Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway confirmed

[Rich Brownn]

What are they? What was at the Magic Kingdom 30 years ago that hasn't been replaced with something similar?

I'm not being snarky; I honestly can't think of much. There's Snow White's Scary Adventure, and that was probably a loss in capacity if you compare it and 20k to Little Mermaid and Seven Dwarfs -- I'm pretty sure Little Mermaid has a higher capacity than 20k did, but I'm sure Seven Dwarfs has less than Snow White. Was there a significant loss in capacity moving from Mr. Toad to Winnie the Pooh? What else is there other than the Stitch theater? Also, isn't the Barnstormer a new attraction that added capacity? I don't remember there being any real attractions there previously.

I'd actually love to see a breakdown of the total hourly capacity of attractions in, say, 1990 compared to today, even before Tron opens. I'd be surprised if it wasn't very similar. The issue is that attendance is significantly higher, which means hourly capacity should have increased, not stayed the same. Also, to clarify, I'm only talking about the Magic Kingdom. EPCOT has lost a ton of capacity.

Well, these aren't biggies but... Swan Boat (not replaced), Space Mount train capacity cut from 8 to 6, the Skyway, the second Riverboat.. that's all I can think of that closed and were.t replaced. (Do the never-running Main street Vehicles count?)

 

[Rich Brownn]

sounds like you’ve given yourself an assignment.

what people miss with capacity is that the queue is part of what keeps people occupied. E-tickets provide capacity by keeping people in their queues for hours. Capacity really needs to be measured in guest-hours how long people are occupied, not just guest-per-hour.

imagine 3 attractions each 3 minutes long with 3000 guest per hour ’capacity’, with no standby wait. You’ve got 3x3000x3/60 = 450 guest-hours. Compare that to one attraction with 1000 guests/hour, but people wait 3 hours for it. That’s 3,000 guest-hours.

do you want primeval whirl, triceratops spin and it’s a bug’s life or flight of passage? I know where I’d spend my time.

Disney and Universal use TRPH (Theoretical Rides Per Hour) when deciding when the park is full. It is based on if every ride had a 1 hour wait, how many people cycle through?

 

[winstongator]

That makes sense in theory, but a park needs more than a few headliners to give guests the satisfying experience of "a full day". Otherwise you've spent all day waiting in line for 4 short rides and you won't want to come back to do it again.

lots of People go back to AK to re-ride flight of passage. It’s what people wait an hour for before the park opens. It and avatar as a whole were a game changer for AK. No amount of a, b, or c ticket rides, filling the day can compete with that. What AK has that HS doesn’t are The animal experiences. Gorilla falls, maharajah trek, rafiki’s planet watch.

tell me I can ride, rise, runaway railway, smugglers run and slinky dog and I’ll want to do that day. Over and over. My preferred way is to combine that with an Epcot festival which makes the skyliner even more useful for me.

 

[winstongator]

Disney and Universal use TRPH (Theoretical Rides Per Hour) when deciding when the park is full. It is based on if every ride had a 1 hour wait, how many people cycle through?

I’d like to think there’s someone putting a little more effort than that into it. Especially when deciding on the types of rides to add to parks.

it is a good quick and dirty measure though, and can provide a fast comparison.

 

[lazyboy97o]

sounds like you’ve given yourself an assignment.

what people miss with capacity is that the queue is part of what keeps people occupied. E-tickets provide capacity by keeping people in their queues for hours. Capacity really needs to be measured in guest-hours how long people are occupied, not just guest-per-hour.

imagine 3 attractions each 3 minutes long with 3000 guest per hour ’capacity’, with no standby wait. You’ve got 3x3000x3/60 = 450 guest-hours. Compare that to one attraction with 1000 guests/hour, but people wait 3 hours for it. That’s 3,000 guest-hours.

do you want primeval whirl, triceratops spin and it’s a bug’s life or flight of passage? I know where I’d spend my time.

