News Park attendance showing significant softness heading into the Fall 2018

[larryz]

Fair enough, but that still doesn't support your assertion that they are somehow in bed with Disney.

Not MY assertion.

 

[LSLS]

If you've ever been stuck at a standstill in a standby queue and are able to observe and endless flow of Fastpasses pouring in during a crowd surge - pay attention. See how fast the Fastpass line is moving? If there were only ONE line, it would be moving even faster than that. And again, you can not just brush it off that "those people would just be in the standby line, making it longer", because they are arriving after you, would ride after you, and the faster, continuously moving queue would balance out the fact that more people are in it.

So the question would be if you took all of those fast pass users and dumped them into a single line, what would happen? Theoretically, wouldn't wait times equal out? Meaning if you average current standby and fast pass wait times, it would equal the wait time for a single line? Longer line than standby, but moving much faster. I thought about doing the math, but I'm not feeling up to it right now (and there are probably others much better at this than me anyways) to see how that would all work out (assuming my assumption is correct). Now what could be significantly impacted would be the ability to walk around areas as more people would be in lines.

 

[Tom Morrow]

Disney would most certainly not approve of a site that presents data showing that the company regularly presents information to guests that is inaccurate and, often, purposefully so. The Unofficial Guide, which is co-written by Touring Plan's @lentesta, also is chock full of evaluations and criticism from actual guests that, if you've ever read it, doesn't tow the corporate line. as @mikejs78 said, there is heaps of evidence disputing your statement, but nothing that substantiates it.

This site, WDWMagic, is one of the most heavily critical of WDW yet it still gets fed information from Disney and invited to media events. Disney doesn't care, exposure is exposure, and a site that says "hey you should totally go during this time of the year, wink wink!" is beneficial to their ongoing strategy to ensure the crowds are never light and queues are always full.

"People may ask why we are focusing so much on posted wait times, when what is important is the actual wait time. The answer is that we are leveraging the information we have. Out of the millions of wait times we have, less than 1% of the data are actual wait times. Fortunately, the 1% gives us a way to predict the actual wait time based on the posted wait time. Another problem with that actual wait times we do have is that they are usually for times of day when it is optimal to ride an attraction. We do not have much data for actual wait times for the longest wait times of the day. For example, over the past two years, we only have two actual wait times for Soarin’ where the wait time is over two hours." -- From their blog post on how they compute crowd levels.

Hahaha... so less than 1% of their data is not directly from Disney, and it's also anecdotal from their users. But we should definitely believe them over the people who work directly with regulating Fastpass/Standby lines.

 

[Tony the Tigger]

Well I guess you can always not plan and wing it, but depending on what you want to see if you go once every 5 years, that wouldn't really work.

And you really shouldn’t do it that way if you’re going once every five years - which doesn’t indicate anything wrong.

 

[geekza]

So, again, where is the evidence that TouringPlans is somehow influenced by Disney? It's true that the larger Disney fan sites are typically invited to events and sent press releases. However, that hasn't stopped them from being critical when warranted. The only influence I've seen evidence of is that Len has lots of connections within the company and doesn't leak inside information until it has been made public. That's just being smart. Plans and situations change and leaking info before it has either come out in a release or was leaked by others would cut off his sources. The fact that he has inside info is what makes TouringPlans and the Unofficial Guide more reliable than a lot of other sites and sources. They also depend upon guest surveys and tend to print differing opinions. There's a big difference between being knowledgeable and being controlled. While hardcore Disney visitors use TouringPlans, the vast majority of people who go to WDW don't, so it wouldn't make sense for Disney to devote time to influencing the site's content and data. Cherry-picking information in order to make a tenuous connection is simply confirmation bias. It's still not proof of anything. In any case, believe what you want. I trust that Len and the rest of the folks who maintain TouringPlans do the best job they can and tend to be more reliable than just about anywhere else when it comes to trip planning. I'll certainly find out in a couple of weeks.

 

[Horizons '83]

And you really shouldn’t do it that way if you’re going once every five years - which doesn’t indicate anything wrong.

Serious question, but are you saying there isn't anything wrong with the current Fastpass system/process?

 

[Tom Morrow]

So the question would be if you took all of those fast pass users and dumped them into a single line, what would happen? Theoretically, wouldn't wait times equal out? Meaning if you average current standby and fast pass wait times, it would equal the wait time for a single line? Longer line than standby, but moving much faster. I thought about doing the math, but I'm not feeling up to it right now (and there are probably others much better at this than me anyways) to see how that would all work out (assuming my assumption is correct). Now what could be significantly impacted would be the ability to walk around areas as more people would be in lines.

Disney distributes enough Fastpasses for every hour to account for 80% of each ride's capacity. Popular attractions will always have a steady flow of Fastpass holders entering at almost all times, meaning throughout most of the operating day, 80% of the butts in the seats entered using a Fastpass. If there were one line, it would be physically longer than the standby queue but moving significantly faster. You would wait longer than you do with a Fastpass but much shorter than in a standby queue in which only 20% of the capacity is devoted to it.

I would personally rather just show up to an attraction and wait in a fast moving line with a manageable wait time than wait several hours for my Fastpass to become active and still wait often 15-25 minutes in the Fastpass line.

