PeoplemoverMatt

Does anyone know how the attractions' wait times, that Q-Bot is going to depend on, will be calculated at SFMM? Are they planning on utilizing some new ways to tell now that there will be virtual people in line too? I'm wondering because SFMM seems to be ok with guessing how long wait times are, but never seemed to change the signs back when they had signs with little dials on them that could be moved to different spots & the times changed. I noticed a couple years ago some permanent signs were installed in different places around different queues (i.e. Goliath's 1 hour from this point sign on that stone wall), but I've never quite understood how that's accurate if it never changes, but the # of trains running on Goliath, or any other coaster, could change at any moment. Capacity at any given moment is #1 contributor to calculation of wait time, so I'm just curious what the new calculation strategies are, if there are any. Also wondering if we'll be seeing little electronic wait time signs posted at attraction entrances now? Those would be nice to see.

Are they planning on making the Flash Pass Rental available as an upsell at the ticket booths? I'm assuming this idea has already been considered, but just wondering.

Just got back from the Job Fair, and it was an great time! Loved all the booths and seeing all the great people. LOVED seeing Jay Thomas' park vision showing itself here, and enjoyed meeting Jay Thomas & Neil Burkhardt, as well as many other awesome people. Thanks everybody for an awesome experience!

Fat people aren't the only ones that can down massive amounts of food in one sitting, or has nobody watched the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest recently? I'd have to do it w/o cheese & guac, but I could totally do this.

^ But that would be asking them to not re-tread their 50th commercial. Too much money!!!

Yeah that's the incorrect, "They're tourists! What do they know?" thinking. People who go to Disneyland even once a year knew exactly what that parade is/was, and that it wouldn't be returning this year. But even so, still a pretty hilarious mistake on Disney's part to leave that included in their 2fer/50th retread promo spot.

It was nice to see the 50th commercial again after a couple years of *Peter Pan fly theme*. Too bad it comes off as some intern's 45-min editing project. It actually had footage of Parade of Dreams before that was switched to Play Parade footage. Disney knew PoD wouldn't be going on, but put that in the ads for the first few weeks anyway. Crazy.

I'm not sure I'd EVER suggest the 110 through Downtown as an alternative to traffic on I-5. That's cutting off your nose to spite your face more often than not. Plus the distance between 110 to 10 is really really short. Takes 5-10 minutes at most, even in heavy traffic, thanks to the little Broadway bypass ramp. Just stay to the right! These two can be combined into 5 south -> 10 east -> 710 south -> 5 south -> 605 south -> 91 east -> 5 south. That's the route I find myself taking the most often when going down to Disneyland from 5 minutes away from SFMM!

How much would it be to upgrade to an Xtreme Pass? I'm hoping not the $40 + $70some odd difference between Season & Xtreme Pass.

I think we all agreed to this 3 or 4 pages ago. --Robb But seeing as nobody's really paying to get into DCA anyway, closing the park could save a ton of operating expenses that would probably outweigh the meager at best revenues gained by keeping DCA open. So who knows, it actually might make a great deal of financial sense to close it while the heavy lifting is going on.

The scariest thought of all in all this is that we're all hoping this construction brings in more people to DCA, but moreover, that people will actually want to pay to get into DCA. That means Disney will have to cut things like the 2fer, and $25 birthday upgrade. They'll also have to convert Disneyland's ticket system into some conveluded form of Magic Your Way (hey! One-Disney!), raising the prices of both Disneyland and DCA, and making Park-Hoppers that much more expensive. If the MYW structure was directly brought over, Disneyland & DCA would immediately cost $75 for 1-day, and a 1-day Park Hopper would be $125. AP's would see cost raises of 15-25%. Does that sound like something you are going to want to pay? Do you look at the construction, the concept art, etc, and envision the end result being good enough where you'd do that? Now if those price adjustments don't happen, and all guests continue to enter DCA basically for free, then all this construction & crappy look is basically for nothing besides giving us nicer stuff to look at. TWDC will have gained almost zero. Wow. Robb will have been right when he said over a year ago that this huge plan doesn't really solve anything. And we still have more than a year to go before the construction really looks bad! Can't wait!!!

Is anyone talking about lack of attendance due to a total park closure being bad considering that pretty much no one who enters DCA today is paying for it? There's the 2fer, which gives free admission to DCA with purchase of 1-day admission to Disneyland. There's also general park-hoppers, which are a required purchase for any ticket longer than 1-day. People who'd buy 2-3 day tickets to Disneyland basically get DCA included without ever asking or wanting it. Since that's going on, and free birthday SoCal residents can upgrade to a 2fer free and a 2-day park hopper for all of $25, is ANYONE paying full price for the privledge to enter DCA??? So what sounds like the better idea - Close the entire park down for months at a time, or keep it open with tons of work walls & obvious construction so people can go in by paying either nothing or a massive discount off regular price? Without number crunching, I'd say the better option is to just close the park down for months at a time, especially during the off-season. Clearly the loss of admission revenue isn't a huge loss. The other minor revenue streams lost can be weathered just fine for the period of time the heavy construction is going on.

