Additional Disney FASTPASS Locations and New Disney MaxPass Coming to Disneyland Resort

[Deleted member 107043]

I think for tourists who come from out of town it could also help them get the most bang for their buck.

Of course it would, but not for $10 per person on top of the crazy single park one day admission. That's another $40 for a family of four until the introductory pricing expires. And what about resort guests? Will they have to pay the fee? The fact that WDW resort guests are given souvenir Magic Bands for free makes the up charge for using an app even harder to swallow.

I can accept a lot of questionable initiatives from Disney Parks, but the way management practically robs guests at the gates and then monetizes the overcrowding that they've purposely cultivated feels deeply wrong to me. I hope this fails spectacularly, but with the public's insatiable appetite for DLR I'll be shocked if that happens.

 

[flynnibus]

Why not use a screen capture program when previewing you photos like everyone else?

Resolution...

 

[flynnibus]

I can't get past the up charge.

Customer convenience isn't the only thing at work here. Behind the scenes there's personal data that Disney will likely be tracking, which guests will essentially be paying Disney to access. Not to mention that Disney will have who knows what kind of permissions on your phone via the app. I'm certainly not suggesting anything nefarious here, but all things considered this service doesn't feel like it's worth the additional cost on top of the hundreds of dollars required for a family just to enter the park for a day.

By carrying a smartphone with wifi and celluar you've already been a huge beacon of data as soon as you walk into the parks. Every time you scan that AP... or that credit card.. or that ticket.. you're leaving breadcrumbs. Disney already has ton of unique user data if they want to focus on that even without the app.

The $10 price is trivial.. its way too low which is what makes you wonder what their grander plan is. $10 per party is a huge loss.. so they'll fix that in some way. The bigger question marks are really about how they will manage a party of users.. vs having everyone be required to have their own device (which is way too unfriendly).

A cool implementation would be to allow you to setup your party on your phone by scanning your other member's tickets. When going to retrieve a digital FP, Disney could cross reference that those tickets are active in the park and do not have any other paper reservations in conflict. Then when you goto redeem your digital FP, if the kiosk/reader simply told the CM how big the party size is.. that's all that is needed to get the party through the check. Even doing something like playing a SOUND.. could make it easy for CMs to check party size when redeeming FPs.

 

[yookeroo]

If I was coming from, out of town, the $10 might be worth it for the pictures alone. If I was solo. For a family, that would add up. I'd consider getting one for the family just for the pictures. If I used the Fastpass feature, that would be bonus.

 

[Curious Constance]

One way to get a good deal out of it would be for one person to get it for one day and then get a boatload of ride and in park photos. But I always take a picture of the monitor after the ride is over with my phone and am happy enough with the results.

 

[George Lucas on a Bench]

What's this now? Everyone was expecting the wrist bands from WDW and Disneyland instead delivers the Flash Pass from Six Flags. No one saw this coming.

 

[BubbaQuest]

only works from inside the parks...

Even worse, now I have to *leave* the hotel at 7am, fight the security lines with everyone else, and THEN button mash my phone in hopes of securing a Toy Story fastpass

 

[mickEblu]

Of course it would, but not for $10 per person on top of the crazy single park one day admission. That's another $40 for a family of four until the introductory pricing expires. And what about resort guests? Will they have to pay the fee? The fact that WDW resort guests are given souvenir Magic Bands for free makes the up charge for using an app even harder to swallow.

I can accept a lot of questionable initiatives from Disney Parks, but the way management practically robs guests at the gates and then monetizes the overcrowding that they've purposely cultivated feels deeply wrong to me. I hope this fails spectacularly, but with the public's insatiable appetite for DLR I'll be shocked if that happens.

I hear you. I'm not a fan of this either. Just saying, if I have a familiy of 4 and I'm already spending thousands of dollars on say, a 3 day trip to DLR, spending another $120 to make my time in the park considerably better would be a no brainer for me. But then again that's the introductory price.