Once in a while Disney hosts events where an entire park is rented out to a huge corporation. Sometimes these events have several thousand guests, and of course they all want to hit the major E-tickets all at the same time. They don't use Fastpass during these events, but the queues can completely fill up. Ask any cast member who has worked a major attraction during these events - a physically full standby queue for Tower of Terror, for example, is around 60 minutes during the day. During these events, with no Fastpass, the guests are getting through in about 20 minutes. Same with Expedition Everest.

Everest is a great point of study because of how easy it is to observe the ride's throughput. A train leave the station roughly every 60 seconds. That's 34 people a minute. Over 2,000 riders per hour, making it one of the highest capacity roller coasters in the world. Once you are past the Fastpass merge point, you are on in seconds. It's not hard at all to see how fast the standby line would actually move if it were the only line.

 

[larryz]

I would personally rather just show up to an attraction and wait in a fast moving line with a manageable wait time than wait several hours for my Fastpass to become active and still wait often 15-25 minutes in the Fastpass line.

Once in a while Disney hosts events where an entire park is rented out to a huge corporation. Sometimes these events have several thousand guests, and of course they all want to hit the major E-tickets all at the same time. They don't use Fastpass during these events, but the queues can completely fill up. Ask any cast member who has worked a major attraction during these events - a physically full standby queue for Tower of Terror, for example, is around 60 minutes during the day. During these events, with no Fastpass, the guests are getting through in about 20 minutes. Same with Expedition Everest.

Everest is a great point of study because of how easy it is to observe the ride's throughput. A train leave the station roughly every 60 seconds. That's 34 people a minute. Over 2,000 riders per hour. Once you are past the Fastpass merge point, you are on in seconds. It's not hard at all to see how fast the standby line would actually move if it were the only line.

Remember, also, that WDW's most popular legacy attractions were built with both right and left waiting lines to speed loading over the comparable DLR legacy attractions. If both sides are working/staffed/being used to move the stand-by lines, they can crank some huge numbers through the rides. Dedicating one side to stand-by and one side to FP+ means they're not pushing through as many as they could by design.

 

[Purduevian]

I did a little thought experiment awhile ago regarding how FP+ Effects Wait Times HERE. If you don't want to read all of it, basically FP+ increases the average wait time by about 25 minutes. It isn't a perfect model, but I think the logic is sound.

 

[deeevo]

Heh.

I'm not one to say "remember the good ole days" but there was a period of time when Disney actually had slow periods and they didn't act like the sky was falling and they'd be putting up the "CLOSED" sign tomorrow.

I understand them wanting the parks constantly busy but they've truly lost sight of giving the guests a comfortable experience ...

But do they want the parks constantly busy? I have read so many times that the reason they continue to drive up cost is to curb some traffic in the parks but still have high margins. The higher capacity they have in the parks then the more Cast Members are needed and more labor is spent. Honestly I don't think they want to be constantly busy they want people spending more money.

 

[larryz]

But do they want the parks constantly busy? I have read so many times that the reason they continue to drive up cost is to curb some traffic in the parks but still have high margins. The higher capacity they have in the parks then the more Cast Members are needed and more labor is spent. Honestly I don't think they want to be constantly busy they want people spending more money.

Somewhere in the bowels of their master plan, they must have a "CM/Guest" ratio that drives their margin estimate. I think they're manning to the optimum margin per day.

 

[Kman101]

But do they want the parks constantly busy? I have read so many times that the reason they continue to drive up cost is to curb some traffic in the parks but still have high margins. The higher capacity they have in the parks then the more Cast Members are needed and more labor is spent. Honestly I don't think they want to be constantly busy they want people spending more money.

It's extremely hard to figure out exactly what their goal is. Do they even know? LOL. I mean, I've said it just today but there's a total disconnect I feel. Too many cooks in the kitchen?

They tried literally everything but expanding for years and years and now they realize they probably have to.

I wish I knew exactly what their goal is but when they're not planning long-term ...

 

[Tom Morrow]

The bottom line to remember about Fastpass is that it was created with two goals in mind:

1. Crowd manipulation and control, which was expanded on tremendously with FP+ and the NGX initiative.
2. Enabling guests to "virtually" wait in lines so they spend more time standing around which leads to more money spent.

Those who utilize Fastpass (and especially those, like me, who know how to work it to it's full potential) have a huge benefit over those who don't bother to use it and are experiencing more. BUT - by using it, you are experiencing the same number of attractions that you would if it didn't exist at all.

I'm not 100% against Fastpass, as it is nice to know that I can schedule a park visit and have at least three guaranteed shorter waits. But my point is, it absolutely does artificially inflate the standby wait times.

 

[LSLS]

Disney distributes enough Fastpasses for every hour to account for 80% of each ride's capacity. Popular attractions will always have a steady flow of Fastpass holders entering at almost all times, meaning throughout most of the operating day, 80% of the butts in the seats entered using a Fastpass. If there were one line, it would be physically longer than the standby queue but moving significantly faster. You would wait longer than you do with a Fastpass but much shorter than in a standby queue in which only 20% of the capacity is devoted to it.

