Lightning Lane at Walt Disney World

T

TQQQ

Well-Known Member
James Alucobond said:
Pre-booking is a problem. That certain people got used to it and liked to exploit it does not make it less of a problem. It in no way relates to how the parks are supposed to be experienced, and it takes a ton of ride availability out of the system far in advance, making it impossible to react organically to day-to-day circumstances. It also creates a multi-car pileup whenever a ride goes down, and recovery from poor planning due to understandable ignorance is impossible once your trip rolls around. It is a major part of the complexity problem plaguing a Disney vacation.
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Seems to be an issue and not an issme

There’s not a single resort guest that prefers getting up every day for the length of their trip not knowing what ride they can get, bring on their phone all day vs getting up once a week before and reserving your top pick with a guaranteed return time.

Not a single one. Ever.
 
JD80

JD80

Well-Known Member
James Alucobond said:
Pre-booking is a problem. That certain people got used to it and liked to exploit it does not make it less of a problem. It in no way relates to how the parks are supposed to be experienced, and it takes a ton of ride availability out of the system far in advance, making it impossible to react organically to day-to-day circumstances. It also creates a multi-car pileup whenever a ride goes down, and recovery from poor planning due to understandable ignorance is impossible once your trip rolls around. It is a major part of the complexity problem plaguing a Disney vacation.
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All that happens now in way or another. Just get me out of the rat race at 7am
 
J

James Alucobond

Well-Known Member
JD80 said:
All that happens now in way or another. Just get me out of the rat race at 7am
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It does not happen now. Now, each day starts fresh. You weren't asked to make choices weeks ago that you might now regret, and if a ride was offline yesterday, you can adjust your schedule today because that ride wasn't already sold through for the subsequent day in advance. The point is that none of this is how it's supposed to work. No one likes planning for this, and it doesn't follow anyone's mental model for how a theme park is supposed to be enjoyed. It is Disney-exclusive conditioning that a few have grown fond of because they understand how to exploit it. The majority of people I talk to who are first-timers asking for advice do not understand why this system exists at all and wish it didn't.
 
T

TQQQ

Well-Known Member
James Alucobond said:
It does not happen now. Now, each day starts fresh. You weren't asked to make choices weeks ago that you might now regret, and if a ride was offline yesterday, you can adjust your schedule today because that ride wasn't already sold through for the subsequent day in advance. The point is that none of this is how it's supposed to work. No one likes planning for this, and it doesn't follow anyone's mental model for how a theme park is supposed to be enjoyed. It is Disney-exclusive conditioning that a few have grown fond of because they understand how to exploit it. The majority of people I talk to who are first-timers asking for advice do not understand why this system exists at all and wish it didn't.
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You couldn’t be more wrong.
 
T

TQQQ

Well-Known Member
Sirwalterraleigh said:
It’s a problem for everyone because the numbers don’t work…

Who’s burner are you again?
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But it’s not ever going away. The numbers are getting worse not better.

There’s not a single resort guest that wouldn’t prefer pre booking vs what it is now.

That’s a fact. I asked every one of them.
 
J

James Alucobond

Well-Known Member
To be clear, I don't think Genie+ is great. I don't want to pay for it, and I absolutely avoid it when I can.

However, the one thing this system does right is that it restores a bit of your ability to react in real time. You can try a park on the first day of your trip without Genie+, and if you get to everything that you wanted without it, you don't have to buy it later on. If you have trouble and want to adjust on your second day, you can adapt your strategy by incorporating G+ and/or ILLs as necessary.

I just don't find the rigidity that people want to re-introduce to the system all that appealing. I don't want to decide in advance whether I want Genie+ for every day of the trip because that requires me to guess at crowd levels and subsequently get annoyed when I guess incorrectly. I'm fairly confident that, broadly, pre-purchase and pre-booking with Genie+ will result in a lot more people wasting a lot more money as a result of FOMO and perceived lack of day-of availability.

TQQQ said:
There’s not a single resort guest that wouldn’t prefer pre booking vs what it is now.

That’s a fact. I asked every one of them.
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Cool story.
 
T

TQQQ

Well-Known Member
Sirwalterraleigh said:
Ohhh…did I hit the funny bone? 🤔

…do please rant about prebooks on dumbo and rise of the lame ride…give it to me plain
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I’ll take my pre bookings and sleep til 10am and have 5 rides booked and you’ll be on ur phone fiddle fadeling away trying to find your second ride after getting up at 6:45. Let me know how that goes for you.
 
T

TQQQ

Well-Known Member
James Alucobond said:
To be clear, I don't think Genie+ is great. I don't want to pay for it, and I absolutely avoid it when I can.

However, the one thing this system does right is that it restores a bit of your ability to react in real time. You can try a park on the first day of your trip without Genie+, and if you get to everything that you wanted without it, you don't have to buy it later on. If you have trouble and want to adjust on your second day, you can adapt your strategy by incorporating G+ and/or ILLs as necessary.

