The fallacy of overcrowded parks......

[Shouldigo12]

The big clue is they seem proud that the amount spent per guest is up.

Well....yeah. Should they be wanting people to spend less?

 

[The_Jobu]

And I suppose they are unpaid?

I'm not sure how it works in Florida, but when I used to work hourly, they had to pay us for a minimum of 3 hours even if they sent us home in 30mins.

 

[KimAnnFran]

I gotta ask when are you there when rides are at 50% capacity?

What does this mean? The parks are overcrowded and the rides are only half full?

 

[Jedi Stitch]

I am an original Disnaylander. I am betting many of you are original park goers, that when you bought a ticket to get in the park that is all you needed. You gamed the system by rope dropping to to get the most out of as many rides you could before the park fully filled up. You would ride during fireworks and the last hour when all the families were trying to get out the gate. You could go at certain times of the year for the best crowd levels. It would be normal for a 45 minute stand by wait on most rides at the heat of the day. that was normal park going.
As was mentioned before, the fast pass style system started a caste system. Those who had the passes, got to ride the rides, while those who stand by line now had longer stand by lines, because you had permitted line cutters, for all intense purpose. So, yo had to game the fast pass system to make sure you rode the lines, but you still could get in at rope drop and do fire works.
Then the some said "Hey, if you stay on property, we will give you Extra Magic hour(s)" So, now if you were not staying on property, you would show up for normal open rope drop to find the park is already filled up.
Then Someone said "Hey, lets have a "party", lets close to the regular ticketed guest earlier than normal, and charge a fee"
So now as stated in the past we have a caste system those with more money to spend won't feel like it is too crowded because they up pay the fees, but eventually everyone one will be in the fast pass stand by, as the the ultra deluxe vacation club members walk the red carpet to the front of the line.
Yes, there can be more crowded days, times of days, and crowded rides, but that is also compounded by newer Disney systems that have created longer wait times and more crowds. Not to mention the parades, and musical performances that can push most of the guests to a certain area.
We can not just blame Disney, as most of us screamed for something more and we got it.

 

[Tanna Eros]

They have not been enlarging the parks. That’s the problem. Another under built gate and all of its associated expenses won’t fix the fundamental problems with Disney’s view of theme parks and Walt Disney World.

Perhaps someone can help me- I had heard that so many of land was set aside for conservation- I thought Walt had set up land for animal conservation. Is this true?

 

[Cesar R M]

I'm not sure how it works in Florida, but when I used to work hourly, they had to pay us for a minimum of 3 hours even if they sent us home in 30mins.

I suppose they would be using college kids for these moves hu?

 

[stratman50th]

Perhaps someone can help me- I had heard that so many of land was set aside for conservation- I thought Walt had set up land for animal conservation. Is this true?

Yes. The large majority is in Osceola County south of the developed property. South of I-4

 

[MickeyLuv'r]

What does this mean? The parks are overcrowded and the rides are only half full?

It means there are times when ride waits are - you might say - inflated- because only one half of say, BTMRR is running.
If both sides are running the wait might be 20 minutes, but with only one track running, the wait is more like 40minutes.

Mind, I'm not saying I agree with the full 50% number on all rides, but most guests wouldn't notice a 20% reduction.

On rides with boats, Disney can increase waits by running fewer boats. Most people can't tell if IaSW has 10% fewer boats .

For characters, they can offer half as many., especially places like the princess hall that have multiple rooms, and pop-up characters. Easter week = extra pop-up characters.

In the case of shows, maybe Disney runs two shows per day instead of three or four.

Disney can also increase QS waits by opening fewer registers, or have less staff preparing food, so orders take longer to prepare. Customers wont notice if their order takes one extra minute.

Same thing with ticket windows, gest services, gift shop registers....

Disney can also play around with the number of FP offered.

One even bigger and easier reduction is just to reduce the number of park hours offered.

 

[LaughingGravy]

That's almost what happened. As an original park goer, there used to be just the monorail resorts and the hotel plaza resorts.
Then they added a TON of extra hotels on site and filled those up. They added park capacity, but then they did multiple things, including dumbing down and/or removing the experiences (Journey into Imagination/Ellen/Horizons/World of Motion/Stitch/ 1/2 day park that is Studios now), even dumbing down Main St. in MK(compare it to Disneyland's), going the route of timeshare by building even more rooms, still dealing with buses with long waits. I didn't ask for Extra Magic Hour, but the parks used to be opened earlier and closed later, until EMH. EMH was a cool thing, but it got out of hand with so many people on site.
I never asked for a party. I never asked for FP in any incarnation. They became things to work around.
I remember my mom dialing the phone in the morning a year to the day we wanted to go so we could get a reservation at the Contemporary. Sure there was a minor up charge of about 10%-15% for a MK side view, but not the situation now that even in the off season ( ha ha) of 80% of the average weekly US take home pay just for one night of Contemporary hotel.
My, how times have changed.

