FastPass+ Most Certainly Not Coming Back As It Was

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larryz

I'm Just A Tourist!
Premium Member
View attachment 569910

tequila-shots-2.gif
Dang... that gif's making my mouth water...
 

Kingoglow

Well-Known Member
So how many rides would you want/expect to skip?
On my typical park day, at the Magic Kingdom, I can only think of two rides that I would pay money to skip the line (Splash and Space). Even then, I am fine skipping those all together or just hoping in stand-by.

The only effect I can really see coming out of this is no longer having a 'feel' for where the crowds will be. Between stand-by, child swap, paid fastpass and virtual ques, the posted expected wait times will be meaningless.
 

jpinkc

Well-Known Member
If this is for real it totally es me off. I didnt mind the 3 FP+ system. At least I could sit down with wife and kids and say ok what 3 rides do you HAVE to ride for each park. Boom we then took the ones we could get and scheduled out the rest of our day. Now it sounds like if you dont rope drop, your going to be stuck with staring at a phone all day to try and get on any E ticket rides. I want to enjoy WDW not wander around staring at a phone all day!!! I guess if we are staring at phones all day they can stop taking care of park cleanliness and let facades rot or run down because we will be too busy staring at phones to notice the once beautiful park around us going further into decline.
 

zakattack99

Well-Known Member
In the Parks
No
Few thoughts (and please correct me if I have my understanding wrong)

1) The system is confusing, I am a "regular" I follow all the news here and I am having a hard time understanding. Now try to explain to a first timer or a infrequent flyer that is taking their family to the parks and have heard for years how great the free fastpass is. They now get a standby pass thinking its a fastpass show up thinking they are getting on a ride only to have to stand in a however long ride. Pray for the Cast because they are going to need it.

2) This whole system just screams engineers/developers developed this without any input from the truly average guest. I am generally an optimist when it comes to people but people are dumb. There will still guest that did not know Fastpass(+) was free. Still more did not know how to use their phone to make or change the ones they had (if they had any). Now you expect them to understand 3 different options? Good luck with that.

3) For all that is holy can I just PLEASE STAND IN A DAMN LINE. Let me show up at 6AM run all you fine folks over as I rush to RotR and just STAND IN THE STANDBY! Like if I choose to waste my day standing in an 8hr line to ride 1 ride let me ruin my vacation the way I want to! The only reason they are closing regular standby is to force people onto the App and hopefully convince them to use the paid option which is crap. Just let us stand in line without fear of it closing at a moments notice. Imagine walking halfway across a park only to get there and be told sorry we just closed standby. Again poor cast are going to take the brunt of this.

4) Speaking on paying so if I feel so inclined to pay Disney takes my money then the ride goes down. Guarantee their first option is going to be offer an alternate attraction. That's fine when the fastpass is free but if I am paying I want what I paid for. Again a nightmare for guest services who will be pelted with complaints about how they paid for a guaranteed spot and now its not available. (yes I know the pass is not a garuntee but try explaining that to someone who paid $40-$80 for something and have been telling their kids that thy have a spot on said ride)

5) This is going to give Disney a bad image. People will go home and tell their friends don't go there they nickel and dime you out of everything. Not worth it go to Universal, go to the beach, go anywhere but there unless you don't care about your money. (I don't think Bob cares about this but it will be a problem. Very very hard to fix a bad image.)
 

Parker in NYC

Well-Known Member
4) Speaking on paying so if I feel so inclined to pay Disney takes my money then the ride goes down. Guarantee their first option is going to be offer an alternate attraction. That's fine when the fastpass is free but if I am paying I want what I paid for. Again a nightmare for guest services who will be pelted with complaints about how they paid for a guaranteed spot and now its not available. (yes I know the pass is not a garuntee but try explaining that to someone who paid $40-$80 for something and have been telling their kids that thy have a spot on said ride)
Absolutely agreed. And thanks for including that disclaimer (bolded) for those here who will stan "nothing is guaranteed" 'til kingdom come.
 

ne4now

Member

"Paid replacement for FastPass+ for Walt Disney World seems to be a step closer with a new ride reservation system coming to Disneyland Paris"​

I liked the more recent system but understand why so many hate Fast Pass and This is probably the WORST way to bring back fast passes and will encourage your average families like mine to spend less time and $ at WDW if this is the route they go. Guests (especially FAMILIES) traveling and staying on site will spend more $ in the parks if they are not standing in a line. But others are less likely to return if they spend hours of their day waiting around.
From a disney $ point of view fast passes absolutely make sense and they could generate money without ing ppl off if they used them properly.
They should reduce the overall # of them to speed up lines and limit them to RESORT GUESTS ONLY while making it a tiered system based on where you stay. Perhaps 1 FP for value, 2 FP for moderate and 3 FP for deluxe and then +1 at a time after using them (based on availability). This would encourage traveling families to spend more on an on-site resort and keep those families spending $$ in the parks and on property overall.
 