I just don't find the rigidity that people want to re-introduce to the system all that appealing. I don't want to decide in advance whether I want Genie+ for every day of the trip because that requires me to guess at crowd levels and subsequently get annoyed when I guess incorrectly. I'm fairly confident that, broadly, pre-purchase and pre-booking with Genie+ will result in a lot more people wasting a lot more money as a result of FOMO and perceived lack of day-of availability.


Cool story.
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Well most people do want to decide in advance If you don’t, then don’t go.

I didn’t go when it was set up the current way. And you know what? Disney realized it was wrong and they are changing it.

So you can skip and I’ll take your spot in line. Thanks!
 
JD80

JD80

Well-Known Member
James Alucobond said:
It does not happen now. Now, each day starts fresh. You weren't asked to make choices weeks ago that you might now regret, and if a ride was offline yesterday, you can adjust your schedule today because that ride wasn't already sold through for the subsequent day in advance. The point is that none of this is how it's supposed to work. No one likes planning for this, and it doesn't follow anyone's mental model for how a theme park is supposed to be enjoyed. It is Disney-exclusive conditioning that a few have grown fond of because they understand how to exploit it. The majority of people I talk to who are first-timers asking for advice do not understand why this system exists at all and wish it didn't.
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Instead of being disappointed 60 day before your trip you're disappointed every morning at 7AM when you weren't fast enough to snag your ride for the day, or didn't wake up in time or whatever. Every single park day you are asked to make choices. In fact you're asked to make choices at 7AM and then nearly ever 2 hours after that repeatedly.

You're asked to make a choice over and over again. If the time you want isn't available yet, you pick another time. Now the timer starts on your next pick but now you have to check the older LL picks to modify.

Each day doesn't start fresh because if you were going to DHS on Tuesday and couldn't get a LL for Slinky Dog, it's not like you can wake up on Wednesday and try again because Wednesday is the day you want to go to Magic Kingdom. So that's nonsense. No one is "adjusting their schedule" each day to go back to a park because a ride is now available.

There is no perfect solution so you have to try to get some kind of combination that is the worse level of awful. Given the surveys and feedback most people want to be able to pre-select an attraction(s).

Being able to pre-purchase G+ and bypassing at least the 7am scramble is probably the minimum they will implement. And more likely than not, because G+ is still going to be available to purchase the day of, they are going to release a set amount of slots for each attraction prior to the day and then the day of they are going to release the rest so you still have a shot of getting the ride you want the day off if you want to.
 
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T

TQQQ

Well-Known Member
JD80 said:
Instead of being disappointed 60 day before your trip you're disappointed every morning at 7AM when you weren't fast enough to snag your ride for the day, or didn't wake up in time or whatever. Every single park day you are asked to make choices. In fact you're asked to make choices at 7AM and then nearly ever 2 hours after that repeatedly.

You're asked to make a choice over and over again. If the time you want isn't available yet, you pick another time. Now the timer starts on your next pick but now you have to check the older LL picks to modify.

Each day doesn't start fresh because if you were going to DHS on Tuesday and couldn't get a LL for Slinky Dog, it's not like you can wake up on Wednesday and try again because Wednesday is the day you want to go to Magic Kingdom. So that's nonsense. No one is "adjusting their schedule" each day to go back to a park because a ride is now available.

There is no perfect solution so you have to try to get some kind of combination that is the worse level of awful. Given the surveys and feedback most people want to be able to pre-select an attraction(s).

Being able to pre-purchase G+ and bypassing at least the 7am scramble is probably the minimum they will implement. And more likely than not, because G+ is still going to be available to purchase the day of, they are going to release a set amount of slots for each attraction prior to the day and then the day of they are going to release the rest so you still have a shot of getting the ride you want the day off if you want to.
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Is there anyone that’s reading this that would rather get up every single morning of their vacation to scramble to book a ride after you paid a ton of money to stay in an overpriced Disney hotel and not know if you can get on the rides you wanted, the reason why you booked that hotel vs getting up once in advance and booking your entire trip so when you get to the park you don’t have to be on your phone the entire time and avoid interacting with your kids?

Please
 
F

Fido Chuckwagon

Well-Known Member
TQQQ said:
Is there anyone that’s reading this that would rather get up every single morning of their vacation to scramble to book a ride after you paid a ton of money to stay in an overpriced Disney hotel and not know if you can get on the rides you wanted, the reason why you booked that hotel vs getting up once in advance and booking your entire trip so when you get to the park you don’t have to be on your phone the entire time and avoid interacting with your kids?

Please
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Unless you are staying at Christmas or Thanksgiving you don’t really need to be up at 7 am, you just need to be up before park open. Refresh/modify method works great now. I worry that any tweaks to this system will make it worse, not better. If the only tweak they made was letting you make **one** advance booking per day, and then the system is the same as it is now, fine. However, @lentesta described a system that sounded basically like paid fastpass, with multiple pre-selections and tiers at magic kingdom. That sounds terrible.
 

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