EPCOT Spaceship Earth refurbishment coming soon?

[Bocabear]

Wait, so your idea of a need for the park, to make it fun, and want as an expenditure of WDW's resources, are rides that are so unpopular that no one wants to go on them, thus meaning there is never a line/wait???? That's your idea of what the park needs?

I mean there are only 3 ways to get a ride with almost no wait time. 1 is that the ride is so overbuilt from a loading/capacity standpoint, that even if it is super popular, and everyone wants to ride it, and is rushing to do so at the most popular times, that the ride itself is set up to handle that flow put, and just cranks people in and out. That also means your designing it for maximum usage all all times, which seems expensive, a pretty difficult design criteria, and arguably putting the focus on throughput over the ride itself. The second, would be to artificially limit the number of people who can ride the ride at any given time a thereby limiting your que numbers and allowing the line to move "quicker." This is done through LL or virtual que return times...which you seem to not want. Then there is the third option, a ride that is just not appealing to the majority of guests, such that you have a natural vs artificial limitation to the number of people in line...because people just don't want to go on the ride.

Horizons was a people eater...as was the original World Of Motion.... they were designed to be crowd eaters and they were both lengthy attractions.... Not a 75 minute wait for a 2 minute attraction.... Pirates in Shanghai boats hold 30 guests each....and can handle 3000 guests per hour....I would love to see more omnimover attractions added to EPCOT....and all the parks...

 

[Disstevefan1]

Spaceship Earth Now Closed for Refurbishment at EPCOT​

Spaceship Earth Now Closed for Refurbishment at EPCOT

Spaceship Earth Now Closed for Refurbishment at EPCOT

www.wdwmagic.com

Cr@p. How long will SSE be closed now????

It will be worth the wait if they get rid of the touch screens, remove the scrim and restore the scenes on the 2nd half of the ride.

 

[JMcMahonEsq]

I see a big difference between rides that are very efficient and as a result often carry lower wait times than other popular rides but are generally running very full so contributing large capacity usage to the parks (think like HM, Pirates, SSE, etc fall into that category) and rides that are absolute walkons most of the time, often have the ride vehicles half empty, etc. (think like Universe of Energy before it closed)

The former are really good to have in the park, the later is ripe for replacement/upgrades

OH I couldn't agree more. The three you listed might be my favorite 3 rides period. More things like that I am going to be giddy. But I very rarely see them as walk ons, as described in this thread. You want to make the argument they need more full capacity/large capacity rides, I am in. But if your going to spend cash for new rides like that, i want an Battle for the Sunken Treasure type ride, not the little mermaid. And i say that as someone who personally Little Mermaid might be my absolute favorite ride. Its the first ride we rode as a family with our kids so it will always hold a personal special place, and I love the move too. But if WDW is investing in something new, I want WOW, with big capacity, not the line is low because its just ok.

 

[WaluigiTime]

Cr@p. How long will SSE be closed now????

It will be worth the wait if they get rid of the touch screens, remove the scrim and restore the scenes on the 2nd half of the ride.

It is supposed to reopen before the end of 2025 so don't get your hopes up.

 

[jah4955]

I see a big difference between rides that are very efficient and as a result often carry lower wait times than other popular rides but are generally running very full so contributing large capacity usage to the parks (think like HM, Pirates, SSE, etc fall into that category) and rides that are absolute walkons most of the time, often have the ride vehicles half empty, etc. (think like Universe of Energy before it closed)

The former are really good to have in the park, the later is ripe for replacement/upgrades

Hopefully this means Imagination is next!

 

[Disstevefan1]

It is supposed to reopen before the end of 2025 so don't get your hopes up.

Yea, I saw that its touch screens and scrim for the foreseeable future I guess.

As we have seen with Disney, I guess it could always be worse, so we must be thankful it will re open this year at least.

 

[Disstevefan1]

if there is anything culturally insensitive or too pro America on this ride

Super sad but true

 

[Chef idea Mickey`=]

Wait, so your idea of a need for the park, to make it fun, and want as an expenditure of WDW's resources, are rides that are so unpopular that no one wants to go on them, thus meaning there is never a line/wait???? That's your idea of what the park needs?