MrPromey

Well-Known Member
I think you are overhyping the situation you could end up in...

"Which one ride will we grab a Standby Return pass for as soon as it becomes available?
And you’ll need to adapt plans on the fly, depending on what happens."

Isn't that exactly what we all did in FP days? Look at available times, make a decision based on the current conditions and what we planned for the rest of the day? Or even pre-FP with looking at lines and availability?



Or looked at it another way... you are free to do what you want and adapt to what you see and feel like... instead of being locked into a plan that you made months ago based on the availability you were offered - instead of necessarily what you wanted in the first place.



Isn't this the __exact behavior__ people used to say why FP+ and 3 FPs wasn't a big issue? Because you could do exactly what you are saying and people were more than happy to do so?

Personally I don't find the issue of 'day of' planning vs 60/whatever days out an issue because it removes most of the hassles the 60days out presented. Tiered access, punishment for last-minute bookings, punishment for organized group trips (vs vacationers), dealing with the future vs now, lack of flexibility to adjust your plans, etc. Sure you are giving up 'piece of mind', but you are also breaking free of the chains or tearing down the exclusionary walls. That's a gain in my book.

Advanced scheduling (and the further and further pushing out of the boundary) IMO was one of the worst things DIsney has been doing. So a new model that burns that to the ground? Excellent. On the other points, I'm still trying to digest how it will play out.

Pre-fastpass days worked a lot better because they were increasing capacity at the parks in a steady pace to keep up with attendance rather than reducing attraction capacity.

Consider that Wonders of Life featured a major ride with Body Wars, another significant attraction with Cranium Command, movies/shows for The Making of Me and Goofy About Health along with a slew of interactive stuff - all in one pavilion. That's way more both in potential time spent doing something other than shoping/eating/waiting-in-line as well as variety than is offered in all of the Avatar "Land" addition to Animal Kingdom and Star Wars Land in Hollywood Studios replacement of existing attractions, combined* and this wasn't even a "land".

It was just a single pavilion.

When they closed down Wonders of life, what did they replace it with?

Nothing.

Since that time, has attendance gone down or up?

How do moves like this affect wait times when they reduce what there is to do and replace existing longer attractions with shorter ones all while doing their damnedest to pack more people into the parks?

Pre-fast-pass worked because there was simply way more to do per-guest than there is today and that is 100% on Disney for creating this situation. They've certainly had the paying guests to bankroll the needed expansion - they've just chosen to pocket the money or use it to prop up other parts of the company rather than reinvest to prevent the Florida parks from becoming the messes they are, today.

*admittedly, the scope/cost of the attractions was smaller - no denying that but what's better? The one 5 or 15 minute e-ticket you never end up doing because you didn't get into the virtual que fast enough at park opening or the pavilion with two hours worth of entertainment you did get to do with minimal or moderate waits?
 
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aliceismad

Well-Known Member
So how many rides would you want/expect to skip?
On my typical park day, at the Magic Kingdom, I can only think of two rides that I would pay money to skip the line (Splash and Space). Even then, I am fine skipping those all together or just hoping in stand-by.

The only effect I can really see coming out of this is no longer having a 'feel' for where the crowds will be. Between stand-by, child swap, paid fastpass and virtual ques, the posted expected wait times will be meaningless.
All of them.

Just kidding - but realistically (depending on cost), I think the answer is going to be a lot different among different segments of the population. It's not only how much money you make/how much money is a big deal to you, but also how often do you go/how much value to do you put on certain things.
 

el_super

Well-Known Member
Few thoughts (and please correct me if I have my understanding wrong)

1) The system is confusing,

It's not any more confusing than Fastpass and Fastpass+ and MaxPass. Obviously the least confusing option is to just do standby only for everything.


2) This whole system just screams engineers/developers developed this without any input from the truly average guest.

Here's the only input you would ever receive from the "average" guest: I want to ride any attraction, at any time I choose, without waiting in any line.

How do you engineer for that?


3) For all that is holy can I just PLEASE STAND IN A DAMN LINE. Let me show up at 6AM run all you fine folks over as I rush to RotR and just STAND IN THE STANDBY! Like if I choose to waste my day standing in an 8hr line to ride 1 ride let me ruin my vacation the way I want to! The only reason they are closing regular standby is to force people onto the App

No, not at all. They WANT people to wait in line, but there is a certain point where a long line is hard to manage and can downright be dangerous to people. Holding people prisoner for eight hours is NOT a solution. Having people relieve themselves in corners, or having people swap in and out of line all day is NOT a solution.

This new solution for paris is the compromise between these: force the majority of people to do standby only, but when the lines get too long to control, start a virtual queue.


4) Speaking on paying so if I feel so inclined to pay Disney takes my money then the ride goes down. Guarantee their first option is going to be offer an alternate attraction. That's fine when the fastpass is free but if I am paying I want what I paid for. Again a nightmare for guest services who will be pelted with complaints about how they paid for a guaranteed spot and now its not available.

