An Irrelevant Visit to Frontierland

We probably need one more After Hours Boo Bash event to come to pass before we can arrive at anything resembling concrete conclusions about its impact on wait times at Magic Kingdom and the other Parks. Tonight’s event will also be the first Friday, with the two previous events falling on the ever-popular Tuesday.

We’ll have that third data point at the conclusion of the day. Tickets for the wintertime version of the event, the Very Merriest After Hours, are now on sale, here. While we wait for the clock to strike 12:30am, and prepare our precious wait time charts and graphs, we’ll simply enjoy a morning walk around Magic Kingdom from earlier this year. A simpler time. After we clear out these pictures, it should be back to the typed word.

Let’s see…two of the most popular rides in Magic Kingdom…experienced in the antiquated standby lines of summer 2k21…that will probably cost us another $3,500 to ride again next month, one way or another, are now out of the way.

We’ll eventually see how the Genie, which will arrive with less than 10% of its intended capabilities baked unceremoniously into the (still free to start) Disney World app, helps or hinders our day. The reintroduction of line-cutting mechanisms, digital, paper, free, paid, or otherwise imagined, will affect wait times as certain guests regain the upper hand. How much waits rise will depend on the Genie(+)’s adoption rate and the ferocity of the fingers attached to those now paying for the privilege to refresh…refresh….refresh for that Mad Tea Party Lightning Lane access. (Why don’t I feel refreshed if I’m clicking refresh so many times? And since when is riding the Teacups with a short wait in 3.5 hours a solid get?)

How quickly waits rise and peak will depend on how many people spring for the extra cost for Lightning Lane access out of the gate or load up the blue ghoul after wait times become unruly (at about 9:15am). Or, someone in the group will finally decipher what figure 16C refers to in Chapter 9 of the Welcome Guide/Threats that they won’t let you pick up at the front desk anymore because nobody actually works there. “What about the middleman?” Having seen a draft of that manual myself, I believe the working title of the chapter is, “Going to Disney World Can Be Fun! No really!*”

*Please stop laughing and insert your credit card below to find out more. (The Walt Disney Company makes no guarantee to the veracity of these claims.)

At least we have our handy copy of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus to guide us when the ghost of Robin Williams cannot.