I mean there are only 3 ways to get a ride with almost no wait time. 1 is that the ride is so overbuilt from a loading/capacity standpoint, that even if it is super popular, and everyone wants to ride it, and is rushing to do so at the most popular times, that the ride itself is set up to handle that flow put, and just cranks people in and out. That also means your designing it for maximum usage all all times, which seems expensive, a pretty difficult design criteria, and arguably putting the focus on throughput over the ride itself. The second, would be to artificially limit the number of people who can ride the ride at any given time a thereby limiting your que numbers and allowing the line to move "quicker." This is done through LL or virtual que return times...which you seem to not want. Then there is the third option, a ride that is just not appealing to the majority of guests, such that you have a natural vs artificial limitation to the number of people in line...because people just don't want to go on the ride.

I do not want us to lose an easy walk on or 5min wait ride to enjoy into another hour(s) wait ride like Frozen Ever After or Ratatouille..If you want to add more popular rides build them additional. WDW is replacing enough.

 

[JMcMahonEsq]

.

I do not want us to lose an easy walk on or 5min wait ride to enjoy into another hour(s) wait ride like Frozen Ever After or Ratatouille..If you want to add more popular rides build them additional. WDW is replacing enough.

So again, you want them to add not popular rides? You think it ever makes sense to spend millions of dollars on things people don’t want? I mean seriously how many drinks do you need to have for that to make sense? Who cares if a ride has a 5min wait if it’s not good?

Again you think you can build a popular ride with enough line capacity to keep a 5min wait….sure makes tons of sense. You want to have rides that suck so badly that no one wants to ride them…I am afraid nothing can help you

 

[MerlinTheGoat]

So like haunted mansion? An omnimover system which sure is good on capacity, but still is very rarely, if ever just a walk on ride.

I am not saying WDW doesn’t need more dark omnimover type rides, personally they happen to be why I go to WDW, or at least they are my favorite rides. I am just saying a good one, like HM will not be a walk on ride

Fastpass and especially Fastpass+/Genie is what caused the Haunted Mansion line to balloon to the length it is today. As it does with every ride. It was frequently a walk-on (or close to it) prior to the introduction of any of these skip the line systems. Even the old paper fastpass system was far less strenuous, the digital change made it vastly worse. I was visiting the parks literally during the week they were first implementing the app reservations for HM. The days prior to its implementation, HM had extremely short waits and was very often a walk on (I think they may have had FP disabled entirely for this interim period as well, even paper ones, which made for an even better control). But the day they brought it online, the wait times immediately skyrocketed to levels that matched if not surpassed even the busiest times of the year. No exaggeration whatsoever. This happened literally overnight and the waits never went back down again. It's one of those perfect before-after comparisons where you can see clear as day what caused the spike.

The Little Mermaid ride initially opened without Fastpass, and even when new it was very often a walk on as well. That's an example of a ride that is genuinely on the lower end of popularity since it was brand new and still struggled to attract guests (not because of its ride system, but because the scenes are widely regarded as subpar). But once again, the introduction of Fastpass caused a sharp increase in the wait times for it. Still often gets low wait times compared to other more popular rides, but it's rarely a complete walk on and is multiple times longer than it would be without reservations.

The older paper fastpass system would occasionally go down (or intentionally disabled by park ops for whatever reason). Whenever they did this, it would again cause a sudden and extreme drop in the wait times for whatever attraction this happened with. Higher capacity and constant-loading rides got even bigger benefits from its absence.

Spaceship Earth has also been negatively affected by the introduction of FP+/Genie. Increasing its waits by multiple times.

Get rid of the entire FP/Genie situation, and you'll see an enormous decrease in all ride wait times across the entire resort. Build more high capacity rides (like EPCOT had in the 80s and early 90s) and you'll see even greater improvements as the crowds are more evenly dispersed.

 

[Bocabear]

Fastpass and especially Fastpass+/Genie is what caused the Haunted Mansion line to balloon to the length it is today. As it does with every ride. I am speaking from personal experience. It was frequently a walk-on (or close to it) prior to the introduction of any of these skip the line systems. This was even often the case with the prior paper fastpass system, the digital version made it vastly worse. I was visiting the parks literally during the week they were first implementing the app reservations for HM. The days prior to its implementation, HM had extremely short waits and was very often a walk on (I think they may have had FP disabled entirely for this interim period, even paper ones). But the day they brought it online, the wait times immediately skyrocketed to levels that matched if not surpassed even the busiest times of the year. It's crazy because this happened literally overnight.

The Little Mermaid ride initially opened without Fastpass, and even when new it was very often a walk on as well. That's a case of a ride that was genuinely on the lower end of popularity. But once again, the introduction of Fastpass caused a sharp increase in the wait times for it.

