ROTR was still not ready to open if hours long breakdowns is a consistent thing

[9oldmen]

But how would that work in reality? This isn't some new app you and I make in our basement and hide in the app store. It's a major AAA ride in the most popular amusement park in the world. Not advertising, but allowing people to ride it (as you even concede) would hit sites like this and all through SoCal in a matter of minutes. Then people would be swarming Disneyland with questions as to why they didn't bother to tell anyone and DL is supposed to act coy and say: "We have nothing to announce at this time, it's not officially open", all while people are lining up for the ride behind them? Then this entire forum would be hammering them for dropping the ball on communication, as if they forgot to announce it properly.

(Sigh...), no, they wouldn't say "we have nothing to announce at this time". They would respond to questions/complaints by giving people the actual opening date. If they were doing "soft" openings now, rather than being officially open, they might find themselves in the same situation that they're in now, with one exception: You would still have people going to City Hall to complain, or they would complain to random cast members, but they wouldn't really have grounds to complain. You see the difference? Look, let's say they announced a "hard" opening on February 14th (Valentine's/Presidents weekend), but then started doing softs on January 17th, with no advance notice. First of all, you wouldn't have as many people who planned vacations for that day, since there was no advance notice, and secondly, when people would go to City Hall and say:"But I saw on Micechat that you're open!", they could remind the guest that "Micechat" is not an official source for information about the resort. Nor are any other fansites, or other non-approved sources.
You understand the difference between an "official" and "unofficial" source? You understand that billboards, T.V. commercials, print ads, disneyland,go.com, the APP, these are all official sources, and they all said "January 17th".
Also, if there was a soft opening going on now, they would have sort of "unspoken" permission to go entire days with the attraction not operating at all, and people, again, would not have legit grounds to complain. Also, on the day of my hypothetical "hard" opening, you would probably have slightly smaller crowds, or at least fewer people trying to get on the ride due to a certain number of us APers and others already having had our fill of it, possibly not showing up, or just showing up to watch the opening ceremony.

[micromind]

Really? I build complicated things too, but you're telling me that if you built something with no prior field trial or beta test, that was down (just guessing based on the thrill-stats) 15-20% of the time, that was being praised as one of the best things in it's genre, a little after one week of launching you would still be fired by your company? I guess I'm just lucky my company views our launches as more iterative processes.

Look, I agree it's pretty lame that they made a huge deal about the opening and then clearly presented something in "beta" form. That's fair.
But I also have a fairly good idea how large corporations make decisions. And I promise you when they were pitching their ideas for this ride....there was what we got and probably another idea that was much more scaled down and "safe". Think Universal's Transformer's ride where you get shuttled to a corner to (inexplicably) have Optimus Prime spray water on you, only to then get thrown to another corner of the building to have Bumblebee...spray water on you. But the folks with the really clever idea won the room. However, the less patient the masses are with a ride after the first week, the more risk adverse the corporation is going to become. The more we empower the "bean-counters" next time to declare: "I told them to go with the track ride where Darth Vader sprays the audience with force juice."

To be honest: I haven't personally even been on the ride. I'm taking my family in February. I'm also preparing myself for the possibility that we won't be able to see it. Still, I'd rather have a great ride eventually then stuck with another cookie-cutter attraction that works from day one. Astro-Orbiter has barely any down time....I still don't want to ride it.

I'm presently working on an oil refining plant, part of it has hydrogen gas at 1400 PSI. There is no room for any kind of failure...........

But I agree with you, Disney has built a reputation of cost-cutting to the point of idiocy and I think that's a big part of the downtime here.

The Company I work for doesn't cut costs because of the obvious safety hazards and yes, with any ride that carries people, safety is always first. But often fear of litigation will foster 'safety to the point of stupid'.

