I don't go to Disney parks very often but the "expanded ride reservation system" mentioned in this article has actually gone from good to terrible, and I think it has contributed to longer waits.<p>The old Fastpass system required you to go visit a kiosk near the ride itself, and acquire a ticket for a specific time window later in the day, at which point you could go in via a shorter priority line. It worked great and was actually kind of fun.<p>I understand they would want to get rid of the physical passes the machine printed out as the machines were probably maintenance nightmares, but they did more than that. They changed the system entirely to an app, which is fine in itself, but they eliminated the need to visit the ride area to get the pass, which is part of what made the system fair. Instead, you can schedule the passes ahead of time, even for future days, and of course passholders and people staying at the park get priority, so all the popular rides' Fastpasses are already gone by the time the typical visitor is even able to attempt to schedule anything, which means they will just have to wait in the regular long line because there's no way smooth out the demand across the day anymore, since all the scheduling happens for a select group ahead of time without requiring any physical commitment.<p>In short, they sabotaged themselves, at least from this visitor's POV. Fastpass was one of my favorite bits of visiting Disney parks, but the new system is one of my LEAST favorite bits. Ah well.
I always wondered why Disney doesn't open a third park somewhere square in the middle of the U.S. There's literally no competition with Disney parks as they're one-of-a-kind and it would both open more space at their other parks and bring in a huge segment of the population that doesn't go to their parks simply because of travel costs. Disneyland and Disney World are <i>always</i> busy. Look at the data. It might be time.
If the strategy of avoiding long lines captures your interest, you'll probably enjoy the El Farol Bar problem (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Farol_Bar_problem" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Farol_Bar_problem</a>) and more general minority games.
Former Disneyland CM (Cast Member) here.<p>Burgeoning wait times, and park overcrowding is (in my opinion) largely a result of Annual Pass sales. The AP's come out, clog up the park and make it less hospitable to non-AP guests.
> <i>During the first month after it opened, the new Guardians attraction had an average wait time of 93 minutes, with the maximum wait time climbing to five hours, according to the data.</i><p>Words escape me.
Back in '92, right after my discharge from the Air Force, I went to work for a copier company, who sent me to LA for training on how to repair copiers. It happened to be during the week of the LA Riots!<p>My instructors told us to take the day off and they stayed home to protect their homes. I hopped the bus to Disneyland.<p>There were no lines there that day. I rode Space Mountain about 12 times!
It looks like by the article raising ticket prices did not reduce the number of people into the park. I think they should have just capped the number of people in the park at one time, in addition to the increased ticket prices. I feel like Disney is a melting pot. It's affordable at some time interval for just about every family. If the prices keep going up it could risk being less of that melting pot, and more of just the pot with more money.
In Tokyo they just built a second park right next to the first one <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_DisneySea" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_DisneySea</a>
IF this were Uber Disney ..they would do surge pricing, and although the media would get mad but at least the lines would be shorter for those willing to pay
I'd like to take my little girl there but after hearing wait time I am kind of withdraw to the idea. Does someone have any tip to visiting DL to minimize the suffering for us adults (i.e time of year, what ride/fun things are worth the wait, etc..)
Growing up somewhat near Cedar Point I'm actually surprised at Disneyland's wait times aren't longer.<p>These are from 2013, but wait times at Cedar Point are much worse! <a href="http://www.fodors.com/community/united-states/cedar-point-wait-times.cfm#comment-8222807" rel="nofollow">http://www.fodors.com/community/united-states/cedar-point-wa...</a>
Do they do staggered ticket pricing based on what attractions are accessible? Last time my family was passing through LA, I looked into taking my 3 and 7 year olds. We could only see the one ticket price. Thought it was just too expensive considering the younger kid wouldn't have been able to nor would have wanted to ride most of the attractions. It would have been nice to bring them just to poke around...
They probably need to create a phone app that tracks guests, and then offer a discount for people to install it on their phones. It might be the best way to divide the customer base into various profiles that could later serve for computer simulations & models for when different events happen: ticket price changes, rides opened & closed, etc.
"passholders and people staying at the park get priority"<p>They didn't trade a faster system for a slower system, they started price descriminating to further maximize their profits. You just happen to be in the group that gets a slower experience.
> Average wait times at the Disneyland Resort have been on the rise over the past few years, despite efforts by the park to ease crowding by raising ticket prices on peak demand days<p>They raised prices because there was more demand, so they could make more money.
Does anyone know if Disney publishes any of their operations materials or data, a la Toyota? I didn't find any on a quick search; it'd be fascinating to dig into materials on how they do planning, capacity, traffic flows, etc.
Or do like Burning Man, Yosemite, Hamilton, etc... schedule sale of limited tickets well in advance. This has the added benefit of not taxing lower-income people and makes the experience much more scarce and something to look forward to.
They have already capped the people going into the park. People with single-day passes can be turned away at the gate if the park is full. Two-day or multi-day pass got priority.