Why wait times have gotten crazy

[MrInfinity]

One thing I feel promotes satisfaction and FP+ is the length of the visitor's stay. Anecdotally, it seems that people who stay 6-7 nights seem to like the new system better. With parties and attraction tiering, FP limits/availability, and ADR cancelation penalty, it no longer seems satisfying to invest the travel time and $$$$ to visit any more.

I don't think the length of stay matters. I ride about the same rides per day with FP+ and FP-. I learned to optimize FP-, and I learned to optimize FP+. Both had strengths and weaknesses. The trick is to find out how to get things out of the system that most guests do not.

I can't relate to your other point about it not seeming satisfying to invest the $$$ to go. We love it there. We have gone to WDW before Fastpass, Disneyland with FP-, WDW with FP- and FP+, and none of it really matters. It's just a ride queuing system. You use it, you learn it, you use it better than the average guest and you'll do fine.

Lets look at this logically. Under the legacy system you could only get one fast pass every 2 hours unless you immediately used said fast pass(ie the window to use it was soon enough). So how would only 10% of guests gobble up toy story , soarin or what ever ride you wish to insert that had passes run out by 11 am? Not possible! The 10% number was thrown out by Disney itself. Should we question it? Sure, they are now pushing a newer system that highly benefits them not the consumer. They are going to tell you it's better whether it is or not. After all they have billions invested. It is also amazing how people are now touting it as being able to sleep in now and couldn't before. You are getting one premium ride(tier1) and 2 rides that probably had low waits before this new incarnation. Your paying dearly in secondary waits for this one tier 1 ride. The other funny thing is many of the plus promoters now admit rope drop is a very good strategy again. Interesting!

Rope drop is always a good strategy. Was in 2010, 2012, 2014, and still is now. Only now, if you're not into rope drop, it's not as important as it was during the FP- era. Smart touring will always be smart. :-/

The 10% is calculated from known figures. I'll post it in the morning if I have time to kill. Late here... have a good night!

 

[over50visits]

They walked into the park at 11, and "had a good time even though we only go to do one ride" -- They waited 60 minutes for Small World, saw a parade, and called it a day.

And that cost them as much as $100 each? Small World?

 

[tomatecerise]

I use fast pass combine with my disabilities return time. I Think disabilities return Time add In the balance.

 

[havoc315]

And that cost them as much as $100 each? Small World?

Basically, yeah. They also walked around a bit, had lunch (actually think they ate while on line) and swam at the hotel pool.

 

[vinotinto]

I think one of the key reasons the parks "feel" more crowded, and this was referenced on the blog post cited earlier, is that the FP+ system has gobbled up so much of the ride capacity the standby lines never move. This results in the long standby wait times which actually repel people from the line and keep it kind of short. The FP+ lines themselves don't hold people for long, so where you used to have a lot of the crowd physically tied up in the lines, they are now out in the park making it feel more crowded.

We used to have a great system with the old FP's...we'd have a runner to go get more FP's and mixed with a good touring plan we'd hit everything we wanted in a day, especially since the second tier rides still had reasonable waits.

Has anyone had success with a FP+ runner handling kiosk duties?

We were unsuccessful in the kiosk duty. We were there 10/8-10/12. At Epcot, after using Soarin', test track FP+ were out. At DHS, after using the FP+ the RnRC that was left was only for 1 person and it was late in the day. We were able to get an extra FP for Great Movie Ride, but man that is a lousy attraction. At MK, our 7DMT was for 5:00-6:00 pm on party night, and by the time we were done, we were unable to get another FP (we were there in the AM, but 7DMT was unavailable earlier than 5pm, I tried unsuccessfully for 60 days to get something earlier). The second MK day, we used our FP+ for Wishes, so no extra FP+ earlier.

What I miss the most about the old FP system is that if you had a late FP, you only had to wait 2 hours to get the next one. Now, a late FP means you won't get to FP anything else.

It wasn't just that it felt crowded, it was crowded. Touring plans always looks back at the "how did we do" and days that were supposed to be 7s were actually 10. October has been crowded for a while, but it wasn't a 10, and these numbers are based on the actual wait times.

