Spaceship Earth wait time longer than Soarin? Why?

[Trackmaster]

I kid you not that for year SE was always a walk on all day and probably about 8 or 9 years ago we walked by and it was slammed and we were thinking it had just messed up. So I asked a CM what happened and he said "I'm in shock because I've NEVER seen this line look like this!" and we hadn't seen it like that either. But now in recent years since attendance has skyrocketed it seems rather routine for it to have a pretty long wait. This time years ago you would have never been able to convince me that there would come a time when a Fast Pass would be needed for it but it definitely gets slammed a lot these days. It's one of my favorite rides too.

Not that shocking to me. Lines work that way. Its an exponential curve that you create based on the data of the situation. Its actually not very hard at all for your rides to be walk-ons... just make sure that capacity meets demand. If demand exceeds capacity by even just 10%, lines will build up and grow throughout the day if the deficit continues. If double your capacity tries to ride, it will get out of control.

Really, the only thing that prevents popular rides from regularly having 7-8 hour lines are two factors:

• Replacement: A bunch of people are already in line so they can't clone themselves and get in line again.
• Deterrence: People see a just OK ride with a 1-2 hour line and say "no way Jose." At a certain point, even a free ride with no alternatives just isn't worth a wait.

But ignoring those two factors, the difference between literally no wait (other than the time it takes for you to walk through the line and maybe waiting for the train to get there) and waiting an hour isn't that much in terms of demand.


This is mainly important because SE is a capacity monster. Its not a super highly desirable attraction, so it just easily meets demand. But if a park gets swamped it doesn't take much for to get to 45 minutes to 1 hour. I suspect that people see it as an easy short wait, and want to get on it when everything else is crushed in the resort. But then everyone thinks that and the wait backs up.

 

[DuckTalesWooHoo1987]

Not that shocking to me. Lines work that way. Its an exponential curve that you create based on the data of the situation. Its actually not very hard at all for your rides to be walk-ons... just make sure that capacity meets demand. If demand exceeds capacity by even just 10%, lines will build up and grow throughout the day if the deficit continues. If double your capacity tries to ride, it will get out of control.

Really, the only thing that prevents popular rides from regularly having 7-8 hour lines are two factors:

• Replacement: A bunch of people are already in line so they can't clone themselves and get in line again.
• Deterrence: People see a just OK ride with a 1-2 hour line and say "no way Jose." At a certain point, even a free ride with no alternatives just isn't worth a wait.

But ignoring those two factors, the difference between literally no wait (other than the time it takes for you to walk through the line and maybe waiting for the train to get there) and waiting an hour isn't that much in terms of demand.


This is mainly important because SE is a capacity monster. Its not a super highly desirable attraction, so it just easily meets demand. But if a park gets swamped it doesn't take much for to get to 45 minutes to 1 hour. I suspect that people see it as an easy short wait, and want to get on it when everything else is crushed in the resort. But then everyone thinks that and the wait backs up.

There was an article I read years ago that said Disney knows that basically they can't meet the demands of that many people as quickly as they'd like and they know they can't just instantly build new ride after new ride so they instead focus on making the line itself be "interactive". That way people feel like they're not "just waiting" but we know that's really all it is and I really feel like sometimes the interactive ques also help to slow things down because kids get caught up in playing with whatever it is or the adults get hung up in it themselves. The Mine Train and Winnie the Pooh both seem to get people caught up in their ques. Didn't they try an experiment a few years back where they tried to literally have no wait times at Toy Story and it turned out to be a disaster? One thing they done for us at a Moonlight Magic at AK was you couldn't just go to the Safari anytime you wanted. They gave us a pass with a time on it and we could only ride it during that time so it didn't just get totally backed up. It was basically a fancy paper fast pass but it did keep things moving swiftly though and in a 5 hour span we got to do everything in the park we wanted to do and Everest literally over and over and over. Oddly enough the special Meet and Greet lines were the longest ones of the night.

