FastPass+ Most Certainly Not Coming Back As It Was

[MisterPenguin]

I’m hearing some rumblings about fastpass+ details coming VERY soon...

I dare you to be more vague.

 

[M:SpilotISTC12]

I’m hearing some rumblings about fastpass+ details coming VERY soon...

 

[LittleBuford]

We know disney isn't going down that road so be prepared for upcharges galore and an overall costlier experience. But alass what works for you.

I'm not sure what your last sentence is implying, but let me make clear that I am in no way in favour of, or looking forward to, a paid FP service, though I'd sooner be out of pocket than standing in long queues.

 

[UNCgolf]

I respect that you and others feel this way. While I always welcome new additions, I personally don't think the parks are quite as in need of them as many here believe, nor do I think they would really help mitigate the crowds. Perhaps data pertaining to earlier expansions (Pandora, for example) could shed some light on the matter.

The other three parks are lacking in attraction capacity compared to the Magic Kingdom, and all three are likely considered half day parks for many if not the majority of guests.

I personally only consider DHS a half day park, but I understand why people feel that way about AK and EPCOT if they aren't really interested in the animals or the World Showcase.

Attendance is going to keep rising no matter what, which means they need more places for people to go. It's helpful to add capacity to a park -- it's not going to suddenly make everything perfect, but if you have 35,000 people in the park, it's always better to have an hourly attraction capacity of 15,000 instead of an hourly attraction capacity of 10,000. That's a big reason the other parks could use a couple of additional flat rides; they don't have to be major additions (although those are always welcome).

 

[HairyChest]

I dare you to be more vague.

That wouldn’t be exciting. This week would be exciting.

 

[CastAStone]

I personally only consider DHS a half day park, but I understand why people feel that way about AK and EPCOT if they aren't really interested in the animals or the World Showcase.

I feel the total opposite of this. If you can do all 9 rides and (normally) 7 shows in a half day, good on you, but with the typical wait times imma have trouble just getting through TSL and SWGE in 4-5 hours.

 

[matt9112]

I'm not sure what your last sentence is implying, but let me make clear that I am in no way in favour of, or looking forward to, a paid FP service, though I'd sooner be out of pocket than standing in long queues.

Thats what there banking on. Literally. Guests that dont want to pay for it all isn't who they want in the parks in the first place. Im enjoying universal until the disney pixie dust settles. See how it looks aroune the corner. Bear in mind this is a company that feels like a 30 second lottery to ride attractions is okay.

 

[Jedijax719]

Thats what there banking on. Literally. Guests that dont want to pay for it all isn't who they want in the parks in the first place. Im enjoying universal until the disney pixie dust settles. See how it looks aroune the corner. Bear in mind this is a company that feels like a 30 second lottery to ride attractions is okay.

But isn't Universal worse in that department? (at least until we find out what Disney does?)

 

[PirateFrank]

But isn't Universal worse in that department? (at least until we find out what Disney does?)

I can't see how Universal is worse at this.....at all. They have a product that serves the park guests very well at a price that keeps everyone from buying it. Also, something that @matt9112 said which really needs restating is this:

Thats what there banking on. Literally. Guests that dont want to pay for it all isn't who they want in the parks in the first place. Im enjoying universal until the disney pixie dust settles. See how it looks aroune the corner. Bear in mind this is a company that feels like a 30 second lottery to ride attractions is okay.

Its not enough that you have to buy park tickets several months in advance, reserve your park entry, get up at the crack of dawn, enlist your whole family to get a boarding pass to have a chance at getting on an attraction you paid for months prior.....but the fact that Disney has no remedy for this kind of guest screwing and doesn't seem to care that it is screwing its guests with the system is mind-numbing. Worse, they appear to be on the precipice of diving headfirst into doing this with other attractions at the park.

