Changing FastPass+ Selections for Popular Attractions

ParentsOf4

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
One of the alleged positive benefits of FastPass+ is the ability to change FP+ selections.

However, what I've encountered this Thanksgiving week is exactly what I expected: for popular attractions, it is impossible to change FP+ selections. Whether it's Peter Pan, Toy Story Mania, Expedition Everest, or Soarin', finding an alternative time on short notice is essentially impossible.

No doubt the holiday crowds are having an effect. However, once FP+ is opened up to offsite guests, FP+ will inherit the same basic problem WDW has had for years. For popular attractions, WDW simply doesn't have sufficient capacity and FP+ does nothing to solve that core problem.

Once FP+ is opened to everyone, I suspect it will become extremely difficult to change FP+ times for WDW's most popular attractions.

FP+ has become just like ADRs. Plan where you want to eat (or ride) months in advance or you'll be shut out of WDW's best experiences. (Sorry but I don't consider spending 2 hours in any Standby line as a "best" experience, no matter how good the attraction is.)

What are your thoughts and experiences?
 

flynnibus

Premium Member
Define what you mean by 'short notice' and what the qualification of success was - because virtually every other report so far has praised the ability to change their existing FP+ selections on the fly.
 

StarWarsGirl

Well-Known Member
Well, after looking through your posts, you went during Thanksgiving. That could be playing into it.

I'm going in January, so I will wait to pass judgment. Not that I anticipate us needing to change our selections, but if we do, I will let you know
 

Tom

Beta Return
I tend to echo what the previous responses have said or implied....you went during an extremely busy time. If you had tried to get vintage Fastpasses for those same attractions, at any time other than rope drop, you would have encountered the same lack of availability.

While I'm definitely not one of the biggest fans of the FP+ portion of their MM+ project, I will say that one of the major perks of FP+ is to allow guests to actually experience these types of attractions during busy periods, like this week. With FP+, I can ride Toy Story on Thanksgiving day, at just about any time I want, without having to be there at rope drop and sprinting back to the Toy Story FP queue.

I encourage you to give it another try during a less popular week at WDW. While it won't be ideal (for everyone), it will be easier to change FP+.
 

ParentsOf4

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
No doubt Thanksgiving crowds are having an effect. Conversely, FP+ is limited to onsite guests. What happens when FP+ is open to all?

Three examples of what I've experienced this week:
  1. On Tuesday evening, I tried changing a Wednesday 10 AM FP+ selection for Peter Pan. The only alternative times available were 11 PM or midnight.
  2. On Thursday morning (10 AM), I tried changing a Thursday 2 PM FP+ selection for RnRC. No alternative times were available.
  3. On Friday morning (7 AM), I tried changing a 9 AM FP+ selection for Test Track. The only alternative time available was 7:25 PM.
I'm wondering what others are experiencing and curious what will happen once FP+ becomes available to both onsite and offsite guests.
 
Last edited:

darthspielberg

Well-Known Member
No doubt Thanksgiving crowds are having an effect. Conversely, FP+ is limited to onsite guests. What happens when FP+ is open to all?

Three examples of what I've experienced this week:
  1. On Tuesday evening, I tried changing a Wednesday 10 AM FP+ selection for Peter Pan. The only alternative times available were 11 PM or midnight.
  2. On Thursday morning (10 AM), I tried changing a Thursday 2 PM FP+ selection for RnRC. No alternative times were available.
  3. On Friday morning (7 AM), I tried changing a 9 AM FP+ selection for Test Track. The only alternative time available was 7:25 PM.
I'm wondering what others are experiencing and curious what will happen once FP+ becomes available to both onsite and offsite guests.

When it's available to every guest who comes through the gate, be it resort guests or just off site visitors, the current allocations for paper FastPasses will be fed into the FP+ system, so there will actually be more spots, and Disney still seemingly intends to hold a select number of passes in the system for the day of. That part could change, but they are at least thinking about it.
 

