FastPass at Disney World: How much is too much?

LostKause said:
Those who piggyback are still waiting longer in the standby line than if fastpass didn't exist.

Yes they are going to get to ride two rides in the amount of time that it would take to ride one, but if their were no fastpass to begin with, they would be waiting for their turn much less.

So which is it?

How exactly are they waiting longer, but getting more rides at the same time?

How is that even possible? :)

See the flaw in your logic?

Let's break it down, LK style!

The more people standing in lines, the longer the waits are. So far am I correct?

Sure.

If some people are standing in two lines at the same time, they are taking up the same amount of line as two people would take up (let's call that the doppelganger effect). Am I still right?

Sure. Mostly. For the sake of your point, I'll agree.

The more people created by this doppelganger effect, the longer the wait times will get. Can I get an Amen? lol

Aww, this is where it falls all apart.

Only stand-by lines get longer. That's balanced by a much shorter FP line.

And without cold, hard numbers we'll never know exactly what the effect is, but based on the idea that we're working with a fixed number of rides and the same number are given with or without FP, then the net gain in stand-by lines can't be greater than the decrease in using FP. It just can't be if they give the same number of rides per day.

Those who piggyback are still waiting longer in the standby line than if fastpass didn't exist.

Let me amend my prior statement to be: not if you use it properly.

When you get a fastpass for Splash Mountain, you don't go off and get in Thunder's big long standby line. That's nuts. In any park---including the Disney parks, even with Fastpass---there are some attractions that don't generate long lines for good chunks of the day. You go on Pirates or, if that line is longer than about 15 minutes, maybe over to the Tiki Room, which never is backed up more than one show cycle. Or you catch the Banjo Brothers and Bob. Or take the train for a grand circle tour. Or see if the Cast Members in the Splash exit shop have that last Haunted Mansion pin you've been trying to trade for. Or grab a mickeybar and chill in the shade. Or whatever.

Then, when your Splash time rolls around, you grab a set for Thunder before you hop on Splash.

I've spent about 6-7 weeks in Disney parks over the past five years, and that includes some holiday weeks (President's and Memorial Day). I've waited in a line that took longer than 15 minutes no more than five or six times, total. The longest was about 45 minutes for Toy Story when it was in previews, but before Fastpass had been turned on.

I'm telling you, fastpass is freaking awesome.

Lord Gonchar said:

LostKause said:

The more people created by this doppelganger effect, the longer the wait times will get. Can I get an Amen? lol

Aww, this is where it falls all apart.

Only stand-by lines get longer. That's balanced by a much shorter FP line.

And without cold, hard numbers we'll never know exactly what the effect is, but based on the idea that we're working with a fixed number of rides and the same number are given with or without FP, then the net gain in stand-by lines can't be greater than the decrease in using FP. It just can't be if they give the same number of rides per day.

I comprehend the points made, but something still doesn't seem right to me. Have you ever went to get a fastpass only to find that the ride time is 4 hours later? If stand-by is longer, and fastpass is longer, then what's shorter? That's what I am getting at I suppose.

It evens out at the end of each day, but some people who got their fastpassess earlier in the day had an advantage.

So perhaps fastpass works well up until a certain point in the day when it gets backed up? Does it work better earlier in the day?

Trying to come up with pros and cons of virtual queue systems hurts my brain... In a sad, sad future, we'll have our entire day planned out for us. Sadly, POP is a dying system. Thank God for CF...for now.

And I'll agree that fastpass is awesome, because I know how to make it work to my advantage.

LostKause said:
Have you ever went to get a fastpass only to find that the ride time is 4 hours later? If stand-by is longer, and fastpass is longer, then what's shorter?

Just because your FP time is for four hours from now doesn't mean you're in a virtual line for four hours...technically speaking, of course.

If you get a FP at noon that says to come back at 4pm and the stand-by is 45 minutes, you're not virtually in that line until 3:15. This is because Disney only gives a certain amount of virtual spots and controls how many people are virtually anywhere at any given time. It's not like Q-bot where you can go to whichever ride you want and use your VQ privledges however you'd like.

