Six hour wait for flights of passage?

[dina444444]

How do you even logistically wait that long? That's physical and mentally exhausting, to say nothing of needing food, bathroom breaks and water.

I waited 5 hours on day 2 to ride it. One or more theatres went down while I was in line so that wouldn’t surprise me if they were having theatres go down which balloons the wait.

 

[disneysteve]

It has been noted over the last week or two that Disney seems to be inflating the AK wait times they are showing far beyond what they really are.

Disney probably does this to try to discourage people from getting in line and get them to go to other areas of the park, but it doesn't work. People see a 6-hour wait time and jump right in line. It makes no sense.

Of course Disney keeps hiking prices to try to control crowds and that hasn't done a darn bit of good either as the place is more packed than ever.

 

[ChrisFL]

Another thing that people are mentioning elsewhere is they're putting them higher manually, OR the new use of the magic bands to automatically calculate wait times has been less accurate compared to the red cards...............and it also leaves out the adjustment needed to the estimated wait when you have a crowd of people that just got in line, unless someone changes that manually?

 

[tlmadden73]

Two things - Disney can never truly know what the standby wait time is thanks to FP+ .. even though they limit people to an hour, there is just no way to know when everyone in that window willshow up. Plus many windows cross over.

What if everyone that has a viable Fast Pass for 11:00 am ALL showed up at that exact minute? The standby line would quickly get longer as all of those FP people skip the line. So the posted wait time will ballon quickly. Or vice versa..what if no one showed up for the FP line for 30 minutes? The standby line would go quickly.

So Disney seems like it is forced to show the worst case scenario for standby wait times. SO maybe they just bump up wait times a lot to scare off people getting in line.


Still what often gets me .. if a wait time is 6 hours .. that means that MORE people had to have gotten in line when it was 5 hours than got off the ride. How do that many people get in line for a 5 hour wait?

 

[ChrisFL]

Two things - Disney can never truly know what the standby wait time is thanks to FP+ .. even though they limit people to an hour, there is just no way to know when everyone in that window willshow up. Plus many windows cross over.

What if everyone that has a viable Fast Pass for 11:00 am ALL showed up at that exact minute? The standby line would quickly get longer as all of those FP people skip the line. So the posted wait time will ballon quickly. Or vice versa..what if no one showed up for the FP line for 30 minutes? The standby line would go quickly.

So Disney seems like it is forced to show the worst case scenario for standby wait times. SO maybe they just bump up wait times a lot to scare off people getting in line.


Still what often gets me .. if a wait time is 6 hours .. that means that MORE people had to have gotten in line when it was 5 hours than got off the ride. How do that many people get in line for a 5 hour wait?

And where do all of the guests go in the line, meaning, do they go in front of the Tree of Life toward Dino-land?

 

[cmwade77]

My guess is that there were capacity issues in some shape or form, this could be:

• Reduced capacity due to technical difficulties
• Reduced capacity due to maintenance - One of the nice things about the setup is they shouldn't have to shut the ride down entirely very often, as they can do maintenance in parts, but this can result in longer lines and rumors are that they are trying to fix some of it to allow more people to be physically able to ride it, be it larger guests, guests with disabilities, etc.
• Reduced capacity due to staffing issues, perhaps they had so many people call in that they couldn't staff half the ride
• Too many FPs distributed (common practice to over distribute them since a certain percentage won't show typically) and everyone actually came back

Overall, while the wait time may have been accurate (or may not have been, as I would imagine it would be difficult to measure a 6 hour line with FP returns), there isn't enough information as to why this happened for us to draw any conclusions even about the popularity of the ride.

 

[disneysteve]

Still what often gets me .. if a wait time is 6 hours .. that means that MORE people had to have gotten in line when it was 5 hours than got off the ride. How do that many people get in line for a 5 hour wait?

This is purely a function of the parks being insanely crowded. There are tens of thousands of people in the park each day. Theoretically, hourly capacity is about 1,400 and real capacity is likely less than that most days. So if 1,000 people get off the ride in an hour but 3,000 get in line, the wait time increases by an hour.

Edited to correct my math; If 1,000 ride per hour but 3,000 get in line per hour, at the end of an hour, there will be 1,000 more in line than there were at the beginning of the hour.

 

[rteetz]

I waited 5 hours on day 2 to ride it. One or more theatres went down while I was in line so that wouldn’t surprise me if they were having theatres go down which balloons the wait.

It went down today for example.

 

[ChrisFL]

It went down today for example.

They have 4 theaters, right? So when they go down, is it usually just 1/4 or half or something like that? I know there's been times where both that and River Journey go down entirely at the same time, due to how the buildings are shared.

 

[rteetz]

They have 4 theaters, right? So when they go down, is it usually just 1/4 or half or something like that? I know there's been times where both that and River Journey go down entirely at the same time, due to how the buildings are shared.

Yes. Typically half go down. Today all four were down at one point.