ParentsOf4

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
When it's available to every guest who comes through the gate, be it resort guests or just off site visitors, the current allocations for paper FastPasses will be fed into the FP+ system, so there will actually be more spots, and Disney still seemingly intends to hold a select number of passes in the system for the day of. That part could change, but they are at least thinking about it.
Attractions such as Peter Pan, Soarin', and Toy Story Mania have theoretical capacities of about 1200 guests/hour. Due to various inefficiencies throughout the day (e.g. ride stoppages, odd number of guests resulting in empty seats, etc.), these attractions tend to average closer to 1000/guests per hour.

Assuming 12 hours as a typical operating day at Epcot and DHS, this means that there are about 12,000 spots available for Soarin' and DHS. Some capacity will be reserved for the Standby line, so let's guess that 10,000 slots are allocated to FP+.

Average daily attendance at Epcot and DHS is much greater than 10,000 per day. (10,000 per day would equate to 3,650,000 per year.)

MK tends to have longer operating hours but, conversely, tends to have considerably more guests than the other parks.

The point is that FP+ capacity for popular attractions will be completely used by guests, whether they are onsite or day guests. As a result, it might become difficult to change FP+ times for popular attractions once it is made available to everyone.

Early in FP+ testing, many reported that they had no problem changing FP+ times. That early testing often was limited to one or two resorts and, thus, not representative of FP+ as a whole.

Now that FP+ is available to all onsite guests and facing its first holiday crowds, I'm curious if others have encountered difficulty changing their FP+ times on relative short notice.
 

Tom

Beta Return
Attractions such as Peter Pan, Soarin', and Toy Story Mania have theoretical capacities of about 1200 guests/hour. Due to various inefficiencies throughout the day (e.g. ride stoppages, odd number of guests resulting in empty seats, etc.), these attractions tend to average closer to 1000/guests per hour.

Assuming 12 hours as a typical operating day at Epcot and DHS, this means that there are about 12,000 spots available for Soarin' and DHS. Some capacity will be reserved for the Standby line, so let's guess that 10,000 slots are allocated to FP+.

Average daily attendance at Epcot and DHS is much greater than 10,000 per day. (10,000 per day would equate to 3,650,000 per year.)

MK tends to have longer operating hours but, conversely, tends to have considerably more guests than the other parks.

The point is that FP+ capacity for popular attractions will be completely used by guests, whether they are onsite or day guests. As a result, it might become difficult to change FP+ times for popular attractions once it is made available to everyone.

Early in FP+ testing, many reported that they had no problem changing FP+ times. That early testing often was limited to one or two resorts and, thus, not representative of FP+ as a whole.

Now that FP+ is available to all onsite guests and facing its first holiday crowds, I'm curious if others have encountered difficulty changing their FP+ times on relative short notice.

It can still be likened to legacy FP, wherein if you didn't get your TSMM FP by 10:00am, you were probably out of luck. And with legacy, there was no going back to the machines later in the day to see if some had freed up....because they hadn't.

FP+ will likely make them more available, since Disney will likely slide even more allocation over to FP+ from Standby queues. But, changing or adding FP+ for headliner attractions will still remain difficult, because on the day-of, you'd be pulling from a pool of FP+ that were held in reserve, and from those which other guests have "returned" that day.
 

GoofGoof

Premium Member
No doubt Thanksgiving crowds are having an effect. Conversely, FP+ is limited to onsite guests. What happens when FP+ is open to all?

Three examples of what I've experienced this week:
  1. On Tuesday evening, I tried changing a Wednesday 10 AM FP+ selection for Peter Pan. The only alternative times available were 11 PM or midnight.
  2. On Thursday morning (10 AM), I tried changing a Thursday 2 PM FP+ selection for RnRC. No alternative times were available.
  3. On Friday morning (7 AM), I tried changing a 9 AM FP+ selection for Test Track. The only alternative time available was 7:25 PM.
I'm wondering what others are experiencing and curious what will happen once FP+ becomes available to both onsite and offsite guests.

Out of curiosity last week (11/16 -11/23) I did check and I was able to change all of my reservation times but TSMM, Test Track and Soarin on the morning of. There were multiple times available for all of my other reservations (not necessarily every time slot, but a lot). TT and Soarin had evening times only and TSMM had nothing at all the whole week.