[Spongeocto4]

(Sigh...), no, they wouldn't say "we have nothing to announce at this time". They would respond to questions/complaints by giving people the actual opening date. If they were doing "soft" openings now, rather than being officially open, they might find themselves in the same situation that they're in now, with one exception: You would still have people going to City Hall to complain, or they would complain to random cast members, but they wouldn't really have grounds to complain. You see the difference? Look, let's say they announced a "hard" opening on February 14th (Valentine's/Presidents weekend), but then started doing softs on January 17th, with no advance notice. First of all, you wouldn't have as many people who planned vacations for that day, since there was no advance notice, and secondly, when people would go to City Hall and say:"But I saw on Micechat that you're open!", they could remind the guest that "Micechat" is not an official source for information about the resort. Nor are any other fansites, or other non-approved sources.
You understand the difference between an "official" and "unofficial" source? You understand that billboards, T.V. commercials, print ads, disneyland,go.com, the APP, these are all official sources, and they all said "January 17th".
Also, if there was a soft opening going on now, they would have sort of "unspoken" permission to go entire days with the attraction not operating at all, and people, again, would not have legit grounds to complain. Also, on the day of my hypothetical "hard" opening, you would probably have slightly smaller crowds, or at least fewer people trying to get on the ride due to a certain number of us APers and others already having had our fill of it, possibly not showing up, or just showing up to watch the opening ceremony.

Agreed. Disney has held soft openings numerous times. I remember riding Expedition Everest (TWICE) during February soft openings, despite the ride not opening til April. In all honesty, Disney should of had public soft openings for this ride a month or two ago, but they chose not to (Was it because of the holidays?), with only having cast member previews.

And while the ride appears to be a new state of the art E+ Ticket ride, the fact that the ride is bugged down with issues, sets the ride back. I'm not even enthused to ride, because I don't know if and when I will ride during my next trip.

And what even more disappointing, as it was pointed out, is that the ride has been in development for at least 5 years or more. A half of a decade to create, test and build. And yet none of these issues were dealt within that time frame. Ocassional issues are one thing. But to flat out expect the ride crash everyday for multiple hours, is an engineering low for WDI.

[TacAlert]

Officially open or not. Who cares. It could have had all the bugs worked out, worked at 95% plus capacity for a week, then went down, and people would still complain that DL screwed this all up. ANd then somwhere Chapek's name would get inserted to blame everything on him like always.

I don't see anyone complaining on here when other rides go down for awhile like Indy or Space Mountain. It happens. If you don't like it, stop going to DL.

[Bob Weaver]

I guess the First Order wins after all.

[spinycactus]

Officially open or not. Who cares. It could have had all the bugs worked out, worked at 95% plus capacity for a week, then went down, and people would still complain that DL screwed this all up. ANd then somwhere Chapek's name would get inserted to blame everything on him like always.

I don't see anyone complaining on here when other rides go down for awhile like Indy or Space Mountain. It happens. If you don't like it, stop going to DL.

I agree. Indiana Jones goes down practically every day. For 25 years.

[TimJohn47]

But often fear of litigation will foster 'safety to the point of stupid'.

The underlying factor for so much Disneyland has done for the past 20 years. Fall prevention railings all over the place where no falls have ever happened (especially the outdoor Alice track), Splash Mountain in disrepair due to accessibility issues since the updated safety guidelines put into place, etc. More astute readers can easily add to this list.

[CMARSH]

I'm presently working on an oil refining plant, part of it has hydrogen gas at 1400 PSI. There is no room for any kind of failure...........

But I agree with you, Disney has built a reputation of cost-cutting to the point of idiocy and I think that's a big part of the downtime here.

The Company I work for doesn't cut costs because of the obvious safety hazards and yes, with any ride that carries people, safety is always first. But often fear of litigation will foster 'safety to the point of stupid'.

Agreed...there are projects that involve safety or catastrophic loss that can't afford miscalculations (like what you're doing). I don't work on things like that. I work on software for entertainment purposes....much like the purpose of this ride (entertainment). We have a much larger margin to iterate and tune our product to meet customers expectations. The most popular games in the history of the world started off terribly (World of Warcraft, Minecraft, etc)...but the fans saw the potential and ambition of the creators and were willing to be patient while they got there. Perhaps that's why I personally am willing to be patient beyond the first two weeks after opening.

