-
Welcome to the WDWMAGIC.COM Forums!
Please take a look around, and feel free to sign up and join the community.
News Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge - Historical Construction/Impressions
- Thread starter BrianLo
- Start date
Let's go about this another way:
We know that RotR ride vehicles hold 8 people.
So, assuming every vehicle is full, in order to get a 4000 pph throughput capacity a RotR vehicle has to launch 500 times an hour.
That's 8.3 RVs per minute.
That's a RV launching every 7.2 seconds.
britain
Well-Known Member
Clearly they're way off, but what if it works Rat-style, so 4 vehicles load up with 8 passengers each. Maybe not 8 RVs per minute, but 4 RVs every minute maybe?
So around half - which is closer to the 1800 pph insiders here have been saying for awhile.
flynnibus
Premium Member
The dependency is still the same no matter how many load together... the only thing that changes it would be is if multiple vehicles travel together as a pack and hence dispatch together.
Otherwise simultaneous loading is used to allow for more time in the station without stressing the dispatch interval.
Dispatch is bound by two things... 'space' to take the vehicle in to the ride... this defines your minimum... and having a vehicle ready.. which dictates what your load design is like. Your 'maximum' is defined in part by how much hold capacity your load/unload has and your zones on the ride path to allow 'absorbing' backups.
Space Mountain is the quickest dispatching attraction I can think of at the parks.. and it has a 20 second dispatch interval. That really takes the cast pushing the guests hard and constantly to do that. More load, settle, and check stations give guests more time.. but most people should notice how terse and direct the Space Mountain CMs are... and it's all about ensuring on-time dispatches.
Something like Indy/Dinosaur is probably more akin to what Alcatraz will be like.. as it has simultaneous load stations and about the same passenger counts and concepts. I've seen sources quote 18 seconds for Indy dispatch.. but I'm not sure how accurate that is.
chadwpalm
Well-Known Member
- In the Parks
- No
Things to consider:
Attractions like Pirates, HM, Splash have show scenes that run on loops. IJA, RSR, the FL dark rides have shows that run on timing. Currently, we don't know how RotR will be and how much of the experience depends on timed show scenes. Shanghai Pirates uses timing because of the screens. This causes the ride vehicles to have to be spaced apart at a minimum distance. How many RotR vehicles they can run depends on that. I'm sure that's something they are continually tweaking. Like Mystic Manor, it may be possible for them to have multiple vehicles in one scene. Again, we don't know.
Also, building footprint size doesn't always equate to ride length proportionally. The northern side of the Pirates building has multiple levels, and the Splash showroom is two levels as well. The FL dark rides are a small footprint, but they twist and turn in corridors which allow there to be more track length. It all depends on how well the current Imagineers designed the space. We have the hanger and AT-AT rooms which are large, but the rest could be a lot winding corridors. Again, we don't know.
We can estimate Falcon because we know roughly how many pods and how many riders in each pod. Capacity will depend on how quickly they can load/unload and how long the ride experience is. Most estimates hit between 1800-2000. For a non-omnimover it's not terrible, but not awesome either. Still more than Star Tours or Splash. I can see RotR being between 2500-3000 if done right, but probably will be closer to 2000-2500. RSR is about 1500 an hour, right? I think it will be a bit better than that.
If you gauge this against Mystic Manor, which is also a trackless system, based on YouTube videos, it looks like the load time (vehicle start to vehicle start) is around 45-50 seconds. It loads 4 vehicles at a time and each holds 6 persons. That makes it about 1700-2000 an hour capacity. RotR holds 8 people. Assuming the same 50 second load time and 4 vehicles loaded at the same time (this is the unknown variable), that puts it at about 2300 an hour. 4 vehicles loaded at a time every 50 seconds allows there to be a 10-12 second spacing between each vehicle, which is plenty of time to reset timed elements in the show.
