Here's Your Sign: The Disney Saga

GMC · Post by **GMC** » Sat Nov 27, 2004 2:07 am

they're less useful than rent-a-cops, a rent a cop has full police powers on the property he's paid to patrol, Disney Security, can do about as much as we can.

Disneyaddicted · Post by **Disneyaddicted** » Sat Nov 27, 2004 5:51 am

I just wanted to say how much i enjoyed reading some of the threads here. I may not be a CM but i have worked in retail before and deal with customers and general public on a daily basis. (i own a carpentry/painting company) anyways... I just returned from WDW 3 days ago and I wanted to tell you how much i enjoyed my 1st visit. If it werent for the great jobs the CM's did/do i am sure it wouldnt be as enjoyeable. maybe you could have a side post for "guests who have to deal with other stupid quests" the best one that we (wife and i) witnessed would have to be: after a CM went to great length to explain this to some brainless individual about why there were no straws in animal kingdom, he turned to another Cm and asked" where are the straws?" i couldnt help but jump in with " they arent allowed here because the monkeys like to have spitball fights" ... he looked at me and said" wow really? when is the show?" okok i am babbling. i wanted to say to all the CM's thanks for putting up with the stupid guests and making our stay fantastic. You have to put up with alot of people day in and day out and still put on a happy face and play the cheerful person so vent away all you want! THANK YOU!

ThenIDrifted · Post by **ThenIDrifted** » Mon Nov 29, 2004 12:16 pm

OMG: You are not kidding about Super Soap being hell if you don't watch them. What's as hellish as having to work them? How about having to put up with relatives wanting to watch every stinking motorcade and you have to drag your kid all over to meet them and mess up half your day?

I'm not bitter...no...just that we wasted half our trip running around so that they could see the top of Susan Lucci's head...but no, I'm not bitter *grumble, (!(*^~(&*%!, grumble*...

I personally can't figure out how the wait time thing works though. Several times they gave us tags and asked us to give them to the CM at the front and said they had to do with recording wait times. But each time the wait time was wrong and after we left I checked and it wasn't updated! I think they all quit caring LOL.

Worst wait time story of our trip: I finally decide to venture a little while without my wheelchair (I use a crutch, I have MS) and husband heads me into a 30 minute stand-by line for Jungle Cruise.

30 minutes my foot! We barely moved for 30 minutes, and I finally had to fight my way out of the queue to get to a seat (felt lightheaded)

Soon as I had sat down to wait for my family, the wait time went up to 45 minutes. A moment later, it jumped to 60.

Total time they waited in line? About 70 minutes and then the time for the ride. Needless to say I don't care if we go back to Jungle Cruise again in the near future LOL.

TID

lady ulrike · Post by **lady ulrike** » Tue Nov 30, 2004 9:20 am

I believe that what those cards are for is to see how long the wait is for research purposes, not necesarilly to change it, although I did hear that it changed it. If you watch, right before they hand it to you, they run it in front of a little box, then when you give it to the person at load they run it down the side of the console or in front of a similar little box. The computer records the time the little card was scanned for research purposes, i.e. how crowded is the park on any given day, is the wait always long a certain time of year, if so can anything be done about it, etc But I had heard that when they scanned it, it was supposed to automatically change the wait time too, I dunno maybe I heard wrong.

We do the same thing in Disneyland, but we have to right what time we give it to them, blah, blah, blah, I hope we get the electronic monitoring soon.

And just to let you know, we do try to keep the wait times accurate, maybe 5-10 min higher to give room for something changing drastically and quickly, but we sometimes don't have a spare CM to go change the time and/or lots of people could get in line suddenly and/or something could go wrong that doesn't make us down but does make the wait longer, they should spiel if that happens though.

BRWombat · Post by **BRWombat** » Tue Nov 30, 2004 11:08 am

lady ulrike wrote:I believe that what those cards are for is to see how long the wait is for research purposes, not necesarilly to change it, although I did hear that it changed it. If you watch, right before they hand it to you, they run it in front of a little box, then when you give it to the person at load they run it down the side of the console or in front of a similar little box. The computer records the time the little card was scanned for research purposes, i.e. how crowded is the park on any given day, is the wait always long a certain time of year, if so can anything be done about it, etc But I had heard that when they scanned it, it was supposed to automatically change the wait time too, I dunno maybe I heard wrong.

