The Miscellaneous Thought Thread

[PiratesMansion]

I think the Panda Express by my house thinks we are at the height of the pandemic again. Wow, they re over the top.

Two weeks ago en route to Silver Dollar City, we stopped at a Chipotle for dinner in central Illinois. This particular Chipotle had a giant sign that stopped you as you walked in that they were only accepting orders through their own app. You could not simply walk up to the counter and order. App only!

Total overkill for where we are in the pandemic IMO, more extreme than anything I've seen by me in the Chicago burbs (and having people hang out indoors waiting for their food certainly can't be *better* than just running the Chipotle normally), and a huge contrast to Missouri, where the pandemic is basically over.

 

[Ne'er-Do-Well Cad]

Does Rise still break down all the time? I detest the boarding group process, but I understand it may be necessary if the ride simply doesn't yet function reliably. If it becomes a necessary permanent feature of the ride, I think it's safe to say Imagineering really messed up.

 

[chadwpalm]

Nothing like setting your alarm for 6:55, clicking at exactly 7am and still not getting a boarding group. I couldn’t sleep last night and should’ve slept in—starting the day this way is bizarre as a guest paying for FIVE PEOPLE (three older kids, two parents, all five Star Wars fans) to come to the park today.

The emotions of not getting a pass when one does the whole unpleasant process correctly (waking up to an alarm, waiting to click a button at the second it turns 7am... how is this my life...) are pretty negative and frustrating, and are going to carry into the day at the park.

And now to tell my kids we didn’t get a “boarding group” for the ride they want to go on the most, as all passes were claimed in under one second on a random Thursday in May.

Don't lose hope. Try again at noon. If I remember correctly, @George Lucas on a Bench didn't get one at 7am but got one at noon and was still able to ride it.

As we've been talking about in another thread, open a browser and go to time.gov and see if your phone time is offset with the official time, and try to compensate if needed.

Not sure if this is a "random" Thursday as it's the Thursday before a long holiday weekend. It's possible with the pandemic many people saved up a lot of vacation time and is taking a very extended weekend away.

Anyway, good luck, and hopefully you snag a group at noon!

 

[Rich T]

No ride is ever designed to handle every visitor. That’s just the nature of how parks operate.

Has any guest ever...EVER.. been unable to board Pirates, Big Thunder, HM or basically any normally-operating other ride in Disneyland because there weren’t enough seats available? You might have had to wait in line for hours, but you could get on if you wanted to. But Disney has decided that guests can’t spend money when they’re in line. And so they come up with “brilliant” ideas like this.

 

[chadwpalm]

Does Rise still break down all the time? I detest the boarding group process, but I understand it may be necessary if the ride simply doesn't yet function reliably. If it becomes a necessary permanent feature of the ride, I think it's safe to say Imagineering really messed up.

I just grabbed all of May's data and this is what it tells us (all numbers based on final boarding group for the day):

Average (mean): 176.4615385
Smallest: 111
Largest: 222
Median: 183.5

Here is a chart:

Over the month the amount of groups called in a day are trending upward. There seemed to be bad days on the 8th and 12th, but still was over 100 (smallest being 111). The best day was the 17th (largest being 222). The past 3 days have shown a bit of a decline, but still staying over 175. If my memory serves me correct from my statistics class, a median that is larger than the mean is a left-skewed distribution which means there are more better days than worse.

 

[1HAPPYGHOSTHOST]

Nothing like setting your alarm for 6:55, clicking at exactly 7am and still not getting a boarding group. I couldn’t sleep last night and should’ve slept in—starting the day this way is bizarre as a guest paying for FIVE PEOPLE (three older kids, two parents, all five Star Wars fans) to come to the park today.

The emotions of not getting a pass when one does the whole unpleasant process correctly (waking up to an alarm, waiting to click a button at the second it turns 7am... how is this my life...) are pretty negative and frustrating, and are going to carry into the day at the park.

And now to tell my kids we didn’t get a “boarding group” for the ride they want to go on the most, as all passes were claimed in under one second on a random Thursday in May.

This is why I hate boarding groups. It should be left up to the people if they want to spend all day lined up in a queue for a ride than not even have a chance to get in the line in first place. I hate the boarding group idea. Sorry you went through this.

 

[1HAPPYGHOSTHOST]

Don't lose hope. Try again at noon. If I remember correctly, @George Lucas on a Bench didn't get one at 7am but got one at noon and was still able to ride it.

As we've been talking about in another thread, open a browser and go to time.gov and see if your phone time is offset with the official time, and try to compensate if needed.

Not sure if this is a "random" Thursday as it's the Thursday before a long holiday weekend. It's possible with the pandemic many people saved up a lot of vacation time and is taking a very extended weekend away.

Anyway, good luck, and hopefully you snag a group at noon!

Yeah you shouldn't have to do all that just to line up to ride a theme park ride is the overall point you are missing there buddy.

