News FastPass+ comes to Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run at Disney's Hollywood Studios

[ToTBellHop]

Here's a clever way to handle the capacity....make more ride vehicles.

And the 8-year-old can get on another ride. Those are the breaks.

Where would those vehicles go? They have four carousels that they built. Should they have built 12? How much room should one ride take up.

Actual Imagineers building actual rides have to take into account actual physical spaces available and actual budgets. Movie directors making imaginary things happen don't have to worry about such things. As long as everything goes "pew pew", it's all good.

 

[Andrew M]

I was able to make the upgrade on only one of our 2 HS days (Sunday, 2/23).

For the other day (Saturday, 2/22), every "ride" in the park was already fully booked by the time the system stopped crashing! Guess I'm stuck with the Star Tours and Muppets FP+ I booked back at 60 days.

Hoping I'll be quicker on the draw whenever the current 9 opening times shift to 7 or 8, and better choices become fleetingly available! In the meantime, I'm trying to figure out why there's no "good" FP+ available on 2/22, but plenty on 2/23. Is Saturday that much more of a popular day at HS than Sunday, or is there some special event on Saturday I don't know about? The Princess Half Marathon is that whole weekend: could that be a contributing factor?

Ha, this is the weekend I was looking at too, I think its a combo of the Princess 5k and Half. I know the hotel prices are through the roof that weekend so they're probably expecting a huge crowd. I was able to get ToT, Toy Story Mania and Smugglers Run for Monday (had to give up Slinky, but oh well). But on Saturday everything was booked. A couple of Toy Story and RnR Coaster spots popped up, but that was it. I did notice it would let me switch my ToT to almost anytime of the day, but everything else was booked? Unless there's some sort of glitch.

 

[MrHappy]

Read another (reputable) blog and he basically said that MMRR would take MFSR place as a standby only ride, MFSR goes to FP+ and ROTR stays BG

Sweet so when I'm there at the beginning of March the popular plan will be to enter the park at drop, follow the heard to MMRR while grabbing a ROTR BG. Sounds fun, can't wait. At least my wife will guide me so I don't trample anyone while I casually speed walk (you know, that walk you do when you're actually running, but playing it off like your walking and acting like you're totally not an adult who is b-lining it to an attraction at Disney World).

 

[LSLS]

So it has fastpass now, and is still not the longest wait at the park?

 

[wdwmagic]

So it has fastpass now, and is still not the longest wait at the park?

It begins Feb 19

 

[BellaSweet8384]

I got a FP for Feb 27th late this afternoon..there were quite a few times available. I didn't realize that they were even being released today until our travel agent let us know.

 

[LSLS]

It begins Feb 19

Ah ok, that's what I get for not paying attention when reading, thanks.

 

[wdwmagic]

I got a FP for Feb 27th late this afternoon..there were quite a few times available. I didn't realize that they were even being released today until our travel agent let us know.

You need to stay tuned to https://www.wdwmagic.com front page

 

[Demarke]

Ha, this is the weekend I was looking at too, I think its a combo of the Princess 5k and Half. I know the hotel prices are through the roof that weekend so they're probably expecting a huge crowd. I was able to get ToT, Toy Story Mania and Smugglers Run for Monday (had to give up Slinky, but oh well). But on Saturday everything was booked. A couple of Toy Story and RnR Coaster spots popped up, but that was it. I did notice it would let me switch my ToT to almost anytime of the day, but everything else was booked? Unless there's some sort of glitch.

I noticed the same thing, I had the 22nd originally as my HS day and no rides were available to change my FPs to, but ToT showed tons of replacement times. I switched to the 23rd and got MF, and my choice of any of the others except SDD. Everything except MF and SDD was still available for the 19th, 20th, and 21st at that time this morning too, so I suspected it might be a glitch counting pre-existing FPs under the old tier system. Before booking my Epcot FPs for the 22nd I tried cancelling and starting fresh for that date, but there was no change in availability, it’s apparently just going to be that busy.

Possibly a bunch of runners chose that day thinking that (based on the current posted opening time), they could finish the 10k and leisurely make it before opening to get a boarding group. If they change the opening to 7am as the trend has been going, that plan will backfire on the 95% of participants who can’t run 10k in 45 minutes or less.

 

[Kman101]

Actually this is far less likely to happen once FP+ is implemented. Don't confuse Line Length (physical amount of people in line) with Line Wait time.

The standby line will almost come to a standstill as FastPass is ushered through. It's wrong to assume my scenario won't happen, but I understand what you're saying.

 

[orky8]

The standby line will almost come to a standstill as FastPass is ushered through. It's wrong to assume my scenario won't happen, but I understand what you're saying.

