Midway to Main Street | How Can Disney Improve Their Lines? @MidwaytoMainStreet | Uploaded September 2017 | Updated October 2024, 22 hours ago.
Lines! The worst part of a Walt Disney World experience! Nobody likes standing around for forty-five minutes just so they can ride a two minute ride. So how can Disney make the line experience better?
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First off, this is just some fun armchair imagineering. I’m sure some of, if not all of, these ideas have impracticalities. This is just for fun and for the sake of creative brainstorming.
Now today we have a couple of measures in place to try and ease the pain of waiting in line for our favorite rides. We have fastpass, which allows guests to be assigned a specific time window to return so that they can get on a shorter line that runs express to the ride. We also have a few queues with interactive elements such as games or trivia or stuff you can fidget with. So it’s nice to see that Disney does continue to think about this and work on it.
I have two ideas for ways in which Disney can help make lines a more pleasurable experience. I’m not sure if one is more practical than the other, or if either is to begin with. I’ll let you decide.
First up, let’s get some really elaborate pre-shows going. I mean to the extent that waiting on a stand-by queue is as much a part of the attraction as the ride itself. We already have hints of this. Elements like the stretching room in The Haunted Mansion or the library in The Tower of Terror act as ways to break up the line while establishing the setting of the ride they’re about to board.
Why not take that to its maximum possible extent? I’m talking animatronics and video screens that run the length of the queue and add to the narrative of the ride itself. Something that will fully engage guests for thirty to forty-five minutes. Imagine waiting in the queue for the upcoming Millennium Falcon ride, themed after a remote starport hopefully, and all along the queue are various animatronics from aliens and humans passing through the starport. They’re split into groups of two or three, having looping conversations about the galaxy, the war effort, and this famed smuggling ship. Each conversation just long enough so that by the time it loops you’ve already moved on to the next area and perhaps give each group a bit of writing that actually ties into the ride’s plot in a supplemental way that fleshes out the story for those paying attention.
Maybe occasionally trade out animatronics for a screen made to look like a window, similar to Rock n Roller Coaster. Same idea but with more freedom in what you show since it’s not physical. In short, take the premise and spirit of these pre-shows and stretch them out to an entire queue.
Would it be expensive? You bet! Would it be realistic? Maybe not. Would it be fun? Yes! This other idea is probably more difficult, but what if we took the concept of a park-wide game like Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom and compressed it into a game for the queue?
Now I don’t mean a literal copy of Sorcerers. That game is anchored in standing in front of a screen for a few minutes at a time, and that just wouldn’t work in a queue where people are always moving. Plus there wouldn’t be enough screens to accommodate everyone. Not to mention handing out cards for everyone who rides the ride every time they get in line would quickly become expensive.
But what if you replaced the cards and screens with something nearly everyone already has and something small and portable enough that they can carry it with them along the queue as it move, like a smartphone? What if the game wasn’t a card combat game but instead an augmented reality game that uses the setting of the queue as a backdrop along with your phone?
Imagine a ride like Mission Breakout over in California, where the queue is loaded with some of the artifacts in Tivian’s collection. What if you had to use your phone to scan them in order to find special ones before you get on the ride. Or maybe similar to the way the droid in the Star Tours queue scans luggage, you get to the do the scanning with your phone, accruing points whenever you spot contraband. If you want to really extend this idea out to it’s crazy maximum, imagine a day where the collective results of how people do in these games actually affect the following ride experience in some way. Maybe a series of “tuning” games for the car you design in Test Track that changes how well it performs during the ride’s tests, or maybe some gameplay loop that helps determine which song plays during Mission Breakout.
Lines! The worst part of a Walt Disney World experience! Nobody likes standing around for forty-five minutes just so they can ride a two minute ride. So how can Disney make the line experience better?
New here? Be sure to subscribe!
🔷goo.gl/x17zTL
My Patreon!
❤patreon.com/RobPlays
My Disney Podcast!
🎧ttapodcast.com
Follow me on Twitter!
📱Twitter.com/RobPlays
First off, this is just some fun armchair imagineering. I’m sure some of, if not all of, these ideas have impracticalities. This is just for fun and for the sake of creative brainstorming.
Now today we have a couple of measures in place to try and ease the pain of waiting in line for our favorite rides. We have fastpass, which allows guests to be assigned a specific time window to return so that they can get on a shorter line that runs express to the ride. We also have a few queues with interactive elements such as games or trivia or stuff you can fidget with. So it’s nice to see that Disney does continue to think about this and work on it.
I have two ideas for ways in which Disney can help make lines a more pleasurable experience. I’m not sure if one is more practical than the other, or if either is to begin with. I’ll let you decide.
First up, let’s get some really elaborate pre-shows going. I mean to the extent that waiting on a stand-by queue is as much a part of the attraction as the ride itself. We already have hints of this. Elements like the stretching room in The Haunted Mansion or the library in The Tower of Terror act as ways to break up the line while establishing the setting of the ride they’re about to board.
Why not take that to its maximum possible extent? I’m talking animatronics and video screens that run the length of the queue and add to the narrative of the ride itself. Something that will fully engage guests for thirty to forty-five minutes. Imagine waiting in the queue for the upcoming Millennium Falcon ride, themed after a remote starport hopefully, and all along the queue are various animatronics from aliens and humans passing through the starport. They’re split into groups of two or three, having looping conversations about the galaxy, the war effort, and this famed smuggling ship. Each conversation just long enough so that by the time it loops you’ve already moved on to the next area and perhaps give each group a bit of writing that actually ties into the ride’s plot in a supplemental way that fleshes out the story for those paying attention.
Maybe occasionally trade out animatronics for a screen made to look like a window, similar to Rock n Roller Coaster. Same idea but with more freedom in what you show since it’s not physical. In short, take the premise and spirit of these pre-shows and stretch them out to an entire queue.
Would it be expensive? You bet! Would it be realistic? Maybe not. Would it be fun? Yes! This other idea is probably more difficult, but what if we took the concept of a park-wide game like Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom and compressed it into a game for the queue?
Now I don’t mean a literal copy of Sorcerers. That game is anchored in standing in front of a screen for a few minutes at a time, and that just wouldn’t work in a queue where people are always moving. Plus there wouldn’t be enough screens to accommodate everyone. Not to mention handing out cards for everyone who rides the ride every time they get in line would quickly become expensive.
But what if you replaced the cards and screens with something nearly everyone already has and something small and portable enough that they can carry it with them along the queue as it move, like a smartphone? What if the game wasn’t a card combat game but instead an augmented reality game that uses the setting of the queue as a backdrop along with your phone?
Imagine a ride like Mission Breakout over in California, where the queue is loaded with some of the artifacts in Tivian’s collection. What if you had to use your phone to scan them in order to find special ones before you get on the ride. Or maybe similar to the way the droid in the Star Tours queue scans luggage, you get to the do the scanning with your phone, accruing points whenever you spot contraband. If you want to really extend this idea out to it’s crazy maximum, imagine a day where the collective results of how people do in these games actually affect the following ride experience in some way. Maybe a series of “tuning” games for the car you design in Test Track that changes how well it performs during the ride’s tests, or maybe some gameplay loop that helps determine which song plays during Mission Breakout.
