Fastpass + : The Real Purpose?

[Bender123]

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.

I would wholeheartedly disagree with you...The analytical benefit of total tracking of every guest is huge.

Think on it this way...

Sixty days out, you have a nearly complete view of where the majority of your guests will be staying, where they will be eating, what park they will be at and what part of the park they will be at during any part of the day. If you want to jump parks, you pay extra, which incentivizes people to stay in the park they arranged reservations for. You can also see exactly how many people in that group will park hop.

You are two months out and you already have almost a complete itinerary for every person staying in your hotels. At 30 days out you have a near complete view of every person for the next month. You see trends for each ride, you have an idea of where the bus needs to go, you have an idea of how many people are needed at every food cart and counter. You are still within a scheduling window for your staff.

As for forecasting at the time of service, you are now tracking a person, their group size, their ages, the rides they go on, the food they eat, what time they enter the park, what times they leave the park, what time they open the door to their hotel room, how many times they leave their room and don't enter a park, etc...

Information is the new oil...it is the grease and fuel that keeps a place like WDW running. What TDO has done is make a system that has real data months in advance and complete tracking of all guests, at any point of the day, through out the property. Im almost certain they have an algorithm that will predict with high certainty how many times the toilet will flush in any given day, just based on the info they have.

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

I would wholeheartedly disagree with you...The analytical benefit of total tracking of every guest is huge.

Think on it this way...

Sixty days out, you have a nearly complete view of where the majority of your guests will be staying, where they will be eating, what park they will be at and what part of the park they will be at during any part of the day. If you want to jump parks, you pay extra, which incentivizes people to stay in the park they arranged reservations for. You can also see exactly how many people in that group will park hop.

You are two months out and you already have almost a complete itinerary for every person staying in your hotels. At 30 days out you have a near complete view of every person for the next month. You see trends for each ride, you have an idea of where the bus needs to go, you have an idea of how many people are needed at every food cart and counter. You are still within a scheduling window for your staff.

As for forecasting at the time of service, you are now tracking a person, their group size, their ages, the rides they go on, the food they eat, what time they enter the park, what times they leave the park, what time they open the door to their hotel room, how many times they leave their room and don't enter a park, etc...

Information is the new oil...it is the grease and fuel that keeps a place like WDW running. What TDO has done is make a system that has real data months in advance and complete tracking of all guests, at any point of the day, through out the property. Im almost certain they have an algorithm that will predict with high certainty how many times the toilet will flush in any given day, just based on the info they have.

I think this is what “can” be done...not saying they actually do it.

You pick up everyone’s bands in both the park and their on property hotels. You see where they are in relationship to times and crowd flow. You see how long they stand still...and when they leave and everything in between.

Now you cross reference that with the costs of their rooms and their hotel folios...see the outlay/means of the demographics.

What do you get? You get “early morning magic” and “after hours magic” and their price points.

See how easy?

That’s just the tip. Potentially.

Anyone remeber the stupid space mountain area smoking cabanas?
Where did that come from? I wonder if it’s because they were tracking families with young children retreating to the monorail hotels midday? The new money exodus?
...hmmm

 

[bUU]

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?

I doubt Disney would ever do exactly what Universal is doing, but they very well might make changes, that fit well within their operations, that one could consider close to or perhaps even well beyond that. There is no validity in the notion that the primer Disney experience somehow must remain affordable to, well, whoever is complaining it isn't. That was never the case: My family couldn't afford Disney vacations until the late 1980s.

And so yes Disney almost surely will further monetize prime experiences at the parks. We just don't know in what way, or when, yet.

 

[Chef Mickey]

I would wholeheartedly disagree with you...The analytical benefit of total tracking of every guest is huge.

Think on it this way...

Sixty days out, you have a nearly complete view of where the majority of your guests will be staying, where they will be eating, what park they will be at and what part of the park they will be at during any part of the day. If you want to jump parks, you pay extra, which incentivizes people to stay in the park they arranged reservations for. You can also see exactly how many people in that group will park hop.

