatever financial pressure or target they're facing at the moment (*cough* ESPN *cough* Shanghai *cough* launching Disney+ *cough*)

 

[peter11435]

Anything with multiple loads....anything that can run with less humans period. At rope drop you wont see space or thunder running there second load platforms respectively. Mission space regularly is running under capacity even in the middle of the day.

Yes, it’s been said by me and others multiple times that attractions don’t open at maximum capacity. That’s not the same thing as intentionally operating at reduced capacity while guests experience significant waits. It’s clear that you're basing your information on observations. That doesn’t paint the whole picture and shows a lack of understanding of how operations handles attraction capacity and demand. If there is significant demand for an attraction they are expected to be operating at maximum capacity. There are obviosuly reasons this doesn’t always take place. But it’s not planned and intentional outside of select instances like planned maintenance such as with ToT recently

 

[po1998]

Pages and pages of nothing to do with MMRR updates. Please make it stop.

 

[nickys]

Yes, it’s been said by me and others multiple times that attractions don’t open at maximum capacity. That’s not the same thing as intentionally operating at reduced capacity while guests experience significant waits. It’s clear that you're basing your information on observations. That doesn’t paint the whole picture and shows a lack of understanding of how operations handles attraction capacity and demand. If there is significant demand for an attraction they are expected to be operating at maximum capacity. There are obviosuly reasons this doesn’t always take place. But it’s not planned and intentional.

Can I ask what your view is on Len’s analysis?

If it had been just one ride, I could accept maybe there was some reason for it - be it technical or something else. But with four of the most popular rides showing the same thing in one week suggests otherwise.

 

[splashtest]

Pages and pages of nothing to do with MMRR updates. Please make it stop.

I've been saying this for 2 days now.......

 

[Disorbust]

• Then thats normal capacity. The only time they load two trains at once is a "catchup" where they had a delay with trains coming up from unload, and there's a gap in front of load one. Otherwise it should be an empty train in load two, moving to load one (actual load), as he rest move to seatbelt check, and then dispatch. So, no, thats not running at half capacity.

I'm not explaining it correctly. It was one Section of "numbers on the floor" loading area, does that make sense?

 

[The_Jobu]

You remember correctly.

Based on the data we've collected, I'm reasonably sure Disney (and Universal) has been willing to runs rides at well under capacity even if it generated high wait times and lower guest satisfaction.

Disneyland's Space Mountain is one example. We've counted the number of people exiting Space per hour dozens of times over the years. The highest number we've ever counted is 1,838, at noon on April 2, 2018. And it ran at > 98% of that capacity for many hours we checked on that week, so it's not a fluke.

At 1,800-ish people/hour, the posted wait was between 60-65 minutes when we checked.

However, for many days from February 13 - 28, 2018, we think Space ran at somewhere between 65% and 79% of capacity: we counted anywhere from 1,198 to 1,452 people/hour. The wait times during those hours ranged from 40 to 90 minutes, and averaged around 60.

Broadly speaking, Disney was willing to run Space at 70% capacity even if it meant 60-minute waits for guests during a slow time of year.

We have many examples like this for both WDW and DLR. During the same week of February, 2018, for example, we counted this at WDW:

• 7DMT at 50-70% of capacity
• BTMRR at 58-67% of capacity
• Space Mountain at 60-80% of capacity

The reason why we started counting riders was because the high wait times we were seeing in early 2018, didn't correspond to how many people should've been in the parks.

Later in 2018 we spoke to some friends in the business who said that Disney had tried staff and capacity cutbacks for the first few weeks of 2018. They stopped it around the third week of February 2018 when they realized it was negatively impacting guest satisfaction. I think they (and we) were also surprised by the number of guests willing to shift their travel to the beginning of the year - that trend seemed to accelerate in 2018.

We saw something similar with wait times, on a smaller scale, in early 2019. We still check things periodically.

So yeah, I'm reasonably sure that Disney is willing to experiment with the trade-off of higher wait times and lower guest satisfaction, for reduced labor costs and maintenance costs achieved by shrinking capacity and staff. The question we've always had is what that equilibrium point is for them, and how much they're willing to move it. I think that's a moving target, based on whatever financial pressure or target they're facing at the moment (*cough* ESPN *cough* Shanghai *cough* launching Disney+ *cough*)

Thank you for all the wonderful work you do.

 

[britain]

(*cough* ESPN *cough* Shanghai *cough* launching Disney+ *cough*)

Oh man, Len has the coronavirus!

 

[matt9112]

Yes, it’s been said by me and others multiple times that attractions don’t open at maximum capacity. That’s not the same thing as intentionally operating at reduced capacity while guests experience significant waits. It’s clear that you're basing your information on observations. That doesn’t paint the whole picture and shows a lack of understanding of how operations handles attraction capacity and demand. If there is significant demand for an attraction they are expected to be operating at maximum capacity. There are obviosuly reasons this doesn’t always take place. But it’s not planned and intentional outside of select instances like planned maintenance such as with ToT recently

They staff for it....my examples are real world observations but the factual information is that disney staffs based on EXSPECTED crowd levels. So if tommorow they did not think it will be busy using all there metrics they will have less people scheduled. But what if tommorow is busy?