 

[mickEblu]

Weird that Mice Age didn't include this in their report yesterday.

 

[BubbaQuest]

Universal Studios front of the line add on is $75 per day or $300 more to their AP for Front of the Line. Disney has been giving you that for free.

But Uni's is a true Front of Line pass including shows. Disney's is a wait-outside-the-queue system. Not saying either is better or that Uni's is a reasonable deal, but one guarantees you quick access to all attractions, the other only *potentially* gets you access to a single ride without waiting in the queue (but still waiting).

 

[flynnibus]

Even worse, now I have to *leave* the hotel at 7am, fight the security lines with everyone else, and THEN button mash my phone in hopes of securing a Toy Story fastpass

Well... two things of value here
1 - better than hoofing it all the way to the back of the park
2 - since we have years of GOOD data collected now on TSMM at DCA through touring plans.. we can see what the true FP impact is when they roll it out this time. Less ancedotal, more factual this time.

 

[Deleted member 107043]

If I was coming from, out of town, the $10 might be worth it for the pictures alone. If I was solo. For a family, that would add up. I'd consider getting one for the family just for the pictures. If I used the Fastpass feature, that would be bonus.

That seems to be goal here - to help incentivize Photopass. Personally I'd prefer that it be optional and make the service free for people like me who don't care about taking photos.

 

[Curious Constance]

That seems to be goal here - to help incentivize Photopass. Personally I'd prefer that it be optional and make the service free for people like me who don't care about taking photos.

I love photos, but I only take pics of my kids and the park, and I can do that myself. I don't have much interest in getting cringy group pictures of us all pretending to be looking at Tinkerbell.

 

[Stevek]

What's this now? Everyone was expecting the wrist bands from WDW and Disneyland instead delivers the Flash Pass from Six Flags. No one saw this coming.

Nobody was expecting the WDW version here. I think most people were expecting a mobile phone/ipad version that was FREE.

I personally don't see myself every paying for this service but we all know there will be large number of die hard Disney fans that will pay for anything. Disney is banking on the large AP population shelling out an additional $10/person every time they visit. I really can't blame them as the fanbase in general has yet to show any significant sign of revolt against anything they do. Moan, wine, complain...take my money please Disney : )

 

[BrianLo]

There are three different discussions at play here that I think everyone is jumbling together.

1) Matterhorn and TSMM getting fast pass.
-Obviously this is going to be a disaster for their respective stand-by wait times. Selfishly these are two of the most aggravating stand by lines in the park. I personally can bypass Matterhorn with single rider, but TSMM is annoying even without fastpass. As it currently functions, it requires either rope dropping and losing out on the magic that is RSR single rider first thing, or waiting in a 30-45 min standby line. TSMM is always the longest ride I wait for in either park, there is just no avoiding it under the current system. Under the new system a fast pass should still be obtainable at rope drop and it's not like I would get on the ride more than once in stand by anyways. So personally it will save me the longest wait of my trip in either park. I'm a bit curious to see how it plays out though, DCA actually has a very high-priority Fast pass in RSR, unlike DHS which was TSMM or nothing.

Selfishly this will improve my DCA experience, but I'm sure it will hamper many others.

2) Electronic fastpass pick up
-This completely ignoring #3 is a good thing. This isn't the FP+ system, this is simply the current vanilla fast pass model without criss-crossing the park when your next window opens and back tracking to your former FP attraction. If anything, for what I would envision, I'd spend less time criss-crossing the park and therefore less time pushing through walk-ways. There is no denying that Fast Pass vanilla with paper tickets gravely changed guest flow and dumped people out of queues. An electronic delivery system, even if it was available to everyone, I honestly think will partially improve the previous damage by eliminating fast pass runners. Will FP run out more quickly? Perhaps. The convenience will allow more guests to adherently book another FP when the next window opens, but I don't see that change massively altering current distribution. I think the addition of a small number of FP via Matterhorn and TSMM would make up for that small bump. Minor changes to the FP window could easily be made if sell-out is truly impacted, which I highly doubt.

