Soarin Queue Information

[starwood]

According to the DIS this is what will happen:

Disney is in the process of installing interactive video systems, motion detectors, etc. that will make the wait time easier to cope with.
The 'Grand Hall' will feature large screens where guests waiting on line can participate in activities such as racing birds across the landscape.
Depending on how guests respond, these changes may become permanent and lead to changes in other queue areas.

Coming in mid july 2007!

 

[shoppingnut]

Awesome, thanks for the info!!

 

[lilmizpixie3]

sounds pretty cool, even though i would fastpass the line anyway :hammer:

 

[frankd1962]

The lines of both are bad last Tuesday. I had a two hour wait in the standby and it seems about a hour for fastpass. They were out real early that day.

 

[Harry456]

i never rode Soarin' b/c it was brought to WDW after 2004 so i have no feel on how bad the lines are? i mean it seems its was really bad, but how can it compare to waiting in Space/Splash mountain's queue line?

i saw this and i was like "huh" they're changing the queue line b/c of boredom? i wish they can spice up space/splash mountain or Thunder railroad. lol. :ROFLOL:

 

[darthjohnny]

Cool. Thanks for the info. :wave:

 

[SnowFire]

This sounds really cool. Even the fast pass line can get long sometimes. I would welcome something like this to pass the time.

 

[the-reason14]

This sounds cool. I am eager to see this, do you know if the ride will close to implement these changes. Ill be there for 2 weeks in July, so Im hoping and pretty sure it'll be there when we get down there.

 

[stephdanielle]

That sounds really cool, something different anyways. I found the queue area for Soarin' extremely long and almost kind of disorganized just kind of a bunch of people jumbled together at some points. I think this could be a fun idea!

 

[WDWFigment]

There shouldn't be any closure because of this. Screamscape first reported this a week or two ago. Sounds great; anything to spice up that boring queue!

 

[MooseImagineer]

Cool info, but I don't see how you can have interactive games, while still in a moving line..:veryconfu

 

[Mufasa's Pride]

Cool info, but I don't see how you can have interactive games, while still in a moving line..:veryconfu

Maybe you could move the games along on a rail around the queue???

 

[basas]

Cool info, but I don't see how you can have interactive games, while still in a moving line..:veryconfu

Have you ever stood in that line? "Moving" is pretty rare.

 

[Rob562]

There shouldn't be any closure because of this. Screamscape first reported this a week or two ago. Sounds great; anything to spice up that boring queue!

This is pretty much what they've been working on for the past month or so. The regular Standby line is closed off, and the FastPass and standby lines are entirely on the left half of the queue corridor. They built 4 or 5 structures up above the queues that will house projectors. The large backlit photos will be replaced with screens of some sort. It's unclear what's going on at ground level in the Standby queue, though.

-Rob

 

[pixiedust629]

i never rode Soarin' b/c it was brought to WDW after 2004 so i have no feel on how bad the lines are? i mean it seems its was really bad, but how can it compare to waiting in Space/Splash mountain's queue line?

i saw this and i was like "huh" they're changing the queue line b/c of boredom? i wish they can spice up space/splash mountain or Thunder railroad. lol. :ROFLOL:

At one point during the first week of June, when I was there, the standby was 170 minutes. And that's what was being "officially" stated. What's so boring about it is that there really is nothing there. At least at Splash Mountain, there's more to look at- and do they still play the soundtracks of Chip and Dale in the trees and treehouses? Soarin is like Space Mountain/Thunder Mtn RR with much more compressed queue lines and nothing to look at, period. Except for the ceiling design/lighting, which was what I ended up looking at. It's pretty awesome.

Come to think of it, we had fastpasses and still waited for a long time, too.

 

[MythBuster]

Here's more info about it.

Play while you wait

The typically long wait lines at Soarin', one of Walt Disney World's most popular attractions, are providing Disney with a new opportunity.

As a "play test," Disney engineers and designers are installing interactive video technology, motion detectors and other devices at the Epcot attraction, so that visitors might be able to entertain themselves while they make their way through Soarin's queue, which one day last week had a wait exceeding two hours.

The resulting games will feature leading-edge technology that will allow people to play together while interacting with video shown on large screens hanging in the high-ceilinged "Grand Hall" area, said Joe Garlington, vice president and executive producer at Walt Disney Imagineering, Disney's attractions-design group. In one activity, people will race birds flying across a landscape.

The system should be up by mid-July. If it works, it could stay -- and perhaps inspire similar play areas for lines elsewhere.

"This seemed like a great place to do it," Garlington said.

Visitors undoubtedly would agree. Last week, a half-dozen members of the extended Doney-Gecewicz family from Massachusetts and New York found their 130-minute wait for Soarin' almost too much. Entertainment in the line would be welcome, said Tom Doney of Longmeadow, Mass.

"Spectacular ride," his brother-in-law, Joe Gecewicz of Saratoga Springs, N.Y., concluded after riding Soarin' -- though he added that he thought the line for it was still too long.