Or something like that. :)

I've encountered instances where a FastPass cache was depleted, and I just come back the next day. And yeah, most people visit for several days, so don't bother me with the stupid fringe case of a single-day visitor.

Seriously, if anyone is complaining about FastPass, they're over-thinking how to use it. It has never been a hindrance, I've always been able to ride everything, and I've never spent a lot of time in line for anything.

Sadly, POP is a dying system.

Irrelevant. Disney's VQ system is, for the moment, fully included in your ticket, and everyone has equal access to it. They do not yet give preference to onsite guests, etc.

Which is precisely why I give Disney so much credit. They've essentially created a system that is non-intrusive and benefits anyone who chooses to use it, without additional cost. Granted, they have multi-day stays and people-eating attractions, but that's beside the point.

Actually, Disney's system can be quite intrusive. I suspect that one of their goals with the way they have set the system up, with excessively large ratios for FastPass, is to discourage park-hopping. After all, the system has been all but completely removed from Disneyland, but the WDW parks are bouncing rides into the 70%-80% FastPass range. Why would they do that, do you suppose?

The fact is, while the ride capacity does not increase, the system does allow for nearly twice as many people to be waiting in the ride's now-increased queue. EVERYBODY ends up waiting longer as a result. From the time you take your FastPass ticket until you board the ride, you are waiting for that ride. Yes, it is important that you are now able to do something else while you wait, but the bottom line is, you will spend more time waiting in the virtual queue than you would have spent in the real queue if the system did not exist. And if you are standing in the real queue, you spend a hell of a lot more time waiting in line because you have to make room for all the people who are waiting in the virtual queue.

It's particularly bad at the Studio park, with the 80% FastPass ratio on the coaster, if you are in that park for the four or five rides it has to offer. Last time I was there, the FastPass time was three hours out and the "standby" queue was over an hour even though it wasn't particularly long. I was pretty annoyed about it until I found the single rider entrance. But then, I was your single-day edge case that day. I had less than a full operating day to do an E-ticket blitz through three parks, and it was FastPass that was making it look like an increasingly impractical goal. The particularly nasty part was when I got over to Epcot and FastPass distribution for Soarin' had been discontinued...and the large number of FastPass customers made the main line crawl...

--Dave Althoff, Jr. (note: .sig test in progress...)

Discourage park hopping? I don't buy that at all. If you're a meal plan user, and especially if you have no kids, you inevitably end up at Epcot every night, because that's where much of the best food is. Heck, Animal Kingdom isn't even open in a practical sense for dinner.

I also don't agree with your logic that waiting for your FastPass slot is still waiting. If I'm standing in a queue, I can't do anything else, but if I'm "waiting" with FP in hand, I'm eating, peeing or in the Hall of Presidents (never all at the same time ;)). You can't really say they're the same thing. And if you choose to get in a standby line, well, that's your choice, and not a very good one. Using FP is a parallel operation, not serial. At Cedar Point, I have to follow a linear pattern of queueing, riding, repeating. At Disneyworld, I can simultaneously "queue" and ride or eat or whatever.

And yeah, I think you're absolutely a fringe case as you describe, made worse by your primary interest only being the big rides.

Jeff said:
Using FP is a parallel operation, not serial. At Cedar Point, I have to follow a linear pattern of queueing, riding, repeating. At Disneyworld, I can simultaneously "queue" and ride or eat or whatever.

Kind of odd that this point gets lost in the discussion as this is the very reason FP exists.

But you have an excellent point. Anytime I'm not standing in line waiting to ride, well...I'm not standing in line waiting to ride...even if I'm holding a FP.

I know that hen isn't, but it almost sounds like Rideman is mocking me...lol.

I don't know what else to say except that Jeff and Goncher are both WRONG... ;)

For the most part I think that each ride has some amount of max time that the majority of people are willing to wait. Rides like roller coasters, new rides, popular rides - people are willing to wait longer. Other rides will have lower waits. My theory is that the standby line will always grow to this max time regardless if it has fastpass or not.

