Disneyland Paris requires 150 euros per person for unlimited FastPass, Is WDW next?

[deeevo]

I would be fine with them charging for an unlimited FP as long as they got rid of FP+. It would improve wait times throughout the parks
because the majority of people are not going to pay for it. I wouldn't pay for it myself but I may spend the extra $$ on a deluxe room if they did something like Universal does. It would be nice to NOT have my face in my phone for once when I am in the parks trying to refresh, refresh,refresh,refresh,refresh some FP times.

 

[fngoofy]

I'd actually love paid FP if they got rid of regular free fastpass. I'd adore that. Charge like... a $200 upcharge for it and YEET will those wait times drop.

Can you explain how this will cause wait times to drop?
You would have the same number of people, those people will still want to ride rides. Rather than using FP to ride some of them, (and in the meantime be out of line eating, shopping, etc.) they will be waiting in the standby line.
The same people in the FP lane that you are waiting on when you are in the standby lane will now be in the queue with you.

All I am saying is, WDW wants happy guests that are not having to wait any longer than they need to and that can do other things rather than wait in line. If FP wasn't the answer they wouldn't be doing it.

 

[Slov72]

Can you explain how this will cause wait times to drop?
You would have the same number of people, those people will still want to ride rides. Rather than using FP to ride some of them, (and in the meantime be out of line eating, shopping, etc.) they will be waiting in the standby line.
The same people in the FP lane that you are waiting on when you are in the standby lane will now be in the queue with you.

All I am saying is, WDW wants happy guests that are not having to wait any longer than they need to and that can do other things rather than wait in line. If FP wasn't the answer they wouldn't be doing it.

This is so right, the same amount of people will want to ride, it will just be a placebo effect because the line will be moving instead of near stationary.... the wait will be the same.

 

[disneyflush]

Its hard to justify paid FP's unless posted wait times are consistently super high for most attractions. The additional revenue would almost be a reason to inflate them a bit as a selling point.

 

[fngoofy]

Simple answer that could be answered by anyone who has worked Mansion/Pirates/Small World/ect since Fastpass was shoehorned in:
If everyone doesn't get fastpasses and fastpass is a paid service, you have much less people in the Fastpass line.
If there are less people in the fastpass line, the standby line rarely stops moving.
If the standby line rarely stops moving, the standby wait is shorter.
Yeet.

I am a former CM as well (I am guessing you are from your name.)
This only works if some of the people in your plan decide not to ride.
It would work, EXCEPT rides have capacities. Which you know, as that is why we are having this discussion. BUT, you forget this with your argument's proof. You also forget that "Having less people in the FP queue" means that they are now MORE people in the regular/standby/non-FP queue, unless some give up.

Let me ask you.
When you go to a restaurant without a reservation and they tell you the wait is 2hrs, do you think you would have gotten a table quicker if there were no reservation system and people just had to wait in a line?

Now, you could say "yes" because a lot of people would give up. To which you might be right, BUT the people that had to wait in line for 1.5 hours wouldn't be as happy as if they could have PLANNED and made a reservation and walked in and been seated in 10-15 minutes.

ALSO, the restaurant would not make as much money, because rather than having its customers drop a dime on a drink during the 10-15 minutes they are waiting for their reservation to be seated, the customer is standing in a line and getting upset, not having fun and not getting a drink or an appetizer while having their short wait.

In short (too late):
- FP+ allows you to plan a good time
- It means you don't have to run all over the park to try and secure your FPs
- The "Good old days" were not as good and there are many factors that impact wait times (to this point, you mention PotC and the FP before and after. BUT you don't take into account the rise in popularity due to the movies and the impact that has on the ride's wait time.)

Now FP needs to continue to improve. They need to allow for park hopping and they could move it up to 3 in the first half of the day and 2-3 at night, that would be nice. And maybe as they add attractions they will have the capacity to do this (although WDW will probably be more popular, and that will mean more capacity will be needed if we want an expansion.)

I hesitate to point out that restaurants in EPCOT used to only have SAME DAY reservations, now we are out to 6 months. If anything with FP+ they should sync this up with when you make restaurant reservations, as it is tough now to have to pick where you are eating but not know if you will have any rides to do in the park you've chosen.

 

[PurpleJesus]

I would pay for unlimited FastPasses without hesitation for the duration of the trip. I'd budget that over pretty much anything. I hate the long lines, and am willing to pay to skip the majority of them. I've actually been hoping this would eventually happen.

And if you've used Universal's Express Pass I can't imagine how you'd think it wasn't worth it. You can chill, go at your own schedule, and ride anything as you please. That's awesome and takes a lot of the stress out of planning, and adds massive amounts of flexibility to your day. If you don't want to wake up at the crack of dawn to ride without lines, well guess what, now you can - you just have to pay for it.

