Lightning Lane at Walt Disney World

Fido Chuckwagon

Well-Known Member
That’s true but M&Gs have terrible put through and I’m sure that removal was a very small portion of the LL pool.

That being said, it seems odd to have removed them entirely especially as an option for families with young children to book.
As a family with young children, this is really aggravating. My girls love meeting the characters but I’m sure as hell not going to wait 30-45 minutes to do it.
 

easyrowrdw

Well-Known Member
I’ve joked in the past that Disney should just go book to a ticket book but I think compared to the mess they’ve created now it may actually make sense.

$100 entry fee that includes A B C tickets and shows, D tickets are an extra $10 each, E tickets are $15-20 each.

A day with the train, tiki room, country bears, JC, PoTC ($10), HM ($10), BTM ($15), TBA ($15), IaSW, philharmagic, 7D ($10), Tron ($20), SM ($15), peoplemover… would be roughly equivalent to a current ticket price. If you want to be a power user and ride everything could add $100 to the total, if you just want a relaxing day in the parks it could cut $100 from the total. Everyone gets what they pay for though.
Keep the standby the same just for every single LL you pay at the moment to enter it, and the price is dependent on the wait time

25 mins? That is $5 ... 45? That will be $10, etc - just scan your MB to enter

So if you want to skip all the lines you can, but it'll cost you
You want it to be more complicated?! What's wrong with you people? 😂
 

TheMaxRebo

Well-Known Member
That’s true but M&Gs have terrible put through and I’m sure that removal was a very small portion of the LL pool.

That being said, it seems odd to have removed them entirely especially as an option for families with young children to book.

Hopefully it means the standby lines for them at least move steadily now. I believe that was a big complaint they were getting that the standby lines barely moved as they had to accommodate the LL people and they have such low hourly capacity.
 

GoofGoof

Premium Member
Hopefully it means the standby lines for them at least move steadily now. I believe that was a big complaint they were getting that the standby lines barely moved as they had to accommodate the LL people and they have such low hourly capacity.
I think this is probably one of the main reasons for excluding. One thing they could do for certain meet and greets is have 2 separate lines with 2 separate characters but they can only do that where they can hide it. Can’t have 2 Mickey Mouses (Mickey Mice???) standing next to each other but if they are in different rooms….no problem. The cost is pretty negligible. Just add a few extra CMs and you can double capacity.

Another option would be to add ILL to some meet and greets. If it’s your kid’s favorite character and you don’t want to wait then pay. People pay a premium for meals with characters to get a no wait meet and greet while they eat.
 

Purduevian

Well-Known Member
False, they removed a bunch of capacity by taking away the M&G’s and ETwB, especially at Magic Kingdom.
You are 100% correct and I totally missed it because the conversation had steered towards riding all the tier 1 attractions at DHS in a day.

I'll amend it to say that each individual ride LL capacity remained constant through this change. My point was meant to be, if on G+ you used to be able to ride SDD, ToT, RnRC, MMRR, and MFSR all on one day, but on LLMP now you only get SDD, ToT, and MFSR... your LLs for RnRC and MMRR now go to someone that otherwise would not gotten those LLs.

Basically, one person losing out on LLs they would have gotten on G+ is another person gaining LLs on LLMP.

It still remains to be seen if the "winners" of this change will be:
  1. Non-power user resort guests (due to the 7+ day prebook)
  2. The uninformed groups (due to the 3 prebook/tiering)
  3. No one, the same people will still figure out how to suck up all the capacity (Disney can't stop us!)
My personal belief is #2, but I actually think it will be pretty minor. I'm planning to stay offsite on my next trip and fully expect to get the same number of LLs as before... Potentially more actually because I now have 3 "tracks" to power use.
 
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Purduevian

Well-Known Member
I wonder if this will be a money saving/power using "hack" people use. For instance, today I could buy AK for $18 and book my family an 8-9pm ITTAB. Then right now as the pass expires (9:01am) it should unlock 3 completely open LL tracks. Switch everything to MK tier 1s without ever setting foot in AK. Meanwhile those that booked MK paid $29 per person are still stuck on 1 tier 1 since the park is opening right now.