For example a popular ride with fastpass the standby line would grow to a one hour wait and would look like this:
|-----|

While the same ride without fastpass, I believe the standby line would still grow to be one hour but look like this:
|------------------------|

I think this then becomes a perception issue - people see short/slow moving standby lines on fastpass rides then think that without fastpass the wait time would be a lot less. This is where I think that the wait time would not be less it would be the same.

I think that part of the reason that Disneyland doesn't have more fastpass rides is because of the fact they already have narrow/crowded pathways and by not having fastpass you keep more guests in the lines – helping to ease the crowded paths.

That was exactly what Disneyland discovered. Apparently, for a while they tried to put FastPass *everywhere* and the result was that they didn't have anyplace to put all the people who were suddenly not standing in line. You can only eat, pee, and buy so much crap, and Disneyland doesn't have a Hall of Presidents...and because so much of Disneyland was built in the days before POP, Disneyland tends to have really short queues, meaning if there is a way to spread the people out and get them out of line, that would be a Good Thing for them to implement; what they found out was that there are so many people in the park that if you take them out of line, there's nowhere left for them to go!

That the FastPass idea is a parallel solution is not lost on me. Yes, you can go do other things, even stand in line for another ride if you want. It lets you wait for more than one ride at a time if you like. If the park actually had traffic patterns like we see at Cedar Point, they could even use FastPass for load balancing (although they would still find that people tend not to want to ride Splash Mountain after dark), but unfortunately the park layout often makes that somewhat impractical.

But I still don't understand how you could say that the time you spend waiting for your window to open is not time spent waiting for the ride. Sure, you don't have to stand in line, sure, you can do other things..but you are still waiting. And odds are you are waiting longer than you would have waited if the FastPass did not exist. In fact, if the system is at all rational, you will wait longer than the people who don't use FastPass. You may not mind the wait (because you're not standing in line) but you are still waiting.

Again, none of the virtual queue systems actually increases ride capacity, and no system reduces the rate at which people can join the queue (in fact, most systems are set up so that virtual queueing allows the queue to build *faster* than it normally would). The ONLY virtual queueing system I have seen that doesn't ultimately end up putting more total people in the queue than the ride can handle is the one Cedar Point tried for Millennium Force back in 2000, where ALL riders had to go through the virtual queue. And we all remember how well that worked out!

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

After all, the system has been all but completely removed from Disneyland, but the WDW parks are bouncing rides into the 70%-80% FastPass range.

While WDW is more aggressive in deployment, it is completely untrue to say that DLR has all but completely removed it. There are some guest flow issues at DL, but part of the problem at DLR was that they deployed FP at rides that never needed it, and don't benefit from it---e.g. people eaters like Pirates and Mansion. They've fixed those problems. (And WDW removed it from Mansion, as well, for the same reason.)

Toy Story is the other interesting example---FP is deployed at Studios, but not DCA. I'm told that WDI did not plan to deploy FP in either location, but TDO insisted. (I don't know whether to believe that story or not, but the source is fairly reliable.)

The other main difference between DLR and WDW is that DLR's attendance mix is heavily local, while WDW's is heavily tourist. That plays a role in such decisions as well.

But I still don't understand how you could say that the time you spend waiting for your window to open is not time spent waiting for the ride.

Technically, time must pass before you can ride that particular attraction, yes. But, for me, the quality of that time is vastly superior if I can choose to spend it however I like, rather than spend it in the switchbacks of even the most interesting WDI-designed queue.

Kind of odd that this point gets lost in the discussion as this is the very reason FP exists.

Getting guests to shop/dine more was one of the original motivations. As I understand it, it didn't work. Per-caps didn't really increase, and every other park that tried it has abandoned it as a free service---presumably because it costs more to implement than it returns in revenue. Disney keeps it because---surprise!---the guests love it, and Disney is more willing to spend money to generate goodwill (for future return visits) vs. an immediate payback on this visit.

