CM used to go “back and forth” with what looked like some system for standby vs FP (now LL). Has that changed since LL introduction?
(Context) We were in standby line for Buzz Space Ranger Spin and there was nearly a riot last night as standby queue would not move for 5-10 minutes at a time. The wall erected to hide all the LL people streaming through was laughable as guests kept leaving even scaling the wall to see what was happening. The line they have you stand at end of Standby line wasnt even staffed by CM (probably cause they don’t want to stare at angry guests). 25 min posted was actually 60.
On our WDW trip in late April 2023 we did not purchase G+ & this happened on almost every ride in Standby - our line would come to a complete stop for 20-40 minutes at a time while LL folks streamed straight thru. We bailed on TSMM when not one single standby person was let on after 55 minutes. Remy 35 min wait turned into 1 hour & 50 minutes. By the 3rd day my husband wouldn’t even get in a line for a ride that had LL. Absolutely horrible - we won’t be back after years of APs & annual visits.
The numbers are set by some algorithm that Disney uses based on the number of G+/LL passes they’ve distributed. The more passes they gave out, the more they have to “cash back in” before allowing Standby through. So if 95% of the throughput was given away via LL, then they would need to send 19-20 people through LL for every one SB. So if a party of 5 is in SB, they need 100 people through LL before then.
Now if there was a ride closure during the day, that may mess things up even more, as more LL passes would be backing up in a temporary unusable state. So they would need to filter that through before letting SB in.
There was a time when Dinosaur! had gone down for a few hours in the morning, and by the time it came back up, the FP+ (pre pandemic) line got totally backed up to Restaurantosaurus. There were 2 CMs and a manager yelling that SB was closed due to the really long FP+ line.
Same for us. Magic is gone. Next generation won’t know any different but I will. We got buttons saying “we’re celebrating” and are writing in “our last visit” for our park day tomorrow
