Originally Posted By sjhym333 Jim Hill is reporting that beginning on Sunday the MK will be running the afternoon parade twice a day for two weeks. Parade times will be at 12:30 and 3:30. He is reporting that there has been as task force looking at how to reduce wait times and the thought is that having two parades a day will reduce the crush of people rushing back to the attractions at the end of the parade.
Originally Posted By ChiMike >>He is reporting that there has been as task force looking at how to reduce wait times<< Why do they need that? Why would a task force need to be created to look at how to reduce wait times when there is Disney's FASTPASS? I thought Disney's FASTPASS reduces your wait in line?
Originally Posted By sjhym333 We have heard that one of the reason for the NexGen project is to reduce wait times. Whats really sad and/or interesting to me is that our society has come to a place that we are no longer willing to wait patiently on a line anymore. You're in a park with 30,000 to 50,000 people in it there are going to be lines. Get over it.
Originally Posted By dshyates I think the wait time issues have more to do with adding 20k resort rooms without adding carrying capacity to the park.
Originally Posted By ChiMike All great points. I still want to know why Disney feels they need to continue to spend energy in reducing wait times when Disney's FASTPASS does just that. Guests demanded that they no longer need to wait in those pesky lines so Disney created Disney's FASTPASS. Guests demanded, that Walt said, that Disneyland, was not to be a museum, so Disney closed older attractions in the park that were boring. Guests think waiting in lines and older attractions are boring. Disney did what the guests demanded on surveys and fixed all of that. So why do they now need to develop a task force - to not reduce time, but a task force looking at HOW to reduce times. Guests sure demand a lot!
Originally Posted By WDWVacationer Interesting reasoning. Anyone remember that article in USA Today or the NY Times or something that said amongst other false tings, that parades are dispatched at any time of the day for crowd dispertion?
Originally Posted By ChiMike Yes I do, WDW... At the time I was hoping they meant more like the Dapper Dans or the small shows in Frontierland. On the other hand all of that is now so scheduled, it left me scratching my head too. BTW, the reasoning was very much tongue in cheek in case you didn't pick up on it, thanks for the response!
Originally Posted By EPCOT Explorer Wait... If they run a 10 year old parade twice a day, does that mean it's going to start falling apart, too? I can see this helping wait times, thought.. I approve.
Originally Posted By ChiMike >>I can see this helping wait times, thought.. I approve<< More or less than Disney's FASTPASS does?
Originally Posted By leobloom I'm skeptical how much this will decrease wait times -- so you take the X thousand people who want to see this parade and you divide them up over two parade times ... I dunno, just seems like the amount of people who will be along the parade route would be less for both times, which means instead of having a 3:00 parade that could conceivably pull people away from the queues, you'll have two times that pull fewer people away. The effect across the park would seem to be marginal. But, then, this is a much cheaper solution than building a couple of big new rides that everyone would want to ride. I'm surprised TDO didn't just run the parade eight times a day instead of doing FLE.
Originally Posted By CDF1 I thought 3PM at MK was reserved in the summertime for the mandatory thunderstorm downpour special effects.
Originally Posted By sjhym333 What the parade does is clears many of the attractions of guests since they are on the street watching. The problem isnt then but after the parade when attractions get a new rush of guests after the parade is over. It is something to behold.
Originally Posted By EPCOT Explorer >>>More or less than Disney's FASTPASS does?<<< More? No idea. But it'll draw people away, of course.
Originally Posted By FerretAfros I would guess that they are hoping that more people stop to watch the parade if it runs twice daily. There are plenty of people who wouldn't really be interested in scheduling their day around it, but if they walked by and saw that it was about to start, they would stop and watch it. With two parades, there are double the chances of these people spending a few minutes doing something other than waiting in line. This means that the queue times will overall be shorter, because guests (on average) will be going on fewer attractions per day, as they will have filled in that time with the parade. I suspect that the 3:00 timeframe will likely see an increase in wait times from what we have now, since not as many people will see that specific showing, but on an all-day average, it will reduce the average wait time, with two periods of lower waits instead of just one. That said, I'm a little surprised that it took them this long to add a second parade. I don't know the WDW entertainment schedule very well, but DL has had two parade showings daily for years (partly due to the parade route layout that 'traps' the floats between Main Street and Tomorrowland), so I just assumed that MK did it as well, at least during busy times. I guess having night time parades helps people get their parade 'fix' in WDW. Do any of the parks offer multiple showings of the same parade? And we can only hope that the additional performances will cause just enough additional wear and tear on the equipment that the current parade will soon be laid to rest. I'm not counting on it, but every little bit helps.
Originally Posted By FerretAfros And who is in charge of making the entertainment decisions like this? It seems like a huge jump to get nightly Fantasmic! and two performances of the MK parade at the same time. I can't help but notice the timing happens to coincide with the Al/Meg switch, even if it is just coincidence.
Originally Posted By standor The only parade that I enjoyed in WDW was the original Main Street Electric Parade. The rest of the parades were not worth watching. The only thing the extra parades would do is tie up and add to the congestion on main street when people want to enter or leave the magic kingdom, or visit the shops. In all the parks add attractions that people would want to visit and eliminate the fast pass. Have it the way it used to be, first come, first served
Originally Posted By Bolna While I personally am not a parade fan I think that this is actually a good decission. It is an increase in entertainment. As FerretAfros pointed out, by just being there twice a day, it might overall atract more viewers. Also because the parades won't be as crowded as they are now, more people might actually stop and see it because they aren't trapped behind a huge wall of people. I am not so sure about having a great effect on wait times at the attractions though. But I think it might have an effect at wait times at the CS restaurants for lunch. The 12:15 pm time slot is perfect lunch time. Since they were trying so hard over Christmas to get people to eat outside of peak times (with discounts), perhaps that's a new method of crowd control?
Originally Posted By HMButler79 maybe if they sold off the parks they wouldn't be so concerened about catering to "I can't wait in line for 10min waaaaah!" guests
Originally Posted By EPCOT Explorer Bye bye, Nexgen queues? Please... I wonder of the HM disaster will never be removed...
