Spirited News, Observations & Thoughts Tres

[PhotoDave219]

I am not much of a BBQer ... you know us one percenters, we have people to do that for us and all. But when I have a BBQ, I like the taste of wood/charcoal so much more than food cooked on propane.

But we gotta keep rednecks like Hank Hill in business, right?

I prefer that as well. Charcoal or wood gives the steak a flavor while propane, hell, thats like cooking your steak at burger king or something.

 

[PhotoDave219]

So let's get this straight. They identified overcrowding as a reason for NextGen, and then they've cut hours by 10%?

Must.
Maintain.
Quarterly.
Profit.
Margins.
At.
All.
Costs.

 

[the.dreamfinder]

If MBAs are raping your BRAND,
Give a little whistle

 

[PhotoDave219]

Touring Plans has accomplished more with their optimized touringplans than Disney has with the $1 billion+ Next Gen. They were also quick to swoop in and take onf of Orlando Informer's best writers.

Yeah, @lentesta has done a great job with his company. (Edit: I'm serious by that, Len)

I still want to know how many thousand people equates to on his crowd calendar but that it beats my own.

For comparisons sake:

TP: 10 (Avoid) Me: Holy (Pooh!) F'n Avoid this Place.
TP: 9 Me: Too F'n Busy, (Avoid.)
TP: 8 Me: Really F'n Busy, (Avoid.)
TP: 7 Me: Really Busy. (Maybe.)
TP: 6 Me: Damn, its Busy.
TP: 5 Me: Its Busy.
TP: 4 Me: Its OK.
TP: 3 Me: Hey, This is Kinda Nice.
TP: 2 Me: This is Great, Nobody is Here!
TP: 1 Me: Its either Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday in the Second Week of January.

 

[Taylor]

If MBAs are raping your BRAND,
Give a little whistle

Yeah MBA's ( and corn) are evil

 

[Longhairbear]

I've been thinking of the reasons we go to WDW, and I was rather shocked at remembering that the parks themselves were a draw but not the main reason. I met my current husband in person at WDW after chatting online for 6 months. We both loved Disney movies and got separate rooms at All Star Music. As we were bi coastal at the time, we met up at different resorts over the next 3 years at WDW. The parks stayed the same, our rendevous was always at a different resort. We tried them all.
Fast forward to living together in California, annual trips to WDW for our anniversary of meeting in person, and staying at a resort we hadn't been to. Not for any new attraction at any of the parks. Although Test Track was going thru it's growing pains at the time.
Fast forward again us becoming DVC members, because we went to WDW twice a year, and saved on deluxe hotel stays, as we had already been to every value, and moderate. We only went back for the different accommodations experience. The same is now true for our DVC resorts. We only go back to stay at a different resort, not for any new attraction at the parks. If there is a new attraction, that's merely icing on the cake.
We'll book a FP+ only because we can. What happens when we could care less if we actually use it? With regular Fastpass we have had one for any given attraction, and then just said, let's go to someplace else, and never used the FP. That must screw up their crowd control dreams.

 

[Fractal514]

It's incredibly complicated but to simplify it say that Peter Pan's Flight has a a daily capacity of 14400 guests (12 hours, 1200 per hour). On an average day it has a standby wait time of 50 minutes and a Fastpass wait time of 10 minutes. Say that 50% of guests wait Standby and 50% of guests wait Fastpass (hypothetical, not actual percentages). This would mean that each guest waits an average of 30 minutes to ride Peter Pan's Flight. In theory, what's stopping all of those 14400 guests from waiting 10 minutes or less each time? If the only way to get on Peter Pan's Flight is through Fastpass, then the wait time can be controlled more easily. The guests won't get in a 50 minute line midday because they can come back at another time and wait 10 minutes.

In the above scenario it means all 14400 guests can get on Peter Pan's Flight in under 10 minutes, however it's safe to assume that more that 14,400 guests would make the "decision" that Peter Pan's Flight is well worth a 10 minute wait. This means that those 14400 guests are happy because they get to ride Peter Pan's Flight, but other guests are unhappy because they didn't even get to make that "decision". I see this ultimately playing out with more than 3 FP+ reservations per day. The magic # we've all heard is that a guest is satisfied if they experience 10 rides, show, or nighttime spectaculars during a day. So is that what the end game is? Every guest gets to select their 10 experiences, Disney maps out your day and you go through those 10 experiences with plenty of time in between for shopping and dining?

The issues with this FP only thinking are also that in order for everyone who rides to only have to wait 10 minutes, you have to distribute all riders evenly throughout the day. This is fine for one ride, but when you add multiple rides, ride closures, and the fact that not everyone wants to ride the same attractions together, you get a system that operates well below peak efficiency.

Furthermore, the "cost" of each ride must be taken into account. If a ride has a 50 minute stand-by time, then the cost of that ride is 50 minutes. Each guest then makes a decision about wether or not they want to pay the cost to ride the ride. With FP+, one has to figure out what the value of each FP+ is, and how to maximize your "savings." Example, if the cost to ride Space Mountain at 2pm is 120 minutes, and your FP+ has an average value of 40 minutes, then you are making a really good decision to spend it on that ride. If you use it on the Tiki Room which has a value of say 10 minutes (or whatever the length till the next show is) then your have wasted a FP+. It is human nature, or at least American nature, that folks, particularly those who are planners, will want to maximize the time savings and that creates big problems for finding value in the FP+ system if you aren't an early planner.

 

[flynnibus]

Looks like we have proof Lee is a disgruntled former imagineer!!

or a dumpster diver...

 

[NoChesterHester]

This seems to be their new approach. Have the hours as low as the possibly can be and extend the hours day of.

How can that be good for staffing? Overtime is more expensive than proper planning.

