Fastpass + : The Real Purpose?

[Tom Morrow]

The bands have the 2nd radio in them that does position tracking. They know where you are with in a park nearly all times. They can look at the crowds and the crow flows on a computer and model how is moving where and make adjustments. The MK walkway improvements and probably even the EPCOT entrance improvements may have easily been designed around what the crowd flow was telling them.

I'm pretty sure this isn't exactly true. The bands occasionally get pinged as you walk around, but its not like you're wearing a GPS tracker.

 

[winstongator]

I'm pretty sure this isn't exactly true. The bands occasionally get pinged as you walk around, but its not like you're wearing a GPS tracker.

They know when your passing through a ride photo-spot. You can do decent location estimation with signal strength and/or proximity sensors. I don’t know what disney’s Doing just speaking of what could be done.

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

The practical purposes as of now are ride rationing and data gleaning.

The rise in “special ticketed events” didn’t just happen to explode a year or two after the system took hold.

Never believe in “coincidence” in a Disney park.

As to the first idea - ride rationing - they confirmed it. If they didn’t need it...there would be no tiers

 

[Queen of the WDW Scene]

I believe one of their initial purposes was so that you would shop in that area while you waited for your FP time.
However that never panned out for them. If the time slot was close enough they would do another attraction near by and if the time slot was for way later they would go to a different section of the park to do a few attractions.
They back and forth to obtain, wait for, and use made me like the new system where you decide what time you want to do something and plan your day accordingly.

 

[Sundown]

Thank you all for these helpful and informative posts. Really terrific.

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

I believe one of their initial purposes was so that you would shop in that area while you waited for your FP time.
However that never panned out for them. If the time slot was close enough they would do another attraction near by and if the time slot was for way later they would go to a different section of the park to do a few attractions.
They back and forth to obtain, wait for, and use made me like the new system where you decide what time you want to do something and plan your day accordingly.

That was definitely the primary goal of the original fastpass...what we call “legacy” now.

I did see some peripheral info on rollouts and analysis in its second year (99 into 2000). It was very well received from the customer perspective.

The problem was while it did reduce lines and freed up time, even then merchandising was starting to change. People had begun the slow move away from “souvenirs” that continues today and exploded in the online world.

But evil Paul was already there...and they decided specialized merchandise that required multiple runs of production in the sweatshop and increased costs by 5-10% just couldn’t be tolerated. How you gonna cover That with an 80% profit margin, huh?

There is no way to directly correlate it...but a working theory is that fastpass rolled exactly when they stopped making wdw a “shopping destination”

And it’s continued and mitigated the fastpass advantage since.

 

[JustAFan]

Sorry I didn’t reply earlier; here’s a quote from a recent post I wrote. The question was did FP+ fail to deliver its premise.

Personally? Overall yes. It failed to spread crowds evenly. It created artificially inflated wait times. New attractions still need to be built. Guests still leave property. It reduces attraction efficiency. It requires more cast. Without my personal feelings those are factual points.

And it cost a fortune

But I like it, so that's gotta be worth ... something.

Right?

 

[thomas998]

Well first, it has nothing to do with minimizing staffing. Having Fastpass at an attraction adds at least one position and usually more, not to mention the entire team behind it and adjusting it behind the scenes.

Basically, Fastpass, and Fastpass+, are free because they are not a "skip the line" pass. They are a form of virtual queuing. By virtual queuing this enables guests to, in theory, spend less time in lines and more time in parks and restaurants, thereby spending more money. Fastpass+ took this a step further by enabling to control the supply and demand of the Fastpasses to a much deeper level, to the point where they can adjust how they are distributed, when more passes are dropped, etc. to move crowds where they want them.

Another thing Fastpass, and even moreso with Fastpass+ does, is artificially inflate the standby lines. Some posters on here will argue tooth and nail that this isn't true, but anyone who has ever worked directly with the Fastpass system or on a popular attraction that uses Fastpass will confirm that it is true. Disney likes to tout that "people who use Fastpass ride more than those who don't." Well, this is absolutely true, however, what it really means is you HAVE to use Fastpass to ride the same number of attractions as you would if the system did not exist at all. It forces you to do more work to get the same experience, though of course with some benefits such as waiting in shorter queues. Fastpass+ has made this concept even more frustrating because you typically have to plan your Fastpasses in advance or you will be left with slim pickings. This brings me to my next point - with the old legacy Fastpass system, the "playing field" was the same for everyone. Want good Fastpasses? Get there early. However, Disney resort guests have a massive advantage by being able to reserve 60 days out. Others who purchase their tickets in advance and plan ahead can reserve Fastpasses 30 days out. Anyone who purchases their tickets day of will probably be screwed and at a massive disadvantage and will likely experience less than everyone else.

