Today (totally made up):
- Krakatau: 200min...play in rivers/wave pools while waiting
- Hanu: 150min...play in rivers/wavepools
- Slide X: 30min...play in rivers/wavepools
Potential Future:
- Krakatau: 200min...play in rivers/wave pools
- Hanu: 150min...wait in "regular" line and ride Slide X three times.
Yes, those wait times would change if we changed up which rides had TapuTapu but the point remains that just like at Disneyland, people want more options of what to do while waiting. Instead of playing in the lazy river for the third hour I'd be more than happy to wait an hour on the steps for a slide!
Loved all that you said- but sadly, you didn't change the capacity at all.
In your scenario, the capacity doesn't change- and the virtual lines would be significantly higher.
Heres just a random example:
10 single person slides- each can do 100 rides in an hour. 1,000 Rides, yes?
All 10 rides are virtual with Tapu Tapu- 1,000 rides an hour.
Say there are 2,000 guests. Everyone wants to slide all the slides equally- thats 2 hrs wait for everyone on average.
Now- lets take your scenario where only 5 rides are virtual- 500 in an hour.
5 rides are traditional- 500 in an hour.
The same 2,000 guests are now waiting 4 hours on average for the virtual slides.
The same 2,000 guests are now waiting 4 hours on average for the traditional slides.
They get to ride 2 slides in 4 hours. Or one every 2 hours. Exactly the same as if they were all virtual.
Now- I get what you're saying regarding perception- so take the guests looking up at a traditional line- and they see it's 4 hours worth of waiting- then they don't get in line. Maybe those wait drops to 1 hour because only 500 of the 2000 are willing to wait that long for a 20 second slide. But that still does nothing but
increase the wait times of the headliners- as there are
less virtual slides to queue for.
It's an all or none thing for Tapu Tapu- splitting it up or allowing reservations would only make it worse in every scenario.
Faster ops, less technical downtime (maintenance), more rides, or less attendance are the only fixes. Nothing else.
Where Tapu Tapu is a problem- is that people are still "in line" when they normally wouldn't have been in line traditionally. Such as lazy river, eating, pooping, playing in kids area, etc etc. So Tapu Tapu in and of itself creates slightly larger lines- so they need more Tapu Tapu rides without increasing their attendence, and that would, in turn, reduce times amongst all the other Tapu Tapu rides.