Interesting. I would think there would be more accurate ways of setting the wait time. True, the card would give a precise reading of the wait time, but it would be the wait time for when that person got in line. The time could have drastically changed while the person was waiting.

For instance, say the person gets on queue and spends 20 minutes in line. If, during those 20 minutes, a bunch of people follow him in and double the line length, the wait would then be 40 minutes for a new person joining the line, but his card would show twenty. Conversely, if no one else got on line after him, his card would still show 20 minutes, but the actual wait time would be zero by the time he reached the head of the line.

You know, I may just have too much time on my hands.

abc · Post by **abc** » Tue Nov 30, 2004 11:34 am

A ton of the reason I have noticed some attractions can't keep the wait time completely accurate is the computer to change the sign is in the fastpass computer, and if a cm is alone at greeter its a bit hard to get there without someone jumping on your back about it, and they can probably only change it when they have an extra or the lead comes by or during a rotation.

The most accurate way to monitor wait times down to the minute would be an "electric" turnstyle at the entrance to the queue, and another right before boarding (a bit of modifications for fastpass). To get the wait time, since you know how many people are between the two turnstyles (basically the difference between the counts) and how many are passing through the 2nd electric turnstyle (the capacity), divide the number of people inbetween the turnstyles by the number of people getting through the 2nd turnstyle each hour, then multiply it by 60 to get the wait time in minutes. A system like this would give a great estimate, and be up to the minute, including factoring in reduced capacity. For example if they drop a station on BTMRR, the # of peeps going through turnstyle 2 would be less, meaning a higher wait. I don't think it'd be too expensive to implement either. They already have the electric turnstyles in all of DCA and at Indy and pooh. Just get another set at the entrance and have software engineers come up with a program, and viola.

GMC · Post by **GMC** » Tue Nov 30, 2004 3:35 pm

the cards are actually a study of how fast the line moves vs attraction staffing, we're supposed to give one or two out every 15 minutes (when thier conduction the study) and it basically tells whoever it is that takes the study what kind of staffing will be needed at that location at that time the next year. if their the cards that i'm thinking of that is.

thundercatjamie · Post by **thundercatjamie** » Tue Nov 30, 2004 5:04 pm

Ah yes the lovely FLIK card program. Actually it does a little of both. Our coordinators use it to update the wait time. Unfortunately, as you see, it is a flawed program. Due to the fact that it measures how long that one person waited in line even if the coordinator changes it the very second the card gets swiped the second time it still is only telling you that the person getting on the ride right then waited that many minutes not how many minutes you are going to wait. As mentioned if someone is not even paying attention to it and doesn't update it it will not change. If it was started as a research tool, they should have left it as a research tool and just figure out the waits the old fashioned way, if its at a certain point it is this long, but no they have to lean on technology even if it is stupid.

IndyandMarion · Post by **IndyandMarion** » Fri Dec 03, 2004 9:24 pm

Coming to a forum near you...

Here's Your Sign: The Disney Saga Episode IV: A New Dope

Here's Your Sign: The Disney Saga Episode V: The Idiots Strike Back

Here's Your Sign: The Disney Saga Episode VI: Return of the Sign

Here's Your Sign: The Disney Saga Episode I: The Stupid Menace

Here's Your Sign: The Disney Saga Episode II: Attack of the Cloned Questions

Here's Your Sign: The Disney Saga Episode III: Revenge of Those Who Recieved the Stupid Answers

I actually recieved this from a friend who has a little too much time on his hands...But what's great is that a lot of the HYSs I've gotten lately fall into those categories so I might actually do something with those...

IndyandMarion · Post by **IndyandMarion** » Tue Dec 07, 2004 2:27 pm

Before I get started I want to give a shout out to the couple who visited G-Force Records today.

Guest: Is Steven Tyler here today?
Me: Unfortunately not. (Yeah, he has so much time on his hands he decided to come here by himself and record a song or two)

That's all I can remember right now (Went 101 today so my mind is a bit shot from that whole fiasco)

Stupid Guest Tricks

Here's Your Sign: The Disney Saga

just wanted to say...