FastPass+ Most Certainly Not Coming Back As It Was

[Sirwalterraleigh]

I would welcome a return to the legacy Fastpass rules with day of only reservations at significantly fewer attractions. Alternatively, I would welcome the complete elimination of Fastpass.

when legacy arrived there were 40,000,000 visitors/clicks a year...
In 2019 there were in the area of 55,000,000

how many more ride seats did they add in that time? Guest space?

what if it’s less than zero?

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

RotR's "goal" capacity is what, 1700 people per hour. Over a 12 hour day only 20,400 spots. How many do you assign to hotel guests, how many to offsite? Frozen is 1000/hr so that's only 12,000 over a full day. Hotel guests would be annoyed if they don't get FPs on the good rides, but you can't give them all the spots otherwise what's the point of coming from off-site? Like half of WDW's guests are off-site, and WDW isn't going to risk that volume of off-site ticket sales, food, merchandise. There are both too many people on and off-site, and too little capacity for all of the newer, popular rides. WDW knew how many more guests they have today over the 90s and they didn't prioritize capacity but believed they could make it work by playing musical chairs.

bingo! Fantastic.

this is exactly what fastpass”+” was...
And it was thrown in because they needed $1 bil in WiFi upgrades

 

[jt04]

1 Boarding Group per day, by weighted lottery the night before. You must have a reservation first then enter for a BG. All 4 parks, same opportunity for all guests.

Then everything else is standby for the day.

If you want the best chance at multiple rides of a certain attraction, buy a hard ticket event. That is better than a front of the line access pass for customers and the mouse's accountants.

IMO.

 

[castlecake2.0]

when legacy arrived there were 40,000,000 visitors/clicks a year...
In 2019 there were in the area of 55,000,000

how many more ride seats did they add in that time? Guest space?

what if it’s less than zero?

Any short term plans to add things for people to do? I’m assuming that’s why Typhoon Lagoon is being rushed to reopen. They could also play around with the ticket type park reso allotment, I’m assuming they care a bit more about their resort guest feedback than day ticket guests. Also FOR THE LOVE these new pop up video adds, I can barely finish typing a sentence !

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

1 Boarding Group per day, by weighted lottery the night before. You must have a reservation first then enter for a BG. All 4 parks, same opportunity for all guests.

Then everything else is standby for the day.

If you want the best chance at multiple rides of a certain attraction, buy a hard ticket event. That is better than a front of the line access pass for customers and the mouse's accountants.

IMO.

that’s awful...

but at least we’re “out of the box”

 

[flynnibus]

yeah this 'park pass has gutted FP+ to where there is nothing left to turn back on' makes no sense from a software perspective.

Now, from a REQUIREMENTS perspective and saying "we rewrote all the rules of the game..." - yes, I can see that. And making the two concepts work together would take a good run through of how the world should be, and would take time to re-implement so the two would co-exist... but this notion of 'robbed peter to pay paul...' doesn't really make much sense. Not from the software aspect... now, there could be other things like... the actual development budget, time to implement, desire, how to transistion, etc... yes all things that make it non-trivial or even possible a 'one but not both' - but not the idea that that FP+ itself is 'nothing to turn back on...'

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

Any short term plans to add things for people to do? I’m assuming that’s why Typhoon Lagoon is being rushed to reopen. They could also play around with the ticket type park reso allotment, I’m assuming they care a bit more about their resort guest feedback than day ticket guests. Also FOR THE LOVE these new pop up video adds, I can barely finish typing a sentence !

i love you (no seriously...I do)

but you didn’t answer the question/identify the problem there.

opening a water park with small attendance that the majority of travelers don’t go near isn’t gonna fill that kinda gap.

putting carnie rides in the Epcot parking lot...or the terrible useless hole in the center...is honestly more effective

 

[flutas]

It doesn't. It's a myth that's out in the community for no good reason, IMO.

The FP+ system was built and yes it's repurposed for park reservations, but bolting on a FP+ with park reservations make it seem like we sending a rocket to Mars.

The code has been done and can be repurposed.

Agreed, the way the PP vs FP system is structured is that a park pass is basically a subtype of a fastpass. Similar in scope to the multiple tiers of fastpasses at WDW, or the ride vs show fastpass type at DLR.

that’s awful...

but at least we’re “out of the box”

How about we go a little bit more out of the box...

What if FastPass as we know it is dead, but the new version is already in the parks, very publicly visible and "battle" tested?

Imagine a system similar (aka cloned from) the ROTR virtual queue system.

Based off of multiple factors then ops could decide to open a virtual queue to guests for attractions at various points throughout the day. Instead of hard FPs for certain rides you get X number of virtual queues per day that allow you to skip the physical line. Maybe you could even set a list of priority experiences and get an alert when a virtual queue for that ride is about to open.

It would solve the "60+ day planning" problem, and allow ops to decide how many "FastPasses" they can hand out for a ride at any one time. It would also allow them to speed up or slow down groups when they need them rather than having people show up at a set time... Best of all for a certain Bob, it keeps people wandering the park and potentially spending money instead of waiting in line.