 

[Tarheel girl 1975]

I don't think the length of stay matters. I ride about the same rides per day with FP+ and FP-. I learned to optimize FP-, and I learned to optimize FP+. Both had strengths and weaknesses. The trick is to find out how to get things out of the system that most guests do not.

I can't relate to your other point about it not seeming satisfying to invest the $$$ to go. We love it there. We have gone to WDW before Fastpass, Disneyland with FP-, WDW with FP- and FP+, and none of it really matters. It's just a ride queuing system. You use it, you learn it, you use it better than the average guest and you'll do fine.



Rope drop is always a good strategy. Was in 2010, 2012, 2014, and still is now. Only now, if you're not into rope drop, it's not as important as it was during the FP- era. Smart touring will always be smart. :-/

The 10% is calculated from known figures. I'll post it in the morning if I have time to kill. Late here... have a good night!

I've learned the system and used it 3 times now. Still can't make it give me a FP for Soarin and TT on the same day or RnR and TSMM either. Much less multiple FP's for these headliners.

 

[DisneyOma]

1--- Lots of ways that capacity get reduced. Do you know how many Enchanted Castle With Belle rooms are running at a time? Or how many elevators at Tower of Terror are operating? And with reduced staff, how much longer it takes to repair a ride or vehicle when it goes down? Or how much faster/slower it takes to load ride vehicles depending on the staffing, at rides where there is some variability. All these things add up.

As to how they get data... they get TONS of data so one person, making things up, will not have a major effect. Furthermore, Disney now actually provides the posted wait times themselves. Actual wait times require people reporting data.

But for example, today.. a pretty low crowd day, TP got 6 reports from users for the Mine Train. They've gotten 8 reports for Soarin and 9 reports for Test Track, so far today and the day isn't over. On very busy days, they may get 10-20+ reports on various attractions. So they are getting tons of data points that they can aggregate.
So between the times provided by Disney itself, the many user reported times, and they do occasionally go into the park themselves to observe themselves... they have lots and lots of data to analyze.

"Tons" and the numbers you quote (6,8,10) are not the same. One invalid data point out of 6 is huge.

I use fast pass combine with my disabilities return time. I Think disabilities return Time add In the balance.

It certainly does - and not something factored into the observations from the first post.

 

[havoc315]

"Tons" and the numbers you quote (6,8,10) are not the same. One invalid data point out of 6 is huge.



It certainly does - and not something factored into the observations from the first post.

6-10 per day. Plus, some being collected by staff, plus being confirmed with Disney's official numbers, so outliers can be thrown out. If a volunteer submits 150 minutes, but the official Disney time was 25 minutes, and the other submissions of the day were all 20-30 minutes, the 150 will likely get thrown out.

So major outliers are likely thrown out.

At 6-10 data points per day, per attraction.. You are looking at over 100 user submitted Data points per day, over 3000 per month... Then combined with Disneys official data, and combined and compared to staff collected data.
So no... 1 or 2 slightly invalid data points in a month are not going to throw off anything on a global scale.

 

[lentesta]

6-10 per day. Plus, some being collected by staff, plus being confirmed with Disney's official numbers, so outliers can be thrown out. If a volunteer submits 150 minutes, but the official Disney time was 25 minutes, and the other submissions of the day were all 20-30 minutes, the 150 will likely get thrown out.

So major outliers are likely thrown out.

We do this, of course. We don't lack for data.

At 6-10 data points per day, per attraction.. You are looking at over 100 user submitted Data points per day, over 3000 per month... Then combined with Disneys official data, and combined and compared to staff collected data.
So no... 1 or 2 slightly invalid data points in a month are not going to throw off anything on a global scale.

Lines doesn't show all of the information that it receives. Some staff and user inputs are intentionally not displayed, so it's not obvious that data collection is happening at a particular place. You can understand why this is a useful feature. The info is still used in the calculations.

 

[MrInfinity]

I've learned the system and used it 3 times now. Still can't make it give me a FP for Soarin and TT on the same day or RnR and TSMM either. Much less multiple FP's for these headliners.

Maybe not... but can you still use it to ride them as much as you used to in the same or less time? We have been able to thus far, because it saves time in other ways.

