Average Day at MK- Rope Drop, Crowds, and Wait Times

[MikeandReneePlus5]

I think you're raising an interesting point. I do think there are a lot of people going to Figment because they have a FP for it that wouldn't have done it otherwise.

I do wonder how often the actual wait for Figment is 30 minutes and how many people are really waiting that long. On our trip the week after Easter we ended up with FPs for Figment on our departure day, the Saturday after Easter. We originally had FPs for MK that day, but because we had spent a lot of time at MK during the week and had done everything we wanted there, we decided the day before to go to Epcot instead. Because we had to leave the park by 2 PM to get back and catch the DME, our FP options were pretty limited and we picked Figment for one because we hadn't done it yet on the trip.

We used the FP at about noon, and the posted wait time was something like 30 minutes. Without a FP we would not have entered the ride, unless it was just to see how long the line really looked. As we entered, the CM was telling guests entering the standby line that the wait was probably about 15 minutes. When we saw how short the line was and how few people were in the FP line, I suspect those in the standby line waited even less than 15 minutes.

That experience was one of several that give me the impression that a lot of these posted waits are overstated, not necessarily intentionally, but because it is impossible to predict exactly how many people are going to arrive with FPs in the next 10-15 minutes. In the case of Figment, I would suspect that a higher percentage of the FPs distributed go unused than for a lot of other attractions. So, the posted standby wait may be accounting for the possibility of FP returns that don't materialize. Or maybe what I saw that day was not typical.

I would be curious to know how many people on the Dis have actually entered a standby line at Figment when the posted wait was 30 minutes or more. They may be hard to find.

I hadn't considered that they adjust the posted wait times for the potential FP+ returners that might come.

Dunno about Figment, but we rode Dinosaur last week and the posted time was 30 minutes and the wait was literally zero - we walked straight to our time travel machine even the doors to the little pre show were open on both sides.

I think you may have explained why.

 

[wisblue]

I don't think there's any question that posting an accurate standby wait time is more difficult when FPs are thrown into the mix.

With no FPs, it is relatively easy to see where the line ends and use experience to know that a line that extends to a certain point typically translates to a certain number of people and a certain wait time. But, if a line has a number of people in standby that would produce a wait time of 15 minutes by itself, the person at the back of the line is obviously going to wait longer than that if 10-20 minutes worth of guests with FPs arrive in the meantime.

I have always thought that Disney intentionally inflated posted wait times by at least some amount because of the psychology involved. As others have said, if the wait is posted at 30 minutes and the guest actually waits 20 minutes, he's going to feel better about the wait than if it is posted at 10 and the actual wait is 20. Take the general approach to err on the side of posting a longer wait and add in the uncertainty of FP returns and that could produce posted wait times that are that much longer than the actual waits.

Someone with complete data about posted standby waits and actual standby waits might be able to determine if my experience is typical or if I am just lucky. It might also be that any disparity between posted and actual waits is more pronounced in the first few hours after the park is open and the last hour or two before it closes.

Edited to correct typo in last sentence.

 

[FallsChurchDad]

I hadn't considered that they adjust the posted wait times for the potential FP+ returners that might come.

Definitely, they have to. The extreme example is character meets, since just a few returnees can make a big difference. We got to Tinker Bell once last year, and the posted wait was 15 minutes, even though we were the next ones inside. Two groups came with FP right after us, and were let in right in front of us. We ended up waiting a total of exactly 15 minutes, but that was a complete (though kind of impressive) coincidence. Disney is learning more and more about guest behavior, but they will never be able to predict wait times to the exact minute, especially with the uncertainty of FP returns.

 

[MikeandReneePlus5]

Disney is learning more and more about guest behavior, but they will never be able to predict wait times to the exact minute, especially with the uncertainty of FP returns.

I bet they'll get even better though.

I suppose they will be able to know, for example, that if you have a FP+ for Space mountain but they can "see" (via your Magic Band) that you are currently in Epcot and can't possible make it they would be able to factor that in to wait times somehow. Or put your FP+ back into SM inventory.

whether the cost of calculating that kind of thing is worth the added exactness I don't know.

 

[notfrostyjosh]

What I think Jennytoon's main point (or question) is is a good one - how do we truly isolate the effects of FastPass+ on how long people actually spend waiting in standby lines at individual attractions. Given everything else is absolutely the same. Or somehow accounting for all of those changes in the analysis. It is probably an impossible bar to reach. Even if you had actual standby waits all day, every day, you'd still have to account for new attractions, altered crowd flow, attraction closures, attendance increases etc.

TouringPlans tried to account for attendance in this post: http://blog.touringplans.com/2014/04/03/how-fastpass-plus-affects-your-wait-update/ but just increased wait times by 8% to account for an 8% increase in attendance and only accounted for wait times between 10am and 5pm, among other things. But you do get to hear about things like t-tests and 95% confidence and whatnot and their conclusions are somewhat similar to mine even given very different methodology.

But the title of that post last year would have been more accurate if it was titled, "How FastPass+ (and everything else that has changed) is Affecting Standby Wait Times." You're not wrong about that.

 

[wisblue]

Even recognizing the problem with translating posted waits to actual waits, if I had access to all of the posted wait time data for the last few years, it would be interesting to do some comparisons for certain attractions.

For example, I would take one of the attractions that is often mentioned as having significantly longer lines, like the Haunted Mansion, and look at the posted wait at a specific time (like 1 PM) every day for about a month in 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015.

The reason I am interested in this is that, as someone who often had to visit during school breaks around Easter, and occasionally at Christmas, we are accustomed to seeing sizeable wait times at attractions like this in the middle of the day. Even going back to the 1990's, if we returned to the MK at around 5 PM after an afternoon at the pool, it was difficult to find attractions with waits under 30 minutes. I don't care about being so mathematically precise to determine if the average increase is 10 or 12 minutes. But, it would be interesting to me to know if the difference is closer to 5-10 minutes or 20-30 minutes or more.

I would also be interested in Josh's observation about how actual waits compare to posted waits when he does wait in the standby line. There have been posters on the Dis who have reported that posted waits have been less accurate than on their previous trips and that actual waits are now often longer than the posted waits. That has not been my experience in my 4 visits since last August. As I have said before, we have always observed that actual waits are shorter than posted waits much more often than longer, and that hasn't changed in the last couple of years.

 

[Planogirl]

I've seen a lot of posts that say that posted wait times are inaccurate too but it seems that these can be inaccurate in either direction. I suspect that they inflate the wait times just before closing but I don't see any sense in them doing this the rest of the time unless it's to make people feel better about their wait. Those waits that go over are likely flaws in their estimates.