How Much Time Does FastPass Save?
Disney's Fast Pass allows theme park guests to go of and do other things. You can go have lunch, or even wait for a different ride. Disney hopes that you would do some shopping.
You will probably need at least a little mathematics background to fully understand these descriptions.
How It Works
All of the Fast Pass machines throughout the park, and the signs above the Distribution Area entrance showing the return times, are electronically connected to central computers. The computers keep count of the Fast Passes issued, change the return time (in five minute increments), and prevent the machines from issuing Fast Passes to you too quickly. We are not sure whether all four parks are linked together although it is a waste of time to hop from one park to another to fetch Fast Passes just to beat the two hour rule.
Every ride has a "capacity" in terms of number of riders per hour. Fast Pass is intended to commandeer a percentage of the ride's capacity, typically anywhere from 40 to 90 percent based on secret formulas that vary with day and time. If the ride has a capacity of 1000 riders per hour and 80 percent is commandeered for Fast Pass, then the machines will issue 800 Fast Passes stamped with a return time within that hour. Then the overhead signs and the Fast Passes themselves indicate a later time to come back. Eighty percent means that on average four people are served from the Fast Pass return line for every one person served from the regular (standby) line. After the allotment is consumed for all hours up until park closing time, the Fast Pass machines are "sold out" for the day. This can happen before noon for really popular rides on busy days.
Because guests with Fast Passes don't always come back to ride evenly spread out during any given hour, the ride attendants may from time to time favor Fast Pass guests more. Ratios of 40:1 (97.5% FastPass guests) on up to 100:1 (99%) in the actual ride lines have been reported which mean in effect taking one party from the regular line and then taking 100 to 200 (or all) people from the Fast Pass line before serving the regular line again. For shows such as Indiana Jones or Philharmagic, all guests in the FastPass line are admitted before anynone in the regular line is admitted. Also, should a ride have to be shut down unexpectedly, a backlog of Fast Pass guests will occur.
As a business decision, the creation of Fast Pass undoubtedly was meant to have more people in gift shops spending money as opposed to standing in lines. After all, the machines, paper slips, trash disposal, and computer networks cost money. There is a disadvantage, the parks seem more crowded when more people are moving about and riding other rides instead of being packed into small spaces (waiting lines) for long periods of time..
Very.
Let's say a ride has a capacity of 1000 guests per hour and the park is open "9 to 9". During these 12 hours approximately 12000 guests can ride and that is it. Before Fast Pass, if the average wait was one hour then people that day spent 12000 hours altogether waiting in line for that ride. That was easy to compute. By the way 12000 hours is about 16-1/2 months or almost 1-1/2 years. And it was repeated the next day and the next.
Now suppose that three Fast Pass riders were admitted for every one regular (standby) rider. This means that of the 12000 riders that day, 9000 of them had Fast Passes. Let's say that Fast Pass forced the regular riders to wait on average 1-1/2 hours each instead of 1 hour while Fast Pass riders didn't wait at all. So we have 9000 people who did not spend any time waiting and 3000 riders who waited an average of 1-1/2 hours each for a total wait of 4500 hours. That is about six months of waiting compared with 16 months without Fast Pass. Thus Fast Pass saved ten months of standing in line!
Someone on "The Dis" (disboards.com) suggested that instead of three Fast Pass riders for every one regular rider it should be the other way around, one Fast Pass rider for every three regular riders. That would mean that the 1000 guests-per-hour ride would have only 250 Fast Passes per hour, or 3000 passes issued between the (hypothetical example of) 9 AM opening and 9 PM closing (or earlier if the machines ran out sooner). The 3000 Fast Pass riders would suffer no wait while the 9000 regular riders wait the same way as before Fast Pass was invented, which was one hour. (Remember that at 1000 riders per hour only 12000 lucky souls get to ride at all that day.) The total time spent in line is 9000 hours or slightly over one year. This is twice as much waiting compared with three Fast Pass riders for every one regular rider.
OK, OK, Fast Pass riders really didn't escape waiting. After all they had to spend some time fetching the Fast Pass from the machines, and also the Fast Pass line sometimes backs up. Let's say that on average, each Fast Pass rider invested 15 minutes including the time waiting to ride. So 9000 people with Fast Passes (3 to 1 ratio) cumulatively consumed 2250 hours while the 3000 people without Fast Passes cumulatively waited 4500 hours for a total of 6750 hours or about nine months. Still a daily savings of seven months off of the 16 months of waiting before Fast Pass was invented.
I doubt if a 40:1 let alone a 100:1 ratio of Fast Pass guests to regular guests was sustained for any prolonged period other than following an unexpected ride shutdown. If such an event lasted for an hour and the ride could handle 2000 guests per hour, someone standing at the end of a regular line no more than the length of two city buses (or two Disney buses) would suffer more than an hour's wait.
All parts (c) copyright 2001-2003, Allan W. Jayne, Jr. unless otherwise noted or other origin stated. All rights reserved.
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