News Star Wars Galaxy's Edge Disney's Hollywood Studios opening date

[The Pho]

Maybe I missed it on these 31 pages of post, but does every know that they are doing the LAST Illumination Reflects of Earth that night at Epcot. Talk about crowds in two places at once. I was going to be in Epcot that day but with that small (LOL) announcement for star wars I have cancelled my plans. Sure it would have affected my stay on property and the crowds at the resorts plus forget about getting a dinner reservation. I will just have to say goodbye to a favorite in my heart.

Unless I missed something, isn’t there nothing official, beyond summer, about the last Illuminations date. With the rumor being September 30, not August 29th. So a month apart not the same night.

 

[marni1971]

Not sure I get your point? My point is that I personally waited for FOP a week after it opened (twice - NO FP) and I have visited WDW frequently since it opened. During that time, outside of crazy-bad weather such as torrential rain, I have seen the FOP standby line remain extremely consistent in terms of average wait times (135-250 or so minutes, 2-4 hours). I also said I believe a statistician published an article discussing how FOP was the odd attraction where wait times have actually gone up over time, rather than down.

FOP has consistently had operational issues that could skew data.

 

[peter11435]

Oh I'm SURE you can't. LOL

I can’t because my data is accurate and confidential.

 

[flynnibus]

Did you read the article I posted? It showed data for the first 8 months. Why don't you see if you can find data after that (I believe the same guy posts that same chart somewhere...)

I'm sorry I used big words... I'll simplify... the Chart doesn't tell the full story nor should it be used unilaterally

 

[peter11435]

Sure did. Did you actually look at the chart? It's more than just the holidays. The guy behind it is good and has said FOP is the only attraction he's aware of where times have actually increased. I'll take his word over a nameless faceless internet person any day.

I did. And he is correct that over those first 8 months (and then some) wait times increased. Wait times increased due to popularity, positive word of mouth, increased attendance, increase in fastpass inventory, and operational challenges.

But that was 13 months ago.

 

[marni1971]

Do you know what that the capacity of the standby line is for FOP?

Not offhand.

 

[matt9112]

Docking Bay is fast casual QS like Satuli. Ronto Roasters is a glorified hot dog stand. Oga's is a bar which may have snacks for sale.

The planned TSR will be built later. A TSR is where you are seated and have service from a waitperson.

If you want to know what QS is, check out the link in my sig below...

odd they cut something with direct ROI potential....its not like a ride...it literally prints money.

 

[RSoxNo1]

FOP has consistently had operational issues that could skew data.

Also they should have built at least 5 theaters...

 

[cohaco]

Hello! I'm planning a trip to orlando and the latest I can go is mid to late september. Do you think that there's a chance I can catch the RotR resistance opening or is it completely impossible for it to be open by then ? I'm thinking of postponing the trip if it's the latter because that's by far the thing I'm looking forward to the most.

 

[Muffinpants]

Hello! I'm planning a trip to orlando and the latest I can go is mid to late september. Do you think that there's a chance I can catch the RotR resistance opening or is it completely impossible for it to be open by then ? I'm thinking of postponing the trip if it's the latter because that's by far the thing I'm looking forward to the most.

No one has any idea when it will open.

 

[mikejs78]

I’m also basing this on my own personal experience having visited constantly since opening. FOP standby lines have not materially diminished since opening in my experiences.... and the guy behind touringplans.com is a statistician who (I believe) has published data on this.

Let's ask the man himself. @lentesta - since the above-referenced article was published over a year ago, from your data has FoP wait times leveled out?

 

[lentesta]

Let's ask the man himself. @lentesta - since the above-referenced article was published over a year ago, from your data has FoP wait times leveled out?

On a day-to-day basis, FoP has some of the longest average lines in WDW. Its popularity has endured far longer than any new ride Disney has opened in recent memory. If you want a model for what the Galaxy's Edge attraction wait times will look like, and for how long there'll be crowds, Flight of Passage is it.

That said, there's some evidence that recent posted wait times at the Animal Kingdom are being overstated at historically high levels. That's probably another thread, though.

 

[shortstop]

That said, there's some evidence that recent posted wait times at the Animal Kingdom are being overstated at historically high levels. That's probably another thread, though.

As an aside, please let me know when Touring Plans is hiring again

we hired someone to ride Animal Kingdom rides all day, every day, and time their actual wait in line

 

[lentesta]

As an aside, please let me know when Touring Plans is hiring again

I was somewhat worried what the effects would be on someone who had to ride Everest, Dinosaur, and Safaris each for five days straight. But apparently it went fine.

 

[shortstop]

I was somewhat worried what the effects would be on someone who had to ride Everest, Dinosaur, and Safaris each for five days straight. But apparently it went fine.

I just hope you didn’t make them go on Primeval Whirl too many times.

 

[winstongator]

On a day-to-day basis, FoP has some of the longest average lines in WDW. Its popularity has endured far longer than any new ride Disney has opened in recent memory. If you want a model for what the Galaxy's Edge attraction wait times will look like, and for how long there'll be crowds, Flight of Passage is it.

