To Infinity, and, er, somewhere else?
There used to be a time, in the not-too-recent past, when queuing for an attraction was almost as much fun as the attraction itself. Shows like Muppetvision 3-D, the (original) Backlot Tour (both at Disney-MGM Studios) and the incomparable Star Tours ride made passing the time in the l-o-n-g lines they generated kind of fun. And then came the Walt Disney Studios to put a stop to all that. If anyone can glean the slightest bit of enjoyment standing outside Armageddon, Cinemagique, the Art of Animation or Animagique, they must be performing mental gymnatics of the imagination to keep themselves awake, let alone amused.
Fast forward from the opening of the WDS to the new Buzz Lightyear Laser Blast at the DP, and, sadly, nothing has changed. You would have thought that, with all the brilliant and innovative animation that Pixar poured into the two Toy Story movies, the Disney imagineers would have had plenty of material to make the queuing area for this spiffy new attraction fun and attention-grabbing.
The ride itself is just what DLP needs - an amusing, interactive, eye-catching, fun-for-all-the-family romp using the well-tried theme pioneered at the Magic Kingdom in Orlando. No quibbles there; this is a great new addition. But what happened to keeping people amused while they queue?
On our recent visit to see the new ride for ourselves, the Brit’s Guide team (myself, Susan and my two boys, aged 7 and 10) were fairly amazed to find that FastPasses had already run out before our mid-day arrival (we had attempted a day-trip from London via Eurostar - a worthy try at doing the DP on its own, and a story in its own right which I will save for another time) and wait times were already topping an hour.
No problem, we thought, we’ll return during the afternoon parade when most queues typically slacken off for a while. Wrong. The posted queue time at 3pm was still over 60 minutes and, given that the outdoor line is all completely in the sun, it seemed unfair to make two youngsters stand for such a long time for one ride. Another mistake.
We returned again at 4.30pm when, lo and behold, the magic figure on the Stand-By queue had dropped to an acceptable 25 minutes. Fine, we thought. Well, after half an hour when we had barely moved through that painfully long, snaking, outdoor section, we decided something must be wrong with their queue timing, so we sent our youngest on a mission back to the front entrance to determine what was up.
Youngest son dutifully reported back that the ‘magic figure’ had somehow changed to 55 since we joined the line. Not good news. By 5.30 we had still only just crawled to within sight of the doors into the main building and, with a 6.45 return train to London, we were starting to feel distinctly apprehensive. So, I asked the nearest CM how long the queue time was once we got inside. ‘Oh, just 15 minutes,’ she cheerfully replied. Now, given that we had already been in line for an hour, faced around another 15 minutes just to reach the doors to the building, and then another 15 to reach the ride, we opted for the safe thing at this point: we bailed out. We fought our way back through the line and exited via the main entrance, breathing a sigh of relief that we wouldn’t be risking a mad dash back to the train station to catch the Eurostar (which sometimes features a good 30-minute wait to clear ticketing and security controls).
Now, as we trudged in slightly dispirited fashion back to our Eurostar rendezvous, we mused over two rather key issues for DLP 2006.
1) What on earth has happened to their queue timing for many of their rides? All day we had noted the times posted out front bore little reality to how long we actually spent standing in line (notably, a ‘30-minute’ wait at Star Tours was more like 10, while a ‘20-minute’ wait for Pirates was easily in excess of 30). And the prospect of a 90-minute wait for Buzz when the posted time was 25 was truly horrendous.
2) Didn’t anyone think it would be a good idea to put something, anything, up in the outdoor queuing area to while away the time standing in line for Buzz? There is not a TV screen, not a sign, a poster or even an inspired lick of paint to divert the attention and keep people amused for what is clearly one of the key new attractions. And, if people are left standing around for such a long time in splendid boredom, how will that relate to word-of-mouth feedback for the still-struggling Resort?
I thought we had seen the low points of this amazing lack of forethought at WDS, but it seems the same problems are still present, even when they can get the attraction right.