Lightning Lane at Walt Disney World

[LittleBuford]

If less people are using G+, then there should be less people in LL lines. What is the problem? Why are they limiting access to G+?

I’m also a bit puzzled by this. Is it because the parks aren’t yet running to pre-pandemic capacity?

 

[MickeyLuv'r]

Other than admitting they were wrong, why wouldn't this work?

I cannot think of one reason....and it solves almost all the current problem....

Even the FP+ haters have to like this

A part of the problem with paid FP/G+ is how unreliable WDW is in delivering products: the timing of TS meals, rides often down, and transportation timing is unreliable.

If I have only paid for general admission, and a ride goes down...I have plenty of other options.

When we have very specifically paid for access to a specific ride at a specific time - say Rise, and we have jumped through multiple hoops to get that pass, then we have a bigger expectation of how our day will go.

Part of why Express Pass works so well is that we can use it any time. Getting to the parks is easy at Universal, while WDW's transportation is very unreliable timing-wise. It is also hard to time how long it takes to eat table service meals, and rides are often down.

Any time I actually PAY for a service, I expect that business to be able to deliver the service.

 

[Demarke]

When there were only lines, the headliners had long lines and you could pretty much walk on Small World or the Carousel if you wanted to. For Fastpass people really only cares about headliners for their first selections. FP+ Tiers made it so that you could only skip one headliner(ish) ride but still got pushed out to some of the C ticket attractions to help manage the parks and check out things you might not otherwise. The didn't need to advertise their lesser rides on TV as that doesn't sell vacations, especially when they could tell you where to go by giving you free line skips to rides that didn't use to have lines.

My feeling is that this is even more useful to the company with Genie+ since they can shuffle bodies easily in real time, but the implementation was terrible.

It seems to me that for most folks there is an upper limit of maybe an hour and a half they're willing to wait for just about anything (with the exception of the first 6 months to a year of a marquee attraction). Before FP and G+, people would have those long 1.5-2 hour waits at long attractions and people might do those then go to do a handful of relative walk-ons, do some shopping, grab a bite to eat, and feel good about their day.

With FP and G+ there is a demand for everything, which I think makes people feel even more that they have to maximize every second of their day. So someone that may have done 5-6 rides and a show or two and spent the same amount on shopping and dining before, now sees that there is a demand for something, or a pass has come available for something else that they wouldn't have done otherwise and ends up doing 9-10+ rides, shopping less, and not feeling any significant amount more satisfied.

I've noticed it myself, I could probably feel just fine doing the Winnie the Pooh ride or Kali River or Frozen or Rat or Millennium Falcon or Buzz Lightyear or Midway Mania or Swirling Saucers or Little Mermaid, maybe once every few trips to those parks. But, FP and G+ makes you feel like you have to maximize every second of your vacation ("There's a FP for Midway which has 60 minutes, can't pass that up!"), so you end up feeling like you have to do what's available, when it's available. That ride on Midway Mania didn't ultimately do much for my vacation other than the thrill of knowing I "beat the system" and skipped a line. That same system that drove me there made someone who probably really loves the ride wait just a little longer in the standby.

 

[lisa12000]

Just as an little aside - in the uk the ability to add genie plus for this year has stopped now - it’s been taken totally off the website. Also we get our offers for next year to book in the 26th May - people have been told that after the 25th genie is not available to add - so for us it’s gone now

 

[Anteater]

Hotel breakfast starts at 7am.
AK opens to onsite customers at 7am, and offsite customers at 7:30am


Part of the problem with G+ and the 7am timing is that it impacts every customer's ability to eat any food at all in the morning, not just character breakfasts.

Anything that = hard to get coffee/tea in the AM is not wise.

No worries. The McDonalds next to the All Stars is open early. Grab your Egg McMuffin and Coffee in the Drive-Thru and you're all set!

 

[drizgirl]

Fastpass was created to get people through attractions faster. They weren’t spending when in line. That was the start of the tipping of the finely designed and balanced formula of park capacity v queue

I get the feeling there is no finely balanced formula any longer. It's "squeeze in as many people as possible and only add more when they scream loud enough".

 

[Jeff4272]

Martin, still haven't seen your post telling us they are dumping this entire system and doing a major overhaul...


where art tho Martin?