I only actually made 1 change to my FP selections when I moved Star Tours from 9am to 3PM the night before our DHS day since we decided to "sleep in" and our TSMM was 2pm to 3PM. Anyway, I made the change on my iPad the night before and saved it. It was showing up the day of on my phone, but when we tried to use our bands we got blue Mickey heads. Everyone in the group tried and no success. Apparently the change didn't work. The standby line was 10 minutes so we were going to just go there when I commented to my friend something along the lines of "well I guess you really can't make changes like they advertised." The guy at the FP machine heard mean and asked about the problems we had been having. I told him this was the first real glitch related to FP (I also had a problem with my pin the first day at lunch). He let us through the FP line and up the handicap ramp. I felt kinda silly when I realized there were probably less than 20 people ahead of us anyway, but it was a nice gesture by the CM.
 

GoofGoof

Premium Member
Attractions such as Peter Pan, Soarin', and Toy Story Mania have theoretical capacities of about 1200 guests/hour. Due to various inefficiencies throughout the day (e.g. ride stoppages, odd number of guests resulting in empty seats, etc.), these attractions tend to average closer to 1000/guests per hour.

Assuming 12 hours as a typical operating day at Epcot and DHS, this means that there are about 12,000 spots available for Soarin' and DHS. Some capacity will be reserved for the Standby line, so let's guess that 10,000 slots are allocated to FP+.

Average daily attendance at Epcot and DHS is much greater than 10,000 per day. (10,000 per day would equate to 3,650,000 per year.)

MK tends to have longer operating hours but, conversely, tends to have considerably more guests than the other parks.

The point is that FP+ capacity for popular attractions will be completely used by guests, whether they are onsite or day guests. As a result, it might become difficult to change FP+ times for popular attractions once it is made available to everyone.

Early in FP+ testing, many reported that they had no problem changing FP+ times. That early testing often was limited to one or two resorts and, thus, not representative of FP+ as a whole.

Now that FP+ is available to all onsite guests and facing its first holiday crowds, I'm curious if others have encountered difficulty changing their FP+ times on relative short notice.
Especially during high crowd times this is definitely going to be the case. If they only allow onsite guests the ability to make advance reservations (which has been rumored) and only allow off property guest to book FP at the kiosks in the park on the day of there will be little shot for day guests to book TSMM or Soarin or one of the mountains. It will make FP+ Advance reservations a valuable perk for onsite guests. I would imagine that if you are staying on property at all but the most popular times you will have some flexibility up to the day before you visit a park. I would also imagine it could cut down on off property guests during peak times. Gains in revenue from hotel bookings offset by losses from off property ticket and food sales.
 

flynnibus

Premium Member
The point is that FP+ capacity for popular attractions will be completely used by guests, whether they are onsite or day guests. As a result, it might become difficult to change FP+ times for popular attractions once it is made available to everyone.

But it all hinges on how they distribute the slots... and that is something we will never be able to see. Only through anecdotal observation will we have some general theory... which is subject to change at anytime. The point being... the end-result will be whatever Disney chooses it to be.
 

psukardi

Well-Known Member
Disaster. on to be an onsite guest.

Bingo! If you have FP+ and that removes the need to bum-rush at rope drop for FP then why should I stay on site. For example, let's say I'm on a budget and want to go down for Christmas. In my example I'll use December 23rd - 28th. That's a Monday - Saturday. For $149 a night I can stay at a Hilton-Garden Inn. They run a shuttle to the park and I really don't care too much about EMH anyway. Or, I could stay at the All-Star Sport for $198 a night. That's a $50 a night difference. Over 5 nights that's saving me roughly $250 and I'm getting my HGI points that I can redeem at a later date for a free night somewhere.

Let's be honest - where would I rather stay at that point. All Star Sport where I'm going to have all the Brazillian tour groups running around acting a fool, reliant on a horrid food court and rushing to the bus? Or, do I go to the HGI and have a quieter night for $50 less a night?

