SALT LAKE CITY — A Disney executive defended Disneyland’s smaller lines in a new interview weeks after the theme park received criticism for having short lines in the wake of the opening of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge.
Bob Chapek, the chairman of parks, experience and products for Walt Disney Company, told CNBC that the lack of long lines is a good thing, since guests wouldn’t want long lines while waiting for rides.
“The deep secret is that we don’t intend to have lines,” Chapek told CNBC. “If you build in enough capacity, the rides don’t go down and it operates at 99 percent efficiency, you shouldn’t have 10-hour lines.”
“One of the wins that we had with the opening of the original Galaxy’s Edge is that we didn’t have the waits,” Chapek said. “So 10-hour lines are not a sign of success. It should be seen as a sign of, frankly, failure.”
The 10-hour wait time may be a reference to Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure at Universal Studios, which reportedly had 10-hour wait times when it opened, according to Fox News.
In the immediate aftermath of Galaxy Edge’s opening, guests reported that Disneyland had become a “ghost town” that felt “empty,” according to the Deseret News. Guests reported a drop in wait times, too.
Disneyland confirmed the smaller wait times.
“We are incredibly focused on delivering a great guest experience for the opening of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge,” Disneyland said in a prepared statement. “This land has added 20% more capacity to Disneyland Park, and together with all of our new offerings, advanced planning and innovative technology, has resulted in incredible feedback and satisfaction from our guests.”
Disney CEO Bob Iger later confirmed that Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge saw lower attendance numbers than the company expected, according to the Deseret News.
“I think a number of things happened,” Iger said during Disney’s Q3 FY19 earnings result webcast, according to ComicBook.com. “First of all, helped in part by some of our efforts, there was tremendous concern in the marketplace that there was going to be huge crowding when we opened Galaxy’s Edge. So some people stayed away, just because they expected that it would not be a great guest experience.”
Iger said people may have been concerned about facing long wait times for Galaxy’s Edge, so they purposefully stepped away.
“At the same time that that was going on, all of the local hotels in the region, expecting a huge influx of visitation, raised their prices,” Iger noted. “So it simply got more expensive to come stay in Anaheim. In addition to that, we raised our prices, we brought our daily price up, so if you think about local visitation, we brought the price of a one-day ticket up substantially from a year ago.”
“And then we opened up Galaxy’s Edge with one attraction instead of two; the second attraction is going to open in January,” Iger explained. “And so all of those factors contributed to attendance that was below what we would have hoped it would be. That said, guest satisfaction, interest in the attraction in the land is extremely high, it’s the most popular thing at the park. And so, long term, we build these things for the long term, we have no concerns whatsoever about them. We’re opening Galaxy’s Edge in August in Orlando, the second attraction there will open in December, and, as I said, the second attraction in Anaheim will open in January, so we feel great about the product we’ve created, it just takes some time to, basically for us, to work themselves out in terms of how the marketplace is reacting.”
So why the decreased wait times? Well, annual pass holders were in the middle of their blocked-out periods, which tend to last from June through August. Disneyland hasn’t increased its size but it added wider walkways, which creates the illusion of more space.
“Aside from Galaxy’s Edge, several new attractions were opened at the same time in Disney’s California Adventure Park. This could potentially cause crowds to disperse more evenly across the theme parks,” according to Fox News.
Interestingly, since the opening of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, Disneyland’s top ride continues to be It’s a Small World, with 57,000 riders per day. Pirates of the Caribbean sits close behind with 55,000 riders, according to the Deseret News.
But that might not be Star Wars: Galaxy Edge’s fault.
“Small World and Pirates are high-capacity people-eater rides that vacuum up visitors and often still manage to maintain relatively short wait times,” according to the Orange County Register.
But it’s been Disneyland employees who have suffered most during this transition. Multiple employees told Fox Business that the short wait times led to them getting fewer hours at work.
The employees said they were getting less than 40 hours a week. Some have seen hours drop to 30 to 35 hours a week, according to the Deseret News.
“Wait times this summer for the new Millennium Falcon Smugglers Run ride were expected to be over two hours long all summer, but in reality, the lines have been averaging half that or less,” an unnamed employee told Fox Business. “As a result, the company has been forced to cut our hours. The need for us to work simply isn’t there.”
“It makes life challenging when your paychecks get cut unexpectedly,” the employee said.