I just don't get it. WHAT is the advantage of FP+ expected to be?

[Weather_Lady]

Gotcha... I'm not worried about those first two, but TSMM... hmm... as of right now, my FP+ for HS is RnR, ToT, and Star Tours. Should I consider changing RnR for TSMM? I was going based on what I thought DH and I would like more, but I've never ridden TSMM.

You don't need to change your FP+ plans -- but I would suggest that you hit TSMM at least once right after rope drop, if you can get there. It's fun for all ages and worth doing once, even for grown-ups, but only so long as you can get there first thing before the line gets crazy.

(If you're not sure if you want to bother, check this out. Obviously it's hard to see everything once the attraction begins, without 3D glasses, but you get the idea.. )

 

[cw1982]

Hah! Wow... the talking Potato Head has me giggling

Thanks for sharing... that is pretty cool! Time to go play with my touringplans itinerary and see how I come out best

 

[sjhym333]

I think FP+ addresses one of the biggest complaints Disney got from guests which were FP's not being available for certain attractions mid-morning and the inflexability of the old system which spit out FP's chronologically. The biggest complaints are coming from people who understood the system and grabbed 8 FP's in a day, which is fine until you realize that there was some poor guest who was able to get just one. I think Disney sees the new system as more equitable.

Personally, I love FP+. As an AP holder I am able to make FP reservations before I leave the house and have been able to ride most attractions that I want to that same day. I have found the ability to get FP's pretty good all in all even the day of.

Lastly, why complain? FP+ is here to stay

 

[flynnibus]

All I'm trying to point out is that people are so stuck on how they've had to bend their schedules around to accommodate the legacy FastPass system, they don't even realize how limiting and archaic the old system really was.

...because at the end of the day, it's the limit on # of FPs people can use that the power users are upset the most over. They find that limit constraining and more significant than the other gains the new system offers. Then add to that the 'fears' that advance booking adds.. and they are upset

Combine that with the ideal that the system could have been made better (electronic, app, etc) WITHOUT any of the negatives (limits, advance booking) and they hate that Disney is putting their motives ahead of the end-user.

 

[Dwarful]

cw1982, Weather Lady nailed it. For us...we enjoy TSMM...actually its one of our favorites to do as a family. So we love to go there at rope drop and have a FP for it. But that has changed for many with FP+. We are going to be in HS two days so one day its FP for TSMM and one day to RnRC and both days we will be there are rope drop.

 

[cw1982]

@Dwarful good to know! We plan to do two days at HS, so if nothing else I may change my FP+ for the second day and put that in place of RnC. If you knew how much I had to discuss the logistics of NOT going to AK at rope drop just to get him to agree to do it for one day (since the animals aren't out as much as Safari when it starts getting warmer out), you'd see that I can't plan to do rope drop any other days lol... once is all he'll tolerate. It's his trip too, so I don't want to ruin it for him by pushing early mornings when he wants to relax a little. Splitting them between the two days may be the best I can do.

Plus, we'll be at MK the night before our first HS day until 2 am, so I may be pushing things by having our first FP+ window being at 11ish. Maybe I need to rethink that... especially by the time we actually get on the bus and make it over there... hmm... so much to think about.

You guys are awesome for always being so willing to help me think through these things!

 

[cw1982]

Ok... I just went and updated my plans for Thursday. Since we are using FP+ for RnC on Monday, I changed that FP+ on Thursday to TSMM just in case we don't get to it on Monday. From everything I'm seeing, though, it sounds like we would be more likely to be able to change that back to RnC a few days before if we wanted to than if we were doing that in reverse and trying to change RnC to TSMM, so I figured this gave us the most flexibility. All of my FP options for that day are right after lunch. That gives us time to go back to MK or Epcot, or even DTD or just do a night by the pool if we want to... basically we would just be showing up at HS to do our FP+ options (maybe wait in line to ride RnC one time) and leave lol... but hey, we're on vacation and we won't be driving, so I have no qualms with this.