I would personally rather just show up to an attraction and wait in a fast moving line with a manageable wait time than wait several hours for my Fastpass to become active and still wait often 15-25 minutes in the Fastpass line.

Once in a while Disney hosts events where an entire park is rented out to a huge corporation. Sometimes these events have several thousand guests, and of course they all want to hit the major E-tickets all at the same time. They don't use Fastpass during these events, but the queues can completely fill up. Ask any cast member who has worked a major attraction during these events - a physically full standby queue for Tower of Terror, for example, is around 60 minutes during the day. During these events, with no Fastpass, the guests are getting through in about 20 minutes. Same with Expedition Everest.

Everest is a great point of study because of how easy it is to observe the ride's throughput. A train leave the station roughly every 60 seconds. That's 34 people a minute. Over 2,000 riders per hour. Once you are past the Fastpass merge point, you are on in seconds. It's not hard at all to see how fast the standby line would actually move if it were the only line.

Ok, but would it still not be true that the average wait time would be the exact same for all guests, it would just be a more equitable wait? I'm just trying to wrap my head around the math of if there is an actual change in the minutes waited for all guests (Fast pass and standby), or if it would still equal out the same. So the argument would be get more people in the lines, and have everyone equally waiting with a moving line as opposed to some waiting much longer in a line that is not moving, correct?

I do think Fast pass increasing standby (and you are crazy if you don't believe that unless my math is WAY off) is something the parks really want done. They want to discourage people from standing in line, and encourage sitting in shops/restaurants/etc. This goes back to the idea of artificially inflating the wait times, it all relates.

 

[LSLS]

The bottom line to remember about Fastpass is that it was created with two goals in mind:

1. Crowd manipulation and control, which was expanded on tremendously with FP+ and the NGX initiative.
2. Enabling guests to "virtually" wait in lines so they spend more time standing around which leads to more money spent.

Those who utilize Fastpass (and especially those, like me, who know how to work it to it's full potential) have a huge benefit over those who don't bother to use it and are experiencing more. BUT - by using it, you are experiencing the same number of attractions that you would if it didn't exist at all.

I'm not 100% against Fastpass, as it is nice to know that I can schedule a park visit and have at least three guaranteed shorter waits. But my point is, it absolutely does artificially inflate the standby wait times.

I'd add whether an initial goal or unintended consequence is the increase in standby times also has people without Fast Passes avoid lines and spending in the shops as well.

 

[larryz]

I'd add whether an initial goal or unintended consequence is the increase in standby times also has people without Fast Passes avoid lines and spending in the shops as well.

Well, the argument has been made that in implementing FP+ across the board, crowds are being conditioned for monetization of "premium FP+" offerings.

Increased stand-by times would have that effect, as would longer waits in the FP+ lines...

 

[Thelazer]

FastPass is great if your a local, and only zip in to ride a few rides with the kids, then head on out.

 

[Missing20K]

Who uses standby lines?

The VIP CM always points them out as the parts of rides that has some junk in the queue to appease the masses while they wait.

 

[winstongator]

The bottom line to remember about Fastpass is that it was created with two goals in mind:

1. Crowd manipulation and control, which was expanded on tremendously with FP+ and the NGX initiative.
2. Enabling guests to "virtually" wait in lines so they spend more time standing around which leads to more money spent.

Those who utilize Fastpass (and especially those, like me, who know how to work it to it's full potential) have a huge benefit over those who don't bother to use it and are experiencing more. BUT - by using it, you are experiencing the same number of attractions that you would if it didn't exist at all.

I'm not 100% against Fastpass, as it is nice to know that I can schedule a park visit and have at least three guaranteed shorter waits. But my point is, it absolutely does artificially inflate the standby wait times.

I'd recommend listening to this podcast episode:
https://www.acast.com/theunofficial...ll/episode-100-the-guy-that-invented-fastpass
You can search it through iTunes as well. They do not have the original creator of FP on, but Jim Hill recounts an interview with him.

 

[CaptainAmerica]

Those who utilize Fastpass (and especially those, like me, who know how to work it to it's full potential) have a huge benefit over those who don't bother to use it and are experiencing more. BUT - by using it, you are experiencing the same number of attractions that you would if it didn't exist at all.

These two sentences are somewhat in conflict. A person who uses FastPass efficiently sees MORE attractions with FastPass than they would if it didn't exist. A person who does not use FastPass or uses it poorly sees FEWER. The AVERAGE guest sees the same number.

I'm not 100% against Fastpass, as it is nice to know that I can schedule a park visit and have at least three guaranteed shorter waits. But my point is, it absolutely does artificially inflate the standby wait times.

Follow-up on the above. Standby wait times are higher. FastPass wait times are shorter [than Standby wait times in a no-FastPass system]. Average (mean) wait times are slightly lower.

The net small reduction in total wait time is due to the fact that FastPass shifts people to less popular attractions that wouldn't otherwise operate at full capacity. Mean wait time across all attractions is a function of total attendance, total ride capacity, and capacity utilization. FastPass doesn't affect total attendance or total capacity, but it can have a favorable impact on capacity utilization.