Rumor Version of MaxPass coming to WDW in May?

[Kingoglow]

Maybe just ditch the fastpass option from MDE and go back to fastpass booths in the park? Keep it on MDE for those paying for fast passes.

That means you wouldn't have thousands booking rides that they probabaly won't ride, your not taking the park away but means less people will utilize them and help the standby lines move quicker

There are simply not enough people that want/demand to go back to paper Fastpasses.

Operationally, paper fastpasses is a downgrade from the current system in place. Less data for Disney and less convenience for the guests that are already tied to their phones.

They just wont go back. Having the entire system tied to the app is great for everyone. Well... everyone except the old try-hards that separated from their families and ran in the park to grab 3 slips of paper each and snickered at others not gaming that system.

 

[monothingie]

I don't think data which tells Disney the flow of the parks on MDE is as important as people think

Nonsense. Consider the following casual observation, did you ever notice that the park hours usually change (increase) a little less than a month out (at around 28 days).

Data is valuable. MDE wasn't sold on being a plus for the guests, it was sold on the ability to harvest guest spending, interest, locations, habits, etc. (big data)

 

[lentesta]

Nonsense. Consider the following casual observation, did you ever notice that the park hours usually change (increase) a little less than a month out (at around 28 days).

Data is valuable. MDE wasn't sold on being a plus for the guests, it was sold on the ability to harvest guest spending, interest, locations, habits, etc. (big data)

I'm told that savings through more accurate staffing forecasts is a major, unexpected benefit of FP+. It wasn't mentioned in the original pitch, which is interesting. As you say, it shows there's a ton of data around FP to be used.

 

[monothingie]

I'm told that savings through more accurate staffing forecasts is a major, unexpected benefit of FP+. It wasn't mentioned in the original pitch, which is interesting. As you say, it shows there's a ton of data around FP to be used.

That is shocking to hear that the guest data generated by MDE was an unexpected benefit. Says a lot about Disney executives and strategic growth...

 

[kpilcher]

Would you be happy with a paid FastPass system if admission fees were lowered to compensate?

First. Thanks for a well-thought out and reasoned response. Let me start by saying I have no problem with Disney rewarding hotel guests with an extra FastPass or two as a perk, for example, if all things were being equal.

The variables make it complicated. I can’t agree directly that dollar amount / ticket price a or b would be fair and c would not. Your model of lowered price for lowered expectations already exists with The Epcot After 4 Pass and Water Parks after 2 Pass. Those are fair.

I first responded to: “Walt had ‘pay for play’” and I tried to explain why I think that’s a false equivalence. No insult meant to Penguin, btw. He’s a smart guy.

Disney upended its own model in 1981. Disney promises “1-Day. 1-Park” not “1-Day, and our older and A-C attractions. The new stuff? Pay more.”

Your feelings of fairness require that Disney keeps it's revenue constant under this new plan.

Nope. Don’t care. I want Disney to be successful and to thrive. Disney was profitable even when a 1-Day, 1-Park pass was below $20 and included all of Epcot or the MK. The exact level of revenue and profit will always fluctuate, same with costs.

The other major difference is that you're still allowed to go on additional E's for free as long as you're willing to wait in the long standby lines.

Here’s where I think the trouble starts:

You’re obviously a math guy. I’m not. Still, it stands to reason that under even optimal conditions only x number of guests can ride each attraction each day.

Complicating things, Disney’s promise of 3 FP+ per day meant adding it to people-eating rides like Spaceship Earth, Pirates and Mansion. Operators will tell you accomodating FP+ lowers efficiency on those kinds of rides, making those lines longer. If demand isn’t maxed out, that’s usually not a huge deal.

Demand is usually maxed out for highly-hyped new rides like Flight of Passage. People can and do wait hours “for free” to ride if they weren’t lucky enough to get a FP. Since FP+ is like a “free” weighted lottery system, it still feels mostly fair, even if I end up not being able to ride.

That perceived fairness quickly ends, however, if person A is sweating in a 3 hour line that needs a bathroom pass while knowing person B used their app to pay their way to the front of the line. Person C doesn’t even bother.

I’m sure Disney’s logistics teams are modeling tons of different scenarios. Disney cares about and constantly surveys guest satisfaction. Making paid FP+ work is going to be a challenge in balancing fairness, happiness and profit no matter the dollar figure or strings attached.

 

[Indy_UK]

Nonsense. Consider the following casual observation, did you ever notice that the park hours usually change (increase) a little less than a month out (at around 28 days).

Data is valuable. MDE wasn't sold on being a plus for the guests, it was sold on the ability to harvest guest spending, interest, locations, habits, etc. (big data)

That's fair enough, I do understand that it allows Disney to track people more but as far as fast pass, it has made things far worse than they used to be. Its made the standby lines so long now because they probabaly allocate 80% to FP and 20% to standby. It's a broken system..

