Solving the WDW Capcity Problem. Ideas?

Virtual Toad

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Yes, building more rides. Especially, IMO, several family-friendly C-ticket dark rides in each park as soon as possible. A much wiser and cost-effective solution than blockbuster E-ticket "lands" which would increase attendance but not reduce congestion. Get people out of the walkways and into show buildings!

Beyond actually increasing capacity, how do you improve the guest experience by reducing congestion and giving the most guests the best experience possible?

On our weeklong trip last week, I saw a TON of day guests. I was at the MK Wednesday when they closed the parking lot and attendance was beyond unreal. Most day guests were stressed, exhausted and visibly upset by the crowded conditions and long lines. I suspect many onsite guests, like our family, rode our three FP+ attractions, ate a snack or pre-reserved sit-down meal, rode the train and got the heck out.

Crowded walkways, jam-packed FP entrances and insane lines for food and stand-by make touring the park less than enjoyable for everyone. High-paying resort guests feel like they get less value for their money, and day guests are left stressed, overwhelmed and less than satisfied after waiting in two-hour lines and picking up what FP+ scraps are left.

WDW is taking fantastic and long-overdue steps to alleviate crowding by expanding the MK hub, building the walkway behind Main Street, and expanding eating areas. But is it enough?

Is adding family-friendly C-tickets, especially at half-day parks such as DHS and AK, but even at the MK, a viable solution?

What about more radical solutions, such as separate days at the MK for resort guests only, and special days where only day guests can visit, allowing them a fair playing field without resort guests gobbling up all the FPs in advance?

In short, what are your ideas for giving guests across the spectrum the most fulfilling and pleasant park experience possible? Discuss!
 
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AllydoesDisney

Well-Known Member
Raising the ticket prices hasn't kept them away so far. I like the idea about keeping the park to certain guests certain days but it also sounds complicated
 

MikeTaylorSound

Well-Known Member
I think the idea with Magic Bands and the new FP+ system tackled a little bit of crowd control... if the data showed them that the average family only used 2 fast passes per day (and will now probably use their 3rd on character greetings, fireworks viewing area, or a lunch rezzy at BoG) and the people running around getting 10 fast passes are now forced to wait in 7 standby lines, there you go.
 

kap91

Well-Known Member
Before we get too far into this can we stipulate that the answers bet somewhat realistic? I know there are going to be people that post their dream list of changes...$100 billion of changes that would work but has no chance of ever happening - even if John Lasseter became CEO.

So that being said some of the easiest things that could be done would be to limit attendance or raise ticket prices further. And do it by a large degree. If attendance at the MK was limited to 20,000 or each ticket cost $250 a day, you'd get significantly reduced crowds. However, neither of these are great ideas as they wouldn't do anything favorable to Disney's reputation and I personally would hate them. So that's out.

Indeed expanding the current infrastructure as they are doing would help. Wider pathways, more transportation, main street bypass etc. This is probably the most realistic easiest thing to do, and I'd expect to see more of it. You optimize the resources you have.

Another thing that you'd want to do is to spread out your crowds more evenly. Within the park as well as throughout the resort. This is a terribly tricky thing to do though. The fact is certain rides, and indeed certain parks are more popular than others and you can't just ignore that fact. You can build all the attractions in the world at the other three parks, hell build another 3 parks, but nothing is going to change the fact that MK remains the most popular, and that nearly everyone that goes to WDW is going to want to visit it. All you accomplish for the MK by building attractions or parks elsewhere is increasing the attendance at the MK and at least in the more park scenario, likely decreasing attendance at AK, and DHS. And unfortunately the biggest capacity problems are seen at the MK. However there are capacity problems at the other parks as well and I think this means that the problem would need to be addressed in different ways for the different areas of the resort.