[Dougy]

But how would that work in reality? This isn't some new app you and I make in our basement and hide in the app store. It's a major AAA ride in the most popular amusement park in the world. Not advertising, but allowing people to ride it (as you even concede) would hit sites like this and all through SoCal in a matter of minutes. Then people would be swarming Disneyland with questions as to why they didn't bother to tell anyone and DL is supposed to act coy and say: "We have nothing to announce at this time, it's not officially open", all while people are lining up for the ride behind them? Then this entire forum would be hammering them for dropping the ball on communication, as if they forgot to announce it properly.

Exactly...since social media is so prevalent, Disney is always in a damned if they do, damned if they don't situation. 'GE is a failure because only one ride opened and they didn't cram millions of people in'. There are so many armchair qb's that know how this huge company should be ran.

Do we know that they didn't run soft openings and didn't announce it to everyone?

[IndyAdventurer]

Obviously the technical fixes are critical and will take both time and money to sort out. But I said it in the other ROTR thread, and I'll say it again: Disney could alleviate 80% of the headaches of this ride launch by tomorrow for zero dollars, by simply implementing a two-tiered reservation system:

Reservations open for guests who HAVEN'T ever received a reservation (e.g. first-time riders) at park opening.

Reservations open for all other guests an hour later.

That way you eliminate the first-timers and out-of-towners from missing out, while still letting those who've ridden already to try again. It won't stop the breakdowns, but it means those who are most affected (folks with higher numbers or in backup groups) are the most likely to have already ridden before and gives those who haven't ridden the best shot at riding it that day. And it also means that less-experienced guests don't have to become experts in cell towers and app refresh rates to ride a damn ride.

Over time, demand will sort out the rest--as there's fewer and fewer guests who've never ridden, there's more opportunities for repeat riders.

Disney could do all of that with a little bit of code.

[wlc]

Reservations open for guests who HAVEN'T ever received a reservation (e.g. firs-time riders) at park opening.

Reservations open for all other guests an hour later.

I agree with this and, as a developer, recognize how easily this could be done if they wanted to. Sure there may be some ways around it, but most would involve buying additional single day passes which could get costly just to try to get around it.

[KevRus]

Maybe Disney *is* doing that? Not the tiered hour-by-hour release, obviously, but maybe they already are internally prioritizing first-time riders?

[CMARSH]

I agree with this and, as a developer, recognize how easily this could be done if they wanted to. Sure there may be some ways around it, but most would involve buying additional single day passes which could get costly just to try to get around it.

Seconded...this was probably the optimal solution. Heck DL would probably welcome people "getting around it" if it means a pile of single day tickets sold.
While the park wouldn't look as crowded/successful (as local people who already got their one ride wouldn't probably show up again for awhile), they could even market it like that: "Come ride the greatest addition to Disneyland in X years, with our exclusive first-time rider queue....hurry before its opened up to everyone!!"

Perhaps they would consider something like this when Avengers opens...

[CM08]

Maybe Disney *is* doing that? Not the tiered hour-by-hour release, obviously, but maybe they already are internally prioritizing first-time riders?

Oooo... I like where you're going with this. Excellent point, we may never know! It's easy for them to track since all Boarding Passes are linked to tickets and no one knows what number they'll get between 8:00am and 8:01am (or whatever park opening time is that day).

[CM08]

Exactly...since social media is so prevalent, Disney is always in a damned if they do, damned if they don't situation. 'GE is a failure because only one ride opened and they didn't cram millions of people in'. There are so many armchair qb's that know how this huge company should be ran.

Do we know that they didn't run soft openings and didn't announce it to everyone?

No soft openings, only the week long CM preview which tested the Boarding Pass system (CM's just had to go to certain Fast Pass machines, instead of app). Each CM could bring one guest who didn't have to be an employee.

Disney also had soft opening for Space Mountain back in 2005 when it reopened after complete rebuild of attraction, for a month before official opening date. It was great! No Fast Pass and line was almost always under 20 min. As mentioned though, social media and smart phones have taken over now so there's no way to keep things "quiet".