You are two months out and you already have almost a complete itinerary for every person staying in your hotels. At 30 days out you have a near complete view of every person for the next month. You see trends for each ride, you have an idea of where the bus needs to go, you have an idea of how many people are needed at every food cart and counter. You are still within a scheduling window for your staff.

As for forecasting at the time of service, you are now tracking a person, their group size, their ages, the rides they go on, the food they eat, what time they enter the park, what times they leave the park, what time they open the door to their hotel room, how many times they leave their room and don't enter a park, etc...

Information is the new oil...it is the grease and fuel that keeps a place like WDW running. What TDO has done is make a system that has real data months in advance and complete tracking of all guests, at any point of the day, through out the property. Im almost certain they have an algorithm that will predict with high certainty how many times the toilet will flush in any given day, just based on the info they have.

I work with analytics all day. They absolutely matter. However, they will never replace the product itself. You can't keep squeezing without the constant expansion and a great product.

Disney overpaid for the platform and didn't expand enough for about 15 years. They are big enough to afford overpayment and have realized they need to expand/improve the product. That's why you're seeing an overhaul of 2 parks and additional expansion in the other 2.

 

[rkleinlein]

I would wholeheartedly disagree with you...The analytical benefit of total tracking of every guest is huge.

Think on it this way...

Sixty days out, you have a nearly complete view of where the majority of your guests will be staying, where they will be eating, what park they will be at and what part of the park they will be at during any part of the day. If you want to jump parks, you pay extra, which incentivizes people to stay in the park they arranged reservations for. You can also see exactly how many people in that group will park hop.

You are two months out and you already have almost a complete itinerary for every person staying in your hotels. At 30 days out you have a near complete view of every person for the next month. You see trends for each ride, you have an idea of where the bus needs to go, you have an idea of how many people are needed at every food cart and counter. You are still within a scheduling window for your staff.

As for forecasting at the time of service, you are now tracking a person, their group size, their ages, the rides they go on, the food they eat, what time they enter the park, what times they leave the park, what time they open the door to their hotel room, how many times they leave their room and don't enter a park, etc...

Information is the new oil...it is the grease and fuel that keeps a place like WDW running. What TDO has done is make a system that has real data months in advance and complete tracking of all guests, at any point of the day, through out the property. Im almost certain they have an algorithm that will predict with high certainty how many times the toilet will flush in any given day, just based on the info they have.

Before all these reservations didn't they have a pretty good idea which attractions and restaurants were going to be crowded and when? Do you need all this data to know that Avatar is going to have long lines and a lot of people are going to want to eat at Be Our Guest? Or that, on any given day, the Magic Kingdom was going to be more crowded than Hollywood Studios?

Still, I'm sure, the company finds all this data useful somehow. But I wonder if fastpass has really improved overall guest experience. Yes, I get to walk on three attractions but my wait for every other attraction is exponentially increased since since the capacity for standby riders has been reduced by 80%.

I also find it absurd that planing family a vacation at Disney theme parks can now be more complicated than planning a trip abroad. All the time and frustration of planning three months out (and revising up to and during your vacation) is now part of the overall guest experience.

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

I work with analytics all day. They absolutely matter. However, they will never replace the product itself. You can't keep squeezing without the constant expansion and a great product.

Disney overpaid for the platform and didn't expand enough for about 15 years. They are big enough to afford overpayment and have realized they need to expand/improve the product. That's why you're seeing an overhaul of 2 parks and additional expansion in the other 2.

Now THIS...is what these boards can be.

I’m completely crossing the isle to vote “duster” with you due to how much I agree here.

 

[jaques21]

I work with analytics all day. They absolutely matter. However, they will never replace the product itself. You can't keep squeezing without the constant expansion and a great product.

Disney overpaid for the platform and didn't expand enough for about 15 years. They are big enough to afford overpayment and have realized they need to expand/improve the product. That's why you're seeing an overhaul of 2 parks and additional expansion in the other 2.

hmm thats interesting, @marni1971 what you think?

 

[Bender123]

I work with analytics all day. They absolutely matter. However, they will never replace the product itself. You can't keep squeezing without the constant expansion and a great product.

Disney overpaid for the platform and didn't expand enough for about 15 years. They are big enough to afford overpayment and have realized they need to expand/improve the product. That's why you're seeing an overhaul of 2 parks and additional expansion in the other 2.