For AK, and DHS, the capacity problems largely manifest themselves in long attractions wait times, particularly at DHS. This is simply because there are too few attractions for the amount of guests. So the strategy outlined above would actually work fairly well. I don't think too many guests are attached to visiting DHS or AK on their vacation so building more parks would likely decrease attendance at each. Interestingly, letting Universal get more popular would also achieve this end, without incurring the expense of an additional park (which the resort doesn't need anyway). Of course, this strategy still hinges on a decrease in attendance at the these two parks. Probably not something that WDW would want. And because there are so few rides, and most are headliners, the strategy I'm going to outline for MK, wouldn't work as much here. The best option for AK, and DHS is to simply increase the count of attractions, as well as shops, and restaurants - in particular large people eating attractions would be best. Most people would probably like to see some sort of e-ticket ride, but you would need several to really effectively address the problem. A large capacity show ala LMA, or Indy would also do wonders, but it would have to be quite popular and have many shows a day to have lasting impact. The biggest issue with these plans is the cost and practicality. How do you build multiple large attractions quickly without spending huge sums of money while simultaneously not trying to increase your attendance too much? My guess is that you could pick any two of them. It's not idea but if you slowly build up the amount of high-capacity attractions in the park you would be able to grow your capacity without drawing the massive crowds that a massive expansion would attract.

Epcot and especially MK are harder. Those that suggest adding multiple smaller rides are probably on to something. Unfortunately the kind of rides that work best elsewhere I'm not sure would work here. Disneyland has half a dozen classic dark rides. While it wouldn't be terribly expensive to do this at the MK (assuming you could find the space), I fear that given the type of guests WDW receives this could severely backfire for a number of years until the rides finally lost their novelty. The prime example of this is LM, it is not all that great of a ride, yet can command 2 hour waits because people that come once in a lifetime want to experience everything. The same ride at CA is a walk on. Now while some of this effect is due to FP+ I don't think anyone would seriously attribute more than half an hour of the wait to it. So if a relatively mediocre ride with a 2000+ person/hour capacity can generate 2 hour waits would a slew of brand new, much smaller rides work as intended to fix the capacity problem? A different problem is generated if you build new large e-tickets, as they'll increase crowds. At the end of the day, new attractions have to be a part of the plan, but the only remedy I can think of to offset the "new attraction" guest craze is to build them slowly one at a time. This also is the only way the company could afford to do it. Ideally, you'd want to nearly double the size of the kingdom but keep the attendance relatively stable. The cost of this would be enormous and is only practical when spread out over a long time. The problem of course, is that while the capacity issues would eventually be resolved - little to nothing ends up being done now where the problem actually is.

This then circles back to issue of distribution of the crowds. Ideally you'd have some way to have an even amount of guests entering the park every hour, as well as each attraction - rather than having huge fluxes of people swarming towards certain parts of the park at certain times of the day as is now. If you could nudge your guests in the right direction by say, telling a couple thousand to go to tomorrowland right as the parade starts you could ease congestion on main street and frontierland. Heck if you could even find a way to incentivevise them to watch from frontierland rather than the hub you'd be 5 steps ahead. Better yet, you'd want a way to be able to analyze where all the crowds are currently and how they've acted in the past so you'd be able to accurately predict where crowds were going to be ahead of time and try to compensate. This system wouldn't solve your capacity issues. Ultimately the capacity of the park is fixed until new attractions are added. But if you could control all your guests touring plans then theoretically you'd be able to make it so that they'd all be evenly dispersed throughout the park - making the park feel much less crowded. Of course most guests would be rightly angered with Disney telling them where and when to go in the resort or the park. So you'd have to find a way to get guests to agree to it while thinking they were still in charge. For instance you could do it under the guise of helpful suggestions. Ask the guest what attractions they'd like to see most, determine what areas of the park those attractions are, and (under the assumption that most guests ride adjacent rides before moving on to further rides) suggest to the guest the "best" times they could go to those rides to expect the least wait. And of course Disney would naturally be suggesting different times to different people to maximize the spread of the crowd. They could even go so far as to offer an incentive to follow through on these suggestions - perhaps by offering a reserved spot on that attraction at the suggested time so that the guest would have a guaranteed short wait. Thus the guest is in the desired land at the desired time and crowds could be better managed. The system could be easily expanded to function on the resort as a whole rather than just on a park basis.