I suspect Disney also hopes to better monetize FP in the future in Orlando, using it somehow as yet another way to market their resorts. Doing this in a way that doesn't manage to piss off the day guests will be a tricky challenge.

If the park actually had traffic patterns like we see at Cedar Point, they could even use FastPass for load balancing

In practice, it does get used this way. Not to distribute people to different places in the parks, because to varying degrees, each of the parks is designed to spread people out geographically anyway. (Though I still want to know who thought it was a good idea to make EPCOT Center's wienie the very first attraction everyone walked past.) Rather, it tends to increase ridership in the secondary and tertiary attractions. In effect, it tends to accomplish the same thing that the mix of ticket types in the old A-E ticket books did.

There are two problems with Fastpass. Not saying it's a deal breaker but it makes it harder for both FP users and stand by guests...

1.) Artificially increases waits. This is proven, check out the HM and Living with the Land when it used to have FP. Waits went from maybe 10 max to a half hour at times. This was due to both guests and their new fear of lines and Disney's poor implimentation. You can have more guests "in line" for a ride than actually are, making lines longer. It's an abstract idea that guests and CM's sometimes don't understand.

2.) Breakdowns. Again, proven, try to ride Test Track in stand-by after a breakdown. It doesn't happen. Fastpass becomes the stand-by as hours and hours of guests who were supposed to be spread out all converge on the ride in a short time. People complain and problems are caused.

The problems of Fastpass come from Disney's sloppy implimentation of the system, not it's inherent idea. We don't NEED FP for rides like Pirates or Haunted Mansion, but they put them in, with no modificantions to the algorythm, and messed up the loading of those rides.

The early days of Fastpass were great. Very few rides had it (I remember when it was only Space and Splash at MK, and heck, only at AK once!), it was "special", and didn't mess up rides that don't mesh with it well.

I don't mind Fastpass as long as it's on the major rides that people can get benifits from, but not every ride. Take it off of Big Thunder, Pooh, Mission:Space, and Star Tours (I forget if this still has it or not). Keep 2-4 rides per park with Fastpass.

I've seen Disney use Fast Pass for a bit of load balancing. When I was @ MGM in 07, I did what any self-respecting enthusiast would do: Got to the park at opening, grabbed a fast pass for ToT and queued for RnRC. However, the ToT Fast Pass machine spat out an extra FP for the first showing of Lights, Motors, Action.

Well after my 2 thrill rides, we indeed went to use the LMA FP....and so did a bunch of other people. There were hardly any people waiting in the standby line, nothing but FPers. It didnt matter, of course, as the stadium is huge. But I wonder how many people would have went to that first show w/o having that bonus FP.
lata, jeremy

RideMan said:
But I still don't understand how you could say that the time you spend waiting for your window to open is not time spent waiting for the ride. Sure, you don't have to stand in line, sure, you can do other things..but you are still waiting. And odds are you are waiting longer than you would have waited if the FastPass did not exist.

Come on, Dave, you're splitting hairs here. As far as I'm concerned, and I suspect any logical tourist would agree, if I'm not in standing in the queue, I'm not waiting. Waiting is something we can all agree is an inconvenience, and when you're using FastPass, there's no inconvenience. Now, if you consider having to come back at some other time an inconvenience ("you" in the non-specific sense), then that indicates some other problem with the person.

If you're annoyed by longer stand by lines, I have a tip. Take out your ticket, put it in the little machine, and get a FastPass. Enjoy another attraction while you "wait." :)

The Mole said:
1.) Artificially increases waits. This is proven, check out the HM and Living with the Land when it used to have FP. Waits went from maybe 10 max to a half hour at times. This was due to both guests and their new fear of lines and Disney's poor implimentation. You can have more guests "in line" for a ride than actually are, making lines longer. It's an abstract idea that guests and CM's sometimes don't understand.

Several people have said this now...and I get the idea.

But no one has been able to explain how everyone is suddenly waiting longer, yet they still give the same number of rides in the same amount of time.

Capacity hasn't suddenly decreased, so they have to be moving the same number of people through the queues (FP and stand-by) as they did before.