I allowed myself 5 refreshes to see what I would book. I got: 9:45am Big thunder (All refreshs gave 9:25-9:45am BTMRR), 2:40pm Tiana's (popped up on the 3rd try), 9:15am space mountain (popped up on the fourth try)

Would you rather pay $29 per person and walk in with 1 tier 1 and 2 tier 2s. or pay $18 a person and walk in with 9:15 Space, 9:45 Big thunder, and 2:40PM Tiana?
Trying this "hack" again from my house to see what I could get. AK $17 today, MK $27. If I had booked an 8am-9am ITTBAB and let it expire. I think at 9:01am I could go for 3 tier 1s at MK and save $10 per person...

I gave myself 5 refreshes:
9:40am HM, 10:05am BTMMR, and 11:10am SM. No Tiana's today, but I still think this is a better strategy than just prebooking MK.
 

GoofGoof

Premium Member
You are 100% correct and I totally missed it because the conversation had steered towards riding all the tier 1 attractions at DHS in a day.

I'll amend it to say that each individual ride LL capacity remained constant through this change. My point was meant to be, if on G+ you used to be able to ride SDD, ToT, RnRC, MMRR, and MFSR all on LLMP now you only get SDD, ToT, and MFSR... your LLs for RnRC and MMRR now go to someone that otherwise would not gotten those LLs.

Basically, one person losing out on LLs they would have gotten on G+ is another person gaining LLs on LLMP.

It still remains to be seen if the "winners" of this change will be:
  1. Non-power user resort guests (due to the 7+ day prebook)
  2. The uninformed groups (due to the 3 prebook/tiering)
  3. No one, the same people will still figure out how to suck up all the capacity (Disney can't stop us!)
My personal belief is #2, but I actually think it will be pretty minor. I'm planning to stay offsite on my next trip and fully expect to get the same number of LLs as before... Potentially more actually because I now have 3 "tracks" to power use.
Except for the most busy times I believe it is likely to be most of all 3 :) Due to the tier limits I am assuming that on all but the most busy days there will be many more tier 1 slots than people to pre-book them meaning that combined with day of drops (which we will figure out timing on) there will be plenty of opportunities to get multiple or all of the tier 1s in one day of use.

#1 and #2 who were not power users will now get a tier 1 and whatever 2 tier twos they want. If these people were unaware of the time of drops and the need to constantly refresh under Genie+ then it’s likely those 3 reservations will be at least as good and likely better than what they would have gotten under Genie+. People are also less likely to buy later in the day which was never a good idea. The power users will figure out how to use the system and as you said, having 3 tracks to work could actually be better than Genie+ for power users spending the day at a park and even for park hopping. The obvious exceptions are that you cannot repeat rides so anyone wanting to do that loses out and you can’t do the evening stack so anyone wanting to do that is also losing out. So I think it’s fair to assume most power users will figure this out and get most of what they want.

We need to wait and see how capacity looks once fully ramped up. So far in very early reports it looks like maybe the new system is at least as good at 3 of 4 parks with more issues at MK.
 

nickys

Premium Member
You are 100% correct and I totally missed it because the conversation had steered towards riding all the tier 1 attractions at DHS in a day.

I'll amend it to say that each individual ride LL capacity remained constant through this change. My point was meant to be, if on G+ you used to be able to ride SDD, ToT, RnRC, MMRR, and MFSR all on LLMP now you only get SDD, ToT, and MFSR... your LLs for RnRC and MMRR now go to someone that otherwise would not gotten those LLs.

Basically, one person losing out on LLs they would have gotten on G+ is another person gaining LLs on LLMP.

It still remains to be seen if the "winners" of this change will be:
  1. Non-power user resort guests (due to the 7+ day prebook)
  2. The uninformed groups (due to the 3 prebook/tiering)
  3. No one, the same people will still figure out how to suck up all the capacity (Disney can't stop us!)
My personal belief is #2, but I actually think it will be pretty minor. I'm planning to stay offsite on my next trip and fully expect to get the same number of LLs as before... Potentially more actually because I now have 3 "tracks" to power use.
Replying to your post because it seems quite appropriate. And is an example of #3 in action, albeit with only a day to learn the new system.

