Lightning Lane at Walt Disney World

[Waters Back Side]

Maybe book breakfast before the parks open.

I'm sure the Uber planners hate this. I personally love this and it actually makes me want to return to the parks. Less planning the better as well as making it easier for people like me who rope drop and stay in the parks all day.

My plan is to get to the park when I want. The ones flexible of all people should agree with that.

It seems like they are forcing you to plan more. Plan to get up early. Plan to be at a ride at a certain time but plan to be expected to reserve the time slot the day of at 7am.

What if someone does not want to wake up early and go to breakfast at Garden Grill st 8am? What if a family wants to hang out at the pool until noon? Heck. What if I want to wake up at 7 book the ride and go back to bed? It is easier to do that and have more flexibility if you have a time slot choice. Just for the first ride. After that next available is fine.

Subsequently what if you want to be spontaneous? What if you want to buy Genie and get a ride for a certain time and then after be open to anything?

Its different when it's free to argue what I'm trying to say. Wjen you have to pay you expect the product advertised. Whst does the Genie advertise? Soonest available time slot potentially works very well in a lot of aspects. But if you really prioritize a ride to book at 7am, you might be forced to be in a park at a time you did not want to be.

 

[TiggerDad]

Wow finally caught up. For threads like this, it's always helpful to pin FAQs at the beginning, not because people read them instead of asking the same questions over and over again, but to make it easier for me to know which things are obvious so I know which posters to avoid.

I especially appreciated all of the APs who thought they would get this for free, when they're not even paying $15 per day right now if you divide the cost of the AP by 365 days. To them and the DVC, no, Disney is not going to give you something for free out of the goodness of their heart. Disney is going to do what it can to make more money.

I need a spreadsheet to keep track of all of the posters who are never going to visit Disney again ever, just so I can laugh at their trip reports in six months.

I think my thoughts on this fall in the middle. It could have been a lot worse, but it still is worse than it used to be.

 

[J4546]

I wonder how much paper is saved on a daily basis from switching to this all digital version of a paid fp lane instead of giving out tickets... I mean, with the 6 parks combined its gotta be a lot.

 

[VaderTron]

Thank you. So a day at HS for 15 dollars means unlimited tier 2 rides..Tower of Terror, TSM,Rock N Roller Coaster etc.. what about the headliners on a busy week like New Years? Is that TBD in terms of pricing still?

Will resort guests get one free?

 

[MrPromey]

I'm pretty sure New Fantasyland didn't decrease capacity, since 20K was already closed and wasn't going to reopen. Plus, Little Mermaid is an omnimover with a high capacity count (although the fact that it's almost never busy means the functional capacity probably isn't as high as they were hoping).

EPCOT has definitely had a significant capacity decrease, though, and not just in actual ride/attraction capacity. There's also been a tremendous loss in other areas.

And the problem for the Magic Kingdom is they see what there is to do at a park like Epcot and compare it to what there is to do at the MK and where do they choose to go?

The Magic Kingdom, IMO, will never catch up until the other three parks are at least remotely comparable.

Rat will open and GOTG will open and when people see they can't do those and see the lines for Test Track and Soarin' and Frozen, they'll hop the monorail and that'll be that for people who were looking to do rides - just like it's been for many years, now.

 

[KingdomofDreams]

Ive seen similar sentiments, but I would ask: did you think old (paper) FP was stressful? Because functionally LL will operate the same way except digital. People keep trying to suggest that it will be some massive rush to book LL times but between people not buying the product, some buying but not using frequently (or at all) during the day, people using it for different experiences, etc there will be availability similar to past paper FP. Some rides will run out but not at 9:00 AM - the rides with that kind of massive demand will be in the higher priced tier that many fewer guests will purchase.

To me the most “stressful” part of paper FP was the running around to machines and backtracking in the park. Digital LL gets rid of those issues which is why Maxpass was popular in DLR

Digital is definitely a huge improvement over having to pull the old paper FastPasses. I've just never been a fan of scheduled return times. Despite that, previously we could at least book 3 in advance and not be so concerned about timing and availability once we were there. Now we'll still have to deal with time windows (or wait in very long lines) but that will all have to be figured out day of, starting at 07:00. Just not ideal for a relaxing day on vacation for me personally. I was hoping for an option at Disney that did not include scheduling times. I'm a big fan of Express at Universal. There, we can just go with the flow that day and still enjoy the Express line access at every attraction that offers it without having to meet scheduled time windows, re-booking as we go, or be concerned about availability later in the day. Strictly my own personal thoughts. Everyone is different and has different priorities and I totally get that.

 

[doctornick]

Wonders of Life probably constitutes a pretty significant loss. World Discovery in general used to absolutely devour visitors, but everything that is or will soon be there at least feels lower capacity, though I don't know the exact numbers.

It's why it's probably more important than ever to actually properly build out World Showcase and fix Imagination.

I think also attaching a ride to Play (in the old Body Wars space) would help quite a bit. But yeah more rides or even shows in WS would help a lot. And making Imagination (both ride and movie) actually enticing would help.

 

[Angel Ariel]

I will wait and see what the details are then. It seems like a good sign that people liked MaxPass, even though my first thought is that this sounds like a lot of planning in the morning and I don’t like the “no ride is guaranteed, criss-crossing back and forth across the park with small children and elderly grandparents to get to an available ride” aspect. As I’ve said though, these are smaller issues than I was expecting. I’m more bothered by the general principle than any specific aspect of the plan itself, which is a surprise.