 

[dlavender]

Yes, I do and I don't think you can argue that on many of the people eater rides that now have fast pass that didn't before.

I think they would also. I feel like FP got out of hand. It started as a small little "rewards" program, and ballooned into this current reservation system where we are now reserving half of an entire ride for it.

FP + to me is a lot like the "savings card" at Winn Dixie, Kroger, or CVS. $4 regular, or $3.50 with your savings card! The savings card is free. They make you go through all this hoopla when they could just give you the real price to begin with.

 

[dlavender]

We haven't been since last October 2014 and don't plan to return until October 2016. I really hope it isn't a lot worse than our last trip. We were great with the paper system and managed to adjust ok through good use of RD/EMH & FP+. We are just really good at maximizing time/efficiency and absolutely despise and refuse to wait in long lines. I'd rather walk for 30 minutes than stand still for 30 minutes.

I'm genuinely hoping we won't be disappointed when we return next year. Hearing stories that October is worse than ever before is just not a good thing to hear.

We went on a 9 crowd level, with two weeks planning, and rode about 20 things, saw both parades and wishes. If you get there at RD, you can do it, even with FP +. The only thing we did not get to do was 7DMT. It would have cost us about 2-3 other rides, wasn't willing to sacrifice that. We had one of our best days ever. You wont be disappointed.

 

[flicx]

Rope drop is always a good strategy. Was in 2010, 2012, 2014, and still is now. Only now, if you're not into rope drop, it's not as important as it was during the FP- era.

I think that rope drop is more important now than in the legacy era. In the legacy era fast passes were delayed and didn't start having return times until 30 minutes to an hour later. Now with plus they are scheduled immediately at opening so the standby lines start getting bogged down sooner. Factor in that there are now more fast pass options than under legacy which slow down rides that under legacy had nothing slowing them. Don't forget secondary attractions have had major increases in waits under plus, so after your first three passes you can expect a substantial increase in waiting in lines. Let's not forget that of these 3 plus passes 1 is for a major attraction, the others for lesser attractions. Thus if you want to expierience more than on tier1 attraction with shorter waits you best be rope dropping! To me this puts more pressure on rope dropping now. Unless your a family who just is happy rolling in later in the day and don't mind getting 3 or 4 rides done at the parks.

 

[3DisneyFanz]

Maybe not... but can you still use it to ride them as much as you used to in the same or less time? We have been able to thus far, because it saves time in other ways.

We can't. We used to be able to get 2 rides on Soarin and do everything else in FW (minus EO) by 11:30. That can't happen now.

 

[MrInfinity]

I think that rope drop is more important now than in the legacy era. In the legacy era fast passes were delayed and didn't start having return times until 30 minutes to an hour later. Now with plus they are scheduled immediately at opening so the standby lines start getting bogged down sooner. Factor in that there are now more fast pass options than under legacy which slow down rides that under legacy had nothing slowing them. Don't forget secondary attractions have had major increases in waits under plus, so after your first three passes you can expect a substantial increase in waiting in lines. Let's not forget that of these 3 plus passes 1 is for a major attraction, the others for lesser attractions. Thus if you want to expierience more than on tier1 attraction with shorter waits you best be rope dropping! To me this puts more pressure on rope dropping now. Unless your a family who just is happy rolling in later in the day and don't mind getting 3 or 4 rides done at the parks.

I get your theories and where you're going w this, but you're kind of pointing out every con you perceive about FP+ and ignoring all the pros. If you only acknowledge the cons, then you probably get on less now. We are, like you, people who used to ride Soarin and Test Track many times in a day, and we still do. It really has not changed. The strategies change a little, but the net result is about the same for us.

We can't. We used to be able to get 2 rides on Soarin and do everything else in FW (minus EO) by 11:30. That can't happen now.

How would you do "Soarin twice and everything else by 11:30". Maybe on an extremely light day, but has nothing to do w FP or FP-. Even if you got there at 9 and were first to pull an FP- ticket to Soarin, your return window would be around 10. After 10 if you pulled one to Test Track, your return window would be after noon. So you certainly could have done this stuff, but not because of FP- by 11:30.

