Walt Disney World prepares to open amid praise and criticism

I admittedly expected more before the only time I rode it. It was good, but didn't live up to the hype the endless years of Pandora construction gave it.

Also of note, I still haven't gotten on Flight of Passage or Rise of the Resistance. I know many consider them the best of the best anywhere.

I still call it the Smurf River Adventure. I did it five times during a passholder preview. Maybe I should see the movie, but I was like, "meh."

I rode FoP once and thought that was perfectly fine. I did not find it the best ever anything. Part of it was nausea, part of it was my son who didn't like it at all, and part of it was the hype and difficulty getting on it setting unattainable expectations. Honestly, at this point I'd rather ride Soarin' (which, I think is in my top 5 best rides in the whole complex).

The Times account of reopening day seems consistent with what locals have said. Generally folks are following the rules, people are sparse and it's kind of a half-baked experience with plexiglass everywhere.

Disney World Opens Its Gates, With Virus Numbers Rising https://nyti.ms/2OmoxyJ

I almost had to stop reading at this point:

“I’m so overwhelmed with emotion,” a weeping Ms. Little said, as she stood on Main Street USA wearing Minnie Mouse ears. “The last few months have been so hard. We have just felt so defeated. Being here gives me the strength to go on.”

Because you yourself were getting a little teary eyed reading about the emotional response from Ms Little?

ApolloAndy said:

I rode FoP once and thought that was perfectly fine. I did not find it the best ever anything. Part of it was nausea...

That is exactly how I feel about Forbidden Journey at Islands of Adventure. Between having no interest in Harry Potter and the screen portions of ride making me a bit queasy (the "live action" non screen scenes are very impressive, I absolutely will give it that credit) I have never had the "wow" factor from it.

Yeah. I had the exact same reaction to Forbidden Journey at USH. It also didn't help that I rode it twice and it stopped at some point in the middle of the ride both times. I mean, some of the mechanics and integration of screens and live effects was incredibly impressive, but nausea plus not super caring about the characters kind of made me luke warm on the ride.

Forbidden Journey is a great ride, but it's always been a bit much for me in terms of movement.

I think if they were to tone down the movement of your vehicle/the Kuka arm even a little bit, it would be more pleasant and rerideable for a lot of people.

I've ridden NRJ twice and both times I kept waiting for the actual ride to start because the boats just meander in one big continuous queue. I kept expecting something to separate the boats but it never happens.

Someone overlaid the Shining theme music over Disney's "please come back" video. If you needed some dark humor today, here you go.

https://movieweb.com/disney-world-welcome-back-video-the-shining-mashup/

They also did Us

The Twitter went nuts with those dubs. They're kind of hilarious, but I don't think they're giving Disney enough credit.

I'm old. I don't get why putting some random horror movie soundtrack to a Disney video warrants any attention at all. Nothing is in synch. Its just music playing over a video.

Okay. So I'm super bored on quarantine and also have spent a lot of time thinking about FastPass, so it's time for GRAPHS! Obviously, everything is broad generalizations and nothing is a fine line - there's lots of gradients that I couldn't illustrate. None the less, don't confuse the details with the overall point.

The following are graphs of the acceptable trade off for hassle to get on a ride which includes wait time, research, getting up early, prior knowledge, running around etc. (in arbitrary units). If a ride falls below the trade off line for the demographic, the person will ride it. If it's above the trade off line, the person will pass. Obviously coaster nerds are willing to go to much greater lengths for a ride than grandma and grandpa. It's almost certainly not linear, but whatever...

The area indicated by the arrow in the figure below represents the sweet spot for coaster nerds. The closer to the top of grandma and grandpa's line the better. Rides in that area have the best value proposition for hassle vs. awesomeness. Theoretically, rides vertically below the sweet spot would be even better, but such rides don't exist because grandmas and grandpas are clogging up the lines (see below).

On the "all standby system" illustrated below, rides (red area) fell in a wide range of places on the graph, depending on a lot of factors. Rides have a fixed awesomeness, but move vertically throughout the day or season (depending on crowds, weather, breakdowns, etc.). However, the data points generally fall within the area and are generally distributed throughout the area. Often, some rides fell in a good place for coaster nerds near the sweet spot, but they could get really far from the sweet spot at times. For instance, on super crowded days, all the points would move vertically upwards towards the top red line. Occasionally, they would stray outside of the limits of the coaster nerds' tolerance (above the coaster nerd line) and they would pass.

The below diagram illustrates what things look like with MaxPass/Paper FP. There's a barrier to entry in understanding the system and cool down times and strategizing which rides to get when. It's not enormous but it's enough to exclude most grandmas and grandpas from really getting good use out of the system. Maybe they pick up one or two FP's but they certainly aren't stacking them on top of each other all day long and they're probably not rope dropping the FP dispenser for Flight of Passage, meaning they aren't riding FoP at all (this is literally what happens with Radiator Springs Racers at DCA). MaxPass and standby data points are mixed together in the area because the hassle of learning to effectively use MaxPass and then doing so is comparable to the hassle of waiting in line.

Finally, this is what I think FPP does and why some Disnerds hate it so much. It basically splits the ride availability that was around the sweet spot into two sections and moves them totally away from the sweet spot to two really disadvantageous areas. Now, it's super easy for everyone to get a couple of rides at basically no hassle and then everything else is incredibly difficult. So it makes life really bad for the coaster nerds, but I think it does make life much, much better for grandma and grandpa.

That sums it up well. It's hard for us enthusiast types to power ride Tower of Terror and Rock n Roller Coaster. But a random visitor that may only do 3 rides in a whole day anyway now has guaranteed priority access to them.

ApolloAndy said:

None the less, don't confuse the details with the overall point.

Hahahahahahahahaha! *snort* *snicker* Bwahahahahahahahah! *ahem* *snort* *pfft* Hahahahahahahaha!

*catches breath* *wipes eyes*

Lololololololololololollolololoooloolloloo!!!!!!!

*deep breaths*

Oh ****. You were serious.