3) The 10 dollar cost
This I don't particularly get. You are paying 10$ for convenience. Someone up thread suggested the introductory price could be a way of soft launching the system without every single AP jumping on board day one. But the cost doesn't particularly make sense. $10 for wifi access as well? Ok, as a foreigner I'd see the value in that, I could avoid burning my data and paying my plans 5 dollar US roaming fee. 10$ for my FP solo convenience? I'd probably pay that too. 50$ per day for a family of five? Just get a FP runner. I don't understand the motivation for a cost. As people are worried about, the implications are potentially bad.

 

[Californian Elitist]

People are going in on the comments on both the blog and on Facebook.

 

[Curious Constance]

There are three different discussions at play here that I think everyone is jumbling together.

1) Matterhorn and TSMM getting fast pass.
-Obviously this is going to be a disaster for their respective stand-by wait times. Selfishly these are two of the most aggravating stand by lines in the park. I personally can bypass Matterhorn with single rider, but TSMM is annoying even without fastpass. As it currently functions, it requires either rope dropping and losing out on the magic that is RSR single rider first thing, or waiting in a 30-45 min standby line. TSMM is always the longest ride I wait for in either park, there is just no avoiding it under the current system. Under the new system a fast pass should still be obtainable at rope drop and it's not like I would get on the ride more than once in stand by anyways. So personally it will save me the longest wait of my trip in either park. I'm a bit curious to see how it plays out though, DCA actually has a very high-priority Fast pass in RSR, unlike DHS which was TSMM or nothing.

Selfishly this will improve my DCA experience, but I'm sure it will hamper many others.

2) Electronic fastpass pick up
-This completely ignoring #3 is a good thing. This isn't the FP+ system, this is simply the current vanilla fast pass model without criss-crossing the park when your next window opens and back tracking to your former FP attraction. If anything, for what I would envision, I'd spend less time criss-crossing the park and therefore less time pushing through walk-ways. There is no denying that Fast Pass vanilla with paper tickets gravely changed guest flow and dumped people out of queues. An electronic delivery system, even if it was available to everyone, I honestly think will partially improve the previous damage by eliminating fast pass runners. Will FP run out more quickly? Perhaps. The convenience will allow more guests to adherently book another FP when the next window opens, but I don't see that change massively altering current distribution. I think the addition of a small number of FP via Matterhorn and TSMM would make up for that small bump. Minor changes to the FP window could easily be made if sell-out is truly impacted, which I highly doubt.

3) The 10 dollar cost
This I don't particularly get. You are paying 10$ for convenience. Someone up thread suggested the introductory price could be a way of soft launching the system without every single AP jumping on board day one. But the cost doesn't particularly make sense. $10 for wifi access as well? Ok, as a foreigner I'd see the value in that, I could avoid burning my data and paying my plans 5 dollar US roaming fee. 10$ for my FP solo convenience? I'd probably pay that too. 50$ per day for a family of five? Just get a FP runner. I don't understand the motivation for a cost. As people are worried about, the implications are potentially bad.

I agree with every single thing you just said.

 

[Curious Constance]

I hope they implement this well before summer, I'd like to see how it all plays out before my trip. I really hope the $10 per day is just an effort to start slowly. The fact that they threw the Photopass in with it gives me some hope. As if they know they have to offer something more than digital fFastpass to get people to pay for it. I really want to use the system, but I don't think it's worth $40 a day to me. Not when we can get them for free in the park.

 

[croboy82]

what if you are not a solo person? must every person pay 10 usd to be able to get digital fast passes? how will they synch that both have the same time.

for now i just see longer stand by lines and fast passes running out quicker if you don't pay. hm.

 

[drizgirl]

what if you are not a solo person? must every person pay 10 usd to be able to get digital fast passes? how will they synch that both have the same time.

for now i just see longer stand by lines and fast passes running out quicker if you don't pay. hm.

$10 per person. It will be tied to the tickets.