And, honestly, your main complain really is less about FP+ and more about enforcing FP return windows when you think about it. Because once they started enforcing return windows with paper FP, the same concerns about having to be a certain place at a certain time came to bear. And, unlike FP+, you didn't have flexibility with your return time. A runner (or the whole party) would go to a ride and have to decide whether to even get a FP if the time worked.
No, that's not my "main complaint". My "main complaint" is that planning what attraction you are going to be around in a theme park up to 3 months in advance is simply insanity.
It's hard to have this discussion when different folks are on way different levels of understanding of just how the concept itself of doing so is utterly baffling and hilarious to those outside of the Disney fandom bubble (and many of us inside, as well).
How do you know what the weather will be like that day? How do you know your kid won't have a stomach ache and not be able to ride the rides you chose three months ago?
Oh, you can just leap on your smartphone,
if you have one, and reschedule -
if there are any available FP+ left, and then you have to mess around and go through this whole process which is beyond words more complex than just "go as you go along", grabbing a FP here or there when it helps.
You schedule a five minute meeting with a President three months in advance, not a five minute theme park ride.
Also, attractions going down is one of the clear positive things about FP+ use. You can use the FP+ any time for that ride when it comes back or simply do something else -- that greatly increases flexibility, not hinders it.
No, that's not a clear positive. The regular FP system was the same.
However, because you've booked that day three months in advance, you are at that park, you've scheduled your whole day around those FP, is far different than getting a FP a few hours before, somewhere you happen to be and that you plan on being for the next few hours.
I get it - some folks are eating this up and loving it. At a different time, perhaps I would have as well - but never for one minute would I think this was typical whatsoever of what the average WDW guest would want, because all I have ever heard from most folks when it comes to planning a WDW vacation is that it ALREADY was too much planning and scheduling to begin with - those folks who
like to go on vacation like this - folks that would come to a Disney board to begin with - are by nature not typical.
I'm not arguing that I am typical myself - but I think after all these years of being the person at every workplace, social gathering, or pretty much any place I am being the "Disney expert" that folks come to (I've helped hundreds of folks plan trips at this point, and given advice to many more) I believe I have a decent idea of how "average" visitors react, and I can tell you the one constant has always been "wow there is just an overwhelming amount of planning, too much" - a lot of folks can't even comprehend how a theme park needs six-month-out dining reservations, let alone the concept of scheduling a 5 minute ride three months in advance.