 

[lazyboy97o]

Perhaps someone can help me- I had heard that so many of land was set aside for conservation- I thought Walt had set up land for animal conservation. Is this true?

Yes, land is set aside for conservation and there are minimums required by law. Some of it is at Walt Disney World and there are also parcels located elsewhere. That though does not impact Walt Disney World’s ability to increase capacity in the existing parks or even build additional gates. Conservation lands are not held in trust or deed restricted, so they can be swapped with other land, something that occurred relatively recently. It is not a cause for Walt Disney World’s capacity issues.

 

[Tanna Eros]

Yes, land is set aside for conservation and there are minimums required by law. Some of it is at Walt Disney World and there are also parcels located elsewhere. That though does not impact Walt Disney World’s ability to increase capacity in the existing parks or even build additional gates. Conservation lands are not held in trust or deed restricted, so they can be swapped with other land, something that occurred relatively recently. It is not a cause for Walt Disney World’s capacity issues.

Thank you. I can't recall where I heard it, so I wasn't sure if it were true or not.

 

[BellTinkR]

Overcrowding means degradation of the guest experience, but it is not the only thing that degrades the guest experience. Overpricing also contributes. A combination of overcrowding and overpricing means guest pay more but experience less than they did 10, 15, 20 years ago. Overcrowding and overpricing are the result of a corporation not having the word “enough” in their lexicon. But the or “more” is certainly there.

 

[Sonconato]

I just wanted to add another example of what the OP started with. Just last night, we wanted to leave before the fireworks at MK. The problem was that we didn't want to take the monorail due to its track record with us recently. To avoid the risk, we first went over to the bus loading area and asked if there were any buses going to the TTC. We were told that there were not until AFTER the fireworks, so we had to take the other alternative: the ferry. Once we reached the line it turned out the boat had just left, but that's fine because there is another boat coming our way, right? No. They only had one boat running, causing us to wait there a good thirty minutes.

Once we loaded and were about halfway there, we saw what had happened to the other boat. It was parked to the side with a group of people on it with blue-lighted necklaces. We found out later that it was the Fairytale Fireworks up-charge dessert party. But we knew this was no excuse because there are three ferry boats. After we unloaded from the boat, there was a manager in front of the gate to the ferry. We asked him what happened to the third boat and he told us it was being refurbished. Let's summarize: if you want to leave BEFORE the fireworks your options are an unreliable monorail or a single ferry boat.

 

[lazyboy97o]

I just wanted to add another example of what the OP started with. Just last night, we wanted to leave before the fireworks at MK. The problem was that we didn't want to take the monorail due to its track record with us recently. To avoid the risk, we first went over to the bus loading area and asked if there were any buses going to the TTC. We were told that there were not until AFTER the fireworks, so we had to take the other alternative: the ferry. Once we reached the line it turned out the boat had just left, but that's fine because there is another boat coming our way, right? No. They only had one boat running, causing us to wait there a good thirty minutes.

Once we loaded and were about halfway there, we saw what had happened to the other boat. It was parked to the side with a group of people on it with blue-lighted necklaces. We found out later that it was the Fairytale Fireworks up-charge dessert party. But we knew this was no excuse because there are three ferry boats. After we unloaded from the boat, there was a manager in front of the gate to the ferry. We asked him what happened to the third boat and he told us it was being refurbished. Let's summarize: if you want to leave BEFORE the fireworks your options are an unreliable monorail or a single ferry boat.

Clearly you should have researched the ferryboat party dates, cross referenced those with the refurbishment schedule and then been more responsible for yourself and left before the people leaving before the fireworks.

On a serious note, this is another example of less capacity existing today. Southern Seas II, which was pretty much a dedicated special event vessel, was destroyed in 1997 without replacement.

 

[Sonconato]

Clearly you should have researched the ferryboat party dates, cross referenced those with the refurbishment schedule and then been more responsible for yourself and left before the people leaving before the fireworks.

On a serious note, this is another example of less capacity existing today. Southern Seas II, which was pretty much a dedicated special event vessel, was destroyed in 1997 without replacement.

Thank you for the interesting fact about the Southern Seas II. As I didn't visit WDW very often between 1995 and 2001, I must have missed that. It really would have been handy last night!