Feedback wanted on a new Lines 2.0 feature

[daybreaker]

Currently the parks are opening before their official times, and not just for queueing, but to let people start riding attractions early. In our app, we don’t let people optimize, evaluate, or submit wait times before the park opens. Our problem is that we need a way to know the parks are open early and allowing people to ride attractions.

Our solution was to let our users tell us, via the app.

The feedback we’d like is, if you saw these buttons in the app, what would you expect them to do if you pressed them?

Screen 1 (Before official Park open): We dont know if the park is open yet.

Screen 2 (Before the official Park open): We do know the park is open early

Thanks!

[ISUamanda]

I’d expect a question about what time the attractions became available, and which attraction(s).

And maybe clarification on what “open” means - allowed to line up for an attraction or attractions already running? (I often end up confused on when to stop the ride timer given all the preshows a lot of rides have, so I’d want to know for sure when I’m supposed to report it’s “open early”)

[len]

Tagging @PrincipalTinker @brklinck and @ejj for feedback here.

[PrincipalTinker]

I think I would expect those buttons to open a check box, or other option to identify a particular attraction is open (thereby letting you know what time it opens), the timer to be activated, and the “done” button on any attraction that is checked as open.

Would it report to you what time it is reported as open? I am thinking about a blog report: these attractions have been open 45 minutes before official opening .

[brklinck]

On Screen 1, I think the text would be clearer as “If the park is open and attractions are operating before the official time, please let us know!”. This way people would know to not click the button merely if the gates are open but the CMs are not letting you “past the rope”.

I am assuming that, after clicking the button on Screen 1, I would be presented with Screen 2 so that I could reoptimize/evaluate if desired.

Question: When this occurs, have all attractions generally been operating early, or only a select few? It would be nice if you would be able to capture that information, but I think it might make for a cumbersome UI. You could possibly capture that information passively (if someone selects ‘Done’ before official start time then it is open early), but I can think of a number of situations where someone might select ‘Done’ for reasons other that actually completing the ride which would skew the data.

Additional thought: I think that if I have a plan that starts after the official park park opening time, I should be presented with a screen like Screen 2, with the following text: “If you have arrived at the park earlier than planned and would like to be able to Optimize or Evaluate your plan starting now, let us know!”

[ejj]

Assuming that all users can be trusted to be truthful about this…

The response to the first screen should be:
“THANKS for the info! You’ve earned the Rope Drop Early Bird Ace Specialist Extraordinaire You’re Out Of This World Pluto Badge! (or a better Disneyfied name than I can think of for the badge right now)”

I would then expect the app to allow all users to enter wait times, and do whatever else one would ordinarily do once the park is officially open, as if it is officially open. Which it kind of is, right?

I imagine it’s possible that Disney is only opening certain lands/attractions too though? Kind of like extra magic hours? If so, then I’d expect another “choice” between:

1. Whole Park Open
2. Some Attractions/Lands Open

If the user chooses 1, you’re done.
Turn TP on.

If the user chooses 2, then a screen with all the attractions with queues would have check boxes with a “Submit” button at the bottom, with the instruction, “Please check any/all attractions that you know are open”, since the user can’t possibly know the whole park all at once?

Or if TP is aware of whatever the recent “standard operating procedure” is (like EMH), TP could just “open” the appropriate attractions by default. Or open everything, and let users let TP know when an attraction is closed, just like it does currently. Perhaps this is better than the “attraction check box screen” idea, which probably puts too much on the user.

I hope that all made sense…

As for the 2nd button…

My first knee-jerk thought was, “This seems superfluous; of course one want this option available now, whether one uses it or not.”

Having said that, I acknowledge that there have been a handful of times that we actually were ahead of the plan we had, either because things went incredibly well, or because something was closed and we skipped it. And what I found most interesting in at least 2 instances was that we ended up waiting in line longer sometimes because we got to something too early, and the line was actually shorter later.

Which kind of made me even more impressed with lines, and the value of staying on target with the plan.

I think I’m one of the few who use personalized TPs with insane anal-retentive precision, and yet am not fond of re-evaluating & re-optimizing once I’m in the park. The reason for this is that the one time I did it, it messed everything up. Oh, I’m sure it made it “better”, but I was so locked in to the what/when we were doing that I found it disorienting.

Okay… that was a stream-of-consciousnesses rabbit trail…

Anyway, the shorter point was that I don’t use that feature, but I don’t see why one wouldn’t want to. The option to do so should always be available.

I hope this helps.
Thanks for thinking of me.
I sure hope I can get to WDW in 2021, though no current plans are imminent.

Hope Len & his family are doing well.

[PrincipalTinker]

@daybreaker, does it matter (to the touring plans data) if not all of the attractions are open? I think we all think only some will open early.