Somebody isn't waiting longer..at all. And if someone is waiting longer for their ride, then somebody else is actually waiting less - they have to be if capacity remains constant.

I personally think people in the stand by lines simply "feel" like they are waiting longer because not as many people from the stand by line are being allowed on the ride as before. Unless someone has graphs showing average stand by wait times before and after FastPass I have a hard time believing they have changed that drastically.

Think in terms of crush loads (which, at the Magic Kingdom, is pretty much any time if the park is at all busy).

The virtual queue system does not increase the number of people who can experience an attraction. The capacity of the ride does not increase.

It DOES increase the number of people who can enter the queue for the attraction in any given hour.

This is because while the FastPass tickets are rate-limited, the standby queue (effectively) is not, and the standby queue load is not accounted for in the FastPass ticket distribution. In fact, on slow days they probably should make such an allowance as there are situations where not all of the available FastPass tickets for a given hour get distributed, but because the attendants do not know that fact, they maintain the normal FastPass percentage instead of making up the difference (saw that on R'NRC resulting in half-empty pre-shows and the crews having difficulty keeping the trains full!).

So, say your ride can handle 2,000 PPH, and you're running it at 80% FastPass. People arrive at the ride entrance continuously, and can squeeze into the turnstile at the rate of about 2,400 PPH, though they arrive a lot faster than that. The FastPass transaction takes about ten seconds, but there are six machines, so tickets get distributed at up to 2,160 tickets per hour. 80% FastPass means only 1,600 FastPass people per hour.

Under this insane situation (think Indy at Disneyland on Christmas. Been there, done that.) in an hour you're packing 2,400 people into the real queue and 2,160 into the virtual queue. After one hour, you have 4,560 people who have entered the ride queue. Of those people 1,600 of your virtual queue people and 800 of the real queue people get to ride in the first hour. So at the end of the hour, you have 1,600 people standing in the regular queue, and 560 people waiting in the virtual queue.

Of course, in reality, this kind of a crush load doesn't keep up all day long. But that is a good thing. Because if it keeps up for just one hour, the real queue, which is running at 800 PPH, gets backed up into a two hour wait. The virtual queue in this case actually does initially move a little faster, as someone arriving at the end of the first hour will only be asked to wait about 20 minutes. But that number is going to deteriorate as well, and with a 2+ hour wait in the real queue, the virtual queue machines are going to stay busy until the allotment is gone. Incidentally, in a 12-hour operating day, that allotment of 19,200 tickets will be gone in just over eight hours. Meanwhile, because the real queue is so badly throttled, there is no way for that queue to recover from the 2-hour wait that got dumped on it in the first hour.

By comparison, if you only have the real queue, it collects riders at 2,400 PPH and the ride takes them away at 2,000 PPH. That means after an hour at extreme crush load, you still only have 400 people who didn't get to ride in the first hour (12 minute wait), 800 people after two hours (24 minute wait).

Something else you can see from this kind of analysis is that if the ride breaks down, it is VITALLY IMPORTANT to CLOSE THE ENTRANCE. The key to managing the queue is to not let the crowd get ahead of the ride any more than absolutely necessary. The queue entrance is rate-limited to about 2,400 PPH assuming it is a single lane, but unless you are Gemini, Dueling Dragons, or it's a small world, it's unlikely that the ride is going to take people away any faster than that. It's the difference between arrivals and departures that gives you a long line.

Let me turn the question around a bit.

What's wrong with a system where EVERYBODY has to obtain a ride time in order to ride? Why not run the ride at 100% FastPass? Why is it that 80% FastPass is acceptable but 100% FastPass is not?

On a ride that can move 1,200 PPH, an hour of crush load yields a one hour wait without a virtual queue. The problems of a 100% virtual queue are well documented over on PointBuzz, but could it be fixed? Can you rate-limit the virtual queue entries? Or will that just turn a long line for the ride into a long line for the virtual queue machine? If you can't boost the ride capacity to 2,400 PPH, what else can you do to reduce the lines?

--Dave Althoff, Jr.