Yes I'm describing FP+ - if implemented correctly it can be a giant step in the right direction. The genius of the system is the means by which the FP's are suggested. You don't initially pick the time - just the experiences. Then the system automatically picks times for you. You're free to change them, but even in my case as a well experienced tourer, I seldom have because they're more or less what I wanted to begin with. So really what is going on is Disney has persuaded me to go along with their touring plan that undoubtedly is being used to spread crowds evenly throughout the park. FP+ doesn't have the drawbacks of drawing a ton more people to the park, or drawing a bunch of people to a specific park or corner of the park. But having a system like it makes so much sense, its a wonder that its only now being implemented. Rides and attractions are essential to the the long term capacity needs of the resort and all the parks, but for both practical, and financial reasons really must be built at a fairly slow pace - especially if there is no system in place to manage the crowds they would generate if built faster.

So those are essentially the ways to do it that I can think of. One think I didn't pay too much attention too and has been slowly disappearing from WDW are more restaurants and, in particular, shows. There was a time when there were several more stage shows throughout the MK. And while I'm actually more of fan of the Disneyland "no stage shows" approach, opting instead for small-scale entertainment, there is no denying that a 7 time daily stage show can easily draw 1000, maybe even 2000 people away from the rest of the park if given the proper space. It'd also be fairly inexpensive - even at a high level of quality with live music. Oh how I miss a live pit for the Galaxy Palace theatre and castle stage shows. If the aim was specifically capacity based though, you'd want to stay away from any more castle/main street entertainment and move to the other lands. A frequent live stage show in both Adventureland and Tomorrowland could take a combined 4000 (or more if people are waiting in line for the next one) people off the streets and rides. The same would work for Epcot, and in its case several of the venues already exist or could be repurposed. Even better, the cost is nowhere near as high as an attraction, shows are easily swapped out, and attendance increases would most likely only be modest.

Alright, I'm out of ideas for now. Thanks for an interesting thread.
 

danpam1024

Well-Known Member
Before we get too far into this can we stipulate that the answers bet somewhat realistic? I know there are going to be people that post their dream list of changes...$100 billion of changes that would work but has no chance of ever happening - even if John Lasseter became CEO.

So that being said some of the easiest things that could be done would be to limit attendance or raise ticket prices further. And do it by a large degree. If attendance at the MK was limited to 20,000 or each ticket cost $250 a day, you'd get significantly reduced crowds. However, neither of these are great ideas as they wouldn't do anything favorable to Disney's reputation and I personally would hate them. So that's out.

Indeed expanding the current infrastructure as they are doing would help. Wider pathways, more transportation, main street bypass etc. This is probably the most realistic easiest thing to do, and I'd expect to see more of it. You optimize the resources you have.

Another thing that you'd want to do is to spread out your crowds more evenly. Within the park as well as throughout the resort. This is a terribly tricky thing to do though. The fact is certain rides, and indeed certain parks are more popular than others and you can't just ignore that fact. You can build all the attractions in the world at the other three parks, hell build another 3 parks, but nothing is going to change the fact that MK remains the most popular, and that nearly everyone that goes to WDW is going to want to visit it. All you accomplish for the MK by building attractions or parks elsewhere is increasing the attendance at the MK and at least in the more park scenario, likely decreasing attendance at AK, and DHS. And unfortunately the biggest capacity problems are seen at the MK. However there are capacity problems at the other parks as well and I think this means that the problem would need to be addressed in different ways for the different areas of the resort.