We went from:

1. "go to the parks, have a great time, go home" to

2. "go to the parks, rush around to kiosks all over the park, get little tickets, have an exhausting but good time, go home" to

3. "weeks of spreadsheet planning, wake up at the crack of dawn 60 days out, get half of your intended FP+, nuke half your ADRs because you got screwed out on ADRs, go to WDW, burn through your FP+ while waiting 60+ on everything else. feel resentful that you spent all this money to do half of what you could do 5 years prior, go home" to

4. "Buy park tickets months out, hope you get a park reservation, get a park reservation, Fly to O-Town, wait 2 hours to get a DME bus, get screwed out of noodles at Ohana, get to the park at the crack off dawn, miss out on getting a boarding pass, go home feeling ripped off vowing to never return"

Meanwhile, Universal is still at a modified version of #1:

"go to the parks, have a great time, have a better time if you want to spend a bit more money, go home"


Big difference.....

 

[DisneyCane]

I can't see how Universal is worse at this.....at all. They have a product that serves the park guests very well at a price that keeps everyone from buying it. Also, something that @matt9112 said which really needs restating is this:



Its not enough that you have to buy park tickets several months in advance, reserve your park entry, get up at the crack of dawn, enlist your whole family to get a boarding pass to have a chance at getting on an attraction you paid for months prior.....but the fact that Disney has no remedy for this kind of guest screwing and doesn't seem to care that it is screwing its guests with the system is mind-numbing. Worse, they appear to be on the precipice of diving headfirst into doing this with other attractions at the park.

We went from:

1. "go to the parks, have a great time, go home" to

2. "go to the parks, rush around to kiosks all over the park, get little tickets, have an exhausting but good time, go home" to

3. "weeks of spreadsheet planning, wake up at the crack of dawn 60 days out, get half of your intended FP+, nuke half your ADRs because you got screwed out on ADRs, go to WDW, burn through your FP+ while waiting 60+ on everything else. feel resentful that you spent all this money to do half of what you could do 5 years prior, go home" to

4. "Buy park tickets months out, hope you get a park reservation, get a park reservation, Fly to O-Town, wait 2 hours to get a DME bus, get screwed out of noodles at Ohana, get to the park at the crack off dawn, miss out on getting a boarding pass, go home feeling ripped off vowing to never return"

Meanwhile, Universal is still at a modified version of #1:

"go to the parks, have a great time, have a better time if you want to spend a bit more money, go home"


Big difference.....

Pretty good summary except you don't have to get to the park at the crack of dawn anymore for a BG. You just need to wake up and be on the app by 7.

 

[UNCgolf]

I feel the total opposite of this. If you can do all 9 rides and (normally) 7 shows in a half day, good on you, but with the typical wait times imma have trouble just getting through TSL and SWGE in 4-5 hours.

Well, the problem is that TSL is a waste of space for me with almost nothing worth doing. I'd do Slinky Dog if the wait was less than 30 minutes, but that's it. I also don't think Smuggler's Run is worth any kind of a wait (it's worth doing once to see the Falcon, but the ride itself isn't fun) and obviously you can't ride Rise without a boarding pass. I spent a couple of hours in Galaxy's Edge the first time I was there, but I don't think I could spend that much time there again because it just wasn't as interesting as I'd hoped. I honestly could spend more time in mid-1990s DHS than in today's DHS. Updating the shows to something new would be a big help.

That's why I said for me, though, because of what I specifically enjoy/don't enjoy. I'd guess there are far more guests who think EPCOT and/or AK are half-day parks now than think DHS is one, but that's not the case for me personally.

 

[PirateFrank]

Pretty good summary except you don't have to get to the park at the crack of dawn anymore for a BG. You just need to wake up and be on the app by 7.

Yeah, I know. It doesn't change how terrible the system is or how terrible the evolution to this system was.

 

[G00fyDad]

"Buy park tickets months out, hope you get a park reservation, get a park reservation, Fly to O-Town, wait 2 hours to get a DME bus, get screwed out of noodles at Ohana, get to the park at the crack off dawn, miss out on getting a boarding pass, go home feeling ripped off vowing to never return"

Only if you allow yourself to go through all of that. For us it would be more like:

"Buy park tickets months out (which we already do anyway since we do not live right down the road from WDW), get a park reservation since there are plenty of available green days on the calendar months out and we already know what parks we want to go to, Fly to O-Town, walk past the DME bus since we have a car rental with by-pass counter service, get our ADR at Disney Springs with zero effort or hassle, get to the park at the crack off dawn since that is our "go time" anyway, get a boarding pass because I understand how to work the app, go home feeling exhausted but satisfied that we had a great trip vowing to return as soon as we can."

