THE IMPACT OF QUEUE LENGTH ROUNDING AND DELAYED APP INFORMATION ON DISNEY WORLD QUEUES

摘要

Many service systems provide queue length information to customers to aid their decisions of what queue to join. One example is at Walt Disney World (WDW), where waiting times are posted to customers via an app. However, it has been observed that the real waiting times are not posted in the app. In fact, WDW rounds the waiting time up to nearest five minute interval. In this paper, we build a simulation model to study the impact of rounding this information and when the information is lagged. We show that rounding or delaying information can result in oscillations in the queue length process. Moreover, increasing the rounding parameter or the delay in information causes oscillations to increase. We also demonstrate that our queueing model can mimic the observed dynamics in the data seen in WDW. Thus, we show the importance of understanding the impact of rounding or delaying information.