crowds, marketing, wait times & FP+

[g8torphan]

Its clear Disney is marketing the parks more aggressivly than in recent years past (Pete even mentioned this in a recent Podcast). More ads on TV ect, and that is just here in the US (I imagine inetnational marketing has also increased).

As a result historically low crowd times are no longer as low, especially at MK, where they seem to be adding hour(s) during the day more regularly. Attendance is up overall as.well.
The economy is in better shape than its been in years, so more people are traveling.

It is also pretty clear that posted wait times are artifically high (based on 3rd party apps, and reports from people who have been there recently).

Why is the reported SB increase attributed to FP+ & not being attributed to the larger number of people in the park?
&
Do you think WDW is artifically posting SB wait times in an effort to move crowds to lesser used attractions?



Thoughts?

 

[Laketravis]

I posted a link in another thread, but according to Disney's own 2014 annual report domestic park attendance is only up 3% and that is 25% less of an increase then they saw in 2013 (4%). Small and slowing gains.

Even in the aggregate, I don't think an additional 7 people per 100 over the course of two years is a highly visible increase.

I do think it's reasonable to believe that posted wait times could be used to manage and manipulate crowd traffic. Would they do it on purpose? Depends on their motivation. I don't think they could do it with such a high frequency that guests quickly catch on that they are substantially overstated and nullify the intended effect.

 

[hoosll]

I believe that Disney is using the data from FP+ to predict crowd size and adjusting staffing accordingly. This means that they may shut down parts of rides or cashiers/servers in restaurants. They also have the ability to manipulate SB times at the rides; they have no incentive to lure people into lines as then they are not in the shops or restaurants spending money. In the end it is all about money.

The issue I find very troubling is that the rides have become so unreliable. With FP+ you will probably only get to ride your favorite rides 1-2 times depending on the length of your trip; so if you are on a 4-day trip with park hoppers it can crush your trip if one of your favorite rides that you have a FP+ for is shut down on your planned day at that park ... a FP+ for another ride is not equal.

We love to ride our favorites multiple times, and I admit that under the old FP system we enjoyed each one 2-3 times a day at a park. We drive to get there (total 4 days in the car) so a 4-day trip works best for us. We have no interest in Universal or Sea World - we love the magic of WDW but we will not go this year ....

 

[Rebekkap]

I believe that Disney is using the data from FP+ to predict crowd size and adjusting staffing accordingly. This means that they may shut down parts of rides or cashiers/servers in restaurants. They also have the ability to manipulate SB times at the rides; they have no incentive to lure people into lines as then they are not in the shops or restaurants spending money. In the end it is all about money.

The issue I find very troubling is that the rides have become so unreliable. With FP+ you will probably only get to ride your favorite rides 1-2 times depending on the length of your trip; so if you are on a 4-day trip with park hoppers it can crush your trip if one of your favorite rides that you have a FP+ for is shut down on your planned day at that park ... a FP+ for another ride is not equal.

We love to ride our favorites multiple times, and I admit that under the old FP system we enjoyed each one 2-3 times a day at a park. We drive to get there (total 4 days in the car) so a 4-day trip works best for us. We have no interest in Universal or Sea World - we love the magic of WDW but we will not go this year ....

I was there less than a year ago for ten days. Over the whole period, the only rides that were down were Pirates and BTMRR once each. And I got to ride Space Mountain 3 times, using 3 FP+ on one of our Magic Kingdom days, twice the other MK day, and TSMM twice on the HS days. I also love riding my favourites multiple times and found it was more possible with less wait time than previously. I also found the ride times for secondary rides massively inflated much of the time. Little Mermaid for example said 20 minutes, took less than five.

I think reliability is no worse than it ever is - just sometimes you have bad luck and everything seems to go down, and sometimes you don't.

 

[Cormoran]

I believe that Disney is using the data from FP+ to predict crowd size and adjusting staffing accordingly. This means that they may shut down parts of rides or cashiers/servers in restaurants. They also have the ability to manipulate SB times at the rides; they have no incentive to lure people into lines as then they are not in the shops or restaurants spending money. In the end it is all about money.

The issue I find very troubling is that the rides have become so unreliable. With FP+ you will probably only get to ride your favorite rides 1-2 times depending on the length of your trip; so if you are on a 4-day trip with park hoppers it can crush your trip if one of your favorite rides that you have a FP+ for is shut down on your planned day at that park ... a FP+ for another ride is not equal.

I agree with you regarding staffing. Disney cuts back on staffing at attractions, restaurants and retail during slower times, so the net effect is the parks feel the same as on a crowded day.
IMO theme park attendance has not increased very much, based on what Disney reported. It's not enough for the parks to feel crowded. But if Disney is cutting back on ride capacity during slower times, this would account for the longer SB lines and the belief that the parks are crowded.
I'm also seeing a lot more reports of ride breakdowns lately. I don't think anyone is surprised when a ride is offline for a few hours, but it seems to be happening at increased frequency. With FP- when a ride malfunctioned, no additional FP's were issued. Now with FP+, Disney has already issued all of the FP's, so when the ride re-opens the FP+ lines are long.

 

[wisblue]

The thing about a 7% increase in 2 years is that you don't know how that increase is distributed . If a significant part of the increase comes by attracting more people on traditionally slower days, the increase on those days would be significantly more than 7%.

To use a simple and extreme example, if you take one day with an attendance of 40,000 and another day with an attendance of 20,000, a 7% increase would be an additional 4200 people. But, if all of those extra 4200 people come on the lower crowd day, the percentage increase on that day would be 21%, which I think would be quite noticeable.

Without daily attendance figures for each of the parks we will never know for sure how these increased crowds are distributed. But, I suspect that the percentage increases have been higher on the traditionally slow days than during the peak times that have always been crowded.

Also, the idea of WDW using posted wait times to direct crowds has been going on forever. Especially at park opening, for as long as we have been going to WDW, they have used inflated wait times and line blocking (holding the line outside the ride building) to discourage people from entering that line. Throw in the uncertainty caused at lines with FP (because they don't know for sure how many people will be arriving with FPs while someone is waiting in the standby line) and those posted times are going to be even less accurate. And Disney definitely wants to err on the side of overestimating those waits (even if by a significant amount) than underestimating them.

I have no doubt that at least some of the longer standby lines at some attractions are the result of FP+. But, I also think that larger overall crowds and uncertain and more frequently inflated posted wait times contribute to the fact that these posted wait times are consistently higher.