These are two different arguments...Should TDO have spent more money on upgrading, adding on and improving rides? I don't think anybody is going to argue that point. The issue is whether the FP+, backend Infrastructure and analytics gained from a property wide build out of RFID based guest tracking. Without really knowing what the data is used for, its hard question to answer. Based on how the system can track you and place you in everything from rides to your rooms and predict where you will be at any given time months in advance, its a pretty good bet that the data TDO owns is worth more than gold.

We can argue all day about what is "more important"...for direct guest benefit, its a hard sell beyond FP+ and some neat little tricks around the parks. On the indirect side, how much of this data was responsible for various upgrades at hotels, restaurants, transportation, etc...? More than likely, guest movement patterns were behind the Gondola routes and walkway upgrades. There are likely hundreds to thousands of other things we don't see.

Dealing with this type of info usually involves a ton of lagging indicators that we aren't going to have visuals on.

 

[Chef Mickey]

These are two different arguments...Should TDO have spent more money on upgrading, adding on and improving rides? I don't think anybody is going to argue that point. The issue is whether the FP+, backend Infrastructure and analytics gained from a property wide build out of RFID based guest tracking. Without really knowing what the data is used for, its hard question to answer. Based on how the system can track you and place you in everything from rides to your rooms and predict where you will be at any given time months in advance, its a pretty good bet that the data TDO owns is worth more than gold.

We can argue all day about what is "more important"...for direct guest benefit, its a hard sell beyond FP+ and some neat little tricks around the parks. On the indirect side, how much of this data was responsible for various upgrades at hotels, restaurants, transportation, etc...? More than likely, guest movement patterns were behind the Gondola routes and walkway upgrades. There are likely hundreds to thousands of other things we don't see.

Dealing with this type of info usually involves a ton of lagging indicators that we aren't going to have visuals on.

I would bet much of the analytics gained from this system was possible for much cheaper andDisney execs were disappointed in its ROI. I believe that’s why it isn’t outside of Florida.

 

[thomas998]

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.

Aside from the Tiki Room and People Mover are there actually any ride you don't have to wait an ungodly long time to ride?

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

Is it reasonable to pay $100 and up for an all inclusive ticket...book 3 rides (it’s still in essence a park with rides)...in some parks only one being “in demand” and then roll the dice with the rest of the day where all lines are longer/slower moving because of prebooking of all rides?

...and then thank Disney for it?

That is a fundamental question.

I loved legacy fastpass and I’m ok with +...but my needs are far less than most travelers

 

[bUU]

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.

Aside from the Tiki Room and People Mover are there actually any ride you don't have to wait an ungodly long time to ride?

Loads. For example, at Animal Kingdom Park, we spend loads of time in the Maharajah Jungle Trek, the Gorilla Falls Exploration Trail, the Discovery Island trails, and the Oasis. We also spend time enjoying the entertainment by the Pandora drummers, the Karibu Sisters, and the acrobats and bands that play in Harambe village. In Epcot, we spend a lot of time visiting each country, enjoying the performances (the band in Canada, the British Invasion, the mime in France, the band in Morocco, the drummers in Japan, the Voices of Liberty, the juggler in Italy, the omhpah band in Germany, the acrobats in China, and the Mariachi band in Mexico), and visiting the exhibits (especially in Morocco, Japan, and Mexico). We also like The Seas, which is a walk-on if you enter through the gift shop. At Magic Kingdom, there's the Tiki Room, like you suggested, as well as Tom Sawyer Island. Carousel of Progress is typically a walk-on when we visit as well.

 

[bUU]

That is a fundamental question.

It is a fundamental question, just like the question about paying an average of $150 to sit in a hard, narrow uncomfortable seat to watch a NFL game for a few hours. It's a fundamental question because it is a differentiator: People who answer 'no' should move on and find something else to concern themselves with rather than whining about how expensive it is to watch a football game.

 

[mdcpr]

Millennium Falcon: Smuggler's Run won't have FP+ when SW:GE goes live, so there's that.

