As has been the rumor for awhile, FP+ isn't coming back like it was. From what's been said it will most likely be a paid system. I can see the reservation system staying but with no capacity limits it will be easy to book a park. For that matter if you wanted to hop to another park you book it that day while in the park.
I'm sure park hopping will return even if the park reservation system stays. It would be easy to implement. Once you are in your first park you go onto MDE and pick the park you want to hop to. It really isn't such a bad thing.
What's the point of a reservation system if there's no capacity limit? Likewise, if you can reserve more than one park for the same day?
It doesn't tell us anything if someone can simply reserve every park for every day of their trip, which is what the prior park hopper allowed.
If there are capacity limits, hopping still doesn't work. Reserving every park for every day just in case, consumes all the capacity with nobody in some parks. Limiting to reserving the second park right before you hop and dropping the first doesn't work because if they're all full you'll never be able to switch.
I always thought they would go that way. Offering 30 extra days to book didn’t seem like a great incentive to stay on site but making it exclusive would. I guess they were trying to keep everyone happy. I’d actually think the best way to do it would be to offer resort guests 60 days advance, but make less availability up front then offer additional reservations that open up the day of visit to everyone similar to max pass at DLR. Then you solve the issue with AP holders and also allow everyone a shot at waiting until the day of to decide what park to visit without missing out on FP reservations. At the same time it gives resort guests a huge advantage possibly worth paying more for.
While I don't mind the option of allowing people 30 or 60 days, my personal preference would be if they restricted some FP capacity and released it right before. Something like 5:00 PM day before for on site guests, 9:00 PM day before for AP, and Midnight for everyone else. Maybe even later than those.
We like to plan each day based on the weather too. Trying to predict months in advance is very limiting. But, it doesn't bother me if others like it that way and I wouldn't want to completely remove that option for them.
Which is sort of how the park reservation has been working, based on daily changes where new capacity is released for different groups. It would be nice if instead of being a surprise, it was simply planned that they would reserve some for those options. They wouldn't have to publish how much is reserved and could still use it to manage overall capacity. But, it would be nice to know that last minute people still had a chance, even if it's a small one.