I’ve never done Dumbo. I might try to do it this trip. Though probably on my own as I don’t think DS14 will go for it!
Okay, forget FPP, this is what we should be talking about!
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Mike, your argument is quite flawed. I’ll focus on point 4. Standby wait times, on a whole, are the same. But that’s because you now have MORE people going through Standby (everyone). Assuming the same number of people who go through FPP now get in standby. Let’s assume a ridership of 1000 riders/hour.
In an hour, you would have (with a 4:1 ratio) 200 people in SB and 800 people in FP. Person number 200 in that line would wait 1 hour to ride.
If you eliminate FP, you have 1000 people in SB. It takes 1 hour for person 1000 to ride.
This matches what you are saying. But what is missing from this is that people NATURALLY shift their ride choices around to balance out. Rather than Disney controlling it, the guests themselves do it. And it works, always has, because it is how all amusement parks to this day operate (other than Disney), with the exception of the Express-pass like offerings, which most parks have relatively few people utilizing.
Now, add to this that the people who are in and out of line using FP quickly move on to another ride, lengthening that line more than it otherwise would have. This makes the SB line longer, etc.
Ultimately, my point isn’t that all SB is an ADVANTAGE over having FP, but that having FP offers no advantage over just SB, ultimately. Your wait just shifts. Ride capacity never changes, and so number of people getting on rides doesn’t change. If FP was actually making lines shorter overall for guests, then overall you should see more people riding than without SB. That isn’t the case.
I think if we really want the answer, we need to track FPP wait times in addition to SB wait times. Compare wait times over the course of the day and you’ll have the answer of what percentage of actual rides are allocated to each (the alternative is counting people entering lines, but that would be a boring job for someone).
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Dumbo is awesome!!
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Probably more awesome if you have some kind of nostalgic link to it though? I don’t. I just think I should probably ride it once, just to say I’ve finally done it.
Right? How can someone like @missoverexcited expect us to trust her if she’s never ridden it? 
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You and I can debate the math all we want, but the data doesn’t support the theory that FPP increases wait times.
This is from an old TP blog post that measured (adjusting for various factors) pre-FP and post-FP. Standby times went down for Winnie the Pooh, Space Mountain, EE, and ToT. They went up for KS, JC, HM, PW, Spaceship Earth, PotC, and Dinosaur. For everything else they stayed roughly the same.
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I don’t expect you to trust me, I’m a random stranger! Didn’t your mother teach you anything??
She told me I shouldn’t judge a book by it’s cover. But not riding dumbo goes pretty deep…
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I won’t debate it any further. I know I’m right in this case. TP numbers only report wait times, not actual number of people getting through the lines and getting on rides. It is rather meaningless data.
It is something you can model in various ways through software. I have done it. If I had the inclination, I could do it again. I don’t.
I just don’t understand what you’re saying. On the one hand you say “standby wait times increase”. On the other you say “TP numbers only report wait times…It is rather meaningless data”… Those two statements don’t seem to match…
I have no objection to the fact that you don’t like FPP. There are other criticisms of it that I think are valid. But the fact that wait times increase or not is not really debatable…
But we can stop the discussion now… I’ve also done the modeling with software, and have come to different conclusions than you, so 
.
I mean on an average individual rider basis, not necessarily a line basis. Lots of reasons can affect the line SB times, including people being less tolerant of waiting so fewer people actually getting in line, etc
Ok, we can agree to disagree :). One thing I think we probably can agree on is that the selecting of FPs 60 days out is less than ideal… I’d much prefer a system similar to DLR’s MaxPass…
Oh, I disagree. We must agree!
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Just want to add my 2 cents here. You are right in that FPP does not change the maximum potential ride capacity. However, FPP changes the utilization of that ride capacity:
- Even at the busiest of times, there still are attractions that are near zero wait times and are not operating at capacity. People who are “virtually waiting” with an FPP can take advantage of these attractions with little or no impact on the wait times of other guests
- Many attractions have variable capacity. If WDW knows that an attraction will be potentially at capacity because of FPP reservations, they can staff accordingly. Not going to hold my breath for that though, as WDW has demonstrated understaffing as a strategy recently.
I also disagree that wait times are meaningless data - they are crucial IMO. Let’s assume that the TP analysis is correct, in that SB wait times have not changed with the introduction of FPP. Let’s also assume that I am interested in the four following attractions:
- Ride A: 5 min Walk, 10 min wait, 5 min Ride
- Ride B: 5 min Walk, 10 min wait, 5 min Ride
- Ride C: 5 min Walk, 10 min wait, 5 min Ride
- Ride D: 5 min Walk, 50 min wait, 5 min Ride, 5 min FPP wait
Pre-FPP it would have taken me from 9:00 to 11:00 to complete these rides. However, with a 10:00 FPP for Ride D it will take me from 9:00 to 10:15 to complete these rides
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I was merely talking about meaningless to the argument at hand, not meaningless for other purposes. Put another way, the wait times for rides tells you nothing about the average wait times for individuals, and how many rides they get on during a day, etc.
They are DEFINITELY meaningful for other purposes, for sure.
Near-zero, yes, but not exactly zero. When can I expect FPP to be added to PeopleMover so I can go ahead of those 8 people who just got on the escalator? I don’t like waiting at all!
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Even worse is when they decide to RIDE up rather than WALK up. I mean, come on people! We have things to do!
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I think this is a key point. Assume a World with only two rides - a high capacity 1-hour show (assume continuous operation for simplicity) and a headliner ride with a 1-hour SB wait, and each visitor only had one hour at the park (staggered arrival):
- In a World with no FPP, most visitors get in line for the headliner and forgo the show
- In a World with FPP, everyone watches the show and uses their FPP for the ride
In conclusion, FPP in this scenario spreads out the crowds to experience attractions they may not ordinarily experience, and manages the arrival time of the visitors to the headliner so that no one has to wait more than a few minutes.
In reality, it’s obviously more complicated than that. But this is the theory that would make FPP a net benefit to park goers. The high-capacity attraction becomes a more value-added queuing area.
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