Finally, I will leave you with the numbers. Disney distributes enough Fastpasses to account for 80% of any ride's hourly capacity. On any popular attraction, 80% of anyone riding entered using a Fastpass. The "illusion" they want you to believe is that you are "skipping the longer line". In reality, you are in the vast majority of riders when you use a Fastpass.

Agreed... but you left out the other very annoying part of the planning process. The restaurants window opens 6 months out and then your fastpass opens only 60 or 30... which often ends up forcing you to choose between accepting the fastpass you want and hoping you can change a dinner reservation or skipping the fastpass which may be difficult to come by. The whole different timing windows or different things at Disney is just makes it more annoying for anyone actually trying to plan things so they can use them.

 

[Club Cooloholic]

Well first, it has nothing to do with minimizing staffing. Having Fastpass at an attraction adds at least one position and usually more, not to mention the entire team behind it and adjusting it behind the scenes.

Basically, Fastpass, and Fastpass+, are free because they are not a "skip the line" pass. They are a form of virtual queuing. By virtual queuing this enables guests to, in theory, spend less time in lines and more time in parks and restaurants, thereby spending more money. Fastpass+ took this a step further by enabling to control the supply and demand of the Fastpasses to a much deeper level, to the point where they can adjust how they are distributed, when more passes are dropped, etc. to move crowds where they want them.

Another thing Fastpass, and even moreso with Fastpass+ does, is artificially inflate the standby lines. Some posters on here will argue tooth and nail that this isn't true, but anyone who has ever worked directly with the Fastpass system or on a popular attraction that uses Fastpass will confirm that it is true. Disney likes to tout that "people who use Fastpass ride more than those who don't." Well, this is absolutely true, however, what it really means is you HAVE to use Fastpass to ride the same number of attractions as you would if the system did not exist at all. It forces you to do more work to get the same experience, though of course with some benefits such as waiting in shorter queues. Fastpass+ has made this concept even more frustrating because you typically have to plan your Fastpasses in advance or you will be left with slim pickings. This brings me to my next point - with the old legacy Fastpass system, the "playing field" was the same for everyone. Want good Fastpasses? Get there early. However, Disney resort guests have a massive advantage by being able to reserve 60 days out. Others who purchase their tickets in advance and plan ahead can reserve Fastpasses 30 days out. Anyone who purchases their tickets day of will probably be screwed and at a massive disadvantage and will likely experience less than everyone else.

Finally, I will leave you with the numbers. Disney distributes enough Fastpasses to account for 80% of any ride's hourly capacity. On any popular attraction, 80% of anyone riding entered using a Fastpass. The "illusion" they want you to believe is that you are "skipping the longer line". In reality, you are in the vast majority of riders when you use a Fastpass.

Awesome explanation! I will add too that the fast passes fall right in line with getting guests to make restaurant reservations. I think 30 years ago guests might have an idea where they want to eat but book a reservation months ahead of time, for all your meals? Well with FP you know where you will be and what you will be riding and what a shame if you could not fit in lunch between 2 ride times better make a ressie. Oh and now canceling the day before or even night before in some cases will cost you!

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

Sorry I didn’t reply earlier; here’s a quote from a recent post I wrote. The question was did FP+ fail to deliver its premise.

Personally? Overall yes. It failed to spread crowds evenly. It created artificially inflated wait times. New attractions still need to be built. Guests still leave property. It reduces attraction efficiency. It requires more cast. Without my personal feelings those are factual points.

And it cost a fortune

I’ve heard their “theory” about even distribution for years...but only a fool didn’t think that the + system wouldn’t highlight/exacerbate the problem of growing aggregate crowds with little if any new attractions. Instead of people going with the flow and skipping rides SOME times...they’re always booked, and the standbys don’t respond quickly to someone not showing up.

They got what they set themselves up for...an app with tiers and a slate of also rans that it’s painful to actually pick on the lower end.

 

[Hcalvert]

They know when your passing through a ride photo-spot. You can do decent location estimation with signal strength and/or proximity sensors. I don’t know what disney’s Doing just speaking of what could be done.

I was in Launch Bay Cargo in July and a CM addressed me by my name. They must have gleaned the information from my magic band as my family was not by me at the time. He was by the checkout computer, so I am thinking there is some type of tracking going on in the stores and the CMs can see it on the computer.

