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View Full Version : Question about FastPass Wait Times



PragmaticIdealist
06-12-2005, 02:29 AM
I haven't visited Disneyland in a while, and I was wondering whether or not the FastPass wait times are the same as those of the stand-by queues. For example, are Guests presented with the choice of either waiting in a line for forty minutes or returning to the Attraction in forty minutes?

I seem to recall that the differential varied from Attraction to Attraction, but that none of the Attractions had the same wait times for both stand-by queue users and FastPass ticket users. Am I right or wrong? And, has this situation changed at all?

sdfilmcritic
06-12-2005, 02:46 AM
It depends on which attraction you are wanting to get a Fast Pass. I'll use some examples for you. If you get a FP for the Indiana Jones ride you may wait forty-five mintues or even several hours before you are able to return to the attraction to redeem your FP ticket which is only valid to deduct about twenty to thirty minutes from the wait time.

PragmaticIdealist
06-12-2005, 03:38 AM
It depends on which attraction you are wanting to get a Fast Pass. I'll use some examples for you. If you get a FP for the Indiana Jones ride you may wait forty-five mintues or even several hours before you are able to return to the attraction to redeem your FP ticket which is only valid to deduct about twenty to thirty minutes from the wait time.

Yeah, that scenario is sort of the one I recall. I do not understand the reason Disneyland does not distribute FastPass tickets more readily, though. A Guest should only have to wait with a FastPass ticket the same amount of time he or she would have had to wait in the stand-by queue.

Does anyone know the logic for not setting the ratio one-to-one, meaning: why do certain Attractions give better treatment to the people in the stand-by queues? Is it a matter of needing to maintain a certain size stand-by queue, and that longer wait times dissuade people from maintaining that particular size?

I also wonder about the reason certain Attractions send FastPass ticket holders into queues that seem unnecessarily long. The queue prior to boarding usually does not have to be very long in order to maintain an Attraction's efficiency, and, yet, oftentimes, even in Attractions with few show elements in the walk-through portions, there are still long lines for FastPass holders once they enter.

sdfilmcritic
06-12-2005, 03:43 AM
Does anyone know the logic for not setting the ratio one-to-one, meaning: why do certain Attractions give better treatment to the people in the stand-by queues? Is it a matter of needing to maintain a certain size stand-by queue, and that longer wait times dissuade people from maintaining that particular size?I'm sure they have some kind of mathmatical equation for planning these things out. Each ride has it's own ride capacity that can't quite be compared on an equal basis to the other attractions at the park and this can affect the FP distribution.

Tutter
06-12-2005, 05:12 AM
If your fast pass is for more than a two hour wait though - you can get another fast pass after two hours - and so on. So you could be waiting in a few virtual queues at the same time and going on lots of other things as well.

Sometimes for things like Indie - it can fun to get a fast pass - get in the queue for the stnad by - and then when you come out it is time to go straight to the front again with fast pass

HydroGuy
06-12-2005, 05:19 AM
Yeah, that scenario is sort of the one I recall. I do not understand the reason Disneyland does not distribute FastPass tickets more readily, though. A Guest should only have to wait with a FastPass ticket the same amount of time he or she would have had to wait in the stand-by queue.

Does anyone know the logic for not setting the ratio one-to-one, meaning: why do certain Attractions give better treatment to the people in the stand-by queues? Is it a matter of needing to maintain a certain size stand-by queue, and that longer wait times dissuade people from maintaining that particular size?

I also wonder about the reason certain Attractions send FastPass ticket holders into queues that seem unnecessarily long. The queue prior to boarding usually does not have to be very long in order to maintain an Attraction's efficiency, and, yet, oftentimes, even in Attractions with few show elements in the walk-through portions, there are still long lines for FastPass holders once they enter.If I understand your question, I think it has to do with the fact that Fastpass was an afterthought in the queue design on almost all rides. So on some rides they could more readily take FP holders right up to the front, while on others they had to work FP further back in line.

I do not know the logic of how they set return times, but I do not think it is related to the length of the current line. For example, say you get into DL at opening and get a FP for Indy or Splash first thing in the morning. Although the line is < 5 minutes, the return time will be at least 35-40 minutes away. The return times in general are designed to spread out FP users throughout the day, not make them wait a certain time based on current line length. This nice concept breaks down though when the FP's are honored any time that day after the window opens rather than within the time window stated on the FP.

bradk
06-12-2005, 05:38 AM
My understanding of the FP time is this.

Based on the average hourly throughput for each FP attraction (which will of course vary), the FP system allots a certain number of tickets per return window. When that number of tickets has been distributed, it bumps the return window later by 5 minutes (?) which will allow two (or more) people who get their tickets together to return at the same point even if their return windows are different.

When the return window goes past closing time, the system sells out.

The problem with giving the return time as if the person had been standing in the queue is that there really is no way to know. I think the QBot system which does this really just estimates the queue time based on time of day (Six Flags also doesn't post wait times like DLR does - at least not the ones I've been to). So the system can't reliably know what the wait time will be, or even the estimate, since none of that is really automated or has a central location to refer to even if someone did set it by hand. Plus, if a ride has technical difficulties, someone already in the standby queue will be waiting considerably longer than someone with a FP that assumes they had been in the standby queue.

As said, the only real problem that's stemmed from this is the honoring of expired FP return windows. It ends up seriously distorting the process and making for longer standby and FP lines (for example, all those people getting FPs at park opening for splash during the summer - you know most of them are saving them for midday and might even have accumulated 2 or 3 of them by then).

Mark Goldhaber
06-12-2005, 07:17 PM
Not to mention the basic fact that the Fastpass machines can spit out tickets at a much faster rate than the attraction can cycle people through. If they didn't schedule the passes into specific time slots, it would easily give out more Fastpasses than the attraction could possibly cycle through in a day.