Scoring issue with Buzz is a symptom of a bigger issue

[WonkaKid]

For the past six weeks or so there's been a (read: yet another) problem with the Buzz Lightyear scoring. In short, it seems that random riders are granted/gifted scores that are both virtually impossible to beat and, indeed, impossible to even score. At some point past 2,097,000, scores reset and start over from zero. It happens to me regularly when I accidentally lose track of my mental score. On my first Buzz ride of the day, I'll get a decent score (1.8M+) only to emerge from the ride to see a scoreboard that resembles the one below. Note that the top four scores are not achievable since no target earns a score that doesn't end in zero. That is, there is nothing riders can shoot that will give them a score of 51 or 27 (or any combination thereof). Therefore, I presume that this is either a system error... or it's being done intentionally to discourage regular riders like me and several friends. Indeed, a family I know who used to ride it regularly told me last Sunday that they won't do it anymore. No idea why Disney would want to discourage regular riders but it's at least a possibility.

Here's the bigger issue. Three times in the past I've written (snail mail) to the park president to raise various issues. I've always received a call to discuss my concern/problem within about ten days. Earlier this month I sent a letter that detailed this scoring issue. This time, though, I merely received a general email in response. Nothing I mentioned in my letter was addressed. In short, I think it's a sign of the times that guest concerns aren't a priority and/or Disney no longer cares about the guest experience. I used to love going to DL but things have changed in my life and, as we all know, things have changed for the worse at Disney. I don't plan to renew my pass when it expires at the end of August. It's too much money for too little value anymore.

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[DizMe]

Oh no! I'm sorry to hear this, Rob. I can't really understand why Disney would do this, but I do think you ought to give it another try and see if you can connect with someone within the administration who will respond to your concerns. Maybe send the same letter to several departments?

 

[goofy1954]

Isn't a complete upgrade of the Buzz targeting and scoring system being scheduled?

 

[disneychrista]

Isn't a complete upgrade of the Buzz targeting and scoring system being scheduled?

At Walt Disney World it is. Not at Disneyland (yet).

 

[goofy1954]

Sounds like it should happen in California, too.

 

[maleficent55]

No idea, but hey Rob! Good to see you, it's been awhile

 

[Diana ZP]

For the past six weeks or so there's been a (read: yet another) problem with the Buzz Lightyear scoring. In short, it seems that random riders are granted/gifted scores that are both virtually impossible to beat and, indeed, impossible to even score. At some point past 2,097,000, scores reset and start over from zero. It happens to me regularly when I accidentally lose track of my mental score. On my first Buzz ride of the day, I'll get a decent score (1.8M+) only to emerge from the ride to see a scoreboard that resembles the one below. Note that the top four scores are not achievable since no target earns a score that doesn't end in zero. That is, there is nothing riders can shoot that will give them a score of 51 or 27 (or any combination thereof). Therefore, I presume that this is either a system error... or it's being done intentionally to discourage regular riders like me and several friends. Indeed, a family I know who used to ride it regularly told me last Sunday that they won't do it anymore. No idea why Disney would want to discourage regular riders but it's at least a possibility.

Here's the bigger issue. Three times in the past I've written (snail mail) to the park president to raise various issues. I've always received a call to discuss my concern/problem within about ten days. Earlier this month I sent a letter that detailed this scoring issue. This time, though, I merely received a general email in response. Nothing I mentioned in my letter was addressed. In short, I think it's a sign of the times that guest concerns aren't a priority and/or Disney no longer cares about the guest experience. I used to love going to DL but things have changed in my life and, as we all know, things have changed for the worse at Disney. I don't plan to renew my pass when it expires at the end of August. It's too much money for too little value anymore.

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Welcome back to the boards Rob!!!!

 

[Evita_W]

Here's the bigger issue. Three times in the past I've written (snail mail) to the park president to raise various issues. I've always received a call to discuss my concern/problem within about ten days. Earlier this month I sent a letter that detailed this scoring issue. This time, though, I merely received a general email in response. Nothing I mentioned in my letter was addressed. In short, I think it's a sign of the times that guest concerns aren't a priority and/or Disney no longer cares about the guest experience. I used to love going to DL but things have changed in my life and, as we all know, things have changed for the worse at Disney. I don't plan to renew my pass when it expires at the end of August. It's too much money for too little value anymore.

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DH has felt that this has been an ongoing issue with Disney for a while now and then he went to Silver Dollar City and Dollywood again last year and honestly they made Disney look bad, even on Disney's best guest service days ever when they really did care about the guest experience. Even Knott's does better with this than Disney and ultimately that is likely to come back and bite them in the near future as tourism dries up and they are going to be much more dependent on the locals again and I don't know that the locals will support them like they once did.

 

[WonkaKid]

Pic of the Sunday board. There are two possibilities here:
1. Ten people got the exact same unobtainable score.
2. There’s a bug of some sort… that they seem to have little interest in fixing.

 

[Diana ZP]

Definitely a bug...yeesh

 

[brightlined]

Pic of the Sunday board. There are two possibilities here
1. Ten people got the exact same unobtainable score.
2. There’s a bug of some sort… that they seem to have little interest in fixing.

3. That's the maximum score in the hardware/software, and it no longer resets if you exceed it - it just tops out at that.