Something has to be implemented. The lines will be ridiculous long at WDW. And I do hope they implement the 4 hour visit block to SGE.

 

[rkleinlein]

On the indirect side, how much of this data was responsible for various upgrades at hotels, restaurants, transportation, etc...? More than likely, guest movement patterns were behind the Gondola routes and walkway upgrades. There are likely hundreds to thousands of other things we don't see.

Maybe. But you're good a running a theme park--or simply have eyes--you don't need to invest billions in a data collection system to realize that certain walkways need to be widened, certain restaurants and attractions get crowded, or that guests are going to need transportation from their hotels to the parks.

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

It is a fundamental question, just like the question about paying an average of $150 to sit in a hard, narrow uncomfortable seat to watch a NFL game for a few hours. It's a fundamental question because it is a differentiator: People who answer 'no' should move on and find something else to concern themselves with rather than whining about how expensive it is to watch a football game.

For the majority of travelers...wdw involves a much larger commitment with ancillary costs for 4-7 days on average.

Not 3-6 hours

So the comparison is not valid

Neither is broadway...if we’re gonna go there

 

[lentesta]

Over the years I've read bits & pieces here on the board that Disney's real purpose for Fastpass+ isn't so guests can get on a ride faster than other guests.

I've searched the forum and can't find a good explanation of the real purpose of Fastpass+ from Disney's perspective. I seem to remember two big points having to do with minimizing staffing and crow control?

Would there be somewhere that discusses or summarizes the intent of the system? (either here on the board or elsewhere)?

There's probably a copy of the "GXP Conceptual Overview Roadmap" doc from July 2010 floating around the internets somewhere. It got presented to the Board of Directors, which outlined how the whole MyMagic+ system was supposed to work.

Page 19 notes that people who use more FastPasses are more satisfied, so one goal of MM+ was to get people to use FastPass more.

That required expanding the number of attractions with FastPass, so that there was enough capacity. Pages 13-18 deal with that. Using all of the ride capacity more effectively was definitely a goal of MM+.

Page 19 specifically says that Disney's industrial engineers' worst-case scenario for wait times was a 1-3 minute increase across all attractions, and 6-8 minutes at headliners. That was supposed to be offset by the lower wait times in the FastPass+ line, which Disney's IEs projected would lead to a 1-minute decrease in overall wait times.

I've said before that the way FP+ works in practice looks only a little like this presentation predicted it would. But it did have the effect of distributing crowds more evenly around the parks.

The ability to use FP+ to better tune staffing levels at parks wasn't mentioned at all in the original presentation. I think it came later on, when the IEs saw all the data MM+ generated, and started to figure out how to use it.

 

[Bender123]

Maybe. But you're good a running a theme park--or simply have eyes--you don't need to invest billions in a data collection system to realize that certain walkways need to be widened, certain restaurants and attractions get crowded, or that guests are going to need transportation from their hotels to the parks.

That's not how millions or billions get approved in a publicly traded company...If I walked into a capital expenditures meeting with a request over $1000 and the reason of "Well...I just know it", they would laugh me out of the board room and my desk would be cleaned off before I got back to it.

Everything needs to have data backing it up.

 

[bUU]

For the majority of travelers...wdw involves a much larger commitment with ancillary costs for 4-7 days on average. Not 3-6 hours So the comparison is not valid

Rubbish. That makes the comparison even more acute. Since, as you pointed out, more is at stake, people who answer 'no' have even more reason to that they should move on and find something else to concern themselves with. If they stick around and wallow in their grudge, then their concerns have no credibility. They just want to whine.

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

Rubbish. That makes the comparison even more acute. Since, as you pointed out, more is at stake, people who answer 'no' have even more reason to that they should move on and find something else to concern themselves with. If they stick around and wallow in their grudge, then their concerns have no credibility. They just want to whine.

So now you’re going to debate something that’s been tossed around for 20 years?

You can disagree. It wasn’t even an argument point...just something to consider in the context of debating the merits of what the consumer gets from the reservation system.

Wdw travelers are a captive audience under more financial stress. They will accept less due to this...but their frustration level will be higher because of it.

I’d suggest you spend more time picking out wicker for the new palace or something?...no need for another needless battle.