The older paper fastpass system would occasionally go down, or just intentionally disabled by park ops for whatever reason. Whenever they did this, it would again cause a sudden and extreme drop in the wait times. Higher capacity and constant-loading rides got even bigger benefits from its absense.

Spaceship Earth has also been negatively affected by the introduction of FP+/Genie. Increasing its waits by multiple times.

Get rid of the entire FP/Genie situation, and you'll see an enormous decrease in all ride wait times across the entire resort. Build more high capacity rides (like EPCOT had in the 80s and early 90s) and you'll see even greater improvements as the crowds are more evenly dispersed.

THIS absolutely!

 

[Chef idea Mickey`=]

.
So again, you want them to add not popular rides? You think it ever makes sense to spend millions of dollars on things people don’t want? I mean seriously how many drinks do you need to have for that to make sense? Who cares if a ride has a 5min wait if it’s not good?

Again you think you can build a popular ride with enough line capacity to keep a 5min wait….sure makes tons of sense. You want to have rides that suck so badly that no one wants to ride them…I am afraid nothing can help you

Just because specific get on's like Grand Fiesta Tour, Spaceship Earth etc suck so badly and no one wants to ride them according to you doesn't mean your verdict is true that no one wants to ride these or doesn't care about these attractions. Whether you like it or not nobody asked for Piston Peak no one asked for Planes IP at Frontierland. Whether it doesn't make sense to you doesn't mean it has to for today's Disney spending millions of dollars on failures and movies that people don't want.

 

[Chi84]

Fastpass and especially Fastpass+/Genie is what caused the Haunted Mansion line to balloon to the length it is today. As it does with every ride. It was frequently a walk-on (or close to it) prior to the introduction of any of these skip the line systems. Even the old paper fastpass system was far less strenuous, the digital change made it vastly worse. I was visiting the parks literally during the week they were first implementing the app reservations for HM. The days prior to its implementation, HM had extremely short waits and was very often a walk on (I think they may have had FP disabled entirely for this interim period as well, even paper ones, which made for an even better control). But the day they brought it online, the wait times immediately skyrocketed to levels that matched if not surpassed even the busiest times of the year. No exaggeration whatsoever. This happened literally overnight and the waits never went back down again. It's one of those perfect before-after comparisons where you can see clear as day what caused the spike.

The Little Mermaid ride initially opened without Fastpass, and even when new it was very often a walk on as well. That's an example of a ride that is genuinely on the lower end of popularity since it was brand new and still struggled to attract guests (not because of its ride system, but because the scenes are widely regarded as subpar). But once again, the introduction of Fastpass caused a sharp increase in the wait times for it. Still often gets low wait times compared to other more popular rides, but it's rarely a complete walk on and is multiple times longer than it would be without reservations.

The older paper fastpass system would occasionally go down (or intentionally disabled by park ops for whatever reason). Whenever they did this, it would again cause a sudden and extreme drop in the wait times for whatever attraction this happened with. Higher capacity and constant-loading rides got even bigger benefits from its absence.

Spaceship Earth has also been negatively affected by the introduction of FP+/Genie. Increasing its waits by multiple times.

Get rid of the entire FP/Genie situation, and you'll see an enormous decrease in all ride wait times across the entire resort. Build more high capacity rides (like EPCOT had in the 80s and early 90s) and you'll see even greater improvements as the crowds are more evenly dispersed.

What do you anticipate the wait times would be for Guardians, FOP and Tron if they removed all ride reservation systems? In numbers.

 

[Purduevian]

Fastpass and especially Fastpass+/Genie is what caused the Haunted Mansion line to balloon to the length it is today. As it does with every ride. It was frequently a walk-on (or close to it) prior to the introduction of any of these skip the line systems. Even the old paper fastpass system was far less strenuous, the digital change made it vastly worse. I was visiting the parks literally during the week they were first implementing the app reservations for HM. The days prior to its implementation, HM had extremely short waits and was very often a walk on (I think they may have had FP disabled entirely for this interim period as well, even paper ones, which made for an even better control). But the day they brought it online, the wait times immediately skyrocketed to levels that matched if not surpassed even the busiest times of the year. No exaggeration whatsoever. This happened literally overnight and the waits never went back down again. It's one of those perfect before-after comparisons where you can see clear as day what caused the spike.