 

[bUU]

So even though I'm getting to use my 3 FP picks and then add 1 more and then 1 more on and on in a day, I'm thinking Im saving myself time in line, when in reality I'm then being forced to spend much more time in line for those I dont have a FP+ for. So in the end I'm not getting more attractions done and I'm still left standing in lines quite a bit longer. Theres just the illusion that FP+ is getting me more.

The benefits we get from FP+ are not illusions. We choose our three picks and then fill the rest of our day with attractions that don't require FP+ to avoid waits. It's no different from how it was with the ticket books. Back in the mid-70's there were at least a half dozen E-ticket attractions but a typical ticket book had just a few E-tickets. The rest of the day guests did other things, like visited Tom Sawyer Island, Swiss Family Island Treehouse, etc. There's nothing wrong with wanting to ride E-tickets all day, but expecting to do so without paying a price for it is unreasonable, and I doubt guests would be happy with how much a value-based ticket to the park would cost if there was enough attration capacity such that all attractions were a walk-on.

 

[bUU]

They know when your passing through a ride photo-spot.

Unless you're wearing one of the original bands. The batteries in those have begun to run out (if not all completely drained) by now.

 

[JusticeDisney]

This thread is really interesting. I’ve learned a lot about this topic that I never knew before.

So, let me ask you this. Given that WDW seems willing to do just about anything to generate additional revenue (that’s not an insult, what company doesn’t do that?), does anyone think WDW will ever got to a system more like Universal’s express pass, where guests simply pay in advance for multiple “fast passes” and then use them as they see fit? Or is WDW simply too crowded for a system like that to ever actually work? Or is there some other reason why this wouldn’t work that I’m not thinking of?

Thanks in advance for any insight!

 

[Disstevefan1]

Fastpasses to account for 80% of any ride's hourly capacity

WOW! its no wonder the all the standby lines are ridiculously too long!!

I have an additional opinion on Fast pass plus. We remember before fastpass plus, only the most popular attractions had the paper fast passes and when they ran out, that was it.

Before Fast pass plus, attractions like Space Ship Earth, or Pirates were NOT fast pass attractions and (most) of the time were walk on.

In the Fast Pass plus system EVERY attraction is a fast pass attraction! Disney Had to do this, they spent almost 2 Billion to implement this system and they cant just have the few most popular attractions in the system, so all attractions were made fast pass plus attractions.

This created an artificial demand for the less popular attractions and now attractions that were walk on, are now mobbed with stand by lines

Space Ship Earth is a good example. The other day we arrived at EPCOT about noon, SSE was MOBBED! We said we will come back later, we came back a few hours later, STILL MOBBED!

Before Fast Pass Plus, SSE was the attraction we always rode, there was never a queue, we would walk on. Today forgetaboutit.

I have a prediction related to the Fast Pass Plus system. I predict that (for a price) folks staying on site would be able to purchase daily itineraries for the whole family; dining reservations and Fast passes made in such a way all your dining times line up with the fast passes and you are always in in the right place at the right time.

The system could support this and Disney could offer this for a premium price, further enforcing the class system that has evolved at WDW.

 

[rkleinlein]

I never used the old Fastpass system so pardon me for asking what may be obvious questions:

If an attraction had a 30 minute wait, would the fastpass say come back in 30 minutes? Or, if too many other guests had gotten fast passes for that attraction before you might it say come back in one hour or two hours even though the current wait is only 30 minutes?

Was it such that the people actually waiting in line never had fastpass holders jump ahead of their place? In other words, if I had to wait 30 minutes, did everybody going in ahead of me with a fastpass get it MORE than 30 minutes ago--before I got in the line?

 

[dreamfinder]

Now for the big question:
Does anyone see Disney moving away from this system in the future? Since it wasn't effective enough to spread to other parks I would think it would eventually be removed. Every IT based system I know of has definite maintenance costs and limited lifespan.

It will slowly turn into a profit center if they milk it long enough, see the demand for the "discounted" fancy MBs instead of the plain colored ones.

And other parks have found it to be cost effective to monetize the FP system instead. I do believe that both SDL and DLP have paid fast pass options in addition to the free ones.

But remember that WDW does have size that the other parks don't. Sheer volume makes FP+ have different returns than at the other venues.

This thread is really interesting. I’ve learned a lot about this topic that I never knew before.