Attractions like Pirates, HM, Splash have show scenes that run on loops. IJA, RSR, the FL dark rides have shows that run on timing. Currently, we don't know how RotR will be and how much of the experience depends on timed show scenes. Shanghai Pirates uses timing because of the screens. This causes the ride vehicles to have to be spaced apart at a minimum distance. How many RotR vehicles they can run depends on that. I'm sure that's something they are continually tweaking. Like Mystic Manor, it may be possible for them to have multiple vehicles in one scene. Again, we don't know.
Also, building footprint size doesn't always equate to ride length proportionally. The northern side of the Pirates building has multiple levels, and the Splash showroom is two levels as well. The FL dark rides are a small footprint, but they twist and turn in corridors which allow there to be more track length. It all depends on how well the current Imagineers designed the space. We have the hanger and AT-AT rooms which are large, but the rest could be a lot winding corridors. Again, we don't know.
We can estimate Falcon because we know roughly how many pods and how many riders in each pod. Capacity will depend on how quickly they can load/unload and how long the ride experience is. Most estimates hit between 1800-2000. For a non-omnimover it's not terrible, but not awesome either. Still more than Star Tours or Splash. I can see RotR being between 2500-3000 if done right, but probably will be closer to 2000-2500. RSR is about 1500 an hour, right? I think it will be a bit better than that.
If you gauge this against Mystic Manor, which is also a trackless system, based on YouTube videos, it looks like the load time (vehicle start to vehicle start) is around 45-50 seconds. It loads 4 vehicles at a time and each holds 6 persons. That makes it about 1700-2000 an hour capacity. RotR holds 8 people. Assuming the same 50 second load time and 4 vehicles loaded at the same time (this is the unknown variable), that puts it at about 2300 an hour. 4 vehicles loaded at a time every 50 seconds allows there to be a 10-12 second spacing between each vehicle, which is plenty of time to reset timed elements in the show.
britain
Well-Known Member
Right, yes, Rat sends off 4 vehicles "sideways" away from the loading platform simultaneously.
Ride length doesn't matter. If you launch 1,000 people every hour for a one minute ride or 1,000 people every hour for a 5 minute ride, the throughput capacity is exactly the same -- 1,000 pph.
The only difference is that one has five times as many people currently experiencing the ride.
Disney Irish
Premium Member
Curious Constance
Well-Known Member
Sorry
Disney Analyst
Well-Known Member
TP2000
Well-Known Member
Exactly. You and I have seen a lot of these things, and that's exactly where we generally are this far out. Nothing looks ready, and CM's panic, and bloggers blare alarm about "They'll never make it!". Heck, just look at the current state of the new parking structure on this rainy Monday, and you'll think "That will never be ready by June!". But they'll make it, they always do.
Thank you for that.
Let's just round up to an RV (ride vehicle) launching every 8 seconds, because that matches with 8 riders in each vehicle. And it's still impossible at every 8 seconds, let alone 7 seconds.
An RV launching every 8 seconds means they'd need to get a rider sitting down every single second, with CM's doing the obligatory seatbelt checks (pull on the yellow tab!) once per second, for 4,000 people per hour. Assuming you'd need a minute or so for each 8 person RV to load and be checked... You would have to have an army of CM's just for that function, and a huge series of identical loading areas all loading, seating, prepping, checking and launching to get an RV out onto the track every 8 seconds.
The ride warehouse for RotR is big, but it's not that big. And @marni1971 has already told us that a third of that building is needed for maintenance and support, with the actual ride track taking up the other two thirds.
SWGalaxysEdge
Well-Known Member
..I'll ask my guy too..and find out how it can be 4000/hour...
Well, you *can* do that if you have multiple load stations and they're coordinated to take turns leaving/launching. A large mulit-loading station could have dozens of RVs filled with people waiting in a RV queue to cast off. The question is whether the ride can handle the RVs stacked on top of each other.
Stevek
Well-Known Member
Which means the ride times have to be much shorter than anyone has anticipated so far.
Ride times don't affect throughput capacity.
A ride that launches 1,000 an hour for a one minute ride and another one that launches 1,000 an hour for a one hour ride, have the same throughput capacity.