 

[misfitdoll]

The problem is that we are a party of five people, and I have two different groups of tickets purchased (some for today, some for later in June) so I had to manually select each person and their corresponding ticket, which took like three seconds. So we didn’t have a chance. I missed out at noon too. We’re still having fun but it just doesn’t seem right for any guests to have to do the park this way! We can’t get one for Indy either, and that really seems like a choice to diminish guest experience in order to make operations easier on Disney’s part; they were having no problems getting people through the line and onto the ride before the switch to virtual queue.

 

[CaptinEO]

Ride photos are alive and well. Just paid $15 for one of me and my son on Splash Mountain

Physical ride photos? I didnt see any to purchase besides in the app.

 

[chadwpalm]

Yeah you shouldn't have to do all that just to line up to ride a theme park ride is the overall point you are missing there buddy.

Oh, I agree you shouldn't have to, but you do and you can't change that fact, so offering suggestions to help is about all we can do at this point.

 

[CaptinEO]

The problem is that we are a party of five people, and I have two different groups of tickets purchased (some for today, some for later in June) so I had to manually select each person and their corresponding ticket, which took like three seconds. So we didn’t have a chance. I missed out at noon too. We’re still having fun but it just doesn’t seem right for any guests to have to do the park this way! We can’t get one for Indy either, and that really seems like a choice to diminish guest experience in order to make operations easier on Disney’s part; they were having no problems getting people through the line and onto the ride before the switch to virtual queue.

So FYI for Indy, last Saturday at about 5pm ish the ride went back to waiting in line, no more virtual queue.

We were at DCA that morning and were across the street at Bengal BBQ right when they reopened Indy for normal waiting and went right over to it. Walked right on.

Keep an eye on the app if you see a wait time for it appear.

 

[mickEblu]

Physical ride photos? I didnt see any to purchase besides in the app.

No physical I don’t think. Just digital.

 

[CaptinEO]

No physical I don’t think. Just digital.

Ok! This I knew, but figured I'd double check. There are those main street and california adventure photoshops that print out photopass photos as well, but I didn't go in to them.

 

[chadwpalm]

The problem is that we are a party of five people, and I have two different groups of tickets purchased (some for today, some for later in June) so I had to manually select each person and their corresponding ticket, which took like three seconds. So we didn’t have a chance. I missed out at noon too. We’re still having fun but it just doesn’t seem right for any guests to have to do the park this way! We can’t get one for Indy either, and that really seems like a choice to diminish guest experience in order to make operations easier on Disney’s part; they were having no problems getting people through the line and onto the ride before the switch to virtual queue.

Hindsight is 20/20 and it's too late to guide on this, but one of the biggest things most blogs will tell you about getting RotR boarding groups is to temporarily unlink any tickets from your account for people who aren't going to ride (and only link those who are) before going through the process so that you aren't slowed down by clicking on extra things, then relinking them again afterward before you enter the park.

Sorry it didn't work out for you . I know I'll be stressin' when the time comes.

 

[George Lucas on a Bench]

Mobile Phone Guests is what Disney wants. When discussing the reopening plans for Disneyland, it's pretty much all I remember Ken Potluck talking about.

"Everything will be done on Mobile Phones!"

 

[Curious Constance]

Is GotG really only open from 9-1 every day right now?

 

[mickEblu]

Is GotG really only open from 9-1 every day right now?

Not when I was there. When did you hear this?

 

[Curious Constance]

Not when I was there. When did you hear this?

The DL app

 

[George Lucas on a Bench]

It doesn't seem to get more accurate than the app

Wait...never mind.

 

[lazyboy97o]

Has any guest ever...EVER.. been unable to board Pirates, Big Thunder, HM or basically any normally-operating other ride in Disneyland because there weren’t enough seats available? You might have had to wait in line for hours, but you could get on if you wanted to. But Disney has decided that guests can’t spend money when they’re in line. And so they come up with “brilliant” ideas like this.

There aren’t enough seats available for most rides. Yes you can wait and people chose not to wait, but there is a limit. Letting people chose to wait can be nice for guests willing to do so but it also has negatives that do impact the guest experience. Disney doesn’t close the line until park closing, meaning those hours of people queued up are going to be cycled through the ride. That means extra late hours for the employees working the attraction and other facilities as the ride cycles through those last riders. A ride open hours later than the park is also getting less work done on it at night, an issue for new rides that continue to be adjusted after opening and more so for one as problematic as Rise of the Resistance. Sure, the queue could be closed before the park, but then we’re right back to people being unable to board. And even if you chose not to deal with the long line you may be stuck having to navigate around it as it spills out into the park (I still remember that long queue for the Indiana Jones Adventure the summer it opened).

It makes sense to allocate capacity when demand is far greater and there is tolerance for long waits. In ways it opens up the ability to experience an attraction as queuing for multiple hours does require a certain degree of physical and mental stamina and the luxury of time. A true lottery where one signs up beforehand would at least be honest in its randomness and remove the stress of having to hit a button at the right fraction of a second and hope you have a good connection that if fractions of a second faster than thousands of others.