 

[Spike-in-Berlin]

Now first I want to thank all those who wrote something in this thread as an answer to my question.
Of course my major complaint was about 1) the 3 FP limit per day and 2) that there was no park hopping available. We were heavy users of the FP but not commando style. We were until September 2012 AP holders as well (actually PAP) and visited the world three times in 12 months (which is quite a lot if you live in Berlin, no not Berlin, NH; Berlin, Germany) and always stayed at least 2 weeks, so there was no commando style necessary.
Of course if TDO now adds more FP+ to the 3 per day maximum AND also makes park hopping possible, this changes nearly everything as these were my two major problems with the new system.
The only remaining question is still, what means you get your 4th ( and 5th, 6th etc.) FP+ option after you USED it. If you really must have done it, that would definitely influence an afternoon or evening schedule in a negative way.
One last question, have the lines at the attractions grown since the installing of FP+?

 

[Weather_Lady]

One last question, have the lines at the attractions grown since the installing of FP+?

Some have (particularly attractions that didn't have FP before, but to which FP+ was added) and some of the headliners have gone down slightly.

From what I've read, the most significant increases have been at Pirates of the Caribbean, Haunted Mansion, Maelstrom, Great Movie Ride, Star Tours, Kilimanjaro Safaris and Dinosaur -- their average wait times have doubled. Wait times at Spaceship Earth and Star Tours have tripled. (Granted, in the case of some of these attractions, we're talking about an average 5-10 minute wait "doubling" or "tripling" into 15-20 minutes -- not an unreasonable wait time for any attraction, but still, it's more time than you'd have spent in line for the same attraction a year or two ago...) Average waits for Jungle Cruise went up by 15 minutes.

By the same token, wait times for Little Mermaid, Peter Pan, Pooh, and Big Thunder Mountain have decreased by about 5-10 minutes each. (Touringplans also says that Expedition Everest and Tower of Terror waits have gone down by about 10 minutes.) Journey of the Little Mermaid wait times decreased 20 minutes. Wait times for every other attraction, in every park, have stayed about the same. (The information on which I'm relying comes from a site that I can't link to here -- go to easy wdw dot com and look at the March 9, 2014 blog entry. It shows the wait times for various attractions both pre and post-FP+. To be fair, touringplans' data shows increases/decreases for pretty much the same attractions, but shows more modest gains and losses in terms of minutes in line).

Just to give you an idea of what this looks like in practice, when I "re-evaluated" my Day 1 touring plan for my family's upcoming visit to the Magic Kingdom to incorporate touringplans' new post-FP+ estimates, our time standing in line (during a 6-hour touring day) increased by over 30 minutes. (The increase came from the fact that we'd planned to do Aladdin's Magic Carpets, POTC, Jungle Cruise, and Haunted Mansion in the standby lines that day (all attractions for which wait times have increased), but were using FP+ for Big Thunder and Peter Pan (the two attractions on our touring plan for which average wait times decreased a little -- since we're using FP+ for them, we won't be seeing any "benefit" to our touring from the decrease in their average standby wait times).

More information here: http://blog.touringplans.com/2014/04/03/how-fastpass-plus-affects-your-wait-update/

 

[flynnibus]

The only remaining question is still, what means you get your 4th ( and 5th, 6th etc.) FP+ option after you USED it. If you really must have done it, that would definitely influence an afternoon or evening schedule in a negative way.

It's my personal interpretation that this is done to try to keep you in a certain park longer.

People have been saying 'Disney is killing park hopping' - I don't think so. I think they have been trying to kill 'park dipping' - where you only visit a park for a short period of time.. you do 1-2 things and leave to go somewhere else... This type of 'visit, but do not stay' visit is very expensive to Disney to support and leads to poor optimization of the resources they have. So instead Disney wants to influence you to visit, and stay. This is what is behind the limits as we've seen them evolve IMHO.

Maybe Disney gives up on that given people will resist too much.. but I'd wager that's the behavior they've been trying to influence.