TP2000
Well-Known Member
Yes, it's entirely possible. But you'd need space for dozens of waiting vehicles, dozens of loading vehicles, and an army of CM's to manage it all and check one seatbelt per second. Which is why the seatbelt per second thing is so important, and why 8 seats and an 8 second launch interval is so convenient for this mind game.
Take Guardians of Galaxy for instance with a 21 person vehicle, that has 6 different loading areas on two different levels for 3 different shafts.
And that ride has a widely reported hourly ridership of 1500 for the California, Paris and Tokyo versions. 500 riders per shaft per hour, and on ride videos with the timing of each 21 person vehicle support that 1500 number.
For an 8 person RotR ride vehicle that has almost one third the capacity of a Guardians elevator, you'd need triple the loading areas that Guardians has for its six elevators. I'm just not able to see how the 4,000 per hour number is possible.
Stevek
Well-Known Member
Define what you mean by throughput capacity. I think everyone is assuming the number of guests that can ride per hour will be determined by number of vehicles, loading time and ride time. That's clearly not what you seem to be talking about.
Capacity is a vague word because there are different types of capacity. The one we talk most about is throughput of riders -- how many people can experience the ride in a time frame, usually measured in one hour. So, we're talking people per hour, or 'pph.'
And the time duration of the ride has no effect on the pph once you have enough vehicle ready to go such that they launch as fast as they can.
Again, to use an extreme example: Let's say you have a canoe ride where each canoe fits one person. Now, you don't want the canoes bumping into each other, so, you launch one every 10 seconds. That's 6 per minute which is 360 launches per hour. Times one person = 360 pph capacity.
But how does ride length figure into that? It doesn't. The ride could be an hour long, or just one minute long. You're still launching 360 times per hour = 360 pph.
Now, a different figure, which is the number of people on that ride at any moment, which is the amount of people you're are taking off the walkways of the park and sitting them in the ride is different. At any moment, the one minute ride has 6 people on it, while the one hour ride has 360 people on it. But for both rides, the number of people who experience that ride in the course of one hour is the same: 360 pph.
TP2000
Well-Known Member
A good reminder as we put our Imagineer hats on. The length of the ride (Pirates at 15 minutes vs. Peter Pan at 90 seconds) has no bearing on the hourly ridership capacity of a specific ride. It's how many people are in each vehicle and how often a vehicle is launched.
You could easily add on a mile of track to Peter Pan and turn it into a 15 minute long ride instead of 90 seconds, but since each little flying boat only seats 3 people (squished) you'd still be getting the same amount of people through per hour and the line would still be long and slow.
You could also easily chop off 13 minutes from Pirates, and just make it a short circle of the Bayou scene and return to the loading area 2 minutes after you left. But you would still have this monster people-eating hourly ridership because a pair of 22 person boats was leaving every 55 seconds (which gets you the 3,000ish per hour that Pirates is widely reported to handle).
Old Mouseketeer
Well-Known Member
Based on what I know of DL management, I have no doubt that staffing will be a mixed bag, at best. There's just too much dead wood--really good managers are few and far between. I have connections to a couple of people on the Test and Adjust crew and I hear there are a suprising number of really good people--but I think part of that is that they get to work directly with Imagineering. I have heard of a couple of good CMs who didn't apply last month. I know of someone who opened a new venue (not attractions) a couple of years ago under a useless manager and it was hell. They lost one core lead and two working leads, along with several CMs--one transferred, one went on medical leave for stress, and the rest left the company.
I did hear that if the shuttle at the beginning of RotR goes down there is an alternative. At least at Mansion they have two stretching rooms. With the RotR shuttle, if we're correct that there are three capsules on the turntable, then even if one went down they could still limp along. But if the whole mechanism fails, they would have to take extraordinary measures. I'm not sure how they would maintain show quality if they're walking people into the hanger through a side door.
But overall, I think there will be capacity issues all around. But this isn't a new problem. Pirates had less capacity when it opened--one less row of seating per boat and slower dispatch time. It takes time and practice to reach peak throughput. And there are also more frequent breakdowns on a new attraction.