Am I the only one who's not a fan of VQ only?

[Lumpy1106]

I like VQs because I detest the artificially long lines created by G+/LLMP. EVERY SINGLE LINE in WDW would be a reasonable length if they used VQ more. Hear me out;
VQ on all rides that regularly push or exceed 2 hours; FoP, TRON, GotG, 7DMT, SDD and RotR
Standby for EVERYTHING else (DAS excepted of course)
Paid ILL for everything VQ in case you sleep in or don't know/don't want to bother getting a VQ

The obvious flaw in this is that Disney will lose all the money they are making on G+. Since when do you care how much money Disney makes?

 

[Babe the Blue Ox]

That’s not what I said…..I said rides with VQ only wouldn’t let you do that because the lines would be too long otherwise & would get cut off. Like FOP was. And ROTR was sometimes cut off early after VQ was dropped. When rides had 6 hour lines…they were not letting you “jump in line” right at closing.

I've never heard of Rise closing early due to long lines in the evening after they added the standby line. Flight of Passage did it for a couple of weeks when the attraction was new, but that was stopped when they quickly learned that the late-night lines weren't as long as anticipated.

You can't say for certain that a VQ only attraction would have too long of a standby line if that option were available, but past performance can often be used to predict future results. The wait times for even the most popular attractions have historically dwindled considerably in the evening when Disney starts implementing their "Line Stacking" processes.

When Toy Story Mania was the rage several years ago, the waits would regularly hit the 3-4 hour mark throughout the day. By evening the posted waits were still in the 120 plus range with a line spilling all the way out the door and into the courtyard. What most guests didn't realize was the about 90% of the indoor queue area was closed and the actual wait was 10-15 minutes or less. It was very easy to ride 4 times or more during the last hour of operation, which led to some pretty epic family tournaments for us.

My forearm and wrist used to get pretty tired after multiple rerides, but a former poster here Robo gave me some good tips on how to work the trigger with less effort.

Those types of memories would have not been possible had VQ been in place back then. That's why I don't like it.

 

[neverlandsky]

Unfortunately, the VQ only is lottery based of how fast your fingers and phone works to book when so many are also booking at the same time. If someone only has 1 park day, the odds are against them being able to ride that specific ride. Doesn't seem fair. However, from a business standpoint, they want more people in the parks for multiple days, if you miss a VQ 1 day there's another day or days that you have to pay for so you can try again.

Bob Chapek: "If you build in enough capacity, the rides don’t go down and it operates at 99% efficiency, you shouldn’t have 10-hour lines. So, 10-hour lines are not a sign of success. It should be seen as a sign of, frankly, failure." To me, this is half true. The other side of it is for people to have multiple days in parks spending more $$$.

 

[BrianL]

Unfortunately, the VQ only is lottery based of how fast your fingers and phone works to book when so many are also booking at the same time. If someone only has 1 park day, the odds are against them being able to ride that specific ride. Doesn't seem fair. However, from a business standpoint, they want more people in the parks for multiple days, if you miss a VQ 1 day there's another day or days that you have to pay for so you can try again.

Bob Chapek: "If you build in enough capacity, the rides don’t go down and it operates at 99% efficiency, you shouldn’t have 10-hour lines. So, 10-hour lines are not a sign of success. It should be seen as a sign of, frankly, failure." To me, this is half true. The other side of it is for people to have multiple days in parks spending more $$$.

Yeah, last year I had gone down for a very short solo trip with TRON being my top priority since it would be my first time riding it. Of course, I tapped in ot get a VQ the second they became available...nope, all gone! I did everythign right, but still got shut out. I ended up buying ILL instead and I'd still rather do that for the a couple of the biggest rides than use Genie+.

 

[Babe the Blue Ox]

Yeah, last year I had gone down for a very short solo trip with TRON being my top priority since it would be my first time riding it. Of course, I tapped in ot get a VQ the second they became available...nope, all gone! I did everythign right, but still got shut out. I ended up buying ILL instead and I'd still rather do that for the a couple of the biggest rides than use Genie+.

I have a hard time justifying an $ILL purchase when we can wait until later in the day and ride those that do have a standby option 2 or 3 times for free. We don't go without G+ though. Especially after they reinstated the refresh option, it's pretty easy to line those up one right after the other and get through several headliners in quick succession.

 

[DoryGirl1963]

You are not alone - don't like them either.