For AK, and DHS, the capacity problems largely manifest themselves in long attractions wait times, particularly at DHS. This is simply because there are too few attractions for the amount of guests. So the strategy outlined above would actually work fairly well. I don't think too many guests are attached to visiting DHS or AK on their vacation so building more parks would likely decrease attendance at each. Interestingly, letting Universal get more popular would also achieve this end, without incurring the expense of an additional park (which the resort doesn't need anyway). Of course, this strategy still hinges on a decrease in attendance at the these two parks. Probably not something that WDW would want. And because there are so few rides, and most are headliners, the strategy I'm going to outline for MK, wouldn't work as much here. The best option for AK, and DHS is to simply increase the count of attractions, as well as shops, and restaurants - in particular large people eating attractions would be best. Most people would probably like to see some sort of e-ticket ride, but you would need several to really effectively address the problem. A large capacity show ala LMA, or Indy would also do wonders, but it would have to be quite popular and have many shows a day to have lasting impact. The biggest issue with these plans is the cost and practicality. How do you build multiple large attractions quickly without spending huge sums of money while simultaneously not trying to increase your attendance too much? My guess is that you could pick any two of them. It's not idea but if you slowly build up the amount of high-capacity attractions in the park you would be able to grow your capacity without drawing the massive crowds that a massive expansion would attract.

Epcot and especially MK are harder. Those that suggest adding multiple smaller rides are probably on to something. Unfortunately the kind of rides that work best elsewhere I'm not sure would work here. Disneyland has half a dozen classic dark rides. While it wouldn't be terribly expensive to do this at the MK (assuming you could find the space), I fear that given the type of guests WDW receives this could severely backfire for a number of years until the rides finally lost their novelty. The prime example of this is LM, it is not all that great of a ride, yet can command 2 hour waits because people that come once in a lifetime want to experience everything. The same ride at CA is a walk on. Now while some of this effect is due to FP+ I don't think anyone would seriously attribute more than half an hour of the wait to it. So if a relatively mediocre ride with a 2000+ person/hour capacity can generate 2 hour waits would a slew of brand new, much smaller rides work as intended to fix the capacity problem? A different problem is generated if you build new large e-tickets, as they'll increase crowds. At the end of the day, new attractions have to be a part of the plan, but the only remedy I can think of to offset the "new attraction" guest craze is to build them slowly one at a time. This also is the only way the company could afford to do it. Ideally, you'd want to nearly double the size of the kingdom but keep the attendance relatively stable. The cost of this would be enormous and is only practical when spread out over a long time. The problem of course, is that while the capacity issues would eventually be resolved - little to nothing ends up being done now where the problem actually is.

This then circles back to issue of distribution of the crowds. Ideally you'd have some way to have an even amount of guests entering the park every hour, as well as each attraction - rather than having huge fluxes of people swarming towards certain parts of the park at certain times of the day as is now. If you could nudge your guests in the right direction by say, telling a couple thousand to go to tomorrowland right as the parade starts you could ease congestion on main street and frontierland. Heck if you could even find a way to incentivevise them to watch from frontierland rather than the hub you'd be 5 steps ahead. Better yet, you'd want a way to be able to analyze where all the crowds are currently and how they've acted in the past so you'd be able to accurately predict where crowds were going to be ahead of time and try to compensate. This system wouldn't solve your capacity issues. Ultimately the capacity of the park is fixed until new attractions are added. But if you could control all your guests touring plans then theoretically you'd be able to make it so that they'd all be evenly dispersed throughout the park - making the park feel much less crowded. Of course most guests would be rightly angered with Disney telling them where and when to go in the resort or the park. So you'd have to find a way to get guests to agree to it while thinking they were still in charge. For instance you could do it under the guise of helpful suggestions. Ask the guest what attractions they'd like to see most, determine what areas of the park those attractions are, and (under the assumption that most guests ride adjacent rides before moving on to further rides) suggest to the guest the "best" times they could go to those rides to expect the least wait. And of course Disney would naturally be suggesting different times to different people to maximize the spread of the crowd. They could even go so far as to offer an incentive to follow through on these suggestions - perhaps by offering a reserved spot on that attraction at the suggested time so that the guest would have a guaranteed short wait. Thus the guest is in the desired land at the desired time and crowds could be better managed. The system could be easily expanded to function on the resort as a whole rather than just on a park basis.

