Theme Park Design Is Outdated

When Disneyland opened in 1955, the line opened with it.

Since then the rides have gone from teacups to trackless robots that sync with projection domes.

The line is the one thing that hasn't changed. You stand. You shuffle. You hope.

Take one ordinary day at Disneyland: eight popular rides, about 45 minutes in line for each.

That's six hours standing in line and about forty minutes on rides.

Half your day goes to waiting.

An illustrative estimate assuming 8 rides, a ~45-minute average standby and a ~5-minute average ride.

Disneyland's Rise of the Resistance averages a 61-minute wait.¹

On a busy afternoon it peaks above 90 minutes.

Parks solved this decades ago. Disney handed out free FastPasses in 1999, and a water park in Orlando opened with no physical lines at all.³

Then, one by one, the free versions disappeared.^4,5

A line doesn't make room.

A queue doesn't make a ride hold more people. It only decides who rides, based on who's willing to stand there longest.

A schedule can make the same decision.

The ride stays just as full, and nobody has to stand anywhere.

The receipt doesn't change.

Today a park sells you a $100 ticket, then four $20 fast passes during the day. They squeeze in four extra rides, but you still stand in line for the other eight.

Instead, sell the same $100 ticket with reservations included, and the same four $20 add-ons as extra ride reservations. You can still buy them on impulse from your phone, mid-afternoon.

The price is the same. The upsell is the same. The six hours in line are gone.

And the guest who never buys an add-on? Today they get the worst day in the park.

Under this model they get the same eight rides, and they don't wait for any of them.

Tell the park what you want to ride. It works out when.

Judge everything a park builds by one number: dollars per enjoyment. How much did it cost, and how much do guests actually enjoy it?

Rides score well.

Queues are the worst-value thing in the park: expensive to build, and miserable to be in.

Play areas score brilliantly.

Universal's Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey has one of the most beautiful queues ever built: a walk through Hogwarts castle, past moving portraits, Dumbledore's office and the Gryffindor common room.⁷

Guests only ever see it in one of two ways.

When the line is long, it's a crowded waiting room.

When the line is short, you rush through.

Now picture the same castle as a walk-through you choose to visit, at your own pace.

That's an attraction in its own right, and nobody has to queue to see it.

"But parks need lines, so people pay to skip them."

Do they? 75% of US theme park guests say they sometimes skip food because of lines, and 65% skip merchandise.⁸

A guest in line can't buy a churro.

Give them their time back and they'll spend it in the park.

Take away six hours of standing in line…

…and you've given every guest six hours back.

The question isn't how to keep them busy. It's what's worth building for them.

Interactive wands

Guests roam the Wizarding World hunting for spots where a flick of a wand sets off an effect. Universal keeps expanding it.⁹

Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom

A free card game included with admission. Guests could play for 15 minutes between rides, or for 4 hours straight.¹⁰

Meow Wolf

A walk-through art experience with no ride system at all. Guests stay for a median of two hours, and the Las Vegas location drew a million visitors in its first year.¹¹

Pirate's Lair and Redwood Creek

Disneyland's own rope bridges, caves and climbing trails. Kids spend hours there, and nobody has to queue.

Somewhere to rest

Physical discomfort is one of the top reasons guests leave unhappy, and benches and shade are what they ask for most.¹² A lawn to lie on costs the park almost nothing.

None of this is new.

Parks already know how to build places where guests happily spend hours. There just aren't enough of them.

Better still, build the play zone into the ride building itself.

Keep playing until your phone says it's your turn. The ride is a thirty-second walk away.

Theme parks have spent seventy years perfecting the line.

The next seventy should be spent designing the day.