Two Disney newbies had half a day in DHS pre-cruise. They planned to arrive at DHS around 1pm for Savii’s and had an ADR at Ogas around 6ish.

Being newbies they asked a friend to help them, who booked the following for them on Wednesday @ 7am for Thursday:

Single LL for Rise
Multipass LLs for Slinky, TSMM and ToT

On Thursday he directed them around the park from his home and this is what happened:

Started with Muppets before doing Savi’s.

They rode TSMM and he booked an LL for MFSR.
Then they rode Slinky and he searched for RnR without luck so booked an immediate Star Tours, which he pushed back so they could eat.
They also decided to skip ToT so that was modified to MMRR (again no RnR available).
They rode Rise & Star Tours, and he managed to book RnR for them for after their Ogas reservation.

Everything ridden except for ToT (their choice) and Aliens.

Over the course of the day he had modified MFSR and RnR to earlier times and ST to a later time.

Rise went down just before they boarded the escape pod so they managed to squeeze it in later using their multi-experience pass.

That’s a pretty good day. Obviously helped by the fact that no one had pre-booked earlier than one day ahead.
 

GoofGoof

Premium Member
Replying to your post because it seems quite appropriate. And is an example of #3 in action, albeit with only a day to learn the new system.

Two Disney newbies had half a day in DHS pre-cruise. They planned to arrive at DHS around 1pm for Savii’s and had an ADR at Ogas around 6ish.

Being newbies they asked a friend to help them, who booked the following for them on Wednesday @ 7am for Thursday:

Single LL for Rise
Multipass LLs for Slinky, TSMM and ToT

On Thursday he directed them around the park from his home and this is what happened:

Started with Muppets before doing Savi’s.

They rode TSMM and he booked an LL for MFSR.
Then they rode Slinky and he searched for RnR without luck so booked an immediate Star Tours, which he pushed back so they could eat.
They also decided to skip ToT so that was modified to MMRR (again no RnR available).
They rode Rise & Star Tours, and he managed to book RnR for them for after their Ogas reservation.

Everything ridden except for ToT (their choice) and Aliens.

Over the course of the day he had modified MFSR and RnR to earlier times and ST to a later time.

Rise went down just before they boarded the escape pod so they managed to squeeze it in later using their multi-experience pass.

That’s a pretty good day. Obviously helped by the fact that no one had pre-booked earlier than one day ahead.
For reference, according to touring plans 7/25 was a 7 crowd level at DHS. So not peak crowds, but not empty either. No pre-booking could be a factor but that’s a significantly better outcome than what some people feared.
 

JD80

Well-Known Member
You want it to be more complicated?! What's wrong with you people? 😂

I've said a long time ago that if they were gonig to have a pay skip system, I would have had a pay per ride. Make everything a LLSP/ILL and make the cost subject to demand like ordering an Uber.

Teacups would be a dollar and Tron would be $20.

Pretty simple and it would work like mobile order.
 

JAB

Well-Known Member
I've said a long time ago that if they were gonig to have a pay skip system, I would have had a pay per ride. Make everything a LLSP/ILL and make the cost subject to demand like ordering an Uber.

Teacups would be a dollar and Tron would be $20.

Pretty simple and it would work like mobile order.
The problem with this is that, there's nothing limiting how many people can enter the express lane at any given time. As we've seen, there's far more demand for an express lane than there is supply, and that's by design. If everyone could just pay to enter an express lane at any time, not only would the express lanes now have long waits, it would make the FP/LL issue of making standby waits longer even worse, and I think it would actually make the average wait time go up for a lot of people, if not most. Seems like a lose/lose for everyone.
 

TheMaxRebo

Well-Known Member
Replying to your post because it seems quite appropriate. And is an example of #3 in action, albeit with only a day to learn the new system.

Two Disney newbies had half a day in DHS pre-cruise. They planned to arrive at DHS around 1pm for Savii’s and had an ADR at Ogas around 6ish.

Being newbies they asked a friend to help them, who booked the following for them on Wednesday @ 7am for Thursday:

Single LL for Rise
Multipass LLs for Slinky, TSMM and ToT

On Thursday he directed them around the park from his home and this is what happened:

Started with Muppets before doing Savi’s.

