My Various Random Ramblings

1:25 – Pete and his dragon are still as annoying as ever. We’d really be happy if Elliot did his trick and actually stayed disappeared. The world would also be better if Pete just would hit puberty. But this is Disney World, no one ages and the children stay children even when they still shouldn’t be. Adults become children here too. Walt always wanted this, but I’m not sure he realized how childish the adults could become. When the adults get upset that Mickey has to take a cheese break or go home for the day and they won’t be able to get a picture with him *right* this second even though they had all day. Or they walk up to that one attraction that is the most important component of their entire trip, a minute after close on the last day of their trip. Priorities and logical thinking are irrelevant to children, the id rules all.
1:20 – Here come the dancers slash safety barriers. Only at Disney would the people who guard the massively large float be lit up in patriotic colors. The wing dancers are actually the emergency breaks and the graceful dancers can quickly break character and tackle a street headed child if needed. Now that the parade has ended, the real fun begins. It’s time for two-way.

Like Jack Demo
I’ve been noticing tons of friends getting like-jacked on Facebook recently. The scheme they are getting hit with is very simple and super easy to fall into if you are not aware of it. Basically, any page can cause you to like it purely by clicking anywhere on it. There is a safe to play with click jacking demo. The current way this is getting passed around is as links with eye-catching headers showing up in your feed. First and foremost, look before clicking on the page, many of these have “FouTube” integrations. Second, take a look at the domain. Most of the domains being used are long and cumbersome to type, which is a tell tale sign of a burner domain. If you get hit by this like jack, don’t worry, all you need to do is go to your profile and remove the item. No need to change your password, as it is not compromised.
There are many of these like button tricks: http://arnab.org/blog/reputation-misrepresentation

It is all about the overall utilization of the park (utilization in the stochastic sense) Internally, WDW divides attractions into 3 categories: FP Preferred Attractions, non-FP preferred, and non-preferred. FP is removed from an attraction if it falls into the non-preferred bin, IE Philhar and Stitch. In addition, what actually matters is utilization during sustained demand. On a design day, sustained demand for preferreds occurs from noon to 3PM. This is the time of day where cast performance really makes a difference in utilization. During the other times, if there is not sustained demand (which basically means a wait of >15 minutes), utilization is a useless metric. Before fastpass, the utilization of preferred attractions during sustained demand was already at 99% or more (Space often breaks 100% utilization). But for the non-preferreds, utilization was low, think 50-60%, leaving tons of capacity for Guests to be doing something other than waiting. With fastpass, the overall park utilization increases. This means, on average, more rides per capita. RPC is what drives park hours and staffing, for Magic Kingdom everything that can feasibly done is done to keep RPC above 8.0. (This is where we hit union limitations and business rules, such as minimum turn around times between close and open.) So with fastpass, it benefits both the business and the customer, on average, the customer experiences a higher RPC at a same or lesser cost for the business. This has lead to an increase in utilization at the C-tickets, actually giving justification for refurbs of things such as TTA and the Worldshowcase attractions. Plus the best benefit: During no fastpass periods (EMH, hard ticket), the lines feel even shorter because of the speed at which they move.

Note: Universal really should take note of this stuff, it’d improve the experience greatly. In addition, I found it surprising how much I learned without having any type of NDAs or other protections.

Over the past year, improvements equivalent to an extra E-ticket worth of capacity have been made at each of the parks. That’s why there have been so many refurbishments, especially at Magic Kingdom. Yet some people think that wait times are still too high and tend to blame FastPass for this. While I agree that yes, standby waits are longer due to it, average wait time is decreased.

Currently, FastPass, except on the 99 percentile days, is operating at a far lower ratio than designed at most attractions. If you visit on a design day or emptier, you shouldn’t really have any complaints about wait times and fastpass raising them. However, as soon as you cross the 80th percentile, you slip into damage control mode. Here, fastpass tends to be dialed up to it’s original ~85% of capacity in an attempt to minimize the number of people waiting in the long lines. On these days, you can definitely get an attraction done every two hours by properly using fastpass. Without it, while waits would be shorter than they are with it, they would still average over an hour, while design day targets an average wait of 20 minutes across priority attractions.
With Fastpass implemented, 85% of Guests don’t have to wait over 15 minutes. This actually lowers the average wait. Let’s look at a 90+ percentile day at Space Mountain.

Math:
85% of guests wait 15 minutes or less in the FP queue. 15% guests wait 120 minutes in standby.
(85*15+15*120)/100 = 30.
So the average wait for the attraction can still be 30 minutes on New Year’s Eve. I think that is definitely a positive thing. Without Fastpass, the 120 minute wait would have to go all the way down to 30 minutes to achieve the same average. With priority attractions, this is not going to happen, as per simple economics as cost goes down demand increases. It’s very rare even on empty days to see Space Mountain much lower than 30 minutes. So that’s why Disney considers Fastpass such a success, on busy days where the waits are already higher than acceptable per Guest satisfaction surveys, the average wait can be minimized giving as many guests as possible an excellent experience.

Now spectaculars and entertainment on beyond design days are an entirely different story.

Make sure you start with Part 1

2:30 – Tonight is one of the rare nights where so much happens in the hub closely together that you can just sit down at 5PM and stay for 3 hours. It’s a Wednesday night in early December. The whole park is decked out for Christmas, the crowds not awful, the weather beautiful. I’m finally able to break out the wonderful blazer on top of the vest and not sweat to death. It really completes the outfit and rolls back the clock nicely to the turn of the century. At 1815 every night during this time of year, Mickey and Minnie come out on the castle stage to help Cinderella decorate her castle. Of course this is fine and dandy for Mickey and Minnie, but makes us have to quit our prodding of Guests through pathways until the castle is lit. Some of us know the timing of the show so well we can aid children in personally lighting the castle. After the lighting, I reclear my walkways and continue to wait.

1:50 – The parade will be stepping off in town square in 5 minutes. This means I have 10 minutes to make sure my section of the hub is prepared. I walk the curbs making sure if any body parts are in the road the attached body is sitting on the curb. Of course, this is a battle when I come across the family of 25 who has half a blanket in the street and appear to be having a picnic consisting of corn dog bites from Casey’s, funnel cakes from Sleepy Hollow, and the requisite Ice Cream Parlor sundae (my favorite in park dessert). They of course want to watch the parade, but do not seem to understand that it will not be a good view looking at the bottom of the tires as 5 ton floats sink them into the pavement. At least there’s not a protein spill in the middle of the path here like there was earlier smack dab in alignment with the very busy Casey-Ice Cream crosswalks. Luckily, it’s not a halloween party where I have to worry about Ike killing someone in a stroller, so it’s a pretty easy clear and I am able to go back to assisting at keeping the Gazebo flowing.