Happy to help.
Here's the thread with the numbers we counted back in September. I was told on Tuesday afternoon by someone who actually knows, "You're in the ballpark. I wouldn't have done it that way." (I may have said something about their coffee budget being larger than my company in response.)
If you read that and think there's no possible way that 45% of guests at Space Mountain were using DAS and 40% of guests at Peter Pan, let me provide more data:
- In this 2020 lawsuit filed against Disney in the US District Court in Orlando, the court noted that these data collected by Disney about Guest Assistance Card (GAC) use were both unchallenged by the plantiffs and convincing to the court (emphasis mine):
In a two-week study conducted by Disney's Industrial Engineering team in April 2013, the team found that GAC pass usage at five of the most popular attractions at Disney (the "GAC Study") was much higher than the percentage of guests in the park who held a GAC pass.
At that time, approximately 3.3% of guests at Disney used a GAC pass, yet the percentage of guests on the most popular rides who had a GAC pass and entered through the FastPass line was significantly higher than 3.3%.
The GAC Study showed that 11% of riders on Space Mountain, 13% of riders on Splash Mountain, and 30% on Toy Story Mania used a GAC pass to access the ride.
Disney's industrial engineers concluded that the small portion of the guest population who held GAC pass was consuming a substantial portion of the ride capacity.
For example, guests with a GAC pass were riding Toy Story Mania an average of ten times more than guests who did not have a GAC pass.
Cite: A.L. v. Walt Disney Parks & Resorts US, Inc., 469 F. Supp. 3d 1280, 1294 (M.D. Fla. 2020). The quote above is on the right-hand side of page 9.
- So 3.3% of the people in the park were using 30% of Toy Story's ride capacity.
- Disney said on Tuesday that use of the system has tripled in the last 5 years. (Second cite here.)
Okay, so if back in 2013, 3.3% of guests were using 30% of ride capacity at a popular ride, and use has
tripled since then, you'd think roughly 33% to 90% of riders on popular rides were using DAS to access the ride.
The numbers we estimated were in the lower end of that range.
The top end of that range is too high, but it's closer to right than wrong. If you said 50-75% of Lightning Lane use at popular attractions was DAS, I would absolutely believe that.