 

[Spike-in-Berlin]

But there are days were exactly this "park dipping" is quite appropriate, e.g. when you visit one park for a special event but then you leave after the event bcs. it makes the park crowded on this particular day.
On the 40th anniversary of WDW, October 1st 2011, we visited the MK for the special program during noon (parade, speeches in front of the castle, the entire thing by the way very poorly done) but after the special program was finished the MK was filled up so we decided to go to EPCOT instead after we had only stayed in the MK for about 60 min. And there are days where we do 3 or even 4 parks and we pay enough to disney to plan our day the way we want it and not to optimize disneys use of resources.
If they would not have announced the adding of park hopping option, we would have cancelled our WDW trip in fall completely and stayed only at DLR instead (we planned to do both this fall, will be our first time at DLR but we wanted to do a few days (7-10) at WDW before we fly to L.A. because of the SDMT and TLM, yes I know we are quite geeks)

 

[Dwarful]

Weather Lady....when I went on to pick fast passes one day at Epcot (only using them on one day instead of both days) Maelstrom wasn't even shown. (I wasn't going to pick that anyway) but I thought it was supposed to be a Tier 1 option. Was I confused? Did this change? I know at MK if you go look now Anna & Elsa are shaded over so you know they are booked and not available, but you can still 'see' that image so you knew it was an option but not one now. Do I have you totally confused now? lol

 

[flynnibus]

But there are days were exactly this "park dipping" is quite appropriate, e.g. when you visit one park for a special event but then you leave after the event bcs. it makes the park crowded on this particular day.
On the 40th anniversary of WDW, October 1st 2011, we visited the MK for the special program during noon (parade, speeches in front of the castle, the entire thing by the way very poorly done) but after the special program was finished the MK was filled up so we decided to go to EPCOT instead after we had only stayed in the MK for about 60 min

You don't steer your grand scheme based on a corner case.

And there are days where we do 3 or even 4 parks and we pay enough to disney to plan our day the way we want it and not to optimize disneys use of resources.

Sorry, no matter what you pay, you are still subject to their influences... this is nothing new. From ticket pricing, to bundling, promos, etc. This a line the company has always, and will always balance.

 

[Weather_Lady]

Weather Lady....when I went on to pick fast passes one day at Epcot (only using them on one day instead of both days) Maelstrom wasn't even shown. (I wasn't going to pick that anyway) but I thought it was supposed to be a Tier 1 option. Was I confused? Did this change? I know at MK if you go look now Anna & Elsa are shaded over so you know they are booked and not available, but you can still 'see' that image so you knew it was an option but not one now. Do I have you totally confused now? lol

Huh - yes, you are right, it was supposed to be a Tier 1 option. It was offered as an option to me. Perhaps they are experimenting with removing it or only offering it during certain days/times, perhaps it's already booked, or maybe it was a temporary glitch. I'd check back later.

 

[DisneyCane]

There are two minor advantages. One is that I no longer have to walk across the park for the sole purpose of getting a fastpass. The second is that when I drive up for a short trip, I like to get a Soarin' fastpass for the afternoon and eat lunch off site. I used to have to go to Epcot first around 10 AM and wait at the land for the return time to advance to the afternoon. Then I'd leave to go to lunch. Now, I can leave South Florida a little later because I can go straight to lunch and have my FP+ reserved.

Of course, the negative to this small benefit is that I can't possibly have FP+ for Soarin' and TT.

 

[surfsupdon]

I thought I read that the advantage was to make it a level playing field.

With obesity rates always growing, Guests cannot walk back and forth across Parks to get legacy tickets.

FP+ cut down "steps in a theme park." You could be walking less.

Who knows.

 

[cw1982]

One thing I like is not having to be there at rd to get fast passes. Dh and I will be able to be a little less rushed getting to the parks since we already have our FP+ times.

 

[MOXOMUMD]

, but I've never ridden TSMM.

You have to try it at least once.

 

[cw1982]

You have to try it at least once.

Yep... we will if the lines never slow down enough to make it worth it on Monday, we'll be using our FP+ to experience it on Thursday when we go back.

 

[kettcobb]

The way I see it is that you're guaranteed three attractions that you want to experience each day of your holiday, providing you book in time?

That can't be a bad thing?

It used to be so frustrating trying to get a fastpass for a big attraction and there being none left, then you'd notice the stand by line would be 90 minutes or more, pffft!!

It helps with kids as well as they can pick the characters they absolutely want to meet, the ones from Frozen of course!

It's taken me a while to get my head around how it works but finally I think I've got it nailed and I'm thinking it will work much better than the old fastpass system which had numerous flaws.