Originally Posted By mousermerf New flash: This is the Walt Disney WORLD forum. I can't do this at Disneyland anymore - the walkways at Disneyland are problematic - I thinks its more crowded at Disneyland. That's wonderful, WDW actually does not have those problems. Adventureland is spacious not a crammed mess, there's far fewer simple metal pole and chain queues overall, people with FP at probably at one of the many restaurants, and the walkways are huge. DL is the one with the unattached FP machines spitting out tickets. DL is the one with crowding problems caused by it's overly cheap AP population too. Not WDW. Disney World functions just fine with FP and has several attractions with their queue space specifically designed for FP. And it feels longer? Cry me a river. It's not physically longer, and there is no exciting part of any queue. The closest thing is Soarin - at Epcot in Disney WORLD - which has the interactive games in the queue.
Originally Posted By barboy "It's been suggested that guests who don't use FastPass are stupid." As to those who don't use FP I would say that some are dummies(they want to understand the system but just can't figure it out), some are ignorant and innocent victims and still others are just plain lazy and/or apathetic.
Originally Posted By barboy "Have you considered that ride capacity is a set number during the operation? And if all the people in the FP queue and the standby queue wanted to ride the attraction then the wait time would be exactly the same without FP?" I have been arguing that same point on 8 to 10 other threads in the last 2 years but I worded it differently.
Originally Posted By Jim in Merced CA <As to those who don't use FP I would say that some are dummies(they want to understand the system but just can't figure it out), some are ignorant and innocent victims and still others are just plain lazy and/or apathetic.> Then why doesn't Disney spend more time educating these...'dumb' guests. Isn't Disney the King of The Guest Experience? Would it not behoove them to get guests on board with how Fast Pass works?
Originally Posted By Jim in Merced CA Didn't I learn at the Disney University that 'Every Guest is a V.I.P.'?
Originally Posted By barboy "Then why doesn't Disney spend more time educating these...'dumb' guests." Maybe there are just too few of them to justify the costs; I don't know why. If I had to guess I would say that the mode of the non FP users are apathetic, followed by the lazy, then the innocent victims(foreigners with very little to no Disney experience) and last.... the dummies.
Originally Posted By alexbook >>If I had to guess I would say that the mode of the non FP users are apathetic, followed by the lazy, then the innocent victims(foreigners with very little to no Disney experience) and last.... the dummies. << Okay, maybe I'm a dummy, but I couldn't figure out FP until some LPers explained it to me. (Admittedly, this is at DLR. Maybe the signage is better at WDW.)
Originally Posted By mousermerf At WDW you are bombarded with information about FP. It's on signs, it's on the TV, it's on an audio speil on the buses, it's blatantly on the guidemaps as the first section you see when you open it, and it's in every single piece of guest media that involves the parks. If people don't know they're oblivious to life.
Originally Posted By mousermerf Note: As for "on the TV" it's on WDW resort guest tv as part of the top 7 must-sees. That alone covers most guests, but that show is offered as a non-wdw-resort-specific variant on a TV channel in orlando. If you're at WDW and in the park and don't know about FP you've not read the guidemaps or anything about the park.
Originally Posted By Jim in Merced CA <If people don't know they're oblivious to life.> mousemerf, your perspective on this is absolutely obnoxious. But let's go with it. Let's assume all those people in the Stand-by line for Big Thunder, who don't know about FastPass, are 'oblivious to life.' Would it not behoove Disney -- even as a test -- to survey those 'dummies' in the Stand-by line and find out what they're thinking? Just go right into the line, and say 'Hey moron, why are you standing in this line, when you could be walking around eating and buying stuff?' Heck Disney spends hours and dollars and warm bodies on surveys when guests leave the parks -- 'Hey, did you like the parade?' -- why not ask about FastPass?
Originally Posted By leobloom I'm sure most first-time guests expect FP to be free. After all, so many things at WDW are.