 

[Genie+]

I can see where not having standby is ‘unfair’, I’m just willing to take that compromise if it means not having to ropedrop 3 hours before park open or wait in 200+ minute lines to get a ride. Maybe I don’t get a VQ every time, but the chances are still very good. I’ll take the occasional ‘miss’ over almost always having to stand on a crazy long line otherwise.

 

[Babe the Blue Ox]

I can see where not having standby is ‘unfair’, I’m just willing to take that compromise if it means not having to ropedrop 3 hours before park open or wait in 200+ minute lines to get a ride. Maybe I don’t get a VQ every time, but the chances are still very good. I’ll take the occasional ‘miss’ over almost always having to stand on a crazy long line otherwise.

I’ve never been to a Rope Drop. Do people really get there that early?

 

[Genie+]

I’ve never been to a Rope Drop. Do people really get there that early?

Rise of the Resistance was nuts! WDW had changed parked hours to open 6am and 7am in anticipation. There were people showing up before 4am. Not a few… alot! We arrived a few days after it opened with VQ and made it to the back of the line at 5:30am. Thousands had showed up earlier lol. And this was just to make sure we’d make it inside the park to catch the 7am VQ drop (they changed procedure shortly after).

Before that was FoP, no VQ. You really weren’t able to ropedrop that without getting to AK 2 hours prior to park open, otherwise you’d be at the back of the line waiting hours anyway. Then the only other way to avoid 2 or 3 hour line many times of the year was going right at park close, which isn’t optimal for other reasons.

 

[Babe the Blue Ox]

Rise of the Resistance was nuts! WDW had changed parked hours to open 6am and 7am in anticipation. There were people showing up before 4am. Not a few… alot! We arrived a few days after it opened with VQ and made it to the back of the line at 5:30am. Thousands had showed up earlier lol. And this was just to make sure we’d make it inside the park to catch the 7am VQ drop (they changed procedure shortly after).

Before that was FoP, no VQ. You really weren’t able to ropedrop that without getting to AK 2 hours prior to park open, otherwise you’d be at the back of the line waiting hours anyway. Then the only other way to avoid 2 or 3 hour line many times of the year was going right at park close, which isn’t optimal for other reasons.

That does sound crazy. We're more likely to show up around 10:30 or so then stay until closing time when the lines get really short.

What do you find to not be optimal about closing time? From your examples above, we rode Rise 3 times in 80 minutes on our most recent visit and we got on FoP in just over 15 minutes during that hectic summer of 2017.

We did wait 20 minutes once for SDMT, but that was during opening week in 2014. Every time since then has been 10 minutes or less.

 

[Genie+]

That does sound crazy. We're more likely to show up around 10:30 or so then stay until closing time when the lines get really short.

What do you find to not be optimal about closing time?

Commonly the AK day is the only chance at FoP that trip. Waiting until closing runs the risk of ride going down, or some reason your party decides to leave earlier, or unexpected delay elsewhere means not getting on line in time. The higher priority FoP is, the more someone might not want to chance it.

Less of a concern for hoppers or APs, but even there we prefer hopping to a park with longer hours and night show. That makes the trade-off/planning for FoP at AK closing harder to work around.

The strategy definitely works. It seems best suited for repeat/frequent visitors. Certain circumstances find it harder to rely on though. With young kids, elderly, only 1 chance at AK in 4 years, etc… it’s probably not an easy plan or optimal strategy.

 

[traveler9]

Commonly the AK day is the only chance at FoP that trip. Waiting until closing runs the risk of ride going down, or some reason your party decides to leave earlier, or unexpected delay elsewhere means not getting on line in time. The higher priority FoP is, the more someone might not want to chance it.

Less of a concern for hoppers or APs, but even there we prefer hopping to a park with longer hours and night show. That makes the trade-off/planning for FoP at AK closing harder to work around.

The strategy definitely works. It seems best suited for repeat/frequent visitors. Certain circumstances find it harder to rely on though. With young kids, elderly, only 1 chance at AK in 4 years, etc… it’s probably not an easy plan or optimal strategy.

FoP has 4 theaters. All 4 would have to break for the attraction to be offline completely. It’s probably the safest out of all the ILL rides to get on at the end of the day.

