Lightning Lane at Walt Disney World

[JIMMYEDDIE]

This system is worse for locals, worse for off-site guests, and worse for many on site guests go into parks later in the day (stacking).

The only people who could benefit are on site guests that go to parks in the morning. And even then today wasn't great for booking 4th and subsequent FPs.

All that so people wouldn't have to wake up at 7 to book something and maybe could save a few steps walking. We'll still be on phones a lot refreshing and looking for better times for 4th and subsequent booking, so the whole "be on one's phone less" is mostly nonsense.

This is exactly how I feel and I think gsat numbers are going to plummet

 

[larryz]

Soooo... we're back to FP+ that you now have to pay for, plus you have the option now to also pay for a spot in line. And this is seen as acceptable by many.

Yep. Disney just boiled up a big pot of Slow Frog Stew. Get a bowl at Tiana's for $34.99.

 

[JIMMYEDDIE]

…..Based on availability. Nothing different now. If available you can end up with every tier 1 ride.

Not true. I got any ride I wanted with genie always. No chance with this

 

[JIMMYEDDIE]

This seems really premature and hyperbolic. I cannot understand how we're making these determinations based on one day.

I expect availability to evolve. Today there were many influencers trying a new product and EVERYONE was booking at 7:00, even hotel guests already there. I expect Disney to adjust # of LLs per attraction and maybe change if any are held back for later times. There will be many tweaks.

Also, don't discount that booking 3 LLs in advance may be a big improvement for the majority of people, even without 4th and 5th picks. I was so frustrated with G+ on my trips because of a lack of good options. This was during a busier time, but 3 pre books would've been a big improvement.

Genie was 100x more efficient and you could get 3 tier 1 rides before you even entered the park. You can't do that with this.

 

[doctornick]

I fully expect the new system to get a lot of negative feedback on pages like this but overall be viewed as a success by Disney.

For starters, the fans on sites like here are more frequent visitors, APs, super users - basically a lot of the folks who are going to be most disadvantaged by the system relative to G+. It’s not a good representation of folks going to the parks, especially WDW.

a huge way this system is better for a lot of guests is they will have three guaranteed rides. They won’t even buy it if what they are getting doesn’t seem “worth it”. I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of guests get it, maybe end up booking one more ride (or maybe just the three) and are perfectly content with the value they receive.

As opposed to now when a guest might show up at 10 am to a park and after waiting in one or two massive lines decide to buy G+ as way to “fix” their day and only get one or two rides out of it. And then march to Guest Services with how they were dissatisfied with it when they thought they’d get a bunch of rides out of it. We know there’s been a lot of complaints with G+ - somewhat expected as there’s always higher expectations with a paid service - so giving people “more” when they buy can help cushion that a lot. And if people don’t like what they see when they are buying, they just… won’t purchase.

The availability is of course going to be eaten up way quicker than with G+. How could it not since a lot of folks will have 4 rides reserved by late morning whereas more people wouldn’t have gotten that many until like mid afternoon.

I suspect the inventory is going to be spread out a lot more evenly with this system than G+. Which sucks for super users but is better for the ordinary guests. And particularly good for the on property guests, which clearly is a preferred thing for Disney.

I’m sure there will be tweaks but Disney has a good idea how this will play out and I think we’ll see something like this system for a while.

 

[Vegas Disney Fan]

How did the change today affect standby lines?

Shorter? Longer? No difference?

 

[doctornick]

Definitely think this benefits:
- those who want to minimize getting up for 7am
- those who like to pre-plan and have a rough structure to their day vs the "unknown" of booking day of and not be stuck with "next available time"
- those who get to the park early to use their first one within first hour or park opening to book their next
- park hoppers who can start booking at 2nd park after using first at first park
- those staying onsite, particularly with longer stays
- more casual users who are good with having their 3 prebooked ones and don't stress about getting more

Bad for:
- those staying off site
- those that enjoyed "sleeping in and stacking" (particularly a negative for DHS)
- power users of G+ that were able to get quite a few top tier rides in
- those that don't want to pre-plan/ability to change parks planned mid-trip/flexibility/etc

I think this is a great list and certainly illustrates that this system like anyone favors some folks and disadvantages others. Some with prefer this, others will be upset. There’s no system that is “good” or “better” than another.

The one group I’m most curious about is the off site but pre planners. Obviously worse off than resort guests, but it will be interesting to see how they do with the tiers in terms of what they can book ahead of time.

The folks who liked to stack for later in the day and go to the parks late are the particularly biggest losers among the “bad for” crowd.

 

[Spash007]

It looks like stacking may end up being an option. Over on AllEars, one of them had LLs overlapping during a meal (said the system recommended that time which is a different story entirely), but when he didn’t use them, they still were on his account and he could make new ones, so he ended up with 6 LLs

What was bizarre, was 2 of the 3 expired LLs let him in no problem (Mickey turned green) but 1 of them turned blue and the CM noted he won’t always be let in with expired LLs

A glitch or can you book a new one after the return window is over (and still use the original)?

 

[doctornick]

It looks like stacking may end up being an option. Over on AllEars, one of them had LLs overlapping during a meal (said the system recommended that time which is a different story entirely), but when he didn’t use them, they still were on his account and he could make new ones, so he ended up with 6 LLs

What was bizarre, was 2 of the 3 expired LLs let him in no problem (Mickey turned green) but 1 of them turned blue and the CM noted he won’t always be let in with expired LLs

A glitch or can you book a new one after the return window is over (and still use the original)?

