FastPass+ Most Certainly Not Coming Back As It Was

[ImperfectPixie]

Went live back in 2013... and of course said program lifted more than just FP+... but still. We're going on 8+ years...

I was generous and gave it 7. FP+ got turned off at the beginning of 2020.

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

I know it never fully leave. A return to FP being day of would go a long way for me to return. I can deal with picking my parks ahead of time. As far as dining my family is good with whatever is available at the time we want to eat. Since we eat off site most of the time ADRs never been a big deal.

I think you may get your wish

So...they were implemented in 2013, and effectively, FP+ was turned off at the start of 2020.

So we'll say 7 years.

Is it even possible that the $2 billion spent on that system has been made back over and above what the yearly revenue would have been anyways?

ETA: And even further...could it possibly have generated more than the $2 billion it cost over and above what the revenue would have been?

EDIT 2: Bear in mind...the revenue from WDW is the only revenue that can be considered...because this system was designed for and implemented at WDW.

Was it really about the bands? The bands are a fail (Disney lead to massive spending with them)

or was it a massive IT upgrade that gutless didn’t fess up to?

Yes but that would be a long term fix. There will always be long stretches where lines a long. No matter what they decide on.

Of course we would. If they opened a new attraction, demand for that attraction would exceed capacity and it would have a ... long line.

In recent memory they opened Flight of Passage, the Navi River Boat thing, Rise of the Resistance and Millennium Falcon, and all of those rides are pulling an additional thousand+ people each, per hour, and yet the lines persist.

Adding attractions is meant to generate MORE crowds, not control the ones you already have.

They have not been making the kind of additions needed to keep with demand since Eisner less…and that’s with 3 parks with easy upgradd

 

[flynnibus]

You make a fair point about being able to adapt if a schedule does not go as planned. We have been very lucky that things have usually worked out and if something fell through we did not let it ruin the trip. Some things are beyond anyone's control like weather, a tired or sick child etc. I do not let those things factor in.

Yeah but where Disney makes this harder is by killing the ability to adapt by committing so much of its resources to be locked in reservations made so far in advance. That's the achilles heel that doesn't have to be that way.

Disney pitches it to you as it's all about giving you piece of mind - but really it's about Disney pushing people to utilize what Disney has already in place and do so in a manner Disney can better predict and manage.

 

[Jrb1979]

I have to ask this for the planners out there. I'm only asking to try to understand the reasoning behind spreadsheets. Do any of you go to other parks at all? Going to an amusement park shouldn't involve this much planning. I get that Disney is different but they also trained most of you.

 

[ImperfectPixie]

Was it really about the bands? The bands are a fail (Disney lead to massive spending with them)

or was it a massive IT upgrade that gutless didn’t fess up to?

Was it really an upgrade though? Huge numbers of people shouldn't be consistently getting error pages...

 

[Waters Back Side]

I think you may get your wish


Was it really about the bands? The bands are a fail (Disney lead to massive spending with them)

or was it a massive IT upgrade that gutless didn’t fess up to?




They have not been making the kind of additions needed to keep with demand since Eisner less…and that’s with 3 parks with easy upgradd

They have added 3 lands and 6 rides.TSL. Pandora, and Galaxy Edge. Those 3 lands have some of the longest lines in the parks. There goes that theory.

 

[ImperfectPixie]

I have to ask this for the planners out there. I'm only asking to try to understand the reasoning behind spreadsheets. Do any of you go to other parks at all? Going to an amusement park shouldn't involve this much planning. I get that Disney is different but they also trained most of you.

I make a huge spreadsheet...big enough that screenshotting it is pointless because the text is too small.

No. We don't plan like this for other amusement parks. We plan like this because in order to do all the things we USED to do without scheduling, we're now forced to.

EDIT: Forced to as in wouldn't be able to do them if we didn't schedule for them.

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

Was it really an upgrade though? Huge numbers of people shouldn't be consistently getting error pages...

Well…I can only go on what I know…

20 years ago…a certain vacation compound had the WORST computer network you could imagine.

dos based until 2003…multilayered stolen/rigged systems that didn’t communicate…virtually no wireless routing…no cell infrastructure to speak of…

the “property management system” was stolen from Vegas in the 80’s…

what kinda bill is that fix?

 

[flynnibus]

Was it really an upgrade though? Huge numbers of people shouldn't be consistently getting error pages...

It was a huge modernization - while there are issues at times, it is still the kind of work that is needed to get people off dead platforms you can't readily support or are incredibly expensive to do so. And that's before all the cross-linking that is possible now, that would have been much harder before.

NextGen is a multi-faceted beast. The kind of monster overhaul that uses both internal-only and customer facing benefits to help get backing for the project. By having customer facing things, you can pull through efforts that may otherwise have been seen as just costs that could be deferred till later.