 

[Disney Glimpses]

If less people are using G+, then there should be less people in LL lines. What is the problem? Why are they limiting access to G+?

It's a complicated dynamic. For one, attractions are a bit more taxed right now since not all entertainment, offerings, dining has returned. Secondly, it's not that there are less people in the LL lines but simply the expectation has changed.

There's a big difference between paying $15 for a service that allows you to skip the line and finding no availability vs. the old model where it was free and if there was no availability you simply shrugged and closed the app.

There's also another interesting dynamic: people are much more likely to heavily use a product/service that they paid for vs. one that is included for free. So while only 1/3 people who had access to FP+ are using Genie+, that 1/3 is using it quite heavily (and again with reasonably high expectations).

Finally, overall attraction inventory isn't great right now due to ILL along with attraction downtime.

This problem of no inventory is also not unique to Genie+, the 60 day FP selection window was very much a rat race of its own, just not as difficult. Once resort guests made their selections, it was really slim pickings for everyone else. But again, no one was directly paying for this so expectations were relatively low.

 

[UNCgolf]

Another likely factor is that staffing shortages have forced more people to rides as opposed to other things like shopping or dining.

They've also made shopping uninteresting by selling the same products everywhere and cutting back on/eliminating store theming, which I'm sure has caused some additional problems (even if only minor ones). People don't really have a reason to go in all the stores now.

Some of the stores used to function like small attractions themselves but that's basically all gone now.

 

[Disney Glimpses]

Okay so real talk . . . how do I get Disney to spend money to recover me as a guest?

Asking for a friend . . .

Honestly, from what I am hearing, it doesn't take much. It's not just really disgruntled guests getting money through the recovery process - even the calmest guests just giving honest feedback are getting massive, week long refunds, with little friction (and not even asking for it). Again, props to Disney here for putting customer satisfaction first while they sort this out.

 

[LittleBuford]

There's a big difference between paying $15 for a service that allows you to skip the line and finding no availability vs. the old model where it was free and if there was no availability you simply shrugged and closed the app.

But this bit also puzzles me. There was always day-of availability with FP+, right up until evening. True, pickings could get slim after a certain time, but it was never the case that you would have to content yourself with only two or three experiences a day.

 

[Disney Glimpses]

But this bit also puzzles me. There was always day-of availability with FP+, right up until evening. True, pickings could get slim after a certain time, but it was never the case that you would have to content yourself with only two or three experiences a day.

I wouldn't say always, I have taken last minute trips during March and found absolutely nothing. But again, consider the scenario where you see a IASM opening - but you don't really want to ride IASM. If that's the only thing available, you're far more likely to reserve it if you had paid than if it were free. Compound that over thousands of guests, that means a lot of people making LL selections just for the sake of making LL selections because they are trying to get their money's worth.

 

[LittleBuford]

I wouldn't say always, I have taken last minute trips during March and found absolutely nothing.

Do you mean nothing you wanted to do, or nothing at all?

What I'm getting at is that FP+ was never so limited that Disney would have to warn guests that they should expect to experience no more than two or three attractions a day; there was always something to book, even if it wasn't your cup of tea. (And I'm not even counting the three pre-booked FastPasses.)

 

[nickys]

So anyway, if you were already planning on using Genie+ on a trip later this year seems like you best go ahead and buy it now with your tickets, huh?

Yes.

 

[Thepuma]

Lightning Lane+

I think they should have Unlimited Lightning Lane Passes for a 100 dollars a day. With the option of receiving a complimentary Lightning Lane+ with a Deluxe Resort room.

No, no and more no.

 

[Thepuma]

Yep, but it seems like the unintended consequences were that most people used it to find a different queue to stand in instead while waiting on their fastpass (thus standing in two lines), and it drives artificial demand to desirable attractions. I can’t tell you the amount of times that I’ve re-ridden something because of fastpass (look, a Space a mountain FP just opened up, we rode it earlier, but these are semi-tough to get so let’s walk across the entire park to get there) or genie (let’s rope drop to walk on this premium attraction and get a lightning lane so that we can do it again with no wait when things are really packed around noon) that I would never have done before.

I've never seen the attraction of Space Mountain...its a poor poor ride, possibly one of the worst in the whole of WDW...tied in last place with It's A Small World.