Don't forget the new parking structure that might be built off Disney Way, and the Disneyland Hotel will be undergoing major renovations as well in the next few years. It's going to feel a lot like 1997-2001 again very soon, if it doesn't already.

I wish I could visit Sahara myself to see if the rest of that NASCAR-themed area was receiving some upgrades & refurbishments to bring it up to a more 2009 look, along with Speed. Last time I was in there, that whole looked VERY dated/neglected, and what NASCAR fan, or anyone for that matter, would want to spend much time in that evironment? And Joey, I'm not sure you understand NASCAR fans very well. When 200,000 fans descend on a place for a weekend, whereever it is, NASCAR anything becomes the place for that weekend. Sahara already built a NASCAR area in its casino, and therefore would be doing itself a major disservice for just writing off the race's crowds, and just ignoring a crowd of that size because NASCAR only comes for one weekend a year (which to a facility like Sahara, should equate to 2 weeks, the weeks before & after the race weekend). After all, why even have a NASCAR area if you're just going to totally ignore the one period of time a year when NASCAR is actually in town? Sure they plan on operating the coaster for more than just the weekend, but my larger point was that it really seems like someone just noticed the race on the calendar and decided to whip the area back into some kind of shape using that date as a kind of deadline. Cost justification and motivation has to come from somewhere right? NASCAR coming to town means just as much to Vegas as the NBA All-Star game did in terms of how many people it brings to the area, only NASCAR comes to Vegas every year. If I owned a casino with a NASCAR area like Sahara has, I'd be doing the same thing they're doing. At least get your major eye-candy people-drawing coaster operating again!

Except Robb is right - this current look of the park does look like crap. I'm only thinking of a time when "like crap" won't be anywhere close to the proper adjectives with which to describe this. Since a whole lotta nothin' appears headed for Disneyland, the only real incentive left for me to renew my Premium AP in 2010-2012, apart from World of Color, is the morbid curiosity to be there to see all the front-side construction in DCA, and to do some grave dancing over the death of some of the old hardcore crappiness.

Robb, remember, this is only the beginning. Soon the front 40-50% of the park will be walled off and resemble what the Paradise Pier area looks like now, only it will be much worse. Who's looking forward to that entrance relocation?? 2010-11 will be fun times! Get ready for 4-5 more years of DCA looking like crap!

Folks, NASCAR races at Las Vegas next weekend, and Speed: The Ride is in their NASCAR Cafe & NASCAR section. This is not happening by accident.

Except when it's Presidents Day Weekend.

If it works like how it did last year, the check-in booth will be outside the main entrance gates. Whatever entrance ticket media anyone needs I would think would be given out at that time.

Now YOU can help keep Magic Mountain's bathrooms clean! So bathrooms are a priority to this park, as long as they only have to pay the person(s) cleaning them $8.50/hr...

It was pouring a couple hours ago here, but now the sun's out. Stupid weather.

And just how do we know the mehmetic polyalloy is not just giving you the impression that it's wood?

Ah, but charging dues allows you to do such fun activities like going to dinners and doing other things with other people paying for you while not ever knowing they did it! Doesn't that sound like a great thing to do to, err, I mean, for your "members"? So far I like card idea.

As I've said about 20 times in this thread already, fire/reassign the ops contaminating the culture, and hire new ones that will abide by the proper standards of performance. Not possible they always say. Far too costly, and risk of understaffing is too great because who besides the teenagers would work for the peanuts SFMM pays ops. So then it becomes a money issue, which leads to the ultimate conclusion that SFMM is either too cheap to have consistently strong performing dispatches at their rides, or has flaws/lackings in the business model that are causing the revenues to be not great enough to cover the additional expenses. Therefore I say there's just as much blame to give to the corporate managers as there is to the pinheaded ride ops. The managers can solve the problem themselves by finding a way to generate more revenue that can allow for the upping of the ride op labor expense. But money aside, can anyone give an example of a time in the past 6 months that a SFMM employee was rewarded/given praise/acknowledged for consistently doing a good job? Sometimes that makes all the difference to someone who wants to do a good job in the face of the culture of apathy.

This sounds a lot like the old rumor about how the Sub Lagoon couldn't ever be drained because the Matterhorn would sink.