 

[ImperfectPixie]

Well…I can only go on what I know…

20 years ago…a certain vacation compound had the WORST computer network you could imagine.

dos based until 2003…multilayered stolen/rigged systems that didn’t communicate…virtually no wireless routing…no cell infrastructure to speak of…

the “property management system” was stolen from Vegas in the 80’s…

what kinda bill is that fix?

WOW.

And the board still chose to give the people making those decisions their bonuses...

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

They have added 3 lands and 6 rides.TSL. Pandora, and Galaxy Edge. Those 3 lands have some of the longest rides in the parks. There goes that theory.

And they shut down a numbers of things/areas prior to that…

and they overspent and under capacitied each one…why are the lines long?

…there’s goes your grasp of the reality

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

WOW.

And the board still chose to give the people making those decisions their bonuses...

Once your in the country club…you’re in, baby
I’m sure he blamed Eisner…not totally wrong there either

 

[flynnibus]

They have added 3 lands and 6 rides.TSL. Pandora, and Galaxy Edge. Those 3 lands have some of the longest rides in the parks. There goes that theory.

When park hopping is separated by high prices, reservations, FP limits, and almost an hour of transportation.... you can't lump attractions from multiple parks together as if everything were just in a single pool for customers to pick from at any moment.

Each of those parks (DAK, MGM) are still incredibly light on ride counts for the park as an individual.

 

[flutas]

Each of those parks (DAK, MGM) are still incredibly light on ride counts for the park as an individual.

Don't forget the current shell that is epcot.

 

[Waters Back Side]

And they shut down a numbers of things/areas prior to that…

and they overspent and under capacitied each one…why are the lines long?

…there’s goes your grasp of the reality

Lol! The point is they were still "new attractions"
It's not adding an attraction to unused space I agree, but it's still drawing people to a specific part of the park and crowding up that area due to the novelty of a new attraction, whether it replaced one or not.

 

[Roy G. Dis]

Is there an example of a state-of-the-art ride that can also handle huge volumes of people, by any park? Half of this thread is people saying "nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded!".

 

[Wendy Pleakley]

I have to ask this for the planners out there. I'm only asking to try to understand the reasoning behind spreadsheets. Do any of you go to other parks at all? Going to an amusement park shouldn't involve this much planning. I get that Disney is different but they also trained most of you.

That's pretty much it, people plan because they have to. Whether or not they want to is another story. My planning pre-COVID included a decent number of factors. I'll usually write out a schedule that shows park hours and EMH hours as a starting point to start a schedule.

I'm not an excessive planner (that I'm aware of) but I need to choose parks each day, which can take into account crowd calendars, avoiding or attending EMH, hours, Fastpass availability (i.e. scheduling Animal Kingdom later because FoP Fastpasses are easier to get), etc.

Then I have to plan what restaurants I hope to book and what my Fastpass choices are. Being even a day late from the booking window can make a difference, especially people looking for high demand things like the Princess Castle breakfast or O'Hana.

I don't hate the advance planning. It's somewhat fun to be involved with the trip, so to speak, ahead of time. Helps build anticipation. I also don't love the advance planning. The old school way of just going to a theme park and deciding on a whim what to do holds appeal.

Then there's the inability to change plans without losing out on those hard to book things. Water park closed due to cold weather? Sure, you can switch it with your Animal Kingdom day but now you have no choice but to do the Flight of Passage stand-by you hoped to avoid. Rainy day? Change your plans but say goodbye to that hard-to-get dinner reservation. And so on and so on.

 

[Jeff4272]

Well because you posted it here unfortunately we all were….

I have to ask this for the planners out there. I'm only asking to try to understand the reasoning behind spreadsheets. Do any of you go to other parks at all? Going to an amusement park shouldn't involve this much planning. I get that Disney is different but they also trained most of you.

Yes.....the problem is, we go in the afternoon and stay until closing.....historically if you did that you couldn't get any FP at all b they would all be gone........ so getting 3 anywhere from 2-7pm, it guaranteed us to get on out top 3 rides with less time in the parks so it was great

 

[Wendy Pleakley]

Is there an example of a state-of-the-art ride that can also handle huge volumes of people, by any park? Half of this thread is people saying "nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded!".

The ideal is to have a balance of those state-of-the-art experiences along with people eaters. Maybe I wait 90 minutes for Space Mountain but that's not my only experience. I also get short-ish waits at high capacity things like Little Mermaid.

It's a problem when they lost that balance. I'm sure the Guardians coaster will be great but Universe of Energy was a great attraction to do when things were busy - just walk on in. At least Epcot still has some of those type of attractions. I feel like the Studios and AK really need some of those high capacity options so every single ride isn't a long stand-by experience.

 

[Waters Back Side]

When park hopping is separated by high prices, reservations, FP limits, and almost an hour of transportation.... you can't lump attractions from multiple parks together as if everything were just in a single pool for customers to pick from at any moment.

Each of those parks (DAK, MGM) are still incredibly light on ride counts for the park as an individual.

Okay I'll use a better example...once Tron is complete... the lines will still be long in that park.