it was not.

it was not.

rides with either very high capacity (monsters unchained), low demand (pirates, forbidden journey), comically low capacity (minecart madness), or comically high demand (hagrid's motorbike adventure) naturally did not have noticeable changes in their wait time.

rides with extended downtimes close to the launch (expedition everest) naturally do not have a noticeable difference. if the downtime is long enough, like battle at the ministry's whopping 3.5 hour downtime, that keeps waits high enough all day to not notice a difference.

most of the drops are fairly small. for USO rides, i included ones with drops slightly after the launch, because i'm pretty sure USO updates wait times more reactively than disney; but i've only worked at one of these resorts before, so don't quote me on that.

lastly, everybody give a shoutout to TRON lightcycle run for being down during the entire launch! if you're reading this and you're on the TRON crew and you were able to catch the launch because of it, awesome! if missed the launch because of the downtime, i'm so sorry 😭

i make no claims that all of these are statistically significant lol

The Crawler Transporter carring Apollo 12 Saturn V (CSM-108/LM-6/SA-507) space vehicle from the VAB's High Bay 3 at the start of the 3.5 mile rollout to Launch Complex 39A. The transporter carried the 12.8 million pound load along the crawlerway at speeds under one mile per hour.

Date: September 8, 1969

I saw this on Facebook and had to look it up. It really happened, albeit the details are different. From Homesteading Space: The Skylab Story:

"On the evening of MD-46, I finally played the trick that had been in work for over two month," said Garriott. "It even had the flight controllers puzzled for twenty-five years! My objective was to pretend that my wife, Helen, had come up to Skylab to bring us a hot meal, even though this was an obvious impossibility. Here is how the scheme worked. I recorded her voice on my small hand-held tape recorder before flight, pretending to have a brief conversation with a Capcom, with time gaps for his replies. The Capcom would be my only accomplice, but his role would be carefully disguised.

It was also necessary to have some recent event mentioned to validate the currency of the dialogue, so it would seem it could not have been recorded before fight. The short dialogue is printed below in its entirety. I knew that both Bob Crippen and Karl Henize were going to be Capcoms for Skylab, so they were brought into the planning, given the script and rehearsed on their timing. They kept the short script on a piece of paper in their billfolds, awaiting the right moment.

"For our flight in August-September, there would be many occasions of natural disasters involving forest fires or hurricanes, which would be widely known throughout the United States. So a few comments about one or the other were made on the tape. This led to four different scripts being recorded, one for each of the two Capcoms and one each for the two natural events. I would play the tape on the normal air-to-ground voice link with my wife's recorded voice and the Capcom would respond as if totally surprised by the female interloper."

Near the end of one period of voice contact Garriott said to the ground, "I'll have something for you on the next pass, Bob." Crippen replied, "Roger that, Owen." Then quietly and surreptitiously, he reviewed the brief script that had been in his pocket for all these weeks. Soon after coming into voice range, the ground heard this voice on the standard air-to-ground link:

Skylab (a female voice): "Gad, I don't see how the boys manage to get rid of the feedback berween these speakers.... Hello Houston, how are you reading me down there? (s sec. pause) Hello Houston, are you reading Skylab?"

Capcom: "Skylab, this is Houston. We heard you alright, but had difficulty recognizing your voice. Who do we have on the line up there?"

Skylab: "Hello Houston. Roger. Well I haven't talked with you for a while. Isn't that you down there, Bob? This is Helen, here in Skylab. The boys hadn't had a good home cooked meal in so long, I thought I'd bring one up. Over"

Capcom: "Roger, Skylab. Someone's gotta be pulling my leg, Helen. Where are you?"

Skylab: "Right here in Skylab, Bob. Just a few orbits ago we were looking down on those forest fires in California. The smoke sure covers a lot of territory, and, oh boy, the sunrises are just beautiful! Oh oh..... See you later, Bob. I hear the boys coming up here and I'm not supposed to be on the radio."

"Then quiet returned to the voice link, but we were told later, Bob Crippen had lots of questions coming his way in the Control Center," Garriott said. "What was going on? Where was this voice coming from? Bob must have been a very good actor, because he claimed complete ignorance and innocence of how it happened. Everyone heard it coming down on the air-to-ground loop. The whole two-way conversation sounded like a perfectly normal dialogue. No breaks or gaps, and they all heard Bob respond in real time. Could I have recorded Helen's voice on a 'family conversation' from our home? Yes, but there was no recent one. How would she have known about the fires, or who was to be on Capcom duty and how could she respond to Bob's comments in real time, as everyone could hear?

"No one ever worked out how this was accomplished. Finally, at our twenty-fifth reunion celebration in Houston in 1998, and with many of the flight directors and controllers present and still with no clue as to how it was done, I described it all as above. My prejudiced opinion is that this was the best 'gotcha' ever perpetrated on our friendly flight controllers!"

Crippen recalled: "That was kind of a fun trick. There was head rubbing.

"Pilot’s eye view of the launch tower looking through Enterprise’s forward windows."

Space Shuttle Enterprise was at Pad A, Launch Complex 39 during dress rehearsals from May 1 to July 23, 1979.

Sweet Apollo space foods, 1969.

"The current administration's 2026 budget request includes a staggering 47% cut to NASA's science programs as part of a 25% cut to NASA overall. This is an extinction-level event for the Earth and space science communities, upending decades of work and tens of billions in taxpayers' investment. But there is still time to stop these cuts from taking effect.

The public has an important opportunity to tell Congress to reject these cuts and restore proper funding to NASA science before the budget for 2026 is written. Add your name now to tell Congress: Save NASA Science."

"This test conducted in May 1988 shows what happens during launch if a space shuttle main engine fails. The test was conducted in the 10X10 supersonic wind tunnel at the John H. Glenn Research Center."

Date: April 15, 1988