Why wait times have gotten crazy

[MinnieMeep]

As an analytics consultant for a large company, I'd kill to get my hands on their data! Every once in a while I check Disney careers to see if anything's open. Just let me at it! But seriously, they need more people who are passionate about Disney and the customer experience in their corporate world. People who have spent a lot of time at the World as guests, who have that perspective.

 

[dlavender]

I just gone done reading someone's trip report who was there Monday stating that POTC had a 70 min wait! Please. That's just crazy. That alone should be evidence enough to reimagine, or ditch, FP +. No one can justify that.

 

[3DisneyFanz]

I would tend to disagree. While you don't see any other parts of this I can promise that if this was my team (I am a software developer) doing this, we would have made sure to put in the correct foundation for future expansion for things like tracking. We just implemented a similar system using RFID for our packages and while it's only doing just a couple things now, we paid and installed the foundation to do much more in future as we are able to develop the software side to support it.

And as far as not needing more data, the data they have has no way to go down to the individual level or could be used for good large scale analytics. With the ability to see a single persons every movement, wait time and purchase you can do a WHOLE lot of data analysis for everything from crowd flow to targeted marking by demographic. This is the foundation for big data at it's finest.

You're making the assumption that they'll get readers strong enough to do that. While I think they already have that in place they claim otherwise. If you go off what they say then they can't track your individual movements. Also people aren't packages with hubs and delivery schedules. Just because three trips in a row I walk to Tomorrowland first doesn't mean I'm always going to Tomorrowland first. If I pass Laugh Floor it doesn't mean that the line was too long or I might need a FP it just means I don't like it. Outside of wanting to know where Bob walks in the park it still isn't giving you anything exciting that you couldn't pull from other things they already had in place. I have nothing against data collection but this isn't pulling anything exciting.

Maybe they'll track which bathrooms are most frequented after meals at Pecos Bill and make sure cleaning staff hits those more frequently.

 

[3DisneyFanz]

I agree. This is what has been complained about on this board the most, I believe (well pricing, but it is related to less rides).



Before we do anything, can we please replace Stitch? No one would be upset. Walk on from open to close, even on a 10 day. Put another Peter Pan in there, if possible. A couple of benches in its place would have a longer wait time....

Imagine what they could have done with a fraction of the 2 billion in Stich. You could actually build something people are interested in and then you wouldn't have to try to push them to something else that's crap as well.

 

[3DisneyFanz]

I just gone done reading someone's trip report who was there Monday stating that POTC had a 70 min wait! Please. That's just crazy. That alone should be evidence enough to reimagine, or ditch, FP +. No one can justify that.

Yeah but now they know which idiots are waiting 70 min for POtC and they can offer them an exclusive tshirt to commemorate their hour plus wait for a ride that was 20 min before FP+

 

[dlavender]

Yeah but now they know which idiots are waiting 70 min for POtC and they can offer them an exclusive tshirt to commemorate their hour plus wait for a ride that was 20 min before FP+

LOL! It's all a big test. Will people wait 100 mins for POTC? If so, what will their satisfaction level be? But, we only had to wait 20 mins with our FP's to ride IASW! Great trade off!

 

[serenitynow]

POTC was down a number of times on Monday. That pushes the wait times up

 

[flicx]

LOL! It's all a big test. Will people wait 100 mins for POTC? If so, what will their satisfaction level be? But, we only had to wait 20 mins with our FP's to ride IASW! Great trade off!

There in lies the problem, too much trying to extract every last cent from the customer and not enough focus on customer satisfaction! The whole 2 billion dollar expenditure reeks of it!

 

[dlavender]

POTC was down a number of times on Monday. That pushes the wait times up

I'm sure, but I've still read posts about people waiting 60 for POTC and HM. Thinking about it now, I think Disney anticipated the longer stand by waits. They aren't put off at all about longer stand by's. All of the new queues where designed to be interactive, making waits more bearable. They re-outfitted HM and others for this. Besides data mining, they have to have a "grand" plan for FP + to go to these great lenghts. Perhaps nailing people down to picking their theme park 60/30 days out really is that financially advantageous.

 

[serenitynow]

I wasn't trying to make excuses for the wait times, just adding in the factor of ride stoppage to the wait time equation.

 

[3DisneyFanz]

There in lies the problem, too much trying to extract every last cent from the customer and not enough focus on customer satisfaction! The whole 2 billion dollar expenditure reeks of it!

Yeah but they'll make some of the money back selling the "Disney implemented FP+ and all I got were stupid long wait times" t-shirts.