One of these charts is from October 18th 2021 the day before G+ launched (so standby only). The other is from October 19th 2021... Guess which one is which (also pay attention to the Y-axis, it isn't scaled the same):

 

[phillip9698]

Fastpass and especially Fastpass+/Genie is what caused the Haunted Mansion line to balloon to the length it is today. As it does with every ride. It was frequently a walk-on (or close to it) prior to the introduction of any of these skip the line systems. Even the old paper fastpass system was far less strenuous, the digital change made it vastly worse. I was visiting the parks literally during the week they were first implementing the app reservations for HM. The days prior to its implementation, HM had extremely short waits and was very often a walk on (I think they may have had FP disabled entirely for this interim period as well, even paper ones, which made for an even better control). But the day they brought it online, the wait times immediately skyrocketed to levels that matched if not surpassed even the busiest times of the year. No exaggeration whatsoever. This happened literally overnight and the waits never went back down again. It's one of those perfect before-after comparisons where you can see clear as day what caused the spike.

The Little Mermaid ride initially opened without Fastpass, and even when new it was very often a walk on as well. That's an example of a ride that is genuinely on the lower end of popularity since it was brand new and still struggled to attract guests (not because of its ride system, but because the scenes are widely regarded as subpar). But once again, the introduction of Fastpass caused a sharp increase in the wait times for it. Still often gets low wait times compared to other more popular rides, but it's rarely a complete walk on and is multiple times longer than it would be without reservations.

The older paper fastpass system would occasionally go down (or intentionally disabled by park ops for whatever reason). Whenever they did this, it would again cause a sudden and extreme drop in the wait times for whatever attraction this happened with. Higher capacity and constant-loading rides got even bigger benefits from its absence.

Spaceship Earth has also been negatively affected by the introduction of FP+/Genie. Increasing its waits by multiple times.

Get rid of the entire FP/Genie situation, and you'll see an enormous decrease in all ride wait times across the entire resort. Build more high capacity rides (like EPCOT had in the 80s and early 90s) and you'll see even greater improvements as the crowds are more evenly dispersed.

Why do you think that's the case. Does the reservation system cause more people to ride the attraction since they can confirm a minimal wait?

 

[rd805]

Right now SSE, Imagination, Nemo are all SKIPS for me, also forgetting the Pixar 3D shorts trash -- I can't even get into the former's for nostalgia value anymore. They all need enhancements, and please bring Wonders of Life Pavilion back on FOR SOMETHING. Such valuable real estate.

 

[Brian]

Why do you think that's the case. Does the reservation system cause more people to ride the attraction since they can confirm a minimal wait?

 

[James Alucobond]

Why do you think that's the case. Does the reservation system cause more people to ride the attraction since they can confirm a minimal wait?

I think multiple factors are in play. For one, if someone can reserve something, they will (especially if they paid for the privilege to do so). This means that attractions people didn’t previously consider much of a commodity suddenly become one. Additionally, reservation systems encourage a completely different mentality when engaging with the parks wherein rides are pretty much everything. You’re shuffled from one reservation to the next, sometimes across the park from one another, rather than exploring each land organically.

 

[JMcMahonEsq]

Just because specific get on's like Grand Fiesta Tour, Spaceship Earth etc suck so badly and no one wants to ride them according to you doesn't mean your verdict is true that no one wants to ride these or doesn't care about these attractions. Whether you like it or not nobody asked for Piston Peak no one asked for Planes IP at Frontierland. Whether it doesn't make sense to you doesn't mean it has to for today's Disney spending millions of dollars on failures and movies that people don't want.

Not really sure what your point/argument is here.

GFT and SE are actually 2 of my favorite rides. Subjectively i am a huge fan of them.

But if you look at wait times for rides, they are generally walk on to 5min. This isn't me saying people don't want to ride them, according to me, this is based on objective data on wait time and users. If people aren't riding the rides, the collective customer base IS telling Disney that people don't want to ride the rides. It doesn't matter if I as an individual like them. Individuals are meaningless in decisions on what rides to keep and what to tear down and replace. You spend money invest based on the market as a whole.

As to nobody asking for PP or Planes, well first, WDW isn't a democracy. I don't think they need to be taking a show of hands or asking anyone on these boards what they think they should be building. Second, given the size and sophistication of Disney, i would be willing to bet, even if I don't have access to the data, that plenty of studies were done and support for the the IP they are using for the expansions. And Third, really if it comes down to a "battle" between an ignorant fan board poster and a Forbes fortune 50 company on their plan for leveraging their IP and spending money for their market, guess who i am giving the benefit of the doubt?