Texas84
Well-Known Member
My question is when will APs get the magicbands without staying on property?
When the system goes official live. Testing is resort only. But could be sooner.
My question is when will APs get the magicbands without staying on property?
I had to ask for my booklet this year, too. Every time I renewed before, they just gave it to me. I don't know if they're phasing the booklets out or not.Yes, it shocked me when spending around $1,500 that we don't qualify to use FP+. The lady did tell us however "That we could register on the site to see what was available even though we couldn't yet use it" (seriously she said this, it's like inviting a friend round to your house to watch you eat and drink and not let them in )
On the plus side at guest relations today they did provide a nice AP card holder and booklet telling us the discounts we've been entitled to for the last 2 weeks as they had none when we originally purchased them, so every cloud eh.
Precisely the problem- they figure AP holders are going no where.
(although price wise, I've never paid more than $340 for a pass in my life, been getting the FL rez Seasonal for years)
Hi guys, we arrived 2 weeks ago today and go back to England next Wednesday. We do this every year and have 3 weeks in Orlando and purchase premium annual passes making sure the following year we come a bit earlier to get a full 6 weeks out of our AP's. Over the many years I've been coming I've kind of devised my own tactics to navigate the parks and during Sep/Oct we've often been able to arrive whenever during the day and be able to find certain attractions we could just hop on with next to no wait. I'm fuly aware that certain attractionss are always busy and we do have 'full days' at Disney incorperating fast passes and doubling back accross the parks etc. This year however, there's been a big difference.
On the days we've popped in say mid afternoon, no longer do certain attractions have very short queues. Things like Journey, TGMR, TOT, RNRC, POTC, Maelstrom and Star Tours to name just a few have had 25+ min waits. Getting fast passes has been very hard even at parks where we've arrived well before opening. Today a the Studios TSMM was issuing fast pass returns of 5:00 - 6:00 pm at 9:10am with a standby of 45 mins at that point (I know this is historically bad, but it seemed ridiculous today). At Epcot Test Track was fast passing at something like 4:45-5:45pm at 9:10am the other day and we queued for Journey for nearly 30 mins at about 11am!
We don't yet qualify for FP+ even though I've shelled out nearly $1,500 for 2 premium AP's and I've been told by guest relations today that they're 'unsure' whether we'll be included in FP+ by next September when we return. It seems that we're going to have to rethink our tactics for visiting the parks and I'm struggling to see how we're ever going to go back to the old days as stand by queues now seem much longer and many of the good old reliable 'no wait rides' now have waits.
I'm just wondering if anyone else has been effected like this and if so, have you overcome it? Are there any good tips out there or are the 'good old days' gone forever with the advent of the new technology?
If you already have the plane tickets, you should fly to Orlando and visit Uni and Sea World!! Don't let those tickets go to waste!Oh yeah...good ol' days ARE gone forever. Time to try something new? Actually, to let you know just how disappointed we are with WDW, we cancelled the last vacation for September, we won't even be using the airline tickets before the certificates they issued expire, I received a pin code last week with 35% off through Sept. 2014 and threw it away... I miss it terribly, but cannot justify the amount of money spent with the experiences they now offer. And I'm sorry to rant, but I'm mad as h**** because there is absolutely nothing I can do about it.
All this because you can't get fastpasses for two rides?
All this because you can't get fastpasses for two rides?
Oh yeah...good ol' days ARE gone forever. Time to try something new? Actually, to let you know just how disappointed we are with WDW, we cancelled the last vacation for September, we won't even be using the airline tickets before the certificates they issued expire, I received a pin code last week with 35% off through Sept. 2014 and threw it away... I miss it terribly, but cannot justify the amount of money spent with the experiences they now offer. And I'm sorry to rant, but I'm mad as h**** because there is absolutely nothing I can do about it.
If you already have the plane tickets, you should fly to Orlando and visit Uni and Sea World!! Don't let those tickets go to waste!
Contrary to Disney's often repeated, anti-Uni lies, the Uni parks are every bit as great as Disney's and in many ways, better. Sea World is a beautiful park that is WELL worth a visit.
And you could check out Gatorland, "Orlando's best 1/2 day park."
Disney isn't the only game in town!!
Think about it.
Really sorry to hear you feel that way, it's such a shame that's how you feel about the place. We really still love the place and have still enjoyed our holiday (still here till Wednesday) but I just wanted to express our concerns and see how others felt about the recent changes. Reading my original post back it may appear that my main concern was that as an annual pass holder I should get better or preferential treatment, which isn't the case. Had we purchased say a 4 day hopper, whilst we'd have had 4 'full days' (no days just popping in) we'd have still lamented the difficulty of having to seemingly queue for everything much more. Had we had magicbands I'd have still made a similar thread questioning the longer waits for everything seemingly because of said magicbands.