Adding more rides isn't the answer as they bring more people to the parks. Price hikes on daily admission doesn't seem to be working so I don't know what the answer is.

 

[ImperfectPixie]

That's fair enough, I do understand that it allows Disney to track people more but as far as fast pass, it has made things far worse than they used to be. Its made the standby lines so long now because they probabaly allocate 80% to FP and 20% to standby. It's a broken system..

Adding more rides isn't the answer as they bring more people to the parks. Price hikes on daily admission doesn't seem to be working so I don't know what the answer is.

Well, FP+ is NOT advertised as front-of-line access, but it seems to be treated as such in the parks. I don't think a 10-15 minute wait in a FP line is unreasonable, so maybe rethinking the stand-by to FP ratio used during loading would help.

 

[MisterPenguin]

You know what sucks up crowds? Adding attractions. People-eaters preferred. Magic Kingdom has far fewer attractions than Disneyland. It needs 5 more yesterday.

What I say tongue in cheek has some truth to it...

Why do people think that adding attractions makes the park attract less people?

Attractions attract people. When TRON opens, do you think that all the lines in the MK will be less long? When Star Wars Land opens, do you think all the lines at the other rides will drop?

Also, going by how people use the term, it seems they don't understand what "people eater" means. Take TRON, e.g.. When it opens, there may be at any one time about 100 people on the ride itself. And there may be 400 people in the queue. That's 500 people out of the walkways and out of other lines, right? Yes. That's true. But if a thousand more people show up to the MK every day because of TRON, then that's an extra 500 people not in the queue or on the ride at any one time. Where will they go?... Into the walkways and get on other lines making them longer.

Real "people eaters" pull more people off of the walkways and other lines in a larger number than they attract to the park. A bunch of C Ticket rides will do that. A theater holding three thousand or more people will do that. A new E Ticket will not do that.

The solution to MKs overcrowdedness is to make the other three parks so attractive, that people will chose one of the other parks over the MK, or, at least, stop them from going to the MK several times in the same vacation week.

 

[larryz]

Right.

But that has nothing to do with the context and situation I was talking about. The complaint was that pay-to-play was outrageous, but, originally, everything was pay-to-play.

Later, when moving to Pay-One-Price, that was no longer the case. But then, crowds started to overcrowd the parks with such a generous deal. So the price kept going up. Overcrowding continued. FP tried to move crowds around. Overcrowding continued. Surge pricing was introduced to move crowds around. Overcrowding continued. Upcharge events were added (pay-to-play) and overcrowding continues.

In Roller Coaster Tycoon, this is the point where you stop advertising.

 

[ImperfectPixie]

In Roller Coaster Tycoon, this is the point where you stop advertising.

And we all know they aren't slowing down on that...let alone pushing for free PR from the blogosphere.

 

[Patcheslee]

In Roller Coaster Tycoon, this is the point where you stop advertising.

I just delete the exit paths

 

[PorterRedkey]

What I say tongue in cheek has some truth to it...

Why do people think that adding attractions makes the park attract less people?

Attractions attract people. When TRON opens, do you think that all the lines in the MK will be less long? When Star Wars Land opens, do you think all the lines at the other rides will drop?

If we look at the data for when Pandora opened at AK, wait times increased for most, if not all, of the rides.

When TSL opened, wait times actually decreased for the other attraction in the park. Of course, this won't be the case when SW:GE opens.

The data is from a site that is EASY to find but is banned here.

 

[MisterPenguin]

If we look at the data for when Pandora opened at AK, wait times increased for most, if not all, of the rides.

When TSL opened, wait times actually decreased for the other attraction in the park. Of course, this won't be the case when SW:GE opens.

The data is from a site that is EASY to find but is banned here.

So, adding a C and a D helped with lines at other attractions, but adding an E and a C made things 'worse'.

Or, possibly, the universe is inscrutable and there is no meaning to anything we say or do.

 

[RSoxNo1]

Thanks for that Len.

So for those who haven’t read about or experienced this yet, they have been “restricting” refreshing for FPs.

Basically although it was showing times available, when people selected a time they either got a “sorry, that is no longer available” message, or got given a different time an hour or two after the selected time.

That appears like more of a bug than anything.

 

[Lensman]

That's fair enough, I do understand that it allows Disney to track people more but as far as fast pass, it has made things far worse than they used to be. Its made the standby lines so long now because they probabaly allocate 80% to FP and 20% to standby. It's a broken system.

As an exercise, let's think about what would happen if Disney allocated 100% to FP. Let's call this scheme FP100.