I'm in.

 

[fngoofy]

Attraction wait times were shorter and you could ride much more in a day before fastpass happened.
Fact.

From my experience (your's may vary), in the MK, on a busy small holiday weekend, we were able to ride 17 attractions in one day with our 3 FPs done by 3:00pm.
I don't think you can really ask for much more than that on a busy day.

It just always gets me when I hear a contrarian voice to an obvious improvement to a system. Also, when their contrarian views fly in the face of logic, such as Disney wanting people to be in lines longer.

 

[fngoofy]

I would pay for unlimited FastPasses without hesitation for the duration of the trip. I'd budget that over pretty much anything. I hate the long lines, and am willing to pay to skip the majority of them. I've actually been hoping this would eventually happen.

And if you've used Universal's Express Pass I can't imagine how you'd think it wasn't worth it. You can chill, go at your own schedule, and ride anything as you please. That's awesome and takes a lot of the stress out of planning, and adds massive amounts of flexibility to your day. If you don't want to wake up at the crack of dawn to ride without lines, well guess what, now you can - you just have to pay for it.

I'm in.

I would be too, and I agree with you. But, Universal is soooo small compared to WDW. I don't think it would scale up as well. In order to keep it from being too popular they would have to price it at crazy prices and not let you do it for one day but all nights of your stay (like the dinning plan.)

You will know they are thinking about it when they offer it to a small subset of people. When they were piloting the dinning plan they offered it as a vacation package for people staying at the Grand Floridian. They called it the "Grand Plan" and it was the Deluxe dining plan. Then within a year or two we had the dining plan v.1

 

[fngoofy]

Its funny how people see things differently. Before fastpass I found all the wait times to be less on average. The lines always moved and you knew that if the wait said 60 min, it was going to be more like 45 min or so. E tickets obviously have always had high demand. But a 60 min wait for splash before fastpass, is now closer to 100 min plus for stand-by with it. And dont forget what fastpass has done to the omni movers like pirates and haunted mansion, rarely over 20 min pre fastpass. Last trip those 2 didn't get under 20 min till the fireworks. And unfortunately fastpass has gotten worse rather than better.

I am curious. Will you get into a queue today that has a 45 minute wait.
We won't. We'll do 30 minutes grudgingly, but we've found that if we stick to a 35min or under for standby rule, we can do everything we want in a day and not have any 45-60 minute waits.

We hopped in the RnRC standby line last year because the posted wait was 20min. It ended up being 90 and it was a nightmare of waiting.
If 60-90 minutes was the norm for all C, D, and E attractions, we wouldn't be going to WDW anymore.

 

[HauntedPirate]

I won't pony up my hard-earned cash so that Disney doesn't have to add capacity to their theme parks. Demand better than "good enough". Demand better than attraction-wait-time-manipulation-for-profit.

 

[HauntedPirate]

I am curious. Will you get into a queue today that has a 45 minute wait.
We won't. We'll do 30 minutes grudgingly, but we've found that if we stick to a 35min or under for standby rule, we can do everything we want in a day and not have any 45-60 minute waits.

We hopped in the RnRC standby line last year because the posted wait was 20min. It ended up being 90 and it was a nightmare of waiting.
If 60-90 minutes was the norm for all C, D, and E attractions, we wouldn't be going to WDW anymore.

We're similar in that we will grudgingly get into a queue with a 30-35 minute wait. We did do 7DMT at 75 once.

 

[PurpleJesus]

I would be too, and I agree with you. But, Universal is soooo small compared to WDW. I don't think it would scale up as well. In order to keep it from being too popular they would have to price it at crazy prices and not let you do it for one day but all nights of your stay (like the dinning plan.)

You will know they are thinking about it when they offer it to a small subset of people. When they were piloting the dinning plan they offered it as a vacation package for people staying at the Grand Floridian. They called it the "Grand Plan" and it was the Deluxe dining plan. Then within a year or two we had the dining plan v.1

My guess.....and obviously, just a guess. Is that they will charge for unlimited FastPasses, and completely get rid of all other forms of FP. That way they could control the number of people using the FP lines by fluctuating the price, and as a side bonus to most of the theme park visitors, the reduced number of FP users would mean faster moving stand-by lines. Seems like a win/win. People that are willing to pay get shorter lines, Disney makes more money, and the stand-by lines move faster. I really don't see a negative here.

 

[BigThunderMatt]

- The "Good old days" were not as good and there are many factors that impact wait times (to this point, you mention PotC and the FP before and after. BUT you don't take into account the rise in popularity due to the movies and the impact that has on the ride's wait time.)