Disney is still a terribly uplifting place for us, we love it to pieces and usually I don't like negative things said about the place as it's always been a big constant in my life and I imagine and hope it always will be. We're still going to enjoy our remaining days and we've just got back from popping in to see Fantasmic tonight which we loved just as much as ever. We'll probably do a waterpark tomorrow for the third time this trip and cherrish every moment we're there. It's just a bit annoying for us this year having our usual routine changed and feeling slightly less valued than on site guests presently, that's not happened to us before. I realise it's not personal or hopefully intentional, it's just something we'll have to adapt to but it won't stop me still enjoying the trip as much as possible.
Really sorry to hear you feel that way, it's such a shame that's how you feel about the place. We really still love the place and have still enjoyed our holiday (still here till Wednesday) but I just wanted to express our concerns and see how others felt about the recent changes. Reading my original post back it may appear that my main concern was that as an annual pass holder I should get better or preferential treatment, which isn't the case. Had we purchased say a 4 day hopper, whilst we'd have had 4 'full days' (no days just popping in) we'd have still lamented the difficulty of having to seemingly queue for everything much more. Had we had magicbands I'd have still made a similar thread questioning the longer waits for everything seemingly because of said magicbands.
Disney is still a terribly uplifting place for us, we love it to pieces and usually I don't like negative things said about the place as it's always been a big constant in my life and I imagine and hope it always will be. We're still going to enjoy our remaining days and we've just got back from popping in to see Fantasmic tonight which we loved just as much as ever. We'll probably do a waterpark tomorrow for the third time this trip and cherrish every moment we're there. It's just a bit annoying for us this year having our usual routine changed and feeling slightly less valued than on site guests presently, that's not happened to us before. I realise it's not personal or hopefully intentional, it's just something we'll have to adapt to but it won't stop me still enjoying the trip as much as possible.
We went about a month ago and had a truly great time and never once used a fast pass or ADR. See my trip report for more info, but if you can go in early Sept. no planning is necessary other than picking the least crowded park to go to.That's a great idea. We did go to UNI and loved it. I found out from the airline that it will actually cost more in change fees..(200.00 per ticket ) than we actually paid for the tickets, so I guess that's a no. Even so, thank you for the positive response and maybe we will get back down there one of these days to visit the other parks, where hopefully I don't have to plan every minute of our vacation.
I had to ask for my booklet this year, too. Every time I renewed before, they just gave it to me. I don't know if they're phasing the booklets out or not.
I honestly don't think Disney is going to allow offsite guests (AP or not) to use FPP. But all the folks who have inside info seem to think they will and the Disney staff was telling people (told me personally) that APs would get to use the FPP, so maybe I'm wrong. I hope I'm wrong! But Disney does lie a lot and they do have a habit of not rewarding repeat customers and/or repeat hotel guests, so there is that.
I think that if they were planning to offer this to non-hotel guests, they'd have done it already. We will see.
I think the best plan is to ride popular stuff very early or just before closing. But with the new FPP, I think even at open and close, the lines will be longer than before.
I'd check touringplans.com, too. If anyone will be able to help you (us, lol), it will be them.
What booklet ? They never gave me a booklet when I bought an AP this summer...
It's a tiny, credit card sized, booklet they give you with your AP. There is a slot in the back to keep your AP in, if you want to do that. It has detailed listings (in extremely tiny print) of the AP benefits. Before I lived here and just kept it in my wallet, I'd store them in their booklets.What booklet ? They never gave me a booklet when I bought an AP this summer...
It's a tiny, credit card sized, booklet they give you with your AP. There is a slot in the back to keep your AP in, if you want to do that. It has detailed listings (in extremely tiny print) of the AP benefits. Before I lived here and just kept it in my wallet, I'd store them in their booklets.
They used to always just give it to me. This year, I had to ask for it. I don't know if they're purposely not giving them out, but I assume so, since so many people here didn't get it handed to them.
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that's true. I know as much as I want to ride Soarin' (since I've yet to experience it) I haven't because the line is always so long X_XIn Epcot two rides are the whole day. In DHS two rides are the whole day. In AK two rides are your whole day. The problem is people are use to going park to park in one day and the current situation is screwing that up. Take Epcot where you want to ride saorin and TT, stand by will now be 3 hours between the two.
You're absolutely right! I forgot about that. I did get the bigger one, I know, because I couldn't put it in my mini-dresser knick-knack that sits atop the real dresser it matches. The mini drawers are almost exactly credit card size and I have always kept the booklets in there. I remember, now, not being able to stick that thing in there.Actually now they do a booklet too. We have the holder you're talking about but it no longer has the discounts listed on tiny pages like you describe (we've had those in the past). They also issue a green booklet which is about 3 times the size of the holder with full listings of all discounts, we got ours from the studios guest relations.
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