Yes I'm describing FP+ - if implemented correctly it can be a giant step in the right direction. The genius of the system is the means by which the FP's are suggested. You don't initially pick the time - just the experiences. Then the system automatically picks times for you. You're free to change them, but even in my case as a well experienced tourer, I seldom have because they're more or less what I wanted to begin with. So really what is going on is Disney has persuaded me to go along with their touring plan that undoubtedly is being used to spread crowds evenly throughout the park. FP+ doesn't have the drawbacks of drawing a ton more people to the park, or drawing a bunch of people to a specific park or corner of the park. But having a system like it makes so much sense, its a wonder that its only now being implemented. Rides and attractions are essential to the the long term capacity needs of the resort and all the parks, but for both practical, and financial reasons really must be built at a fairly slow pace - especially if there is no system in place to manage the crowds they would generate if built faster.

So those are essentially the ways to do it that I can think of. One think I didn't pay too much attention too and has been slowly disappearing from WDW are more restaurants and, in particular, shows. There was a time when there were several more stage shows throughout the MK. And while I'm actually more of fan of the Disneyland "no stage shows" approach, opting instead for small-scale entertainment, there is no denying that a 7 time daily stage show can easily draw 1000, maybe even 2000 people away from the rest of the park if given the proper space. It'd also be fairly inexpensive - even at a high level of quality with live music. Oh how I miss a live pit for the Galaxy Palace theatre and castle stage shows. If the aim was specifically capacity based though, you'd want to stay away from any more castle/main street entertainment and move to the other lands. A frequent live stage show in both Adventureland and Tomorrowland could take a combined 4000 (or more if people are waiting in line for the next one) people off the streets and rides. The same would work for Epcot, and in its case several of the venues already exist or could be repurposed. Even better, the cost is nowhere near as high as an attraction, shows are easily swapped out, and attendance increases would most likely only be modest.

Alright, I'm out of ideas for now. Thanks for an interesting thread.
wow- guess you never thought about this particular topic before:p:D
 

Goofyernmost

Well-Known Member
I did! Just wish more people at TDO think the way you do :( maybe some day
I think that they already are, thus MM+. That is one of the points that I have been trying to get across, unsuccessfully, I might add, that MM+ is way, way more then what we as Guests are exposed to consciously. It is a new, whole and complete people moving and placement system. Sure it's got a few whistles for the guests like the bands and the pre-planned FP reservations, but even that, when fully implemented, will be more of a Disney tool then a Guest Perk. It will still be overall, good for the guest but in a backdoor manner that we aren't even aware of.

Just one aspect of it alone... the pre-reserved FP's. When everyone is able to pre-plan, be it onsite or offsite guests, Disney will be able to know almost exactly how many people will be in any given park on any given day. Something that they never had the power to do before. They can plan CM needs, ride and crowd control by distribution of FP's... the whole nine yards. If you have your 3 FP's for MK, that is where you are probably going to spend your day and since you cannot transfer anything but the total three, it is unlikely that you will leave ahead of time. It's unfortunate that people cannot see what Disney has to gain by this and can only stick to what they consider to be the heart of MM+ which isn't even close to the reality. I don't care how much pride they have, 2 billion dollars is a lot to spend without some thing other then what appears on the surface. The BoD would have stopped it long ago.
 

kap91

Well-Known Member
I think that they already are, thus MM+. That is one of the points that I have been trying to get across, unsuccessfully, I might add, that MM+ is way, way more then what we as Guests are exposed to consciously. It is a new, whole and complete people moving and placement system. Sure it's got a few whistles for the guests like the bands and the pre-planned FP reservations, but even that, when fully implemented, will be more of a Disney tool then a Guest Perk. It will still be overall, good for the guest but in a backdoor manner that we aren't even aware of.