Originally Posted By barboy I have to say Jim, and I know it may come off as harsh or callous, that I really do agree with mousemerf as to the amount of FP information out there. How somebody can vacation in WDW and not know about the system is beyond me. It really is presented to the guest in a few ways which should leave very little ambiguity. These are the same folk who know how to drive from Ohio to Orlando by following maps and signage or know how to check in at JFK and Newark and board a plane and rent a car in Orlando. If one can do that then he should be able to notice and follow FP procedure. I have to say if one taps WDW for a few days and is unaware of FP, then maybe she has some far, far bigger vacationing issues to deal with than queuing up.
Originally Posted By plpeters70 "I have to say if one taps WDW for a few days and is unaware of FP, then maybe she has some far, far bigger vacationing issues to deal with than queuing up." I think you're missing Jim's point. Jim, correct me if I'm wrong on this, but what I think you're trying to get at is that Disney doesn't educate those guests because they NEED them to stand in that queue. FastPass doesn't function properly unless some guests are willing to "stand by". As I've already said countless times on this thread, if everyone gets a FastPass, then the system is no different than if there wasn't any FastPass at all.
Originally Posted By plpeters70 "Not WDW. Disney World functions just fine with FP and has several attractions with their queue space specifically designed for FP." I'm sorry, but I quite disagree. While there may be some areas that FastPass works fine in, ther are others where it doesn't. One great example is the Space Mountain queue. Before FastPass, they used to use the entire interior switchback system in the main loading are - now, thanks to FastPass, they hold the standby line in the long tunnel. They've basically eliminated 3/4 of the queue just so FastPass users will have a place to "jump" in the line. That's not what I would call an efficient use of the space.
Originally Posted By leobloom Just out of curiosity, how often do you veteran parkgoers wait standby at FP attractions? Personally, I almost never wait standby at a FP attraction unless there's no wait. When was the last time any of us waited in the standby line for Soarin? I can honestly say I never have. I wonder if the percentage of guests in the standby lines are relatively inexperienced parkgoers who use FP but don't use it exclusively?
Originally Posted By magnet >>>All the anti-FP people.. Have you considered that ride capacity is a set number during the operation? And if all the people in the FP queue and the standby queue wanted to ride the attraction then the wait time would be exactly the same without FP? Same number of people wanting to ride and same capacity = same standby wait time. Does FP magically add people to the queue so less get through the ride? No. The long standby waits would be just as long without FP. It'd take just as long for that many people to get on and off ride.<<< Actually, this reasoning is faulty. There are some correct assertions here, but the conclusions are incorrect. In my prior post I demonstrated what actually would happen with a simple example that I took some care to explain. I will do so again with even greater care. Let’s go back to that example once again. We have a FastPass attraction standby queue operating at a 60 minute wait consistently through the day. We further assume that 50% of the ride’s resources are devoted to processing FastPass guests and that the inflow of these guests is such that the allotted 50% of capacity is fully used with no backup into the FastPass queue. That means there are zero people in the FastPass queue and no waiting for the ride. OK, let’s follow what happens as I enter the standby queue with the FastPass system in place. The moment I enter the standby queue, I encounter all of the standby people, 60 minutes worth, in front of me who are being moved through the ride with 50% capacity. This essentially amounts to standby guests being loaded onto every other train that arrives. Also as I arrive, I see NO guests in the FastPass queue. All of the FastPass guests who are processed BEFORE me during the 60 minutes I wait in standby arrived with their tickets AFTER I entered the standby line. This means that if we were to erase the FastPass system and all those guests, I would have been able to ride in thirty minutes since twice as many trains would be hauling away the same number of standby guests. Therefore, half of my waiting time in standby is due to FastPass guests who arrived AFTER me but are boarded onto trains BEFORE me. OK, now here comes the part we must be careful to think about. Let’s imagine what happens to me as I enter the standby queue again, but this time the CMs decide to change the way the ride is operating the moment that I enter the queue. Again, so far – everything is the same. There are 60 minutes worth of standby people in front of me and zero people standing in the FastPass