Does DisneyWorld fascinate you? Nice NYTIMES article on how they monitor lines and wait times...It is scary how efficient they are without you knowing it!

I am a recent convert to the greatness of DisneyWorld...As an Economics teacher, what particularly interests me is the "magic" and how it is created and maintained.  Whenever I go there, I "look at the trees instead of forest" and try to pinpoint all the nuances of how Disney Inc. tries to manipulate us into having the experience they want us to have.  Some would say that takes the fun out of it...Hey, I say it puts the fun INTO it!! 

If you are interested in the behind the scene machinations of how they monitor lines and get people moving without their explicit knowledge, then  it will be worth your time to read the whole article. The study of lines, or "queues", are the subject of much social science research. Businesses are always looking for ways to shorten customers wait times, make that time less of a burden on customers, and/or try to wring out additional sales and profit from that wait time....Good stuff!

NYTIMES: Disney Tackles Major Theme Park Problem: Lines

""Deep in the bowels of Walt Disney World, inside an underground bunker called the Disney Operational Command Center, technicians know that you are standing in line and that you are most likely annoyed about it. Their clandestine mission: to get you to the fun faster....And so it has spent the last year outfitting an underground, nerve center to address that most low-tech of problems, the wait. Located under Cinderella Castle, the new center uses video cameras, computer programs, digital park maps and other whiz-bang tools to spot gridlock before it forms and deploy countermeasures in real time. ""