Just one aspect of it alone... the pre-reserved FP's. When everyone is able to pre-plan, be it onsite or offsite guests, Disney will be able to know almost exactly how many people will be in any given park on any given day. Something that they never had the power to do before. They can plan CM needs, ride and crowd control by distribution of FP's... the whole nine yards. If you have your 3 FP's for MK, that is where you are probably going to spend your day and since you cannot transfer anything but the total three, it is unlikely that you will leave ahead of time. It's unfortunate that people cannot see what Disney has to gain by this and can only stick to what they consider to be the heart of MM+ which isn't even close to the reality. I don't care how much pride they have, 2 billion dollars is a lot to spend without some thing other then what appears on the surface. The BoD would have stopped it long ago.
Exactly. Not many people seem to realize the scope of all mm+ enables, particularly from Disney's side of things. Fast passes and additional revenue are nearly secondary. (Although I imagine someone is going to be forced to quantify the monetary gains, which will be an unenviable task as the benefits are so widespread, will take a while to materialize, and are more qualitative than quantitative) but $2billion is not that outrageous considering all the system can and will be used for.
 

jlsHouston

Well-Known Member
Raise Ticket Prices :).

HAHA, it's not stopping the masses! The price of a day ticket to WDW or UNI for that matter, for some reason reminds me of the parking lots at the malls and strip centers and wal-mart in 2008 during the great "recession". I kept wondering how could the stores be so packed if no one had any money to spend. I guess since I was in Texas, we didn't feel the recession quite as badly. Yes construction kind of died out,trucking really got hit badly and yah we ended up with a lot of real estate that had car dealerships as tenants that became vacant but consumer spending...I just didn't see much of a hiccup. I suspect the price of admission to great theme parks will be the same. People are not yet priced out of going to WDW or UNI or DL over the cost of admission.
 

Goofyernmost

Well-Known Member
Exactly. Not many people seem to realize the scope of all mm+ enables, particularly from Disney's side of things. Fast passes and additional revenue are nearly secondary. (Although I imagine someone is going to be forced to quantify the monetary gains, which will be an unenviable task as the benefits are so widespread, will take a while to materialize, and are more qualitative than quantitative) but $2billion is not that outrageous considering all the system can and will be used for.
Not every expenditure at Disney is a profit based investment per se. Many things like road repair, painting and cleaning are just plain overhead and charged out against over all income. They are not a profit center in and of themselves. If that is the way it is being looked at, and I have suspicions that this is what they are doing, there is no significant quantifiable measurement. It is an operating system designed to reduce costs via better planning, staffing and stocking and overall improved park resource management. None of us will ever know how successful it is because that is something that Disney would never divulge. I don't recall them ever publishing what it cost to clean a restroom.
 

morningstar

Well-Known Member
Yes, building more rides. Especially, IMO, several family-friendly C-ticket dark rides in each park as soon as possible. A much wiser and cost-effective solution than blockbuster E-ticket "lands" which would increase attendance but not reduce congestion. Get people out of the walkways and into show buildings!

Yes. Also some A-ticket walk-through attractions. Similar to Swiss Family Treehouse. I think part of the problem is that Fastpass means that people are out in the walkways instead of in the queues. Give them something they can do while waiting for their Fastpass time.

- Increase ticket prices. *ducks*

- Increase hours.

What about more radical solutions, such as separate days at the MK for resort guests only, and special days where only day guests can visit, allowing them a fair playing field without resort guests gobbling up all the FPs in advance?

Should never happen. It would make planning difficult. And what if you didn't do your research and showed up for a one day visit and you can't get in. Did you see National Lampoon's Vacation?
 

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