That said, there's some evidence that recent posted wait times at the Animal Kingdom are being overstated at historically high levels. That's probably another thread, though.

When I’ve looked at some of your data, it seemed like there were more submitted wait times in the past than recently. How many submitted times do you need for each day to have ‘enough’ information? There seems to be a lot of noise in the posted waits too. As you say, another ride going down can shunt extra traffic & flexible fp+, but that should show up in the other rides’ data though, right?

Shouldn’t wdw be able to do a lot better? They know how many fp+ are outstanding for a given time, and they should (could) be able to get a very good count on number of people in standby (use the long range Bluetooth to find the last person in line). An hour of Everest standby is roughly 700 people, so measuring to the nearest 100 people would get you +/- 10 min accuracy. If you had an hour of flexible fp come on line then all bets off... the more pertinent question is would Disney post accurate wait times if they had them?

 

[drod1985]

I was somewhat worried what the effects would be on someone who had to ride Everest, Dinosaur, and Safaris each for five days straight. But apparently it went fine.

I just hope you didn’t make them go on Primeval Whirl too many times.

I took a trip with four of my buddies in April. The last day of our trip was spent at Animal Kingdom and later Disney Springs. We ate at Satu'li Canteen and then went on Everest, Dinosaur, Safari and Primeval Whirl. My stomach was a wreck after that, and I thought it was due to riding all of those in quick succession right after eating.

A few hours I realized it wasn't the those rides that upset my stomach. It was the stomach bug I likely contracted at Magic Kingdom a few days before.

 

[lentesta]

When I’ve looked at some of your data, it seemed like there were more submitted wait times in the past than recently. How many submitted times do you need for each day to have ‘enough’ information? There seems to be a lot of noise in the posted waits too. As you say, another ride going down can shunt extra traffic & flexible fp+, but that should show up in the other rides’ data though, right?

These data are just for actual wait times where we have valid, posted wait times within 15 minutes on both sides, from the Animal Kingdom. So yeah, a subset of the total number of actual wait times we have.

There is a lot of noise in the posted data, for various definitions of 'noise'. We've talked about it in previous blog posts. Some of the noise demonstrates group behavior that's physically impossible in real-world conditions.

Shouldn’t wdw be able to do a lot better? They know how many fp+ are outstanding for a given time, and they should (could) be able to get a very good count on number of people in standby (use the long range Bluetooth to find the last person in line). An hour of Everest standby is roughly 700 people, so measuring to the nearest 100 people would get you +/- 10 min accuracy. If you had an hour of flexible fp come on line then all bets off... the more pertinent question is would Disney post accurate wait times if they had them?

Yes, they should be able to do much, much better. But they're not doing much, much better, so the question is why? My bet is still that nobody high enough in the organization has been made aware of it yet.

 

[sedati]

Also they should have built at least 5 theaters...

Maybe what Disney needs is a line for repeat riders. Imagine how much faster FOP or even Falcon might load if everyone knew how to sit and whatnot.

 

[winstongator]

These data are just for actual wait times where we have valid, posted wait times within 15 minutes on both sides, from the Animal Kingdom. So yeah, a subset of the total number of actual wait times we have.

There is a lot of noise in the posted data, for various definitions of 'noise'. We've talked about it in previous blog posts. Some of the noise demonstrates group behavior that's physically impossible in real-world conditions.



Yes, they should be able to do much, much better. But they're not doing much, much better, so the question is why? My bet is still that nobody high enough in the organization has been made aware of it yet.

Volatility would have been a better word to use: https://touringplans.com/blog/2019/02/20/crowd-calendar-review-for-february-2019/

I have a much more limited dataset (my own experience plus what TP publishes), but there was one day (Jan 6, 19) when there were high waits at Kilimanjaro Safaris early, as mentioned in the volatility post. My explanation was Everest being down. The family behind me in line had a FP for Everest that changed to a flex-FP. It doesn't work for FoP, so say half goes to the Safari, and half to Dino. That goes to the FP line, not standby. If all that happened in an hour, you'd have no capacity left for standby and those waits could spike. However, that is something Disney would know as it's happening.

Do you have more user submitted datapoint than the few dots shown? I've looked for some of my submitted times and didn't see them.

I started looking at this when trying to figure out what would happen with Galaxy's Edge crowd & wait wise. Not using FP is a great operational decision. Consider a capacity of 1800/hr. A 3 hr, no fp+ line, has 5400 people in it. A 3 hr standby line with FP+ taking 2/3rds of capacity only holds 1800. That's 3600 people in line that you'd need to entertain otherwise. After RoTR opens and they get to 2hr lines for each (assuming still no FP), that's 7200 people in line. That's 2.5M guests per year, or a huge attendance increase for DHS. To answer the question @danheaton posed to you of 'where will the Galaxy Edge crowds go?', I'd propose, many of them will be in the standby lines! The other question I had a guess for: 'where will the GE crowds eat?', I say Epcot. Skyliner over for more dining options.