Yes, but the line length will be significantly shorter. The queue from the sign to load is about an hour long right now. If FP+ gets 50% of the ride seat, which would be a modest allocation, that will now be a 2 hour line. I think we we've seen FP+ getting more like 70% of the allocation. The standby wait time will increase but the length of the line will decrease as only so many people are willing to wait so long.

 

[SoFloMagic]

Actually this is far less likely to happen once FP+ is implemented. Don't confuse Line Length (physical amount of people in line) with Line Wait time.

Exactly. Now they can fill two queues

 

[durangojim]

I think the key to enjoying this ride is two thing (as contradictory as that sounds):
1. Be a “try hard” in video game parlance and make sure you’re a pilot along with another try hard who knows what they’re doing and run the ride. This would be me and my 14 y/o son. We got the rank of Pirate and he couldn’t have been happier because he sent the Falcon into hyperspace.
2. Just don’t give an “F” and enjoy the ride and the enjoyment it brings the others in the cabin no matter what their role. This would be my wife and I who had a fantastic ride on the absolute worst mission you could have as engineers. ( is it possible to actually owe money to Hondo? I think it might).
Either way you can have a great time on this attraction.

 

[disneygeek90]

I think the key to enjoying this ride is two thing (as contradictory as that sounds):
1. Be a “try hard” in video game parlance and make sure you’re a pilot along with another try hard who knows what they’re doing and run the ride. This would be me and my 14 y/o son. We got the rank of Pirate and he couldn’t have been happier because he sent the Falcon into hyperspace.
2. Just don’t give an “F” and enjoy the ride and the enjoyment it brings the others in the canon no matter what their role. This would be my wife and I who had a fantastic ride on the absolute worst mission you could have as engineers. ( is it possible to actually owe money to Hondo? I think it might).
Either way you can have a great time on this attraction.

I wish I knew what was a “good” score?? Every time they give us a rank or final total I have no idea where that sits on the scoreboard.

 

[durangojim]

I wish I knew what was a “good” score?? Every time they give us a rank or final total I have no idea where that sits on the scoreboard.

So I figured it out by using the screen at the end and the disney play app. I think any score is good but there are different levels

 

[HauntedMansionFLA]

That seems like a low availability of Tier 1 FPs, unless they plan on adding Railway to it soon.

And RotR

 

[disneygeek90]

So I figured it out by using the screen at the end and the disney play app. I think any score is good but there are different levelsView attachment 443139View attachment 443140View attachment 443141View attachment 443142View attachment 443143

Where are the first three images coming from? The Disney parks app?

Edit: never mind, I did not read your whole post. Interesting! Is pirate the best I wonder? Are these all the ranks?

 

[durangojim]

Where are the first three images coming from? The Disney parks app?

Edit: never mind, I did not read your whole post. Interesting! Is pirate the best I wonder? Are these all the ranks?

I’m not sure what the “best” score is. But the pirate level is the best I’ve achieved (with my 14 y/o son who is a gamer and I have some decent skills I must admit. We were both pilots.

 

[Kram Sacul]

Yes, but the line length will be significantly shorter. The queue from the sign to load is about an hour long right now. If FP+ gets 50% of the ride seat, which would be a modest allocation, that will now be a 2 hour line. I think we we've seen FP+ getting more like 70% of the allocation. The standby wait time will increase but the length of the line will decrease as only so many people are willing to wait so long.

Who cares about line length when the standby slows to a crawl because they added stupid Fastpass?

 

[mikejs78]

Who cares about line length when the standby slows to a crawl because they added stupid Fastpass?

Wait times should not be significantly different. When people have a fastpass, they aren't in the standby line. The same number of PPH will be going through. More people don't magically come to the park and want to ride Falcon because suddenly there is FP.

What also will happen is that peak times will probably decrease a bit, and off peak times (say, night) will increase a bit because FP spreads out crowds throughout the day, so you can't look at single point in time comparisons. But average wait time across the whole day will be fairly static.

That's the basics of queue theory anyways. Based on what I've seen I think that's the case. But the data sets we've had have always been imperfect comparisons. Now we will have a much more direct comparison to finally put to rest the debate of whether or not FP actually significantly affects wait times or not. There may be a small increase or difference (or even decrease), but I would bet that it won't be much different than similarly crowded days before FP. As a data geek, I'm excited to see what happens here, and prove my argument right, or, possibly prove it wrong. But seeing the actual data and comparing will be fascinating as it's really the first opportunity we've had to compare since FP was introduced, and there were a ton of other variables in play back then that potentially skewed the data set.