[IndyAdventurer]

Maybe Disney *is* doing that? Not the tiered hour-by-hour release, obviously, but maybe they already are internally prioritizing first-time riders?

I honestly wish they were, but based on the number of posts/Youtube videos I've seen from disappointed first-timers who did everything right and still didn't get a slot--and the number I've seen from folks taking their umpteenth ride--they definitely aren't. Also, reservations are booking up within a minute most days, so it's not likely they're secretly giving priority to anyone. But, like, anything in that direction would be a huge improvement.

[Starcade]

Couple of things...

1. I think they did make a major mistake advertising the ride as simply OPEN as it really isn't. Having a soft opening would be fine not only for the ideas mentioned above but also because anyone finding it on MIceChat etc. would also find the information regarding limited booking etc. that is not explained in the TV adverts.

2. People constantly make comments of frustration at Indy's lack of reliability, to the point where ride used as an example in almost every post regarding unreliability. We use Indy as a FP for anywhere ride because often when we get a FP for it when our hour comes up our FP turns into an anywhere FP which is awesome because there is no time window. ( we used this very method yet again this past Sunday allowing us to to get on Star Tours at a very convenient time in our day.

3. Space Mountain and most if not all the dark rides rely on a pace to keep the sensors happy and this is often why they go down from time to time for 10 min. and require a reset but are back up in no time. They can sometimes combat this by sending through empty cars but I think this might be frowned upon because they don't seem t use this as normal method to stay on cycle. Maybe RofR needs to be managed by only extremely qualified and seasoned CM ride operators and Disney needs to look into tiers to their attractions staff and pay raises for those who can prove an exeptional ability to keep rides on track? Maybe they already have this in place, I am just throwing that out there that some of the burden could be the CM team running it and that would be the only part of the equation DLR could control.

[micromind]

Agreed...there are projects that involve safety or catastrophic loss that can't afford miscalculations (like what you're doing). I don't work on things like that. I work on software for entertainment purposes....much like the purpose of this ride (entertainment). We have a much larger margin to iterate and tune our product to meet customers expectations. The most popular games in the history of the world started off terribly (World of Warcraft, Minecraft, etc)...but the fans saw the potential and ambition of the creators and were willing to be patient while they got there. Perhaps that's why I personally am willing to be patient beyond the first two weeks after opening.

I hadn't thought of the software aspect.......likely because I work almost exclusively on the hardware side......lol. Good point!

Yes, you could easily fine-tune software based on past experience. Hardware, not so much. Especially if a catastrophic failure results in fewer people left......lol.

Something like ROTR involves both hardware and software. It's likely that the majority of the issues are indeed software based and will take some time to de-bug.

[Zanadros]

I like the clip from The Simpsons where they are at Krustyland and Krusty is explaining that the ride is safely operated by poorly paid teenagers. When you think of it that way (and it is true), it brings it all into perspective.

[WaltDisney'sAlec]

Officially open or not. Who cares. It could have had all the bugs worked out, worked at 95% plus capacity for a week, then went down, and people would still complain that DL screwed this all up. ANd then somwhere Chapek's name would get inserted to blame everything on him like always.

I don't see anyone complaining on here when other rides go down for awhile like Indy or Space Mountain. It happens. If you don't like it, stop going to DL.

Fun fact: you were the first and only person to mention Bob Chapek in this thread.

More on-topic: We have insider Cast Member information about capacity, downtime, and maintenance procedures. When was the last time Disney built a brand new ride that operated at only 50% capacity after opening? ROTR is down 40% of the time with around-the-clock maintenance and it's not even at full capacity.

Saying a brand new ride should get even more leeway than 43-year-old and 25-year-old rides is letting a bit too much slide. Breakdowns with new rides are undoubtedly understandable, but if we're being honest ROTR just wasn't ready for this level of opening. WDW's version has been open for almost two months, and they didn't open the ride until 2pm last Tuesday. With Disney's reputation, I expect better. We all should.