Btw: 2097151 is not a random number. That's 2 to the 21st power minus 1. It's the max limit of a 21-digit binary number, and/or a 21-bit processor. (In software, the counts start with 0 instead of 1, which is why it's one less.) I could not guess if that's a software limit or a hardware limit.

There's an argument that this is a "fix" rather than a bug, even if the outcome is confusing or undesirable. If the choice is having your score unexpectedly reset to 0 or stay at a specific maximum - say, 999,999 - it seems like the lion's share of people would choose the latter. Resetting to 0 seems like a punishment that you wouldn't be able to explain to the rider.

(For me, the "correct" fix here would be to max the software out at 999,999 so that it matches the vehicles - that solves all of the confusion.)

To be fair, that doesn't explain the non-00 scores in your original picture. But if they didn't write code to accommodate the upper limit - which they really should have (resetting to 0 is a lousy workaround) - it wouldn't be surprising to have unexpected results.

 

[WonkaKid]

3. That's the maximum score in the hardware/software, and it no longer resets if you exceed it - it just tops out at that.

It still resets. Happened to me about ten days ago. I came out and only had 5,000... and I knew that my score was close to/around 2,090,000. It's not always easy to keep track in your head because occasionally it's unclear if a certain score/target counted/registered. Of course it's possible that it was a mistake and the system only gave me 5,000. Such things are not unknown with that attraction.

I've been on Buzz many, many times. I've never seen ten people get scores more than 2M or, indeed, even in the upper one millions, so it seems unlikely to me that on this particular day it happened. Is it possible? Sure. But unlikely. Whatever the case, this is an issue. It used to be that there was no cap on scores. People I knew sometimes got three, four or even five million. I think they broke it intentionally.

Btw: 2097151 is not a random number. That's 2 to the 21st power minus 1. It's the max limit of a 21-digit binary number, and/or a 21-bit processor. (In software, the counts start with 0 instead of 1, which is why it's one less.) I could not guess if that's a software limit or a hardware limit.

Makes sense. I don't doubt that there's a reason for it. I just hope they fix it... although I don't expect that they will.

There's an argument that this is a "fix" rather than a bug, even if the outcome is confusing or undesirable. If the choice is having your score unexpectedly reset to 0 or stay at a specific maximum - say, 999,999 - it seems like the lion's share of people would choose the latter. Resetting to 0 seems like a punishment that you wouldn't be able to explain to the rider.

Also makes sense. Still annoying, though .

(For me, the "correct" fix here would be to max the software out at 999,999 so that it matches the vehicles - that solves all of the confusion.)

Yes and no. If you know that you scored, say, 1.9M, your placement on the board would be the same as someone who scored 1M. Is this a big problem? Of course not. I always say to friends that any complaint(s) I have at DL are First-World, one-percenter problems ;-). But given how expensive DL is (my pass last year was $1,600), it feels like things should work. Maybe they can apply the Buzz scoring system to the pass renewal process and when the cost exceeds, say, $1,000, the price resets to zero ;-). Not surprisingly, that system works flawlessly and gets every number correct down to fifteen decimal places ;-).

To be fair, that doesn't explain the non-00 scores in your original picture. But if they didn't write code to accommodate the upper limit - which they really should have (resetting to 0 is a lousy workaround) - it wouldn't be surprising to have unexpected results.

Also makes sense. Also still annoying .

 

[brightlined]

I think they broke it intentionally.

The problem is that neither of us know why it happened.

I would be very surprised that they would break something intentionally and have it end up being this ham-handed. From an overall show standpoint, this is bad show. It doesn't make sense to anyone - the leaderboard is essentially useless.

If I were going to go after the high scorers intentionally, I would cap the board at 999,999 and/or set to it to hourly highs. Truthfully, I would probably just turn the monitor off. (Doing that would end the matter in seconds, and the score would still show up on the photos, which is really the place where the average rider would see it.) Any of those options would be way more effective than something this random.


I'm curious if this started around the time that they upgraded the photos last fall.

It's a 20-year-old hardware/software-based ride. Among a number of possibilities, it wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility that they needed more memory space to handle the photo change. (21-bit is a weird choice. 21-bit processors exist, but I'd be more inclined to think that they simply capped the score variable to 21-bits to make space for something else.)

But it could be anything.


I'm trying to hold my other feelings on this topic. I totally get that this is something you care about, and I don't want to take that away from you.

But this isn't a 1% problem. It might not be a 0.01% problem. Across the resort, this affects an extremely small number of guests. (I'm not surprised that they didn't get back to you about this.) Buzz can handle 25,000 riders in a day - very, very few riders would even recognize this as an issue. (WDW's version of this ride doesn't even have the leaderboard - if you hit 999,999, you win.)

The timing isn't great to make the point that this is a sign of anything at the resort. A significant percentage of the resort has been and will be improved this year. I mean, they fixed the cannons on ROTR, which I thought would never happen - that ride doesn't need to have them.

Hardware/software rides often don't have easy fixes for things like this, especially at this age. And we can't rule out that they know it's a problem and have a plan to fix it - that they just can't do it right now.

I do think they'll figure something out for this eventually. Hardware/software rides eventually need to be upgraded - especially after 20+ years. I would bet those upgrades are coming, but certainly not until after WDW gets theirs. If it isn't solved sooner than that, it would easily be solved then.