They rode TSMM and he booked an LL for MFSR.
Then they rode Slinky and he searched for RnR without luck so booked an immediate Star Tours, which he pushed back so they could eat.
They also decided to skip ToT so that was modified to MMRR (again no RnR available).
They rode Rise & Star Tours, and he managed to book RnR for them for after their Ogas reservation.

Everything ridden except for ToT (their choice) and Aliens.

Over the course of the day he had modified MFSR and RnR to earlier times and ST to a later time.

Rise went down just before they boarded the escape pod so they managed to squeeze it in later using their multi-experience pass.

That’s a pretty good day. Obviously helped by the fact that no one had pre-booked earlier than one day ahead.

That is pretty good and about what I got done our last trip using G+ where we "slept in and stacked" - only thing was I was getting 1 tier 1, then another, then another and then moving to tier 2, vs now coming in with one tier 1 and two tier 2s and then going from there. But if people are able to do what they got done on most days, that is sufficient I think
 

JD80

Well-Known Member
The problem with this is that, there's nothing limiting how many people can enter the express lane at any given time. As we've seen, there's far more demand for an express lane than there is supply, and that's by design. If everyone could just pay to enter an express lane at any time, not only would the express lanes now have long waits, it would make the FP/LL issue of making standby waits longer even worse, and I think it would actually make the average wait time go up for a lot of people, if not most. Seems like a lose/lose for everyone.

This is probably not worth discussing because it'll never happen, but I'll leave it at this (DM me if you want to continue the convo because I find it interesting).

If there are 100 slots to sell per hour. The first 10 slots cost $5 the next 30 cost $10 then next 30 cost $15 then the next 30 cost $20. Anything over 100 is now $40. As demand drops and time passes, it makes its way back down to 10 based on how many people are in the LL.

You can write a simple dynamic script that sets the price.
 

doctornick

Well-Known Member
Ah, I hadn't thought of it that way. I saw another comment that the system isn't really designed for you to use it on every ride, even as that's how I want to do it. We'll see how things shake out.
Yeah, there’s no way that everyone purchasing G+ or LLMP could all get a pass for every eligible attraction. The capacity just isn’t there. I would spitball and say the average number of attractions that can be booked is probably around 4 per purchaser, maybe 5.

In order the have it function as a “everyone gets one pass for every eligible ride” system they would have to sell a ton fewer G+ or LLMP. And if they did that, we’d be looking at a price many times greater (like $75-100 per person per day) to make up for the revenue. And that would have bad PR I would think both in being unaffordable for “regular” families and also being unfavorable compared to Uni’s system that is more similar but allows unlimited rides.
 

gorillaball

Well-Known Member
This is probably not worth discussing because it'll never happen, but I'll leave it at this (DM me if you want to continue the convo because I find it interesting).

If there are 100 slots to sell per hour. The first 10 slots cost $5 the next 30 cost $10 then next 30 cost $15 then the next 30 cost $20. Anything over 100 is now $40. As demand drops and time passes, it makes its way back down to 10 based on how many people are in the LL.

You can write a simple dynamic script that sets the price.
I hate the idea of a pay for every ride/book of tickets system with a passion.
It would be an all day internal conflict of, is it worth it, is it worth it.
I'm an accountant and this sounds like a good way to ruin a vacation that I dearly enjoy.
Don't get me wrong - I don't like ILL either, but that's one decision to make and move on.
Am I an adult that rides Small World almost every trip because it's nostalgic and usually has a short line - yes.
Now, charge me $1, $3 - whatever.... gross. That would probably be the #1 thing that would turn me off from Disney/Theme Parks.
 

JD80

Well-Known Member
I hate the idea of a pay for every ride/book of tickets system with a passion.
It would be an all day internal conflict of, is it worth it, is it worth it.
I'm an accountant and this sounds like a good way to ruin a vacation that I dearly enjoy.
Don't get me wrong - I don't like ILL either, but that's one decision to make and move on.
Am I an adult that rides Small World almost every trip because it's nostalgic and usually has a short line - yes.
Now, charge me $1, $3 - whatever.... gross. That would probably be the #1 thing that would turn me off from Disney/Theme Parks.

This would be place of the LLMP not Standby Lines.
 

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