 

[Babe the Blue Ox]

Commonly the AK day is the only chance at FoP that trip. Waiting until closing runs the risk of ride going down, or some reason your party decides to leave earlier, or unexpected delay elsewhere means not getting on line in time. The higher priority FoP is, the more someone might not want to chance it.

Less of a concern for hoppers or APs, but even there we prefer hopping to a park with longer hours and night show. That makes the trade-off/planning for FoP at AK closing harder to work around.

The strategy definitely works. It seems best suited for repeat/frequent visitors. Certain circumstances find it harder to rely on though. With young kids, elderly, only 1 chance at AK in 4 years, etc… it’s probably not an easy plan or optimal strategy.

We’ve been doing this for a long time. In my opinion, the single biggest factor that makes a late night plan work so well is other guest’s fear that it won’t.

I would probably be more concerned if I had ever encountered a late night breakdown at Disney but fortunately that hasn’t happened yet. It’s more likely that a ride will fail to fire up in the morning than it is to break down in the evening.

Our only experience with a late breakdown was at Universal just as we were boarding Dudley Doo Right several years ago. The ride system stopped when some jokers had jumped out of their moving boat.

Universal gave us free tickets to return another day for that one.

 

[Genie+]

FoP has 4 theaters. All 4 would have to break for the attraction to be offline completely. It’s probably the safest out of all the ILL rides to get on at the end of the day.

Ok, that doesn’t help for the rest of it though. It’s one of many things in combination that cause it not to be a great plan for many people. This isn’t new advice. If there’s a ride you really want to get on and you have one shot? Depending on you and your party waiting to park close may not be an optimal plan. FoP moreso do to it being less likely a 2 day/trip park and operating hours in conjunction with other operating hours and events.

We’ve been doing this for a long time. In my opinion, the single biggest factor that makes a late night plan work so well is other guests fear that it won’t.

That’s just the thing… ‘been doing this a long time’. What if it was your only chance?

 

[Babe the Blue Ox]

That’s just the thing… ‘been doing this a long time’. What if it was your only chance?

Sorry, I should have been more clear. We first learned about line stacking, inflated wait times, etc. in the 1996 Unofficial Guide and have been using that info to our advantage ever since.

We don’t go that often, we just continue to utilize the experiences that we have gathered over several years.

 

[scrappinginontario]

That’s just the thing… ‘been doing this a long time’. What if it was your only chance?

We often leave FoP for close to park close and we only visit AK once. In yearly trips since FoP opened (minus 2020/2021) the plan to leave for park close has never failed us.

 

[Genie+]

We often leave FoP for close to park close and we only visit AK once. In yearly trips since FoP opened (minus 2020/2021) the plan to leave for park close has never failed us.

That’s great! It’s still not the optimal strategy for every group. You have to be certain your party will stick around to closing and consider if something in your plans increases chance of hiccups. I guess the point wasn’t said well on my part. There’s many reasons people may find waiting until closing isn’t the optimal strategy, and a different strategy fits better. It was in regard to the different strategies to ride FoP.

 

[Babe the Blue Ox]

That’s great! It’s still not the optimal strategy for every group. You have to be certain your party will stick around to closing and consider if something in your plans increases chance of hiccups. I guess the point wasn’t said well on my part. There’s many reasons people may find waiting until closing isn’t the optimal strategy, and a different strategy fits better. It was in regard to the different strategies to ride FoP.

Disney does a very good job of funneling guests away from the attractions, toward the gift shops then eventually out the exits close to closing time.

Lots of families see the posted wait time on one of those headliners, shake their heads and just turn around even though the actual wait is just a fraction of what is posted.

To get back to the original question, this is why we don’t like the virtual queues. They take away the potential for those late night re-rides.

 

[HopperFan]

At this point it is the fairest way to operate Guardians and TRON ... and folks in line for hours are not spending money. I want to know if I have it or not - over standing in long lines. Not sure why folks would rather stand in line for hours?! Maybe me but I've been pretty lucky at both time slots to spin the MDE VQ dial.

 

[Babe the Blue Ox]

At this point it is the fairest way to operate Guardians and TRON ... and folks in line for hours are not spending money. I want to know if I have it or not - over standing in long lines. Not sure why folks would rather stand in line for hours?! Maybe me but I've been pretty lucky at both time slots to spin the MDE VQ dial.

I don’t believe anyone mentioned a desire to wait in lines for hours. What we’re missing is the option to wait in the shortest lines of the day, often for mulitple rides with very little wait.