Next Stop: Knott's and Universal
ParQwish has only ever known one resort: Disneyland. Every park, land, and ride list in both apps was built around it. This weekend I started the groundwork for more — beginning with Knott’s Berry Farm and Universal Studios Hollywood. None of it shows up in the apps yet, and nothing changes if you’re planning a Disneyland trip. Here’s what’s happening behind the scenes and why it starts where it does.
Start with the data that takes longest
The wait-time heat map and the breakdown stats both needed about three months of readings before they said anything worth trusting. That clock can’t be sped up, so it should start before anything else. As of Sunday, the same collector that has been recording Disneyland and California Adventure every five minutes since June now records Knott’s Berry Farm, Knott’s Soak City, and Universal Studios Hollywood too, along with the weather at each one. In its first day it logged about 15,500 readings across 87 rides. By the time the apps are ready for these parks, the history should be there to go with them.
Why these two first
They’re close to Disneyland, a lot of Southern California trips include one or both, and they’re in the same time zone. That last part matters more than it sounds: a lot of the code quietly assumes Pacific time for things like “which day is today” and “when do parks open.” Starting with parks on Pacific time lets the rest of the work happen first. Florida, Paris, and Tokyo can come once those assumptions are fixed properly.
What comes for free, and what doesn’t
The live data comes from ThemeParks.wiki, the same open source the app already uses for Disneyland’s wait times. It covers every ride, show, and restaurant at both parks, with a location for each one. What it doesn’t have is just as important: which land anything is in, ride heights, what a restaurant serves, and any shops or photo spots at all. Those have to be filled in by hand, the same way Disneyland’s were, so I built a set of tools for doing that. A nightly import keeps names and locations current, and never overwrites anything entered by hand. That data entry is now the long part of the job.
A Halloween fix for the stats
Getting the new parks’ data flowing turned up a quirk in the existing Disneyland numbers. During seasonal overlays, some rides change their names in the live feed: Haunted Mansion becomes Haunted Mansion Holiday, and two of the Cars Land rides pick up Halloween names. The ride is the same, but the stats were treating the seasonal name as a ride they’d never heard of. Those rides dropped in and out of the reliability page from one night to the next, and on the heat map, every reading under the seasonal name was quietly thrown away. Both now follow the ride, not its name. Those three rides’ wait-time samples roughly doubled overnight, which should make their numbers on the heat map noticeably steadier through the holidays.
What’s next
Filling in Knott’s and Universal — lands first, then shops and photo spots. After that, the web planner learns to plan a trip that covers more than one resort, and then the app does. I’m not putting a date on it. As always, ParQwish is an unofficial fan project, not affiliated with Disney, Universal, or Knott’s Berry Farm.