 

[voodoo321]

You remember correctly.

Based on the data we've collected, I'm reasonably sure Disney (and Universal) has been willing to runs rides at well under capacity even if it generated high wait times and lower guest satisfaction.

Disneyland's Space Mountain is one example. We've counted the number of people exiting Space per hour dozens of times over the years. The highest number we've ever counted is 1,838, at noon on April 2, 2018. And it ran at > 98% of that capacity for many hours we checked on that week, so it's not a fluke.

At 1,800-ish people/hour, the posted wait was between 60-65 minutes when we checked.

However, for many days from February 13 - 28, 2018, we think Space ran at somewhere between 65% and 79% of capacity: we counted anywhere from 1,198 to 1,452 people/hour. The wait times during those hours ranged from 40 to 90 minutes, and averaged around 60.

Broadly speaking, Disney was willing to run Space at 70% capacity even if it meant 60-minute waits for guests during a slow time of year.

We have many examples like this for both WDW and DLR. During the same week of February, 2018, for example, we counted this at WDW:

• 7DMT at 50-70% of capacity
• BTMRR at 58-67% of capacity
• Space Mountain at 60-80% of capacity

The reason why we started counting riders was because the high wait times we were seeing in early 2018, didn't correspond to how many people should've been in the parks.

Later in 2018 we spoke to some friends in the business who said that Disney had tried staff and capacity cutbacks for the first few weeks of 2018. They stopped it around the third week of February 2018 when they realized it was negatively impacting guest satisfaction. I think they (and we) were also surprised by the number of guests willing to shift their travel to the beginning of the year - that trend seemed to accelerate in 2018.

We saw something similar with wait times, on a smaller scale, in early 2019. We still check things periodically.

So yeah, I'm reasonably sure that Disney is willing to experiment with the trade-off of higher wait times and lower guest satisfaction, for reduced labor costs and maintenance costs achieved by shrinking capacity and staff. The question we've always had is what that equilibrium point is for them, and how much they're willing to move it. I think that's a moving target, based on whatever financial pressure or target they're facing at the moment (*cough* ESPN *cough* Shanghai *cough* launching Disney+ *cough*)

I was there between those dates in Feb '18. It was miserable. The wait times were longer than at any time I've ever visited at any time of any year. They obviously got their wires crossed somewhere with the predictive staffing because there were a lot of re-bookings from canceled trips from the hurricane in '17 and the entire city of New Orleans fleeing Mardi Gras to WDW. Just from my perspective I can tell you that they weren't running rides at full capacity. The shortest lines I experiences were 45 minutes and that was fastpass.

And for the people that say that "they've been doing this for years", in some ways, yes, I'm sure they have, but never to the degree of austerity in recent years. I've been going since the late 70's and there had always been times with low waits. Not any more. I know, I know, there isn't a slow season anymore and blah blah blah. Between predictive staffing and FP+ those times are long gone. That particular trip was the beginning of WDW losing its magic for me. I've been a few times since and I've noticed more and more things that I don't like about the place anymore. It's now to the point that there are more things that I don't like than I do like, so I just don't go anymore. It's sad. But I still have Anaheim, Paris and Tokyo.

 

[pierrecanal75]

Just to come back to the main topic can you confirm the ride will open march 4?

 

[marni1971]

Just to come back to the main topic can you confirm the ride will open march 4?

That’s the official date at this time.

 

[danlb_2000]

Pages and pages of nothing to do with MMRR updates. Please make it stop.

I assume you reported these off topic posts to the moderators?

 

[The_Jobu]

So, just reflecting on this ride, when was the last time we got a big ambitious dark ride like this? It's nice to have a mixup from all the family coasters.

 

[SplashJacket]

So, just reflecting on this ride, when was the last time we got a big ambitious dark ride like this? It's nice to have a mixup from all the family coasters.

December 5th, 2019 and January 17th, 2020.

 

[The_Jobu]

December 5th, 2019 and January 17th, 2020.

What are these?

 

[SplashJacket]

What are these?

Rise of the Resistance in WDW and Disneyland Anaheim.

 

[The_Jobu]

Rise of the Resistance in WDW and Disneyland Anaheim.

Oh yeah. Haven't ridden it yet but Rise seems like more than a simple dark ride to me. Guess I cant say till I ride it but I'm looking forward to the Railway experience of slowly going through detailed cartoon scenes.

 

[UNCgolf]

Oh yeah. Haven't ridden it yet but Rise seems like more than a simple dark ride to me. Guess I cant say till I ride it but I'm looking forward to the Railway experience of slowly going through detailed cartoon scenes.

From what I've read about MMRR I think it's going to be pretty similar to RotR. It sounds like it will have more movement etc. than your standard dark ride.