Personally, I doubt it would be that much of a drop. Most of those who would try outside the park will be the ones who would have tried from within the park.
Then, you will have some who try because they can now, sure…but it becomes a gamble. What if you end up with BG 9? You wouldn’t have time to get to the park, etc. So I think it will self-limit who tries. (Not, probably initially, but after the flood of people going, “Look! Quick! Grab one!” and then realizing it is the new norm.)
In the meantime, it would mean a return to more sane RD crowds.
I would see this as a huge boon. People could go to HS on the day that they got a BG, and go to another park when they don’t. Maybe limit it to those who have tickets loaded and the starting the day before.
If I just look at my own vacation in May…I have plans to do HS once early for an attempt at ROTR. If we get there early, and we don’t get it, we’re stuck in the RD crowds, plus no chance to ride it. We don’t have plans to try again another day because we’re in HS already.
But if we new beforehand that we didn’t get ROTR, we could swap that day for our EPCOT day (which is the day afterward) and go to EPCOT. Then, the next day, try for ROTR again. If we don’t get it, we could then swap out that day again, pushing HS to yet another day. Eventually, if we never get ROTR, we’ll still end up in HS…but we’ll show up at RD with lower RD crowds.
I think a bad feedback cycle exists. If BGs are hard to get, you try to get one on every day that you are at WDW. If everyone does that, BGs become even harder to get. And then everyone learns to try for BGs every day.
You can upgrade to a Park Hopper or change your plans depending on if you get a BG, so there is no reason not to try for one.
Thing is…I want to know immediately if I get one or not, OR just decide to RD like every other park…but I’d rather NOT get a chance to ride ROTR if it means RD crowds can return to normal and I can take advantage of the time for lower crowds.
Right now, our HS day means getting up super early, hoping for a ROTR (no guarantee) and still end up having to stay until late in the day because the RD crowds are making SB times super long early in the day. Put another way, just for the CHANCE at getting ROTR, I’m being forced into a long day with longer lines.
Anyhow, there is an effective maximum number of people who can ultimately try for BGs. If we are seeing crowds of 10,000 people at RD now to get one, then if the park normally does 30,000 guests per day, then the maximum increase of attempts for folks, if EVERYONE was trying, is 3x, not 5x.
I also don’t think using the stats from TP users is representative of the percentage being successful. 90% of people arrive at RD aren’t getting a BG. Just 90% of those who have learned what to do through TP!
We generally don’t get Park Hopper. Regardless, we also aren’t rope-dropping each day, so even if we did get Park Hopper, we’d have to RD every day until we got ROTR.
Except the potential pool isn’t just people that plan to go to HS that day. It’s also people that would go to HS if they got a BG. There are likely many people with one day no PH allocated to HS right now that have one shot at a BG that would now be trying across multiple days.
Yes, it is 90% of liners, and probably 90% of well informed park goers, which includes everyone here
Right now there are steps you can take to make your chances be quite good, a new system would give you less control.
But in this case, the preferred trade off is a matter of priority. It looks like you would be happier at DHS back in September then right now, which is quite reasonable, and actually the case for me as well. But it is a trade off between control of your odds and RD crowds.
I understand. And I’m saying it would FORCE me to have to RD even on days I had no intention of doing so. Not so, if I didn’t need to be in the park. I would know if I got a BG. If not, we could wait to go into the park (or a different park) later as we see fit.
With PH, it doesn’t change that. I would have to RD a park with the entire family.
Anyhow, way HS is working now, I’m just dreading it rather than looking forward to it.
The more I think about it, BGs are a poorly conceived, badly implemented solution to an ill-defined problem. I’m not sure what WDW was attempting to achieve with BGs, but it is definitely not creating an overall happy user experience.
The big issue here is that they have a very popular attraction that has a very limited capacity. I’m not sure what its rider throughput is, but I would think that it can handle a small percentage of the guests at HS on a given day. So they need to come up with a solution that minimizes disappointment as much as possible, and BGs are clearly not that solution.
A far better solution may be to go with FPP like every other attraction - that way only the people who did not get FPP and want to go for the SB line have to be at the gates at RD.
Here is an article that was posted on another thread that’s a good read. While I don’t agree with all of their points, I think I land with them that the general BG idea is probably the least of the possible evils.
ETA: Here is that thread, where there has been some interesting discussion of suggested improvements
The truth is, Disney has made mistakes every step of this journey for SWGE. First, by wildly under-anticipating demand while designing it not able to handle large crowds, then creating panic in the size of the crowds and waits, and then over-estimating how many people would actually want to go, and then not opening all of SWGE as promised.
The, once they did, crowds had dropped to dramatically, rather than go up, because of this. ROTR opens, and they, again, misjudged demand and handling of the BGs has been complete trial-and-error, resulting in a dramatic shift in the dynamic of the park which no longer can handle the crowds it was designed to handle at any given time.
Furthermore, they decided to shutdown additional ride capacity (TGMR) during this time period, further contributing to capacity issues…and then open MMRR in a park that is already seeing such wild crowd fluctuations due to the still relatively new TSL plus all new SWGE.
It has been a mess from the start.
Ironically, overall numbers aren’t showing that it is driving up their attendance as they had hoped.
And with everyone now planning vacations, they are holding off for Tron and Guardians, etc., so that they can come and do it all in the same trip…which means we won’t really see a re-balancing of park attendances any time soon.
Interesting article, but I think that it misses on several points:
No way current capacity is anywhere near what they assume, given how quick BGs sell out and the large percentage of people who do not get one
They do not evaluate the ‘tried and true’ option of FPPs plus standby queue, which works well enough for other high-demand attractions like FoP. Note that ‘well enough’ is a relative term, but most people would agree that it is better than BGs.
Only reason why FPs couldn’t be use with ROTR is because of inconsistent ride reliability/capacity. If you are giving people fixed times to ride, and the ride is breaking down a lot, you have a huge mess on your hands, compared to the BG method, which allows shifting the time to allow the next BG until after they get it working again, etc.
Once ride capacity is running consistently, though, I think they can safely switch to FPs.
I doubt it. Tron and Guardians are not really doing anything new/different, so reliability and ride capacity should be fairly predictable. I think they will likely use FPs.
I do wonder if the opening of Tron will lead to MK adopting tiers, though.