1. As a first approximation, no one would ever have to wait in the standby queue for an FP100 attraction, since there wouldn't be a standby queue at all.
2. One problem that you'd have is that there would be times where not enough FastPass riders showed up and so some seats would go out empty.
3. To compensate, you could increase FastPass overselling - that is, hand out more than 100% of capacity as FastPasses. Let's call this FP110.
4. When FP110 is working perfectly, people show up into the FP queue and get onto the ride in 5-10 minutes.
5. As another technique, you could release "last minute" FastPasses to make sure the FastPass queue has at least a few people waiting in line to board. Maybe I'll call this FastPass Now. You could either do this in the app or you could use a kiosk to get a FastPass Now for an attraction. Note that if there weren't any FastPass Nows available, you might be able to get a day-of FastPass later pass.
6. Another problem you'd have to deal with in the FP110 is when too many people show up for their FastPass and the FP queue starts to back up. If you're not careful, you could end up in a situation where the FP queue could end up being a 30 minute wait or longer. This might be a fatal flaw in FP110 and could only be mitigated by going back to FP100 + FPN. The idea is that you only give out FPNs when the FP queue is less than 10 minutes long and give them out until the FP queue is 20 minutes long.

Anyway, my main point being that we always complain a lot about FP+ due to the length of the standby line, but can we eliminate these complaints by eliminating the standby line completely? I'd be interested in hearing some reasoned arguments about this crazy idea - it's less of a proposal and more of a thought experiment.

 

[RSoxNo1]

What I say tongue in cheek has some truth to it...

Why do people think that adding attractions makes the park attract less people?

Attractions attract people. When TRON opens, do you think that all the lines in the MK will be less long? When Star Wars Land opens, do you think all the lines at the other rides will drop?

Also, going by how people use the term, it seems they don't understand what "people eater" means. Take TRON, e.g.. When it opens, there may be at any one time about 100 people on the ride itself. And there may be 400 people in the queue. That's 500 people out of the walkways and out of other lines, right? Yes. That's true. But if a thousand more people show up to the MK every day because of TRON, then that's an extra 500 people not in the queue or on the ride at any one time. Where will they go?... Into the walkways and get on other lines making them longer.

Real "people eaters" pull more people off of the walkways and other lines in a larger number than they attract to the park. A bunch of C Ticket rides will do that. A theater holding three thousand or more people will do that. A new E Ticket will not do that.

The solution to MKs overcrowdedness is to make the other three parks so attractive, that people will chose one of the other parks over the MK, or, at least, stop them from going to the MK several times in the same vacation week.

High Capacity D Tickets... Mermaid like attractions, that's what MK needs. The Main Street theater would have helped, but it needs about 10K more guest per hour ride capacity and it can't all be high demand attractions.

 

[mikejs78]

Its made the standby lines so long now because they probabaly allocate 80% to FP and 20% to standby. It's a broken system..

Well, no. Len's company did an analysis on this and found that standby lines stayed roughly the same (on average) before and after FP - and here's the key - once you adjusted for increased attendance. It's really that which has driven the standby lines to increase over the past few years. If anything, FP+ has slowed down the standby line increases by redistributing crowds.

Attractions attract people. When TRON opens, do you think that all the lines in the MK will be less long? When Star Wars Land opens, do you think all the lines at the other rides will drop?

True. But I do think if a few B/C attractions that could eat some capacity were added to MK, it would do so without increasing attendance. But I agree with you that the best way is to make the other parks more attractive. Will be interesting to see if Galaxy's Edge does just that....

 

[mikejs78]

If we look at the data for when Pandora opened at AK, wait times increased for most, if not all, of the rides.

When TSL opened, wait times actually decreased for the other attraction in the park. Of course, this won't be the case when SW:GE opens.

The data is from a site that is EASY to find but is banned here.

That particular site doesn't do it's statistical modeling correctly. I've found flaws in several of their analysis' in the past (not adjusting for YoY attendance changes, for example). If you want a good source of crowd data, and good modeling anaylsis, go to @lentesta's site.

 

[MisterPenguin]

True. But I do think if a few B/C attractions that could eat some capacity were added to MK, it would do so without increasing attendance. But I agree with you that the best way is to make the other parks more attractive. Will be interesting to see if Galaxy's Edge does just that....

Ah, but the problem with adding a few B/C to MK is that you'll just make MK more ride-heavy than the other three. The other three will still have less than 10 rides each, but MK will jump to over 30. At some point, the sheer number of rides is an attractor in and of itself. Adding more rides to MK means people will make MK a 'several day park' while the other three remain a 'one day park.'

Need to get the other three to be as attractive as the MK before adding onto the MK.

IMO.

 

[PorterRedkey]

So, adding a C and a D helped with lines at other attractions, but adding an E and a C made things 'worse'.

Or, possibly, the universe is inscrutable and there is no meaning to anything we say or do.

I think it speaks more to the popularity (or lack of) of TSL. TSL didn't pull enough guests in to increase the other ride wait times. SW:GE will be popular enough to change that.

We'll see if the Epcot additions and TRON increase total attendance more that those additions add capacity. TRON will like cause increase MK wait times across the board, but with all of Epcot additions, they may break even.