9-9:10 - be first in line to pull FP- to Soarin
9:10-9:40 - ride Soarin
9:40-10:05 - ride LWTL
10:05-10:35 - ride Soarin with FP-
10:35 -10:50 - go over to TT, pull a FP- for later return

Now from 10:50 to 11:30, you would have done "everything else in Future World"? Let's say that's SE, Figment, MS, Turtle Talk, and Nemo all in 40 min. That's skipping everything that isn't commonly discussed out here, like SOAT or Ellen. Don't forget you haven't ridden Test Track yet, just pulled a FP- for later in the day. It seems to me you have a particularly rosy view of how great the past was.

 

[Happy_2_B]

I remember a discussion between Len and Jim Hill about guest satisfaction surveys. Disney noticed a correlation between the number of Legacy FPs used guest satisfaction. They also saw that a large number of people used none while a small number of people used multiples. Spreading the passes more equally via a different distribution system, which became FP+, would logically increase guest satisfaction for a larger number of people in comparison to those who would see a decrease in satisfaction due to a lower rate of FP usage.

If you take this information- and combine it with the 'magic number' of attractions that an average family needs to experience to feel like they are getting their 'money's worth' in a given day- then I think we are onto something. Let's say that 'magic number'- based on other posts here- is seven to ten. If a family is utilizing their 3 FP+s, let's say they take an average of 30 minutes each as a worst case average. There is 90 minutes. Now let's add another two hours to this families' day for one TS meal, one counter service meal, and restroom breaks. Now we are up to 3.5 hours. If an average family spends a total of 8 hours (it's probably more- but let's use this as an example) that leaves 4.5 hours to see another 5 or so attractions to hit the 'magic number' for the day- which should be totally doable assuming they aren't picking all super headliners. Perhaps Disney has come up with this 'magic number'- whatever it actually is- and is tweaking FP+ usage combined with standby lines so that the average family can attain the requisite number of attractions to reach the 'satisfaction threshold' on a given day.

We on the boards need to remember that we aren't the 'average family'. We go to the parks with a plan and carry it out- and our expectations are pretty high. The average family arrives, strolls over and grabs a park map- then stands there all glassy eyed staring at the castle while trying to get their bearings. I think if you look at it from an average families' point of view- it would make sense that Disney is fine tuning attraction capacities so that 'Joe Average' can enjoy his day and feel satisfied at the end of it. Just some random thoughts on the matter...

 

[GreatLakes]

If you take this information- and combine it with the 'magic number' of attractions that an average family needs to experience to feel like they are getting their 'money's worth' in a given day- then I think we are onto something. Let's say that 'magic number'- based on other posts here- is seven to ten. If a family is utilizing their 3 FP+s, let's say they take an average of 30 minutes each as a worst case average. There is 90 minutes. Now let's add another two hours to this families' day for one TS meal, one counter service meal, and restroom breaks. Now we are up to 3.5 hours. If an average family spends a total of 8 hours (it's probably more- but let's use this as an example) that leaves 4.5 hours to see another 5 or so attractions to hit the 'magic number' for the day- which should be totally doable assuming they aren't picking all super headliners. Perhaps Disney has come up with this 'magic number'- whatever it actually is- and is tweaking FP+ usage combined with standby lines so that the average family can attain the requisite number of attractions to reach the 'satisfaction threshold' on a given day.

We on the boards need to remember that we aren't the 'average family'. We go to the parks with a plan and carry it out- and our expectations are pretty high. The average family arrives, strolls over and grabs a park map- then stands there all glassy eyed staring at the castle while trying to get their bearings. I think if you look at it from an average families' point of view- it would make sense that Disney is fine tuning attraction capacities so that 'Joe Average' can enjoy his day and feel satisfied at the end of it. Just some random thoughts on the matter...

All of that makes total sense. I think one of the results of FP+ is that it increases the number of attractions the casual/standard WDW guest does while lowing the number the typical DIS boards guest does. That really isn't a bad thing.

FP + to me is a lot like the "savings card" at Winn Dixie, Kroger, or CVS. $4 regular, or $3.50 with your savings card! The savings card is free. They make you go through all this hoopla when they could just give you the real price to begin with.