Industry standard goal for attractions per guest per hour is 1.5 - 2.0. Building a park around the expectation of people waiting in hour plus queues drops you below 1.0 attractions per guest per hour meaning your going to struggle with satisfaction as people struggle to achieve the 7.3 attractions per day threshold at which they become satisfied with their day.

lots of People go back to AK to re-ride flight of passage. It’s what people wait an hour for before the park opens. It and avatar as a whole were a game changer for AK. No amount of a, b, or c ticket rides, filling the day can compete with that. What AK has that HS doesn’t are The animal experiences. Gorilla falls, maharajah trek, rafiki’s planet watch.

tell me I can ride, rise, runaway railway, smugglers run and slinky dog and I’ll want to do that day. Over and over. My preferred way is to combine that with an Epcot festival which makes the skyliner even more useful for me.

While marquee attractions are what people highlight in surveys you can never maintain the finances of a park that is near exclusively marquee attractions and has sufficient capacity. You are even contradicting your own claim by substituting a festival for the small scale attractions you claim as irrelevant.

I’d like to think there’s someone putting a little more effort than that into it. Especially when deciding on the types of rides to add to parks.

it is a good quick and dirty measure though, and can provide a fast comparison.

Attractions per Guest per Day is the only metric that would be considered more important as it guides hourly and instantaneous capacity requirements.

 

[UNCgolf]

EPCOT Center was a rare case where almost every Future World Pavilion had something that could pass for a headliner AND you didn't have to wait forever to get on it because 1) The attraction capacity was that high, and 2) There was THAT much to do in the park that people were spread around. You could do a bunch AND feel like you were riding the heavy-hitters.

Plus most of the pavilions had other activities beyond just the headliner ride. Kids spent a bunch of time in ImageWorks, just as one example.

 

[ImperfectPixie]

Plus most of the pavilions had other activities beyond just the headliner ride. Kids spent a bunch of time in ImageWorks, just as one example.

My boys still spend a bunch of time running around on the musical tiles after Journey into Your Imagination.

 

[marni1971]

Plus most of the pavilions had other activities beyond just the headliner ride. Kids spent a bunch of time in ImageWorks, just as one example.

Take just Futureworld. Transcenter, The Imageworks, six pods of interactive exhibits in The Living Seas, and then there was the Communicores which could swallow the better part of a day should you have been so inclined.

 

[UNCgolf]

Take just Futureworld. Transcenter, The Imageworks, six pods of interactive exhibits in The Living Seas, and then there was the Communicores which could swallow the better part of a day should you have been so inclined.

Horizons and Universe of Energy are the only two that didn't have anything beyond the main attraction, right? Some pavilions had more than others, but I think all of the rest had at least one other activity.

 

[marni1971]

Horizons and Universe of Energy are the only two that didn't have anything beyond the main attraction, right? Some pavilions had more than others, but I think all of the rest had at least one other activity.

Horizons post show area was removed as the ride advanced in scale. GE figured with that and CoP they had the required exposure. Exxon purposely built Energy Exchange just beyond the exit of the UoE along with directional signage.

 

[yensidtlaw1969]

lots of People go back to AK to re-ride flight of passage. It’s what people wait an hour for before the park opens. It and avatar as a whole were a game changer for AK. No amount of a, b, or c ticket rides, filling the day can compete with that. What AK has that HS doesn’t are The animal experiences. Gorilla falls, maharajah trek, rafiki’s planet watch.

tell me I can ride, rise, runaway railway, smugglers run and slinky dog and I’ll want to do that day. Over and over. My preferred way is to combine that with an Epcot festival which makes the skyliner even more useful for me.

You've missed my point - you said it yourself, you like to combine those attractions with an EPCOT Festival. But what if Rise, Railway, Slinky, and Smugglers Run each had 3 hour waits and that was truly all you could get out of your day at WDW, no hope for experiencing anything else? Most guests do not consider that an appealing day. And what if their kids are only tall enough for Runaway Railway? Or what if Grandma can't get tossed around on Falcon and Slinky? Then it especially doesn't work. Guests need a viable range - not everything for everybody, but something for everybody.

The point of the A, B, C, and (less-so these days due to marketing) D-Tickets generally is not to attract further guests into the park who weren't already coming, but to fill out the day for the guests who are. Headliners can turn a park's visitation around, but the guest experience has to turn with it. With the lineup you've listed, a park like DHS has everything it needs to draw in millions of people, but does it offer a totally fulfilling experience once you get there?