queue. All of a sudden, a CM walks up and says that FastPass is now closed and everyone must wait in standby. His first action is to place all of those people waiting in the FastPass queue at the front of the standby queue. However, there are NO people in the FastPass queue, so there is NO lengthening of the standby line. Also, all of the people who were about to start coming into the FastPass queue AFTER I arrived are now stopped by a CM and forced to wait BEHIND me. Suddenly, there are now TWICE as many trains available to the SAME number of people waiting in front of me as there were while FastPass was operating. Therefore, since the queue length did not increase, but there are twice as many trains carrying away people from standby, I move through the queue in thirty minutes. I waited half the time I would have expected to wait if FastPass had not been closed. OK, you might say, “Well, you were lucky that time because you happened to arrive at the moment when FastPass was closed. However, now that all those FastPass guests will be piling into standby, you’ll end up waiting 60 minutes if you get back in the line after your ride. WRONG! You’ll only wait thirty minutes again. Here’s why: Let’s say that the same number of FastPass guests that we had in the original example now begin to pile into the standby line after FastPass closes. Now the rate of people entering the standby queue has doubled. Originally, I said that the standby queue was consistently operating at a 60 minute wait, which means that 50% of the trains carried enough people away from the queue to prevent it from growing longer than 60 minutes. Since there were also no people accumulating in the FastPass queue, the rate of people entering that queue was exactly the same as the number entering standby in a given interval of time. Therefore, when we collapse the two lines into one, we double the flow of people coming into standby. Now, if the rate of people being carried away from the standby queue didn’t increase, we would suddenly start to see the length of the standby queue increase. However, though the rate of people coming into the standby queue doubles, the rate of people being carried away from the queue on trains ALSO doubles. Therefore, the length of the standby queue does not grow by collapsing the same number of FastPass guests as we had in the original example into the standby queue. Notice now -- we are still servicing the same number of people as we were in a given interval with FastPass in operation -- the capacity of the ride has not changed. However, the wait time in standby never exceeds thirty minutes. That’s because time is a conserved quantity also, just as the total number of people is. Every zero wait that a FastPass guest experiences is gained because a standby guest pays them thirty minutes of their time. This is forced upon standby guests by FastPass precisely because there is a set capacity for the ride that cannot be altered. It is exactly this fixed and unchangeable capacity of the ride that every short wait one experiences is paid by someone else. There is no free lunch. We are neither creating nor destroying either seats on the trains or minutes in the day. As it turns out, the only way to minimize the wait for everyone is by having a single queue which is drained by all the available resources of the ride. There is no way around this. FastPass is only able to give someone a shorter wait by removing riders from queues or adding to the waits of riders who insist on remaining. Therefore, your equation: Same number of people wanting to ride and same capacity = same standby wait time. is incorrect. We do have the same number of people and the same number of trains to carry them away. However, when we collapse the two queues into a single queue, the rate of motion in that single queue doubles. Though you cannot change the number of people or the number of trains, if you increase the rate at which people move through the queue, the wait time will decrease. In this case the standby wait decreases because the FastPass guests take back their thirty minute wait burden relieving the standby guests of half of the sixty minutes they were waiting. See, you remembered the conservation of people and ride capacity, but you forgot about the redistribution of a fixed quantity of time among the guests. Note that the average waiting time did not change. Whereas one guest waited zero minutes and another one sixty, now both are waiting the same average time, thirty minutes. Another way of stating it is that you forgot that the “same standby wait time†on the right side of your equation is actually the average wait time of FastPass and standby guests, otherwise known as the wait time a guest would experience if FastPass did not exist!
Originally Posted By Spirit of 74 I like the old stealing soda threads so much better than FastPass discussions ... just an opinion ...
Originally Posted By magnet In that case...be sure not to miss my thread about the EPCOT hot air balloon. It was a lot more comical, and BlueOhana had a really funny post.
