Would you take casual volunteers?
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Honestly if you raised the subscription prices it would still be worth it. I’m amazed at all you and your team do!
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Something that may have contributed to higher than expected crowds in AK and HS the past several days is the cheer competition taking place here. I have been here all week and it seems the cheerleaders prefer going to AK and HS more than the other two parks. I have seen a lot of large groups there but barely any elsewhere.
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A question for @len or other members of TPs - have you considered adding confidence intervals to your estimates? I’d be curious to see some of the rawer distribution numbers if you were willing to publish them. (Disclaimer: data science is literally in my job title, but I have no intent on starting a competing company 
)
Thanks,
Shayne (was at WDW the last ~10 days, and other than Epcot, nearly everything felt crowded, none so more than AK)
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I’d be willing to.pay a higher fee to get access to more data. I’m a data nerd… 
So we have another CL10 this Saturday at AK, but also an unexpected 9 at HS.
Sat Feb 9: MK 6(7) EP 7(8) HS 9(5) AK 10(8)
TP have people on the ground all this week looking at what’s going on with those high figures, and hopefully we’ll hear more about it soon. The only thing of note when I asked about it on Liner chat was LOTS of big groups of cheerleaders for the competitions this week who apparently have preferred going to AK this time around. Watch this space.
Adding Sunday’s figures shows similar strangeness at both HS and AK:
Sun Feb 10: MK 4(4) EP 5(4) HS 9(4) AK 9(4)
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Monday was bad for HS and AK too. AK turned out as a 10 yesterday!
We got a number of very good actual wait times at AK yesterday - we hired people to wait in line, and a numberof Liners added in their own. It’s too early to tell, but let’s just say that the posted wait times were not good indicators of crowd levels.
We predicted a 3. Posted wait times indicated a ‘10’. Actual waits look like substantially less than that.
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That’s a good job. 
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Mon Feb 11: MK 6(4) EP 5(4) HS 9(3) AK 10(3)
Thanks so much for the updates Len! Looks like the same is happening at HS?
Stats aside, any thoughts on what might cause Disney’s posted wait times to be so off?
Yes, we think the same thing is happening at DHS. We’re not sure why yet. We’ll ask around.
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@len - if you had to guess based on actual wait times - compared to what normal actual wait times are vs. posted wait times, what crowd level would you guess the park was really at yesterday?
First question I asked the stats team this morning. Will let you know.
My guess is maybe a 5? Here are some sample posteds and actuals, to give you an idea:
Safaris:
- Posted 95 at 10:46. actual 41 (to put this in perspective, the posted wait should’ve been ~50 for this actual)
- Posted 60 at 12:10, actual 34
- Posted 60 at 12:20, actual 34
- Posted 65 at 1:52, actual 58
- Posted 85 at 3:26, actual 63
- Posted 70 at 4:24, actual 65
Everest:
- Posted 75 at 6:50, actual 10
- Posted 25 at 7:10, actual 10 (two more 10-minute actuals after this)
Dinosaur was pretty accurate: they may have cut capacity.
- Posted 65 at 11:10, actual 58
- Posted 55 at 1:30, actual 49
- Posted 55 at 1:50, actual 42
Flight of Passage:
- Posted 190 at 4:45, actual 81
- Posted 110 at 6:05, actual 78
Na’Vi River Journey:
- Posted 45 at 8:26, actual 21
- Posted 50 at 9:00, actual 28
- Posted 90 at 2:28, actual 66
- Posted 60 at 6:25, actual 47
- Posted 45 at 7:25, actual 20
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So what I think is happening is that the posted waits are being set artificially high in the morning. We don’t know why yet, but we assume there’s a reason for it.
And sometimes those posted waits stay too high for too long (beyond whatever purpose they were supposed to be serving.)
I’m betting the same thing is happening at DHS. We’re going to concentrate on AK for a couple of weeks, to see what we can figure out. Then we’ll move to DHS.
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Interesting, this is great stuff Len, thank you so much.
So one option would be they are testing the impact of high wait times on park attendance - how much it puts people off and diverts them to other parks if it’s inflated first thing. They do tend to like testing stuff at this time of year.
There’s no indication of artificially LOW posted wait times for these rides first thing in the morning recently is there? If I were running the analysis I’d want to run it both ways.
This is super fascinating, thanks for sharing the process!
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This is fascinating to me! Thanks for sharing the team’s findings!
I agree – fascinating! So grateful to have this team – you guys rock!
We’ve not seen low wait times, no.
The other thing I don’t understand is why they’re inflating wait times when it’s a low-price ticket season. Don’t some guests look at these wait times and say to Disney “You told me it wouldn’t be crowded?”
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But that’s thinking two steps ahead Len, it’s a bit of a reach for some of the management.
If we just work on the basis of ‘if we scare some of them off to the other parks we can save on staffing’ I think we’re about the level of their usual motivations for anything like this.
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