The savings card has the exact same purpose as MyMagic+ (not to be confused with FP+) and that is data gathering. Companies know that they can make better decisions with better data.

 

[flicx]

All of that makes total sense. I think one of the results of FP+ is that it increases the number of attractions the casual/standard WDW guest does while lowing the number the typical DIS boards guest does.

I think it lowers both! It really drops the number if you want to ride the most popular attractions. Because you are limited to one tier1 and generally can't snag another the same day so that means off to the standby lines which now have substantially longer waits. Let's not forget many offsite guests can't even grab the attraction they want at 30 days out. That leaves them with less riding time too!

 

[Angel Ariel]

It seems to me you have a particularly rosy view of how great the past was.

It seems to me it would perhaps be prudent to let someone answer the question of how they used to do something before making assumptions about it and accusing them of the above.

 

[hopemax]

Does anyone think that without FP that all lines would be shorter? Would space be an average of 50 mins vs 95? Would HM and POTC go back to an average of 20-30 vs 45-60?

Tried to post this last night, but hit the board downtime by 4 min...

Yep. Obviously, the wait times would only drop so far but you only have to look at the FP math to see why there's a problem now. If you have an attraction with 2000 people/hr capacity, to experience a 90 min wait, you need 3000 people willing to wait that long in the queue in front of you. And to maintain a 90 min wait, that flow of people has to be continuously that high. That's a lot of people. But then lets say you divert, as easywdw says up to 70% of the seats to "reservations" ie FP. Then as far as the standby line is concerned there are only 600 seats, so a 90 min line only needs 900 people per hour, continually. A heck of a lot easier to obtain than 3000.

And you could see this in practice when something would happen on a ride, like say Tower of Terror when operating one drop shaft vs two. The line can get out of control, quickly. Seats diverted to FP are no different than taking vehicles out of service, as far as the standby line is concerned. FP effectively turns high capacity attractions into low capacity ones like Dumbo or Peter Pan for anyone not holding a FP.

Wait times are only partially dependent on ride capacity, and partially dependent on the thought bubbles over people's heads ala Roller Coaster Tycoon. It seems like someone thought that it was a simple thing to move people out of a standby into a virtual queue, and if that is what really happens, things might be okay. In practice, the virtual queue is partially filled with a bunch of people who were never in the standby queue to begin with (which is WHY some people like it so much). In order to accommodate these "new" riders, somebody has to either lose their seat, or the wait time has to go up, since ride capacity hasn't changed.

So to take our 2000 people per hour ride. 1400 slots get distributed via FP, but lets say 30% of those are new riders. That means 420 are new, and therefore only 980 can move from standby to FP. So as far as standby people are concerned, they've dropped from 2000 people to 1020. But we've dropped effective capacity from 2000 to 600. So for those 1020 people they went from a 60 min wait to 102 min. Some people in standby will get frustrated by that (and why some people hate FP so much) and bail, and some people holding FP won't return and so standby can move a little faster, so the actual equilibrium wait time might only be 80 min.

Now, those 420 new riders came from "somewhere," so you think that might mean there's a smaller line wherever "somewhere" was. But we've also freed 980 people from standby (plus the people that got frustrated and bailed) and they can now go "somewhere" too. And not only can they replace those 420 people, there's enough people to double that, with some more left over. So wait times at "somewhere" can go up too.

And here's the thing, this is true for FP+ but it was also true for legacy FP. What most likely has changed is the number of "new" riders. Legacy required you to wake up on time, get to a park, etc. So maybe the net effect was there were only 5-15% of "new" riders, so wait times went up less, and it affected fewer attractions. FP+ allows for a much larger volume of "new" riders and so the wait times can be more drastically affected, and it's on every attraction people would view as "worth doing." Basically, all FP has a negative effect on wait times for the standby line, and that's not something legacy FP lovers want to hear, because if shorter wait times is the goal, it should be gone entirely (just increase capacity instead).

Now, from Disney's perspective they went from "420 unhappy, non-riders walking around and 980 stuck in a line," to "1400 happy riders walking around." Which group do you think spends more money? Makes it easy not to care about the 1020 unhappy people still stuck in the standby line only now for 33% longer. And they didn't have to mess around building expensive new capacity in each park.