 

[UNCgolf]

Only if you allow yourself to go through all of that. For us it would be more like:

"Buy park tickets months out (which we already do anyway since we do not live right down the road from WDW), get a park reservation since there are plenty of available green days on the calendar months out and we already know what parks we want to go to, Fly to O-Town, walk past the DME bus since we have a car rental with by-pass counter service, get our ADR at Disney Springs with zero effort or hassle, get to the park at the crack off dawn since that is our "go time" anyway, get a boarding pass because I understand how to work the app, go home feeling exhausted but satisfied that we had a great trip vowing to return as soon as we can."

That's not a guarantee. There aren't enough boarding passes for everyone trying to get one. You could know exactly what you're doing and still not get one due to a slight connection hiccup or any number of issues.

Regardless, that still describes why it's a terrible system. You have to have some specific knowledge to be able to get on one of the headlining attractions of the whole resort? There's absolutely no reason they couldn't do an actual lottery to make things more equitable. It's frankly absurd that they haven't yet.

 

[SamusAranX]

That's not a guarantee. There aren't enough boarding passes for everyone trying to get one. You could know exactly what you're doing and still not get one due to a slight connection hiccup or any number of issues.

Regardless, that still describes why it's a terrible system. You have to have some specific knowledge to be able to get on one of the headlining attractions of the whole resort? There's absolutely no reason they couldn't do an actual lottery to make things more equitable. It's frankly absurd that they haven't yet.

But if they don't use that system, how will they cope with UNPRECEDENTED DEMAND?

 

[G00fyDad]

That's not a guarantee. There aren't enough boarding passes for everyone trying to get one. You could know exactly what you're doing and still not get one due to a slight connection hiccup or any number of issues.

Regardless, that still describes why it's a terrible system. You have to have some specific knowledge to be able to get on one of the headlining attractions of the whole resort? There's absolutely no reason they couldn't do an actual lottery to make things more equitable. It's frankly absurd that they haven't yet.

Since I have been "testing" things here at home I have been able to get all the way to the end with no issues. I keep my phone (Galaxy S20 Ultra) up to date, cleaned out, and cache cleared all the times anyway. I also do not use anything that would run in the background that would cause my phone to slow down. The people I have seen that have had problems have had those problems due to a variety of things that I do not allow on my phone. My only variable will be the cell data strength that I cannot control from my phone. So I will take a walk around the resort on my day (evening) of arrival and use my Signal Strength app to locate the best spot for full bars to try at 7am on my DHS days.

 

[PirateFrank]

Only if you allow yourself to go through all of that. For us it would be more like:

"Buy park tickets months out (which we already do anyway since we do not live right down the road from WDW), get a park reservation since there are plenty of available green days on the calendar months out and we already know what parks we want to go to, Fly to O-Town, walk past the DME bus since we have a car rental with by-pass counter service, get our ADR at Disney Springs with zero effort or hassle, get to the park at the crack off dawn since that is our "go time" anyway, get a boarding pass because I understand how to work the app, go home feeling exhausted but satisfied that we had a great trip vowing to return as soon as we can."

If you can't tell, there was a bit of a tongue in cheek approach to my post (as evidenced by my comment about Ohana Noodles). We've discussed this in the past - but you and I (and probably others) are comfortable with the hyper planning required to enjoy WDW. I used to tell people in the past that you could still do disney *without* the massive pre-planning, but you'll have more fun if you do. I'm not sure I can say that anymore. If you don't get your tickets/reservations out far enough where everything is still green, you're not going to get them. Some people are *not* ok with not using DME (just look at the DME threads here)....I'm more than OK with not using it. I don't *need* to get certain ADRs every trip (though I'm a sucker for Ohana and Via Napoli), but if I dont get what I want, I'm not going to starve.