If you could trade one of those attractions with a 3 hour wait for 5 or 6 fun, smaller rides in the same timeframe, would you make that exchange? Many guests do at the parks where such attractions are on offer, but DHS has hardly any. These days Disney seems to struggle to offer a full attraction menu at any WDW park that doesn't begin with "Magic", and then they wonder why MK stands head and shoulders above the others. It gives you TONS of options for every kind of experience you could hope for.

Though it could use some more quickservice!

 

[UNCgolf]

Though it could use some more quickservice!

It could use more table service as well, or at least a quality increase among the ones they have.

 

[The Grand Inquisitor]

Horizons post show area was removed as the ride advanced in scale. GE figured with that and CoP they had the required exposure. Exxon purposely built Energy Exchange just beyond the exit of the UoE along with directional signage.

Did you like Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway Marni? If you could change something on the ride what would it be?

 

[Mickeyboof]

About to ride... but broke down about an hour ago! Line was moving so so fast.

I’m committed, though. I made it from the end of the queue to inside the building, without the ride reopening.

 

[RSoxNo1]

You know that "2 dozen" is 24. And that wanting MK to have at least 25 is just one more ride?

Also, MK has 27 rides. TRON will be 28. A replacement for Stitch will be 29. So... there's your 25-30 rides.

Of course, what is a ride and what is not gets in to grey areas, but, in general....

View attachment 455940

FWIW, Stitch wasn't a ride and it's not guaranteed its replacement would be either.

 

[Goofyernmost]

That makes sense in theory, but a park needs more than a few headliners to give guests the satisfying experience of "a full day". Otherwise you've spent all day waiting in line for 4 short rides and you won't want to come back to do it again.

You need a nice smattering of things you can get on without killing yourself that aren't headliners but are still enjoyable. This is the situation Hollywood Studios is in vs. a more well-rounded park like MK.

EPCOT Center was a rare case where almost every Future World Pavilion had something that could pass for a headliner AND you didn't have to wait forever to get on it because 1) The attraction capacity was that high, and 2) There was THAT much to do in the park that people were spread around. You could do a bunch AND feel like you were riding the heavy-hitters.

But short of that, you at least need a handful of nice C and D-Ticket attractions to flesh out the menu, and then enough A and B-Tickets that can double as atmosphere for the park and benefit even the guests who don't ride just by the way they liven up the environment (the way the Main Street Vehicles, Teacups, and Carousel do).

Never mind that not every guest can ride attractions like Flight of Passage, for various reasons - DHS has only TWO rides that don't have any height requirement, for example.

Oh, you had to wait to get on them, but they had the worlds longest switchback in theme park history. The time didn't seem long, even though it was. I don't recall anything over an hour, but there was some length to it. You never stopped moving so the time went quickly without frustration. Fastpass killed that dead. The worst thing that Disney ever created. It is a monster that continues to haunt them, but now that it has gotten there and as long as most people cannot see that the few minute gain from a Fastpass creates the long, long lines that they have to experience they will still think that they are ahead of the game. They are not! In order to see something that they cannot get a Fastpass to see the wait is terminally long. I don't even think it is a wash over all. The FP lines are almost always faster and the standby lines are incredibly long. I don't believe that you can see anymore now then you could 30 years ago.

 

[MisterPenguin]

FWIW, Stitch wasn't a ride and it's not guaranteed its replacement would be either.

Point taken.

 

[doctornick]

Well, these aren't biggies but... Swan Boat (not replaced), Space Mount train capacity cut from 8 to 6, the Skyway, the second Riverboat.. that's all I can think of that closed and were.t replaced. (Do the never-running Main street Vehicles count?)

Also the keel boats and canoes.

As mentioned, there was also SWSA and the submarines closing, tough they were sorta replaced.

How does it compare to stuff that has been added: Little Mermaid, 7DMT, flying carpets and Barnstormer (depends on where you want to draw the before/after line), Dumbo's capacity was doubled. And Tron soon to come.

 

[UNCgolf]

Horizons post show area was removed as the ride advanced in scale. GE figured with that and CoP they had the required exposure. Exxon purposely built Energy Exchange just beyond the exit of the UoE along with directional signage.

What were the original plans for the Horizons post show? I don't think I've ever seen anything about that.

 

[marni1971]

Did you like Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway Marni? If you could change something on the ride what would it be?

Move it?