Just a thought...

Maybe kinda like what DLR is doing for Indy...

Maybe throw a splash of blue on it and call it Disney Genie...

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

yeah this 'park pass has gutted FP+ to where there is nothing left to turn back on' makes no sense from a software perspective.

Now, from a REQUIREMENTS perspective and saying "we rewrote all the rules of the game..." - yes, I can see that. And making the two concepts work together would take a good run through of how the world should be, and would take time to re-implement so the two would co-exist... but this notion of 'robbed peter to pay paul...' doesn't really make much sense. Not from the software aspect... now, there could be other things like... the actual development budget, time to implement, desire, how to transistion, etc... yes all things that make it non-trivial or even possible a 'one but not both' - but not the idea that that FP+ itself is 'nothing to turn back on...'

it has nothing to do with software.

it’s that the reservation system has failed and they are doing all but admitting it...which they can’t do outloud.

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

Agreed, the way the PP vs FP system is structured is that a park pass is basically a subtype of a fastpass. Similar in scope to the multiple tiers of fastpasses at WDW, or the ride vs show fastpass type at DLR.



How about we go a little bit more out of the box...



Maybe kinda like what DLR is doing for Indy...

Maybe throw a splash of blue on it and call it Disney Genie...

have you done that virtual queue???

it sucks...it’s not meant for full park crowds. And in that rides case...there’s no payoff.

im gonna have to “cellphone battle” to get on big Thunder??

...what other ideas you got?

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

Trust me, it isn't awful.

no...trust me it is. I read it.

you want people to pay $175 a head to get into a park and battle virtually for 1 ride...most of whom will get shutout.

and then to ride what you already paid for (it’s called a “ticket”...pioneered in the 1970s and adopted by Disney in 1980 as a “ride all day”)...you throw another $130 on top to complete the nice, relaxing 15 hour day in the heat?

You’re punking people, right?

 

[castlecake2.0]

i love you (no seriously...I do)

but you didn’t answer the question/identify the problem there.

opening a water park with small attendance that the majority of travelers don’t go near isn’t gonna fill that kinda gap.

putting carnie rides in the Epcot parking lot...or the terrible useless hole in the center...is honestly more effective

Was more thinking i

i love you (no seriously...I do)

but you didn’t answer the question/identify the problem there.

opening a water park with small attendance that the majority of travelers don’t go near isn’t gonna fill that kinda gap.

putting carnie rides in the Epcot parking lot...or the terrible useless hole in the center...is honestly more effective

I guess I was thinking if they can’t bring back FP and they don’t want the parks to be miserable then they might keep capacity a bit lower and need something for people to do. Or they going to keep letting more people in with miserable wait times?

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

Was more thinking i

I guess I was thinking if they can’t bring back FP and they don’t want the parks to be miserable then they might keep capacity a bit lower and need something for people to do. Or they going to keep letting more people in with miserable wait times?

that could be why those hotels haven’t come online??

but that doesn’t solve the problem if off-property business comes knocking in force.

 

[Nickp1983]

Useless hole in the center? What is that exactly? Please tell me there is a bottomless pit at epcot im not aware of

 

[castlecake2.0]

that could be why those hotels haven’t come online??

but that doesn’t solve the problem if off-property business comes knocking in force.

Use a parking tram to drive people through the middle of future world and tell them it’s catastrophe canyon. Boom, new ride

 

[GaBoy]

Mike, bob, and slaps allowed it to go here.

Oh my lord. I fell out... slaps. Perfect.

 

[UNCgolf]

Whoa, not going to quote all the posts responding to me, but I wasn't arguing for or against that system.

I was just pointing out that saying there are 90k resort guests on site on any given day doesn't mean there are 90k people in the parks every single day, and that they're spread out among four parks as well as water parks, Disney Springs, hotel pools, etc.

 

[Roy G. Dis]

Besides the logistics/software part, why couldn't WDW roll out a maxpass type system? Paid only . No guarantees of anything. No paper alternative. Give it to resort guests for free (or don't!). Let everyone else fork over a variable cost per day. People who want to pay to skip lines, can.

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

Useless hole in the center? What is that exactly? Please tell me there is a bottomless pit at epcot im not aware of

I meant where the “festival booth observation deck/starship bridge” is going to be built. Currently isn’t some kind of hole? I’ll hijack a monorail and take a picture for you

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

Whoa, not going to quote all the posts responding to me, but I wasn't arguing for or against that system.

I was just pointing out that saying there are 90k resort guests on site on any given day doesn't mean there are 90k people in the parks every single day, and that they're spread out among four parks as well as water parks, Disney Springs, hotel pools, etc.

yeah...but the 90,000 numbers is low. As one poster put it: that really might only cover on property rooms. Prior to the “plague”...there were close to 600 hotels in Orlando...I think?