However, there's no getting around the boarding pass issue being as problematic as it is. If you're hoping to ride Rise on a high-traffic park day, you have several hurdles to get over the day of. You have to be up on your devices when the window opens (not everyone is an early riser), you have to try to get a boarding pass (not everyone will), if you were lucky to get one - you have to hope your boarding pass return time doesn't nuke your other plans that day (what if you had other hard-to-get plans for the evening and you get a boarding group that conflicts with those plans), and even if you get over all of those hurdles - the ride may close down for technical difficulties and you lost your chance to ride it (which has historically plagued Rise since it opened). Nothing about this is ideal and the potential to screw a traveling family who has budgeted a single day for DHS is pretty big. At least with FP+ you could rest a little easier knowing you were going to make this expensive trip down to O-town and have a good chance at riding the attraction. The virtual queue system is a real head scratcher to me. It seems like WDW took all of the worst aspects of FP+ and rolled them into the boarding pass program, while gleefully ditching the few aspects of FP+ that really did help out the guest.

 

[nickys]

That's not a guarantee. There aren't enough boarding passes for everyone trying to get one. You could know exactly what you're doing and still not get one due to a slight connection hiccup or any number of issues.

Regardless, that still describes why it's a terrible system. You have to have some specific knowledge to be able to get on one of the headlining attractions of the whole resort? There's absolutely no reason they couldn't do an actual lottery to make things more equitable. It's frankly absurd that they haven't yet.

If they did an actual lottery then people who were unsuccessful would blame Disney. And that means a lot of irate people who are on their once in a lifetime / once in a blue moon complaining that Disney’s lottery shut them out.

Making people try for a BG themselves puts the onus on the guest. Yes there will still be upset guests but at least it isn’t directly attributable to Disney.

It might not seem much of a difference but I think there is a perception of difference between the two outcomes.

 

[flynnibus]

If they did an actual lottery then people who were unsuccessful would blame Disney. And that means a lot of irate people who are on their once in a lifetime / once in a blue moon complaining that Disney’s lottery shut them out.

Tokyo does lotteries and it's just about managed expectations. No reason Disney couldn't do weighted lotteries to make sure people get more equitable chances, etc.

Disney didn't build the virtual queue system to be sold out in seconds. It's just the reality of the demand profile these days. It really should be on Disney to redo the model to match reality... but it's just easier to hide behind 'unprecedented demand'

 

[G00fyDad]

If you can't tell, there was a bit of a tongue in cheek approach to my post (as evidenced by my comment about Ohana Noodles). We've discussed this in the past - but you and I (and probably others) are comfortable with the hyper planning required to enjoy WDW. I used to tell people in the past that you could still do disney *without* the massive pre-planning, but you'll have more fun if you do. I'm not sure I can say that anymore. If you don't get your tickets/reservations out far enough where everything is still green, you're not going to get them. Some people are *not* ok with not using DME (just look at the DME threads here)....I'm more than OK with not using it. I don't *need* to get certain ADRs every trip (though I'm a sucker for Ohana and Via Napoli), but if I dont get what I want, I'm not going to starve.

However, there's no getting around the boarding pass issue being as problematic as it is. If you're hoping to ride Rise on a high-traffic park day, you have several hurdles to get over the day of. You have to be up on your devices when the window opens (not everyone is an early riser), you have to try to get a boarding pass (not everyone will), if you were lucky to get one - you have to hope your boarding pass return time doesn't nuke your other plans that day (what if you had other hard-to-get plans for the evening and you get a boarding group that conflicts with those plans), and even if you get over all of those hurdles - the ride may close down for technical difficulties and you lost your chance to ride it (which has historically plagued Rise since it opened). Nothing about this is ideal and the potential to screw a traveling family who has budgeted a single day for DHS is pretty big. At least with FP+ you could rest a little easier knowing you were going to make this expensive trip down to O-town and have a good chance at riding the attraction. The virtual queue system is a real head scratcher to me. It seems like WDW took all of the worst aspects of FP+ and rolled them into the boarding pass program, while gleefully ditching the few aspects of FP+ that really did help out the guest.

I admit that this whole BG situation is stupid and should have been handled differently from the beginning but I have had zero problems getting all the way through the app to the part where it asks if I am here. I feel very confident that I will have no issues.

I got the tongue in cheek references. I was not attacking at all. I just do not see the WDW trips as problematic as others see them.