Hi all -- Here's a little armchair queue engineering.
Doubling Dumbo (as per the FLE) sounds like a good idea, since the ride is a must-do with many little ones, and families get stuck in the line for a long time. I think it was about 60 minutes when I was at MK this past June. But here's the problem. The Dumbo queue must start to act as a deterrent when it gets too long -- once it hits, say, 60 minutes, people are no longer willing to stand in it, so it stays stuck at 60, give or take. Doubling the ride will double the number of people who get on the ride, for sure, but the queue might *still* fill up to 60 minutes, and then deter. In other words, the amount of time people are inherently willing to spend on Dumbo might be fixed. So waits won't necessarily get any shorter.
Thoughts?
I do not think it will do anything for the actual wait time. That is a hard and fast math equation that no amount of theming can alter. However, I do think it will help the "perceived" wait time quite a bit.
Dumbo won't actually be "queueless".
It has a very large, indoor "interactive" queue which will be entered from the far right side.
On the far left is the Fastpass entrance.
Net result....maybe...shorter lines.
Looking at this from an operations standpoint, the original poster presents an interesting hypothesis, and that in turn results in some questions that need to be asked.
Q: Currently, does everyone that wants to ride Dumbo on any given day queue up for the attraction?
A: I assume that the answer is no, I have to believe that some people are discouraged by the lines. While queuing for the attraction is often dictated by children, you have to assume that the occasional adult wields some power over their children.
Q: What is the most amount of time that the people that chose not to queue in the current system would be willing to wait?
A: For me, I believe that anything over a 35 minute wait is unnecessary, and at that point Fastpass should become an option. I use 35 minutes because 35-40 minutes is the shortest return window for Fastpass.
Q: How much time does Fastpass add to the Standby queue?
A: If Fastpasses are distributed at 6% of hourly capacity every 5 minutes, this number is quite substantial. As the day continues, you can assume that one spinner would be devoted entirely to Fastpass. That's more or less what is done at Space Mountain.
Q: Is the total number of people that want to ride Dumbo but don't (for whatever reason) equal to the total number of people that ride it on any given day.
A: I'm going to say no. This would mean that capacity for the ride has doubled, but demand has not doubled. The average wait for the ride will become shorter, because a portion of those waits will be Fastpass. It's entirely conceivable that the Standby wait
will get longer under this current system, but the overall waits for the attraction (when Fastpass is considered) will shorten.
When I get more time to actually put up a detailed explanation of how this would work, I'll post that as well. In the mean time, does anyone know the current hourly capacity of Dumbo?