I almost fell off my seat when I first heard it was originally a paid LL+...

 

[Thepuma]

There are 36,000 rooms in WDW.....At any average of 3 per room (would argue its higher), that's almost 110,000 guests per day (and likely more).....Parks average 160,000 per day

But...........My point was, in relation to DL, WDW has far more resort guests vs DL....

I should have clarified

And every day of the year all these WDW hotels are 100% full?

I beg to differ.

 

[Thepuma]

Have you used Genie and Genie+ at WDW?

Also when was the last time you used FP+?

I've used Genie,G+ and ILL extensively for each of my 3 fortnight holidays to Orlando the last 8 months...all in all probably 24 visits in that time. So yeah, quite a bit.

Genie itself is poor....you can plan a much better day doing it yourself...as I said, Disney wants to tell you where to go to suit them, not you.

As regards FP+ , The last time I used it was our last holiday before the lockdowns..which was February 2020. Used it the year before that in our 3 Orlando holidays Jan,May,October and the year before for our 3 Orlando holidays.

I'm well versed in all and every aspect of FP+ and G+,ILL

 

[lentesta]

I don't disagree. It's also not unreasonable (perhaps @lentesta can chime in here) to say that some attractions may be operating at a lower capacity. Disney has definitely played that game before.

Another likely factor is that staffing shortages have forced more people to rides as opposed to other things like shopping or dining.

For what it's worth, I think yesterday's announced G+ changes are an unspoken admission of three things:

1. Genie (the itinerary app) has failed. Guests caught on pretty quick that it was routing them to less-popular, under-used attractions instead of helping them see the best rides in the park. People were willing to put up with using Fastpass+ at Mad Tea Party because Fastpass+ was free. You can't combine paying $60 for a family of four for Genie+, with Genie telling you to visit Swiss Family Treehouse.
   
   
2. Disney hasn't built enough high-capacity, popular rides over the last 20 years, to keep up with today's attendance numbers.
   
   
3. Ride downtime is having a significant effect on wait times. Some recent downtime numbers:

EPCOT

• Frozen: Over an hour of downtime per day
• Remy: Over an hour of downtime per day
• Spaceship Earth: Over an hour per day
• Test Track: More than an hour and a half per day
• Journey Into Imagination: Nearly 30 mins

Hollywood Studios

• ROTR: 2 hours/day
• Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster: 80 minutes/day
• Runaway Railway: 45 mins/day
• Slinky Dog Dash: 30 minutes/day
• Tower: 30 mins/day (and that's at reduced capacity)

Magic Kingdom

• Splash: 75 mins/day
• Big Thunder: 60 mins/day
• Pooh: Almost 50 mins/day
• Pirates: 45 minutes/day
• Space: 40 mins/day
• Mansion: 30 mins/day
• 7DMT: 30 mins/day
• Peter Pan: 25 minutes/day
• Astro Orbiter: 25 minutes/day
• Barnstormer: 25 minutes/day

That's many, many thousands of lost rides per day.

One problem is that the existing rides are already running at 100% capacity. So when a ride breaks down and cannot fulfill its existing Genie+ ride reservations, there's no additional system capacity to soak up the displaced riders. That makes the standby lines much, much longer. Also, people know that offering a replacement G+ reservation for Under the Sea isn't adequate compensation for missing out on Big Thunder Mountain. There just aren't enough popular rides in each park.

(As a side note, think about what happens at Animal Kingdom when a ride like Everest goes offline for a couple months in winter. Nobody's going on Kali because it's cold. So guests are left with Na'Vi, Safaris, and DINOSAUR as top-tier choices. That's a tough sell at $60 for a family of four.)

Regarding building new rides, I know EPCOT now has Remy and GOTG, but those are the first all-new rides since ... 2005? It makes it very, very difficult to do long-term maintenance on rides like SSE, when they can't afford to lose that capacity. So this is a problem that's two decades in the making, and that's not going to be solved in the next couple of years.

ETA: Fixed typo.

 

[GhostHost1000]

If they rebrand it I would suggest

Complicated+

The + being whatever you’d like to add
- cost
- confusion
- frustration
- stress
- error prone
- inefficient
- etc