 

[Jfine]

I'm sure, but I've still read posts about people waiting 60 for POTC and HM. Thinking about it now, I think Disney anticipated the longer stand by waits. They aren't put off at all about longer stand by's. All of the new queues where designed to be interactive, making waits more bearable. They re-outfitted HM and others for this. Besides data mining, they have to have a "grand" plan for FP + to go to these great lenghts. Perhaps nailing people down to picking their theme park 60/30 days out really is that financially advantageous.

I think it definitely is advantageous. If you look at fp+ information on their website it talks about making reservations for rides, not saving time. Now maybe someone will infer that they will save time, but Disney isn't necessarily saying that.
Now maybe as someone else said they released too many slots or opened too many rides to it? Personally I hope they keep tailoring and modifying it for guests to cut down on these wait times.

 

[Tarheel girl 1975]

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.

No, I can't.

If a person searches for FPs in the Magic Kingdom for a Monday, everything is available except 7DMT, and they decide to search the next day instead it can be deduced that they were looking for 7DMT on a Monday. The repeated logging in and searching for FPs after they are already booked is also an indication that a wanted FP wasn't found and when combined with subsequent searches and changes a relatively clear picture of intent can be formed. A lot can be determined from search patterns.

It is admittedly a bit more complicated then the narrow example I provided but these kinds of things are the focus of MBA tracts, not exactly the kind of thing you can explain very well in a few sentences on a message board.

ETA: By design these systems get more accurate as the data set grows and forecasts are either proven or debunked. The decisions made based on the data will not be nearly as accurate at these early stages of the project as it will at later stages. The first 5 years or so of this kind of project is really just a data gathering phase.

Or they could deduce that you weren't satisfied with the times you originally got for your fast passes.

POTC was down a number of times on Monday. That pushes the wait times up

Good thing they just had that refurb.

 

[Angel Ariel]

POTC was down a number of times on Monday. That pushes the wait times up

POTC just reopened after a decently long refurb. It is unfortunate that they did not get the problems under control during the refurb to prevent the temporary closures. Someone said on another thread recently that Josh at EasyWDW posted that POtC has been down more post refurb than it was prior.

 

[DisneyOma]

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



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.

Even if you got 20 data points a day, if one point (not an outlier, but just someone putting in a random point) is not a 'true' reading, it can skew the rest of the data too much to keep it valid. Or do you play with your data selection?

Of course, I'm assuming scientific data is being collected, not regular observations. But one cannot make valid predictions based on anything but scientific collection of data.

 

[kelleybean]

Honestly not having FP is one reason why we like to do the parties. It is slightly cheaper than a one day ticket and we like that the line moves without having to stop and let people from the FP line in. My theory is that in order to allow all guests to have access to three FP's, they are having to distribute way more FP's than they "should." I'm hoping that they at least tinker with the ratio of FP:Standby guests. Last time we were there, the wait for Peter Pan was 60 minutes. We were able to snag a FP and were on under 5 minutes. It was good for us obviously, but maybe they should consider letting the people in the fast pass line wait at least a little longer to allow the standby waits to be more reasonable.

 

[Planogirl]

What is the deal with POTC? I hear that people still get drenched because the boats ride too low. Apparently they didn't do anything about the boats during the refurb?

 

[Disneymom1126]

I just gone done reading someone's trip report who was there Monday stating that POTC had a 70 min wait! Please. That's just crazy. That alone should be evidence enough to reimagine, or ditch, FP +. No one can justify that.

MK is really busy on Mondays in October because it's one of few days that the park doesn't close early for MNSSHP...we were there today and it didn't go over 30 minutes all day -- we rode when it was a 30 minute wait and only waited about 20. We were there from rope drop to about 6pm and rode almost everything (only things we didn't do were IASW, Jungle cruise, Astro Orbiter, Stitch, MI laugh floor, and Winnie the Pooh because we didn't want to)...some things we rode 2 times (Space, BTMR, Splash, 7DMT (one was after BOG breakfast)...it was busy, but with rope drop and a plan it was totally manageable

 

[MermaidMommy]

IPerhaps nailing people down to picking their theme park 60/30 days out really is that financially advantageous.

One of the few reasons Disney has publicly given about why they implemented FP+ is that they think having pre-set ride times will keep guests from going off property to other Orlando attractions. The theory is that guests will be less likely to wake up one day and say, "Let's go to Universal instead of Disney today" because they won't want to miss out on their FP+ ride times.

 

[3DisneyFanz]

One of the few reasons Disney has publicly given about why they implemented FP+ is that they think having pre-set ride times will keep guests from going off property to other Orlando attractions. The theory is that guests will be less likely to wake up one day and say, "Let's go to Universal instead of Disney today" because they won't want to miss out on their FP+ ride times.

Yup and the best way to help make sure that happens is to ensure trying to operate with the FP is completely miserable. Increase SB times and you make FP seem like a real necessity.