Forgive me if a thread like this already exists, but I wasn't able to find it. It seems there should be a central thread where people can post their reviews of the system as/after they've experienced it. I'll start below:
I'll be vacationing at the World in less than a week and after hearing all the hate towards MyMagic+ and personally loathing the process that is getting ADR's I've a heavy dash of skepticism about the whole program. However, so far I've been pleasantly surprised. I deliberately held off making any fastpass+ reservations until today, to see how easy/difficult it would be to make them at the last minute. I was thrilled to have absolutely no trouble getting passes for whatever attractions I liked at or near the time I liked- and we're talking popular attractions here like Soarin' and Space Mountain not walk-on's. It was a bit disappointing to see a tiered system in place at Epcot and MGM, but the way the tiers are set up its very easy to work around them and keep my normal touring schedule- picking one popular attraction and going to the other first thing in the morning. So so far as fastpass+ is concerned I'm quickly becoming a fan, especially since changing the reservations looks to be nearly painless. I'll withhold final judgement till I actually get to use it at the attractions of course - and I plan to try changing reservations the day of to see how possible that is - although since I was able to get all the experiences I wanted today and there are still hour-long time windows the necessity of this seems more theoretical than anything - certainly much more so than I expected.
Everything is clearly not perfect with the system but they seem like minor annoyances for now. I used my iPhone for everything and the interface for selecting fastpasses is not the most intuitive - in that you are forced to pick 3 attractions even if you want less, and have no initial choice of the times - you then have to change the times manually. I can see the benefits of a system like this, as the computers can suggest times that benefit crowd flow the most, and even I found myself thinking "we'll that's not what I would have chosen, but it works pretty well." There's some minor graphical annoyances as well - if you change the time of a fastpass+ the order of the entries doesn't change immediately so at a glance an attraction you plan to go on at 10am can appear below one that is a 9am. I suspect these things will eventually be addressed.
Also we ran into issues getting all our dining reservations to show up among family. They all show up with the person who added them, but only one shows up in my copy of the app. Again - minor, doesn't really affect anything.
Finally I just want to comment on how much better the My Disney Experience app has gotten since it was first released - in short it was a mess at first. I hadn't used it in several months, and I was shocked to see just how responsive it was now and how much better organized it was. I still think it needs refinement - I'm a pretty tech savy person and even I think some of the processes are a tad confusing - but I expect after seeing the progress made in the past few months that those issues will be resolved even if behind schedule. I personally am happy they are still labeling this as a test and not prematurely releasing a (so far good) but unrefined product. My initial experiences have all been very surprisingly positive and my worst fears about the system are fading away. I can't wait to report back in a week or two what the actual results are in the park - I hope I have more good things to say. I can't say whether the system was worth a billion dollars, but if it continues to work as it has for me so far once opened to every guest and is refined a bit further I can see no real reason to complain and I'll happily use it again. Hoping I don't eat my words...
I'll be vacationing at the World in less than a week and after hearing all the hate towards MyMagic+ and personally loathing the process that is getting ADR's I've a heavy dash of skepticism about the whole program. However, so far I've been pleasantly surprised. I deliberately held off making any fastpass+ reservations until today, to see how easy/difficult it would be to make them at the last minute. I was thrilled to have absolutely no trouble getting passes for whatever attractions I liked at or near the time I liked- and we're talking popular attractions here like Soarin' and Space Mountain not walk-on's. It was a bit disappointing to see a tiered system in place at Epcot and MGM, but the way the tiers are set up its very easy to work around them and keep my normal touring schedule- picking one popular attraction and going to the other first thing in the morning. So so far as fastpass+ is concerned I'm quickly becoming a fan, especially since changing the reservations looks to be nearly painless. I'll withhold final judgement till I actually get to use it at the attractions of course - and I plan to try changing reservations the day of to see how possible that is - although since I was able to get all the experiences I wanted today and there are still hour-long time windows the necessity of this seems more theoretical than anything - certainly much more so than I expected.
Everything is clearly not perfect with the system but they seem like minor annoyances for now. I used my iPhone for everything and the interface for selecting fastpasses is not the most intuitive - in that you are forced to pick 3 attractions even if you want less, and have no initial choice of the times - you then have to change the times manually. I can see the benefits of a system like this, as the computers can suggest times that benefit crowd flow the most, and even I found myself thinking "we'll that's not what I would have chosen, but it works pretty well." There's some minor graphical annoyances as well - if you change the time of a fastpass+ the order of the entries doesn't change immediately so at a glance an attraction you plan to go on at 10am can appear below one that is a 9am. I suspect these things will eventually be addressed.
Also we ran into issues getting all our dining reservations to show up among family. They all show up with the person who added them, but only one shows up in my copy of the app. Again - minor, doesn't really affect anything.
Finally I just want to comment on how much better the My Disney Experience app has gotten since it was first released - in short it was a mess at first. I hadn't used it in several months, and I was shocked to see just how responsive it was now and how much better organized it was. I still think it needs refinement - I'm a pretty tech savy person and even I think some of the processes are a tad confusing - but I expect after seeing the progress made in the past few months that those issues will be resolved even if behind schedule. I personally am happy they are still labeling this as a test and not prematurely releasing a (so far good) but unrefined product. My initial experiences have all been very surprisingly positive and my worst fears about the system are fading away. I can't wait to report back in a week or two what the actual results are in the park - I hope I have more good things to say. I can't say whether the system was worth a billion dollars, but if it continues to work as it has for me so far once opened to every guest and is refined a bit further I can see no real reason to complain and I'll happily use it again. Hoping I don't eat my words...