 

[Trackmaster]

There was an article I read years ago that said Disney knows that basically they can't meet the demands of that many people as quickly as they'd like and they know they can't just instantly build new ride after new ride so they instead focus on making the line itself be "interactive". That way people feel like they're not "just waiting" but we know that's really all it is and I really feel like sometimes the interactive ques also help to slow things down because kids get caught up in playing with whatever it is or the adults get hung up in it themselves. The Mine Train and Winnie the Pooh both seem to get people caught up in their ques. Didn't they try an experiment a few years back where they tried to literally have no wait times at Toy Story and it turned out to be a disaster? One thing they done for us at a Moonlight Magic at AK was you couldn't just go to the Safari anytime you wanted. They gave us a pass with a time on it and we could only ride it during that time so it didn't just get totally backed up. It was basically a fancy paper fast pass but it did keep things moving swiftly though and in a 5 hour span we got to do everything in the park we wanted to do and Everest literally over and over and over. Oddly enough the special Meet and Greet lines were the longest ones of the night.

Yeah, I think that what Disney does with pre-shows and interactive queues is the main reason why there's not an insurrection and revolt. If you had to stand in endless open air switchbacks with nothing around you for 120 minutes, people would revolt. As long as the interactive stuff is far away from the loading station, people stopping doesn't matter. The bottle neck is the loading, not the people stopping. You are just stopped behind the guest looking at stuff instead of stopped 30 feet down.

Maybe you could elaborate on how they tried to make Toy Story have "zero wait time?"

 

[Trackmaster]

Yeah, I think that what Disney does with pre-shows and interactive queues is the main reason why there's not an insurrection and revolt. If you had to stand in endless open air switchbacks with nothing around you for 120 minutes, people would revolt. As long as the interactive stuff is far away from the loading station, people stopping doesn't matter. The bottle neck is the loading, not the people stopping. You are just stopped behind the guest looking at stuff instead of stopped 30 feet down.

Maybe you could elaborate on how they tried to make Toy Story have "zero wait time?"

I should also add in that there are plenty of Disney attractions that will be walk-ons guaranteed if the crowds are 4/10 or less. Half of the attractions at EPCOT are like that, Star Tours and the Muppets are, Carousel of Progress and Small World, and Tough to be a Bug (although you may have to wait for the show to start). And as this thread was saying, Spaceship Earth can be hit or miss, but its usually not more than a five minute wait (but may never be a "walk-on"). Also the People Mover can be hit or miss, but does generate some crazy short lines.

Some rides will simply never have a short line unless its a special event or pouring rain and miserable, but the bottom 30% of the park will be walk-ons if its 4/10 or less at the park.

 

[DuckTalesWooHoo1987]

Yeah, I think that what Disney does with pre-shows and interactive queues is the main reason why there's not an insurrection and revolt. If you had to stand in endless open air switchbacks with nothing around you for 120 minutes, people would revolt. As long as the interactive stuff is far away from the loading station, people stopping doesn't matter. The bottle neck is the loading, not the people stopping. You are just stopped behind the guest looking at stuff instead of stopped 30 feet down.

Maybe you could elaborate on how they tried to make Toy Story have "zero wait time?"

The Toy Story thing was a few years back and I can't remember for the life of me where I read that but I know I did. I'm not sure if they were trying to give people designated times or not but it was when Toy Story was absolutely as crazy as FOP is now. Back when people would get up and go over there in the morning and drain the old school FP machines in no time.

 

[WondersOfLife]

Spaceship Earth was down for a majority of my last trip, which can result in FP+ backing up. Soarin' has 3 theaters now, so if one breaks down at least 2 are still operational.

There ya go.

 

[Trackmaster]

The Toy Story thing was a few years back and I can't remember for the life of me where I read that but I know I did. I'm not sure if they were trying to give people designated times or not but it was when Toy Story was absolutely as crazy as FOP is now. Back when people would get up and go over there in the morning and drain the old school FP machines in no time.

Maybe the concept was that they were just eliminating Stand-by, and only allowing FP's. Not a bad idea, but the problem for that is that you're turning away people who aren't early birds, and that's going to alienate a lot of people. If you at least offer Stand-by... even if its 5 hours, you can at least say its on them for not waiting.