I worked in Ad/Lib in 2011 before FastPass+ but 6 years after the changes had been made to Pirates. The wait only ever exceeded 20 minutes or more at both PotC and HM during traditionally busy periods. Now both rides rarely ever don't have a line.

 

[BigThunderMatt]

My guess.....and obviously, just a guess. Is that they will charge for unlimited FastPasses, and completely get rid of all other forms of FP. That way they could control the number of people using the FP lines by fluctuating the price, and as a side bonus to most of the theme park visitors, the reduced number of FP users would mean faster moving stand-by lines. Seems like a win/win. People that are willing to pay get shorter lines, Disney makes more money, and the stand-by lines move faster. I really don't see a negative here.

And not as much pre-planning involved which is my biggest gripe with the current system. I'm very much a Type A planner kind of person but I hate having to not only pick 3 attractions and the times I want to ride them well before I get there (because that also means I have to try to time the rest of my day around them so I'm not backtracking all over the place), but I hate having to decide between things I really want to do when I know 3 isn't enough. This is especially true at parks like Epcot and DHS because you know people would just take Soarin', Test Track and Frozen Ever After all the time and at DHS it would always be Tower, Coaster and TSMM until Star Wars opens. I would GLADLY pay for every day of my trip for the ability to just bypass all that garbage. And honestly, that might be the exact reason Disney did it in the first place. Spend millions of dollars to build a needlessly complicated attraction booking system and then once people are accustomed to begrudgingly use it, offer them the ability to pay to bypass it.

 

[fngoofy]

I worked in Ad/Lib in 2011 before FastPass+ but 6 years after the changes had been made to Pirates. The wait only ever exceeded 20 minutes or more at both PotC and HM during traditionally busy periods. Now both rides rarely ever don't have a line.

So why would you say this is?
Why would a ride having FP cause more people to want to ride PotC when there are so many other rides you can spend your 3 FPs on at MK?
Do you think the demand to ride the ride would go away if FP was removed? I'm curious.

 

[erasure fan1]

I am curious. Will you get into a queue today that has a 45 minute wait.
We won't. We'll do 30 minutes grudgingly, but we've found that if we stick to a 35min or under for standby rule, we can do everything we want in a day and not have any 45-60 minute waits.

We hopped in the RnRC standby line last year because the posted wait was 20min. It ended up being 90 and it was a nightmare of waiting.
If 60-90 minutes was the norm for all C, D, and E attractions, we wouldn't be going to WDW anymore.

When there wasn't fastpass, 45min was no problem. Now, unless it is something that we have to do, like a new ride, I won't wait in a 45min line. The reason is, the wait all too often spikes because of a fastpass influx. Too many times we have jumped into a line, then after waiting 40min, the fast pass backs up and the stand-by all but comes to a stop. typically we try to stay at 25min or less for stand-by.

 

[BigThunderMatt]

So why would you say this is?
Why would a ride having FP cause more people to want to ride PotC when there are so many other rides you can spend your 3 FPs on at MK?
Do you think the demand to ride the ride would go away if FP was removed? I'm curious.

FP+ artificially inflated the line. Now that people have to choose attractions in advance, they choose fastpasses for things that didn't need it previously, like Pirates and Mansion. This artificially creates more demand for the attraction, especially on days where more popular attractions (that have the ability to handle FastPass better) have little to no availability. Now every time they have to stop the line to let FastPass through it backs up the standby line which over time makes it much longer than it ever used to be.

 

[Slov72]

Attraction wait times were shorter and you could ride much more in a day before fastpass happened.
Fact.

Explain how fastpass made the demand for said rides increase? This is the only way to increase the wait time. People with fastpasses are already in line, there spot is just virtually held. If fastpass didn't exist would then not get in line?

 

[Slov72]

Explain how fastpass made the demand for said rides increase? This is the only way to increase the wait time. People with fastpasses are already in line, there spot is just virtually held. If fastpass didn't exist would then not get in line?

I guess having a fastpass for POTC means that people who would never go on this ride are now deciding to do it. If the total number of rides a person is willing to do doesn't go up then that means waits at other rides must go down. If people are doing more rides in a day then isn't the park actually more efficient?

 

[sixbagelboy]

Maybe Disney should charge a mandatory $100 per ticket up-charge to include the unlimited FP+. Now everyone will have unlimited head of the line access and there would be no slowing down of stand-by lines since everyone is in the FP+ line and there would be no need for stand-by. Unless... They charged another $50 on top of that to use the stand by line. Never underestimate the bean counters at Disney.