Conspiracy?

Heard any good conspiracy theories lately? Let me share one with you that has nothing to do with today’s political scene. It’s one that’s dawned on me little by little, over the past few weeks.

Disney World’s Hollywood Studios has had a new ride for the past... I’m not sure, 6 weeks? 2 months? We didn’t pay close attention to it when it finally opened, because we figured it would be super-freaking popular (being new), and there was no chance we could get on it for a while. So basically, we ignored it for several weeks to let some of the hullabaloo die down.

After about a month, we ventured to Hollywood Studios and since we were there, we wandered over to sign up for a ‘boarding group’. See, they had started a ‘virtual cue’ for this ride, where once you are in the park, you can sign up for a boarding group. I think we were in Boarding Group #105 on that day. They had also put up information signs around the park that - among other things - would tell which group(s) were being boarded at that time. So we wandered around the park, riding all the other rides, seeking out a lunch reservation, eating lunch, riding more rides again. They still weren’t even up to Group #50, and we were flagging badly. So we gave up and went home. Just wasn’t our day, we figured.

J did some research after that. The official line was that once your entire party is in the park, you can use the disney app on your phone to sign up for the ride and get your boarding pass number. J had an account for that app, he used it on his home computer to get fast passes for us when we are planning to go to one of the Disney World parks. But he didn’t have the app on his phone, because 1) he seldom carries his phone, and 2) he doesn’t want to load up a bunch of apps, so he’s not adept at using them.

About a week later, we tried again, getting up early enough to get there by 7am (we arrived at the entrance about 6:50am, only to find they were already letting people in). Once inside, J took off for the ride (located in the back of the park) to get us signed up, sure he did not need my wristband to get us both signed up. Meanwhile, I had halfway listened to the announcements, and went to the closest ‘Guest Experience’ umbrella, where staff members were helping people get signed up for this fantastic new ride. I was placed in Boarding Group #115. I was sure they would never get that far, but the staff person said they had gotten through #130 the day before. I assumed that meant they hadn’t had any delays, but I went off to the place where J and I were supposed to meet. He was impatiently waiting for me so I could go back with him and get myself signed up, because he couldn’t do it without my armband. But he was in Group #115, too. Good enough, we figured, and tried to pace ourselves, to get through the day.

It didn’t happen. We aren’t spring chickens anymore. Once again we gave up and went home long before they got anywhere near our group number.

This time, I got my own account, AND downloaded it onto my phone, but when I tried to tie his membership to my account, I couldn’t do it, not even on my at-home computer. So, the next time we tried, we got up at 4 am to leave by 5am to get to the park by 6am. Yes, we live that far from the park. And we made it, and only had to stand in line at the gate about 20 minutes before we got in the park, they started letting people about 6:15. We high-tailed it to the neared ‘Guest Experience to get signed up... only to find nobody there to help us because it wasn’t 7 am yet. Yes, we had to stand in line until 7am to get assigned to a Boarding Group. At 7:02, they assigned us to Group #94. 94! In 2 minutes, the computer filled up 93 groups? Yes, they said, those people using their phones can be awfully quick.

We had a melt-down. If we’d gotten any angrier, we probably would have been expelled from the park for the day. But the staff lady kept her cool, kept working with her pad, and finally told us she’d gotten us into Group 50, but that was the best she could do. We took it and were grateful. So, maybe we were looking at getting on the ride in early afternoon, rather than late evening. Providing the ride did not experience too many glitches to shut it down during the day.

We wandered around the park, riding rides, standing in lots of long lines, and finally had a funnel cake, because breakfast at 4:30 did not last until lunchtime. We consulted with another staff lady about the difficulty with my account, and she called their IT department, who got it fixed.

At long last, about 1pm, about the time I was beginning to feel my blood sugar was getting low, we saw a sign that said they were now accepting Groups 40-60. That included us. No chance to get another snack, we reported for duty! They checked our wristbands and told us we were good to go! Except they didn’t tell us where to go to get on the ride. I finally noticed another staffer lazily waving people onto a particular path, so I asked. Their answer? “Yes, if you just have a regular Boarding Group and nothing else, that is where you go now.”

So we beat feet down that path. But as we stood in the line for about an hour (so much for virtual cues eliminating long lines), we wondered about the ‘something else’ that might have gotten us onto the ride. We also wondered about 93 Boarding Groups filling up in 2 minutes or less. A Boarding Group appears to be 16 people, based on what we observed during the ride, so that would be 1,488 people (or more) managed to get into a Boarding Group in 2 minutes or less. Remember, these people supposedly all had to be in the park at 7am in order to do that.

I don’t buy that explanation. Yes, I did see people standing just inside the gate, focused solely on their phones, but I didn’t see 1000 of them.

I think the first several Groups are reserved for ‘special people’. I don’t know who those people are, or how they manage to get into one of those early groups. Maybe when you are signing up for a Boarding Group, the computer checks to see if you are staying at a Disney hotel or resort. If you are, you get an earlier group. If you’re a ‘local’, like us, you get shunted to a later group.

I don’t know how they are doing it, but I think Disney is pulling a fast one. Supposedly, there are no fast passes for this ride, but evidently, there are methods of getting on it besides the virtual cue that we worked so hard to get into.