I’m honestly very curious as to his opinion on this and API use in general.
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While it used to, the Lines app does not use any Disney API (nor any page) to get any attraction info at all, as far as I know. (I mean, David and Brad run the site, I’m just the pretty face.)
I think BG1 is very well engineered. To be blunt, Joel put more time into thinking about the user experience than did Disney. And since it uses the same calls and code, just in a different order, it’s hard to even call it a ‘hack’, let alone a ‘cheat’. Honestly, I think BG1 is a bug fix if it’s anything.
As far as knowing about BG1, I think we all know that information isn’t distributed evenly, and that people with more information have more advantage. One of the reasons I mentioned BG1 is to point out to people that that information is available.
@joelbruick - sorry for not running my recommendation by you first. I probably should have.
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I don’t see it as cheating or loopholing either. That’s the beauty of the concept of open source, everyone contributes.
My biggest fear for Joel is that Disney finds it and tries to reverse engineer it. Or buys it and buries it.
The software space is a nasty little space sometimes.
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I’d be curious (if you’re willing to share) how you get the posted wait time then or info as to when attractions are down if you’re not using Disney APIs?
Understand if you want to keep this a trade secret.
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I can’t say. Just like Disney got grief from other sites and travel agencies for our private email address for room requests, I don’t want to rock the boat.
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Completely fair and i understand.
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Just wanted to share this too from Joel:
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Also just heard the reference to that which shall not be named and thought it was tastefully done.
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I just got caught up on the last Disney Dish when they were talking about your Disney survey. I laughed out loud when Jim Hill said, AWWW BUBBLEZ OHHH!!!
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You mean Bruno Group One? (Full disclosure, not my joke, but I thought it was funny and a Disney IP!)
It is really a lovely feature. As someone who helped track down the new times I worry about this, but feel it is a small enough risk - I would rather it stay as a feature.
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I’ll add - the part of the Disney community I love most is crowd sourcing information to improve a Disney trip. I understand there is a different continuum of “shade” factors - some of which Disney has shut down (i.e. bots scrapping ADRs and making automatic reservations) - and each person’s perspectives on these may vary. This gets more confusing with pay to play and the glitchiness of Disney IT making the playing field a complicated landscape.
Sharing and learning different informtation has been the fun part for me. I get to imagine trips and stays I have never taken. If an advatage gets out - easy come, easy go. Many things have disappeared before I used them (I would have loved that backstage to backstage transportation)
I am so grateful for peole who share their knowledge and skills! The best I have been able to contribute is helping to rediscover drop times after they moved and keep a forum list of outdoor dining during Covid to help people plan. I enjoyed being able to give something back.
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I wondering too if the requirement of one’s MDE login info will put people off as well. Maybe @joelbruick can give us an update if there’s an uptick in usage? This may all be for naught.
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Last Friday I was at dinner with DH at our usual Friday night spot when I offhandedly made a joke to DH that a few people had commented on my response and he said “Oh! You’re so internet famous right now”.
Our server was walking up and asked what he meant (we know everyone that works there by name) and when DH told her she asked to hear. So I pulled it up on my Spotify and she took it to the back to listen with some of the other staff.
She comes out a few minutes later and says “AWWW BUBBLEZ! OHHHHH!!!” as loudly as she could.
I was a few shades of red, but sat proudly in my little 15 seconds of fame
Len’s response in particular helped me realize that I actually can write well when I want to, and that maybe my DH hasn’t been blowing smoke up my popcorn bucket when he’s been telling me I should start writing to pay for our Disney trips.
I grew up in a house where phrases like “Thank God you’re pretty” and “Children should be seen and not heard” where often said. But with a few seconds of sharing my thoughts with like minded individuals, they validated something I had been hiding for decades. And as a direct result, I spent 7 straight hours in a total word dump yesterday and I feel amazing!
I am empowered. And I hope in writing, I can inspire someone to believe in themselves too, just like Len and Jim did for me 
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Just one thing to add, I think we’re overestimating the reach of the podcast and how that would translate to actual people learning how to use BG1 and of those, actually using it at a park. Len has said many times that maybe 1% or park goers are familiar with Touring Plans. That has got to be the maximum population BG1 would ever get to - likely only a fraction of that.
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Disney should fix its rides and its staffing, then move onto capacity. Once those hurdles are cleared, I’m fine for it coming for people building better mousetraps.
Don’t have 100 minute lines, you won’t have idle hands during those 100 minutes.
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Nah, it’s cool.
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I missed out on some interesting discussion today. A few additional thoughts and context I wanted to add:
BG1 does still have a slight advantage for boarding groups, which is why I suppose people still bother using it despite me repeatedly saying “you really don’t need it”. Before Disney updated the VQ UI in MDE, it was an absolutely ridiculous advantage. Like “one time I waited four seconds after 7 AM before hitting the Join button and still got BG6” advantage. The advantage wasn’t the goal, though – the goal was fixing a terribly flawed design.
Nowadays the advantage is more like a quarter to half a second, and that’s only because in MDE you have to refresh to see if the queue is open and then tap a second button to actually request a BG, instead of submitting the join request immediately upon receiving a “queue open” response like BG1 does. Like, who decides upon seeing the queue is open, “no, on second thought, I’d rather not go on this brand new attraction today”? Disney could totally eliminate that advantage tomorrow, and they should.
Also, I’m not sure if anyone here even knows about this, but way before BG1 led to Disney improving their VQ UI (and eliminating the very common failure mode where your friends/family list wouldn’t load during the critical seconds the queue was open), I dug into the API and discovered that simply loading the app or refreshing at the “wrong” times explained why so many people were reporting being unable to get a BG despite doing their homework, being prepared, and seemingly doing everything right. The bugs causing this issue were fixed during the shutdown, and some folks were actually kind of sad that it leveled the playing field for people that didn’t know about tips like the “Demarke method”. That’s exactly the result I was hoping for, though.
So is BG1 unfair? I don’t know, maybe. But I’m fairly confident that no one on this planet, employed by Disney or otherwise, has done more to help make the VQ process more fair and less crappy than I have.
Thank you for reading my blog, and yes, I’m well aware that this is a Wendy’s.
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BTW, BG1 information is way out there… I am a member of a Facebook Group and they discuss BG1 on that group CONSTANTLY… so I know that the information is being widely promoted in at least some circles outside of this forum…
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Wow that surprises me!
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