Disney needs to provide added-value to staying on property. And it's harder to see the value-added these days
 

orky8

Well-Known Member
What they should do is give onsite users access to three reservable FP+ slots. Using tiers, they can mitigate to some extent what people reserve (e.g., half will reserve Soarin and half TT; one-third each picking their favorite mountain at MK, etc.). Essentially make it so only one of these FP+ selections will be of much value, as the other two are for attractions that would generally have shortish lines anyway. Then, on the day of, everyone has access to a normal fastpass slot that worked just like fastpass before, but is now electronic. The only difference being that because there is only one of these "slots," you can't get another fastpass until it is used, whereas before it was until the return time or 2 hours. This will give a valuable perk to those onsite, get rid of some of the issues with FP+ (but not all - the ability to change will still be curtailed, but you can't change regular FP anyway), and also alleviate some of the frustration with people who use FP proficiently to obtain more than 3 fastpasses a day. At the end of the day, the true issue is still capacity, and there is no getting around that, and this will bump up the standby lines. But, FP+, as currently envisioned by Disney, is a disaster. With some tweaking, though, it could be salvaged.
 

Weather_Lady

Well-Known Member
What they should do is give onsite users access to three reservable FP+ slots. Using tiers, they can mitigate to some extent what people reserve (e.g., half will reserve Soarin and half TT; one-third each picking their favorite mountain at MK, etc.). Essentially make it so only one of these FP+ selections will be of much value, as the other two are for attractions that would generally have shortish lines anyway. Then, on the day of, everyone has access to a normal fastpass slot that worked just like fastpass before, but is now electronic. The only difference being that because there is only one of these "slots," you can't get another fastpass until it is used, whereas before it was until the return time or 2 hours. This will give a valuable perk to those onsite, get rid of some of the issues with FP+ (but not all - the ability to change will still be curtailed, but you can't change regular FP anyway), and also alleviate some of the frustration with people who use FP proficiently to obtain more than 3 fastpasses a day. At the end of the day, the true issue is still capacity, and there is no getting around that, and this will bump up the standby lines. But, FP+, as currently envisioned by Disney, is a disaster. With some tweaking, though, it could be salvaged.

That's what they've done already with Epcot and Hollywood Studios -- created attraction "tiers" so you can only reserve one FP+ (possibly two at HS) of any real value. It's been predicted that eventually all the parks will have such limits. I think reserving a "free slot" FP for people on the day-of might add unnecessary complication and confusion to an already complicated and confusing system, as well as limiting the number of FP+ that could be reserved initially (as much as it would help me personally).
 

disney4life2008

Well-Known Member
That's what they've done already with Epcot and Hollywood Studios -- created attraction "tiers" so you can only reserve one FP+ (possibly two at HS) of any real value. It's been predicted that eventually all the parks will have such limits. I think reserving a "free slot" FP for people on the day-of might add unnecessary complication and confusion to an already complicated and confusing system, as well as limiting the number of FP+ that could be reserved initially (as much as it would help me personally).

I choose my FP+ selections last week and it is seriously a joke. Excluding MK because you can select any 3; Epcot is the most laughable. I can pick between Soarin or Test Track as major attractions; then select 2 from Captain EO, Nemo, Spaceship Earth, Mission Space - I have never waited more than 5 minutes for any of these attractions even during peak season. And AK is even worse, lol. You can not tier attractions when these parks have no major attractions.
 

MOXOMUMD

Well-Known Member
I choose my FP+ selections last week and it is seriously a joke. Excluding MK because you can select any 3; Epcot is the most laughable. I can pick between Soarin or Test Track as major attractions; then select 2 from Captain EO, Nemo, Spaceship Earth, Mission Space - I have never waited more than 5 minutes for any of these attractions even during peak season. And AK is even worse, lol. You can not tier attractions when these parks have no major attractions.
The thought of using a FP+ for EO still has me scratching my head. :confused:
 

Clamman73

Well-Known Member
I choose my FP+ selections last week and it is seriously a joke. Excluding MK because you can select any 3; Epcot is the most laughable. I can pick between Soarin or Test Track as major attractions; then select 2 from Captain EO, Nemo, Spaceship Earth, Mission Space - I have never waited more than 5 minutes for any of these attractions even during peak season. And AK is even worse, lol. You can not tier attractions when these parks have no major attractions.

Having to choose from either TT or Soarin out of three fastpass slots is totally insane when there was the choice to grab paper fastpasses from both in the past.
 

Register on WDWMAGIC. This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.

Back
Top Bottom