So, let me ask you this. Given that WDW seems willing to do just about anything to generate additional revenue (that’s not an insult, what company doesn’t do that?), does anyone think WDW will ever got to a system more like Universal’s express pass, where guests simply pay in advance for multiple “fast passes” and then use them as they see fit? Or is WDW simply too crowded for a system like that to ever actually work? Or is there some other reason why this wouldn’t work that I’m not thinking of?

Thanks in advance for any insight!

See DLP and SDL. Both have pay options on top of the free ones. And in some case (SDL Pirates I'm looking at you) the paid option is available even when they don't offer free FP.

I never used the old Fastpass system so pardon me for asking what may be obvious questions:

If an attraction had a 30 minute wait, would the fastpass say come back in 30 minutes? Or, if too many other guests had gotten fast passes for that attraction before you might it say come back in one hour or two hours even though the current wait is only 30 minutes?

Was it such that the people actually waiting in line never had fastpass holders jump ahead of their place? In other words, if I had to wait 30 minutes, did everybody going in ahead of me with a fastpass get it MORE than 30 minutes ago--before I got in the line?

The FP distribution was tied to their expected through put. IE a ride can handle 100 guests an hour, and they shoot for 80 FP an hour, with 20 standby. If you were guest 50 to ask for a FP, you might get 9AM, while if you were guest 150, it might be for 10AM. This is how popular rides would "sell out" of their FP early in the day, because lots of people would request them. Space Mountain might have run out of its FP alotment by say 11AM, but you could still walk up at 5PM and wait standby, but it might be a 2-3 hour wait if 80% of the seats were already allocated to FP holders.

Both with the old, and the new system, there were definitely times where you could get a FP for a return time that was about the same, or possibly shorter (I think shorter) than if you waited in standby. This would usually be for the less popular rides, but would still tie up your FP, so you wouldn't be able to get one for a more popular ride. So some guests who had a FP for Space, would then go wait in the standby line for tea cups, even though the FP return might be shorter since their FP was tied up.

 

[Chef Mickey]

The problem isn't for guests, IMO. The problem for FP+ and the Magicband concept was its benefits were oversold to Disney execs and they spent way too much money essentially building an alternative payment system. For what it is, I use FP+ for my 3 guaranteed attractions and I'm happy. I think that's about the only benefit guests care about and I don't think that needed to cost upwards of $2B.

"Tap to Pay" is not a new concept to consumers and the mindless spending that comes along with it is too minimal to justify billions of dollars spent on a system.

We don't have visibility into the analytical benefits of total guest tracking, but my guess is its impact is minimal and only directional.

In the end, you still have to expand parks and create amazing experiences for people to spend money and come back. You can't "analyze" your way into success. Analytics are simply a tool that help determine the direction of what you do, not IF you do it at all.

To be fair, I think Disney has learned this and the days of no/little expansion have caught up with them and you see what we see the last couple years.

 

[Bender123]

One operational thing that gets missed in these conversations is that FP+ actually steers people to certain parks in certain days with a massive headway in timing for scheduling and planning.

In the old system, it was pretty much random chance to guess what park would be the busy one on any given day. Yes, there are trends that go with EMH, but overall, people weren't really locked into it. If you wanted to go on Soarin, the availability of FP on Everest wasn't really going to change your mind.

When you are getting a majority of your guests locked into their park 30-60 days out, suddenly it becomes very clear where you need to send your busses, where the extra staffing needs to be, etc...People aren't likely to change a reservation on the day of, if it means giving up entry to a top tier ride for a ticket to Dumbo.

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

The problem isn't for guests, IMO. The problem for FP+ and the Magicband concept was its benefits were oversold to Disney execs and they spent way too much money essentially building an alternative payment system. For what it is, I use FP+ for my 3 guaranteed attractions and I'm happy. I think that's about the only benefit guests care about and I don't think that needed to cost upwards of $2B.

"Tap to Pay" is not a new concept to consumers and the mindless spending that comes along with it is too minimal to justify billions of dollars spent on a system.

We don't have visibility into the analytical benefits of total guest tracking, but my guess is its impact is minimal and only directional.

In the end, you still have to expand parks and create amazing experiences for people to spend money and come back. You can't "analyze" your way into success. Analytics are simply a tool that help determine the direction of what you do, not IF you do it at all.

To be fair, I think Disney has learned this and the days of no/little expansion have caught up with them and you see what we see the last couple years.

It also masked a huge IT upgrade that they couldn’t just pay for out of pocket in today’s Wall Street climate. The street hates “infrastructure”

Their computer system was wretched...they had to spend. Saying you’ll screw the customers to pay for WiFi routers is actually genius