But how is this any different from waiting 8 hours in a standby line, and then having the ride go down for the rest of the day? Nothing is a guarantee. It's easier for Disney to refund the cost of a paid Fastpass, than to try to comp an entire day because you were standing in line for 8 hours.

5) This is going to give Disney a bad image.

They will be fine.
 

Mr. Moderate

Well-Known Member
When is it finally going to be too much for even the most diehard of the Pixie Dusters? I loved going to parks and years ago, I was pretty diehard too, but Disney with each passing year makes it harder to justify the experience. I am so tired of greed in our culture and the grabbing of cash with both hands in just about everything that Americans like to do and hold dear. It's just a matter of time before this is fully implemented in the states and before long will be an accepted part of the Disney park experience. Paid shills and trolls will be out on social media, web forums, etc, to knock down people like me, who express frustration and dismay at what is happening with the company and the parks. Where does this end and you can bet more is on the way and the fan community of the parks just keep going along with it.

Sure some will say just budget for it or the famous rude reply, "don't go then and there will be more room for me". It still doesn't change the fact that the experience of going to the Disney theme parks was a part of our culture growing up and that it was looked as a rite of passage for the working/middle class. I've saved for two plus years to make my family's wish of going to the 50th and to have a great experience and honestly, I'm still not not done paying, but where do you draw the line? The after hours boo party wanted $700 plus dollars for my family of 4, just for a few nighttime hours at MK and that's on top of a 5 day park ticket. Now soon we will have this to deal with this, I'm sorry, but no thanks.

I'm sorry to vent here, but I guess when you love something and see it being run into ground to appease the shareholders and the big money makers within the company, it sours the whole experience. Just my honest opinion and YMMV.
 

ImperfectPixie

Well-Known Member
When is it finally going to be too much for even the most diehard of the Pixie Dusters? I loved going to parks and years ago, I was pretty diehard too, but Disney with each passing year makes it harder to justify the experience. I am so tired of greed in our culture and the grabbing of cash with both hands in just about everything that Americans like to do and hold dear. It's just a matter of time before this is fully implemented in the states and before long will be an accepted part of the Disney park experience. Paid shills and trolls will be out on social media, web forums, etc, to knock down people like me, who express frustration and dismay at what is happening with the company and the parks. Where does this end and you can bet more is on the way and the fan community of the parks just keep going along with it.

Sure some will say just budget for it or the famous rude reply, "don't go then and there will be more room for me". It still doesn't change the fact that the experience of going to the Disney theme parks was a part of our culture growing up and that it was looked as a rite of passage for the working/middle class. I've saved for two plus years to make my family's wish of going to the 50th and to have a great experience and honestly, I'm still not not done paying, but where do you draw the line? The after hours boo party wanted $700 plus dollars for my family of 4, just for a few nighttime hours at MK and that's on top of a 5 day park ticket. Now soon we will have this to deal with this, I'm sorry, but no thanks.

I'm sorry to vent here, but I guess when you love something and see it being run into ground to appease the shareholders and the big money makers within the company, it sours the whole experience. Just my honest opinion and YMMV.
I'm right there with you.
 

aaronml

Well-Known Member
1) The system is confusing, I am a "regular" I follow all the news here and I am having a hard time understanding. Now try to explain to a first timer or a infrequent flyer that is taking their family to the parks and have heard for years how great the free fastpass is. They now get a standby pass thinking its a fastpass show up thinking they are getting on a ride only to have to stand in a however long ride. Pray for the Cast because they are going to need it.

2) This whole system just screams engineers/developers developed this without any input from the truly average guest. I am generally an optimist when it comes to people but people are dumb. There will still guest that did not know Fastpass(+) was free. Still more did not know how to use their phone to make or change the ones they had (if they had any). Now you expect them to understand 3 different options? Good luck with that.
The new system is definitely confusing, but the idea seems to be that the “Genie” will handle explaining all of this to guests / guiding people through the process.
 

aliceismad

Well-Known Member
No, not at all. They WANT people to wait in line, but there is a certain point where a long line is hard to manage and can downright be dangerous to people. Holding people prisoner for eight hours is NOT a solution. Having people relieve themselves in corners, or having people swap in and out of line all day is NOT a solution.

This new solution for paris is the compromise between these: force the majority of people to do standby only, but when the lines get too long to control, start a virtual queue.
It's only a matter of time before someone sued Disney for heatstroke because they stood in line for 8 hours or something. Or they get clocked by the people behind them because everyone's angry after 6.78 hours. Or they decide it's a good place to kick over/deface some decor. Long lines are just bad for so many reasons. People who are both bored and annoyed do stupid things. Give me all the virtual lines vs. real lines longer than 90 minutes.

But more importantly for Disney, standing in line for 8 hours is bad for profit and guest satisfaction. If someone is waiting in line 8 hours, they are also not riding other rides, nor are they buying churros and turkey legs and cupcakes and cocktails, buying $80 sweatshirts, buying $25 bubble wands that their kid will break 2 days later, etc.
 
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