Interesting. It’s already been stated that an expired selection works just like a used one in being able to select a new ride. So that makes sense.

But it would certainly be a big deal if you could used an expired selection well after the fact.

 

[ConfettiCupcake]

Without access to Disney’s actual data, I can only assume they believe guest satisfaction will be higher with a prebooking system than with a system like Genie+, or they would not have changed over.

I think it would be counterintuitive for them to revert back to a system that is largely FP+ if it truly rated lower than Genie+ amongst guests, but I suppose they are not immune from questionable decision making.

 

[Laketravis]

I’m not afraid at all. I’m not the one making a claim pretending to be true without any citation.

Edit: just to be clear, my main purpose here is to make sure that other posters don’t mistakenly believe this claim is true and quote it and take it as gospel.

Thanks for looking out for other posters but I was a beta tester for FP+ and can vouch for the fact that both pre and post GSAT numbers were low. One of the main factors cited was tiering followed by availability.

The fact is no solution is effective when capacity is fundamentally lower than demand, and they stubbornly went down the rabbit hole of yield management rather than increasing resources. The current iteration is doomed in much the same manner previous versions were.

 

[JIMMYEDDIE]

Thanks for looking out for other posters but I was a beta tester for FP+ and can vouch for the fact that both pre and post GSAT numbers were low. One of the main factors cited was tiering followed by availability.

The fact is no solution is effective when capacity is fundamentally lower than demand, and they stubbornly went down the rabbit hole of yield management rather than increasing resources. The current iteration is doomed in much the same manner previous versions were.

This %

 

[ConfettiCupcake]

I'm sure you can find it yourself. Try this thing called google first. Also see jrb1979 post at 7:50 pm.

It had bad ratings and this product is worse. Why would I lie? I'm not lying. Guest satisfaction was very low due to pre planning, lack of ride repeat, lack of inventory. Genie + was a far superior product.

FP+ allowed repeats to your hearts content, we often were able to loop lesser attractions like TSMM. Genie did not.

 

[Vegas Disney Fan]

The fact is no solution is effective when capacity is fundamentally lower than demand, and they stubbornly went down the rabbit hole of yield management rather than increasing resources. The current iteration is doomed in much the same manner previous versions were.

It’s too bad they didn’t invest all that money they’ve spent on line schemes into actual ride capacity, then maybe we wouldn’t need the schemes.

 

[JIMMYEDDIE]

FP+ allowed repeats to your hearts content, we often were able to loop lesser attractions like TSMM. Genie did not.

Thwre was still an inventory problem. Would you rather ride SDD, RnR and ToT once each or TSMM 3x? I think everyone knows that answer.

 

[JIMMYEDDIE]

The fact that Disney is on their 4th different line skip service in 10 years (paper fp, fp+, genie + and now whatever this is called) shows how bad they are at this for guests.

How come they can't get this right? It shouldn't be this hard.

their competitors have mastered it.

I'm not saying to do the same thing as them, but how do they keep getting this wrong?

 

[ConfettiCupcake]

Thwre was still an inventory problem. Would rather ride SDD, RnR and ToT once each or TSMM 3x? I think everyone knows that answer.

It was not an either or for those who were familiar with gaming FP+, similar to the way those who are familiar with gaming Genie+ could have a much better experience than average. But my only reason for mentioning that was to point out that one of your reasons FP+ had low satisfactions scores was actually not applicable to FP+ at all. It was a major aspect lost with the shift to Genie+, but FP+ did allow it.

I’d love to see the sources on the GS scores of any of these systems you have them to share. It’s hard to simply Google that kind of thing and not get flooded with opinions instead.

 

[Laketravis]

It’s too bad they didn’t invest all that money they’ve spent on line schemes into actual ride capacity, then maybe we wouldn’t need the schemes.

You are correct. Over the course of ten years they spent billions on faulty yield management concepts trying to figure out how to allocate insufficient capacity to increased demand without doing the single most effective thing - simply increase capacity.

 

[ConfettiCupcake]

The fact that Disney is on their 4th different line skip service in 10 years (paper fp, fp+, genie + and now whatever this is called) shows how bad they are at this for guests.

How come they can't get this right? It shouldn't be this hard.

their competitors have mastered it.

I'm not saying to do the same thing as them, but how do they keep getting this wrong?

Their competitors are pricing people out in a way Disney doesn’t seem to want to do. Hence our worst of both worlds type systems we get lol.

 

[doctornick]

Without access to Disney’s actual data, I can only assume they believe guest satisfaction will be higher with a prebooking system than with a system like Genie+, or they would not have changed over.

I think it would be counterintuitive for them to revert back to a system that is largely FP+ if it truly rated lower than Genie+ amongst guests, but I suppose they are not immune from questionable decision making.

Exactly this. I have no idea the ratings for any line skipping system that Disney has had but I would be shocked if FP+ truly rated significantly worse than FP or anything else given that Disney decided to switch to a very similar system (and not suddenly or without forethought given that this was announced a long time ago). I’d be curious if @lentesta or anyone else has actual data on the topic.

The only thing I’m sure about is that any system used will have people who dislike it and prefer something different.