An Unofficial Introduction
Since this is my first blog entry I thought that I would introduce myself. My name is Josh Carver. Some of you may recognize me as part of “Josh and Sarah,” the dynamic duo of Unofficial Guide researchers often mentioned on the WDW Today podcast (ding!). Most of Sarah’s and my posts will be about our observations while doing field research and data collection at the Walt Disney World Resort. We will also be sharing reviews of the many experiences that Walt Disney World has to offer. We hope to shed some light and background about what it’s like to be an Unofficial Guide researcher as well as keep our readers up to date on our current data collection/research assignments.
Just last Thursday we were in the Magic Kingdom collecting wait times at all of the attractions in the park. We wanted to see the effect of the additions to the morning Extra Magic Hours attractions list. So I took down the times for one half of the park, and Sarah took the other half. We did this from the early opening at 8am until 3pm, which is usually when peak crowds start to taper off. Even with the closure of Space Mountain, the TTA, and the Hall of Presidents, we did not see a noticeable increase in wait times throughout the day. Peak waits at Splash Mountain and Big Thunder Mountain were 70 minutes, which is what was predicted. So, the attractions that were added to morning Extra Magic Hours at the Magic Kingdom, including Splash Mountain and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, seem to be good additions to the list.
Look for Sarah’s first post very soon. She’s going to go into how we got started and what else we’ve been doing lately in the parks.
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When you collect wait times do you go by what is posted or do you actually go through the line? I hear there can be quite a discrepancy between the 2.
Hey Beth,
In most cases we when do our wait time collection, we are recording several attractions within a 30 min period and simply don’t have the time to actually ride the attraction. So, we record the posted waits to see any visible trends in the crowd conditions. We do, however, occasionally ride a given attraction multiple times in a row for several hours to see the discrepancy in the posted wait time and the actual wait time. Knowing the average discrepancy, our statistician Fred can work that into our crowd predictions.
Caroline,
Thanks for the comment. Believe it or not, it was a pretty cool morning and that seemed to keep most guests from riding Splash that early. So, most were going to Big Thunder, then the waits between the two started to even out as the sun really started to beat down.
Hi Josh,
So great to meet you. Loved all you had to say.
By the way, I guess everyone rushes to Frontierland now? Are guests excited to do Splash at 8AM?
Caroline
Loved your post! It was full of info, keep up the good work “Josh and Sarah”! Excited to read Sarah’s first post!