 

[ChrisFL]

Yes. Typically half go down. Today all four were down at one point.

ugh...one of the things I also worry about with Galaxy's Edge is reliability, on the complex ride systems they're using.

 

[rteetz]

ugh...one of the things I also worry about with Galaxy's Edge is reliability, on the complex ride systems they're using.

Well on the bright side for SWGE I agues is the two rides won't be using the same building like Pandora is. A major issue with Pandora is over heating and when the system over heats and trips the alarm both rides have to go down not just one.

SWGE will have a trackless ride system in Rise of the Resistance, and Falcon will be a simulator which has four separate turntables. Each turntable acts sort of like a continuous loading attraction. I am unsure yet if say one "pod" goes down the entire turn table will need to go down or what yet.

 

[ChrisFL]

Well on the bright side for SWGE I agues is the two rides won't be using the same building like Pandora is. A major issue with Pandora is over heating and when the system over heats and trips the alarm both rides have to go down not just one.

SWGE will have a trackless ride system in Rise of the Resistance, and Falcon will be a simulator which has four separate turntables. Each turntable acts sort of like a continuous loading attraction. I am unsure yet if say one "pod" goes down the entire turn table will need to go down or what yet.

Right, and Alicia Stella who runs a podcast said the Rise of the Resistance vehicles may slot into another vehicle system for part of the ride...similar to how Tower of Terror does it, that's the reliability part that scares me, lol.

One good thing for WDW is that hopefully any bugs from the DL version get worked out ahead of time

 

[rteetz]

Right, and Alicia Stella who runs a podcast said the Rise of the Resistance vehicles may slot into another vehicle system for part of the ride...similar to how Tower of Terror does it, that's the reliability part that scares me, lol.

One good thing for WDW is that hopefully any bugs from the DL version get worked out ahead of time

Rise of the Resistance will be an interesting one. It will use several different moving parts starting in the queue all the way through.

 

[MarkE83]

I cannot think of one single thing, or even person, for that matter, that I would wait that kind of time for.

We should have a “craziest amount of time you’ve waited in line for something for” thread. You’d be amazed.

Last May, some ridiculously hard to get tickets went on sale for an annual event here in the U.K. its held in a venue that only has a few hundred seats & sells out instantly.

The tickets went on sale at 9am on a Sunday. I joined the line on Saturday evening (yes, that’s a 12 hour+ wait, overnight, outside...)...
I was not at the front of the line. Not even first 20.

You think that’s crazy?

The tickets I purchased were not for me*!!

*They were a gift for my mom. She was 60 and having done it once now as a surprise, I’d do it again if she wanted to go again.

 

[Leslee Borowski]

That is absolutely insane!

 

[Jennygt]

Definitely not "in the know" but there is a thread over at TouringPlans about the crowd levels and predictions. It has been noted over the last week or two that Disney seems to be inflating the AK wait times they are showing far beyond what they really are. The TouringPlans folks, in order to try and get some accurate numbers, hired people to wait in lines at AK and were finding some major discrepancies.

Here are some samples that Len posted about a week ago:

Flight of Passage:

• Posted 190 at 4:45, actual 81
• Posted 110 at 6:05, actual 78

Na’Vi River Journey:

• Posted 45 at 8:26, actual 21
• Posted 50 at 9:00, actual 28
• Posted 90 at 2:28, actual 66
• Posted 60 at 6:25, actual 47
• Posted 45 at 7:25, actual 20

I have no idea if Disney was still doing this over the holiday weekend, but it would be interesting to know if the line was ever truly 6 hours.

That’s so interesting, why do they inflate the times?

 

[Ensusieasm]

I rode FoP 4 times in a row in January from 9am till 11:00 am one day.
I had booked a 9:05am fast pass at 65 days out, and then I was given 3 anytime fast passes at a DVC info tour session for any ride except Frozen, Slinky, and Aliens. It would have been silly to use the three extra fast passes for anything else but FoP.
I have to admit that I was feeling a tiny bit woozy after that marathon.
I would never wait more than 20 minutes for any ride.
Rope drop and fastPass+ is the answer.

 

[disneyland_is_magic]

That’s so interesting, why do they inflate the times?

Everyone has a story of wildly inaccurate times at Disney either bad or good.
Last summer at DL we went to Mickey’s house and my sister saw the 35 minute wait and flat out said no, she was not waiting while holding fussy toddlers. (Strollers aren’t allowed in Toon Town.) Sure enough I coaxed her and we winded all the way through his house, stopping to look at the props, a CM appeared, opened the door and we walked into Mickey with just two families in front of us.
It’s sure a pleasant surprise when it happens.

 

[MarkE83]

That’s so interesting, why do they inflate the times?

One of Len’s theories is that they want to make the park seem bruiser to justify constantly upping ticket prices. This way they can say “we keep making it more expensive to try and control the crowds a bit, but it’s not working”...
“Oh well let’s raise prices again and see if that helps”