The shorter hours are real noticeable.

 

[WDWFigment]

This may sound odd, but I think Lost in Translation has "suffered" from Scarlett Johansson's stardom. It's not really a movie for mainstream audiences, but due to her rise in popularity, it became somewhat of a mainstream film.

 

[NoChesterHester]

Kind of actually. My biggest complaint is a lack of subtle merchandise for guys.

Exactly. If you don't want a gaudy shirt designed for the trailer park crowd you are SOL.

 

[MattM]

I've eaten at local restaurants that are supposedly among the best in the nation, and I've eaten at Ruth's Chris, Shula's, Morton's. Don't recall ever having a bad meal at any of them and wouldn't know how to go about ranking them.

Absolutely. I'm not taking away anything from any of those establishments. I'm just making the point how much of the American public will not eat at a restaurant if they haven't seen their commercial on T.V. because they get..."nervous"

 

[Pentacat]

Anyhow...just saw WWZ.
I liked it quite a bit. It is far less...ummm...moist than Walking Dead, but the pacing is great and there are several nail-biting, breath-holding moments.
Now I have to finally read the book. But not until after Under the Dome debuts tonight.

The overall PG-13 feel of the WWZ movie was kind of a disappointment(lack of moistness?) and to say it's nothing like the book would be a GROSS understatement. The book really should have been made into a mini series....sigh.

Check out the Audio Book version, great voice cast and production. Probably the best Audio Book I've ever listened to and I generally dislike audio books.

 

[flynnibus]

The hours are 9-6 these days thanks to congress' inability to fund anything properly.

People don't do much sunbathing or swimming in the ocean at 7pm...

This from the guy who lives on the beach that is open all day long. After 5pm or so.. its about beach hangout. Sports, walks, fishing, bonfires, etc. If you don't allow any of the later activities anyway... becomes less reason to keep the place open.

 

[ChrisFL]

This may sound odd, but I think Lost in Translation has "suffered" from Scarlett Johansson's stardom. It's not really a movie for mainstream audiences, but due to her rise in popularity, it became somewhat of a mainstream film.

Ack, the only good part about the movie was seeing her in underwear for half of it. I thought the movie was a terrible introduction to culture in Tokyo by two people who were too chicken or depressed to leave their hotel, why would I want to watch that?

 

[lentesta]

First and foremost, it's always good to see you post on here.
Second, essentially scheduling a guests day (or every guests day) isn't particularly far fetched. In terms of modeling, again I'll reference @lentesta to see what Touring Plans' software is capable of. In theory, Disney could have guests pre-select what attractions they want to experience on a certain day and provided every single guest participated they could optimize each guest's day in such a way that every guest benefits. Yes, some guests would benefit more than others but it's not unreasonable.

Yes, it's possible to optimize every guest's touring plan in real time, regardless of whether they want to pre-plan their day or make decisions on the fly.

In fact, our touring plan software can do it now. It's not particularly difficult.

In terms of capacity, we stress-tested the software by running the equivalent of 40,000 families all simultaneously optimizing touring plans. It runs on Amazon's Elastic Cloud, so we have pretty much infinite capacity. And it's dirt cheap.

The other thing we had to figure out was how the waits change once we start sending a bunch of people to various attractions. So internally we keep track of how many people we've sent to each attraction, and when, along with a probability distribution of the likelihood that they're going to arrive at the attraction when we think the should. We adjust wait times in advance according to that.

Say, for example, we send a family of 4 to Winnie the Pooh at noon, and we think the wait is going to be 10 minutes. By sending 4 more people to Pooh at noon, we know that we've now increased the line for the next person to 10 minutes and 3 seconds, based on Pooh's capacity. So the next time we consider a wait at Pooh at noon on that day, the wait is 10:03.

If the family later changes their touring plan, we remove them from Pooh's queue at noon, and put them somewhere else.

It's not perfect - we don't really know family size, and the probability distribution can be thrown off by a lot of things, but the basics are there.

Len

 

[coolbeans14]

The overall PG-13 feel of the WWZ movie was kind of a disappointment(lack of moistness?) and to say it's nothing like the book would be a GROSS understatement. The book really should have been made into a mini series....sigh.

Check out the Audio Book version, great voice cast and production. Probably the best Audio Book I've ever listened to and I generally dislike audio books.

Hold on- in USA WWZ is a pg-13?! In the uk it's a 15 (no one under 15 can see it) and I thought that was a reasonable level. Some of the jumps were quite surprising and even though its a bad adaptation, I found it oddly refreshing compared to most blockbusters.


By the way, I recently was pointed towards this, and I'm very glad they changed the ending: WARNING SPOILERS!!!! http://www.movies.com/movie-news/world-war-z-original-ending/12638

 

[ScoutN]

I am not much of a BBQer ... you know us one percenters, we have people to do that for us and all. But when I have a BBQ, I like the taste of wood/charcoal so much more than food cooked on propane.

But we gotta keep rednecks like Hank Hill in business, right?

I bought a new grill. Look into Traeger, they pioneered the wood pellet fired grills/smokers and they turn out a brisket or ribs like nothing else. Low maintenance and safe to use on any combustible surface. Gone are the days of tending to the smoker for ten hours.

 

[asianway]

How can that be good for staffing? Overtime is more expensive than proper planning.

The shorter hours are real noticeable.

It doesnt matter when you schedule the CMs for 32 hours off the bat. OT doesnt come into play.

 

[WDWFigment]

Ack, the only good part about the movie was seeing her in underwear for half of it. I thought the movie was a terrible introduction to culture in Tokyo by two people who were too chicken or depressed to leave their hotel, why would I want to watch that?

I don't recall the movie billing itself as an introduction to culture in Tokyo, anymore than LOL billed itself as an introduction to culture in America.