I liked maxpass, but this isn’t maxpass. Maxpass included every ride in the park, and all photopass photos. For Disney to include photos at DLR but not at WDW is wicked cheap. Plus the up charge for the star attractions on top of the initial up charge? Definitely not maxpass anymore.

 

[Angel Ariel]

To be clear, I do not consider this better. I’m trying to understand the position of those who disliked FP+ (I loved it) and who were arguing that a paid system would shorten the standby lines.

I disliked fp+, but also disliked the idea of a paid system. I begrudgingly used MaxPass, and it at least had extra value with photo pass included - we didn’t get it every day of our trip, just 2-3 days, and focused all our photopass stops on those days. We get well over 300 photos/trip, so were always getting memory maker anyway, and it worked out to be a similar cost. Plus it included every ride in the parks.

the value we could find in maxpass isn’t there in genie+.

 

[wutisgood]

So basically if you are not a fan of getting up early you are going to have a bad time, so much so that if you like getting up late Disney is probably not the place for you.Even the lightning passes have to be booked early. I would say we gave up on going late to the parks a long time ago as it was a huge decrease in value for tickets that cost so much. I think the plan is they want to lock people in to the parks before they have the ability to realize how crowded it is and how little people can do. I imagine Disney maybe wants to keep up the value of the VIP tours up since those people will pay through the nose to do vacations at their pace. In that way the lightning lane is aimed at extracting money from people worried they won't otherwise ride who could never afford vip and are already stretching to afford the parks

I know Disney has the opportunity to make money as they see fit but this type of squeezing guests based on data is just distatesful and out of touch. Even the people who make money on YouTube hate this.

 

[lazyboy97o]

The way I see it though, they have been adding attractions for decades, and the complaints of long lines are also decades old. It's a never ending cycle.

They haven’t been adding, they’ve largely been replacing. All you have to do is look at the total attraction counts to see this. Decades after opening and some of the world’s most visited parks still don’t or barely have a double digit ride count.

Adding attractions isn't pointless, it's just solving for a different problem. The problem in thinking that additional capacity would decrease wait times, is thinking that attendance would be static. You seem to be suggesting that the attendance is almost an external force that rises and falls like the tide... and that they needed to build more capacity to manage it, but that's not really true either. The two are linked together. More attractions = more attendance. It's just as easy in this case to argue that the attendance at MK went up because of the additions of Mine Train and Mermaid and negated whatever capacity gains were to be had.

Not all new attractions induce demand. This is exactly why you see other parks often follow a sort of tick tock tock pattern of investment. They add a big ride to drive visitation and then smaller ones more to maintain visitation. Disney though is incapable of delivering small projects with appropriately small budgets, so even what are supposed to be smaller additions are marketed as big additions to drive new visitation. Then there is the dearth of actual increases in number of attractions that places more focus on the newest thing.

So... what was the magical formula that allowed them to increase attendance and decrease attraction capacity?

Decreasing their desired attractions per guest per hour. They adopted the 7.3 experiences per day metric as the only thing they wanted to meet which is why the attraction count for Disney’s Animal Kingdom, Disney’s California Adventure, Walt Disney Studios Park and Hong Kong Disneyland were so low. Disney determined the point at which more people considered themselves satisfied with their day and set about trying to make that the ceiling.

I sort of understand what you're trying to say here, but you're doing the opposite of what you're accusing me of doing: you're holding onto these generalities about how the whole system worked before. It was absolutely possible to go in the offseason and ride Haunted Mansion with a 15 minute wait. But people in the summer and holiday still have really long waits and still complained about them.

A typical design day for a park is above your average day but below your peak day. The cost of meeting your peak day’s capacity needs is too great to justify. It’s a trade off, you have a few miserable days but offer a lot more days that are more enjoyable.

I totally get it, it's bonkers to think that Fastpass came about due to guest complaints about overcrowding in the late 1990s when the MK attendance was about 3/4 of what it is now.

How much did capacity decrease? I asked for the numbers for New Fantasyland but no one has really provided them.

The Magic Kingdom today has abandoned or lost attraction, retail and dining space. Even dining capacity, which directly makes money, is lower today than 30 years ago.

 

[Patcheslee]

My plan is to get to the park when I want. The ones flexible of all people should agree with that.

It seems like they are forcing you to plan more. Plan to get up early. Plan to be at a ride at a certain time but plan to be expected to reserve the time slot the day of at 7am.

What if someone does not want to wake up early and go to breakfast at Garden Grill st 8am? What if a family wants to hang out at the pool until noon? Heck. What if I want to wake up at 7 book the ride and go back to bed? It is easier to do that and have more flexibility if you have a time slot choice. Just for the first ride. After that next available is fine.

Subsequently what if you want to be spontaneous? What if you want to buy Genie and get a ride for a certain time and then after be open to anything?

Its different when it's free to argue what I'm trying to say. Wjen you have to pay you expect the product advertised. Whst does the Genie advertise? Soonest available time slot potentially works very well in a lot of aspects. But if you really prioritize a ride to book at 7am, you might be forced to be in a park at a time you did not want to be.

I'm hoping they do take into account when people want to be in the park. That can be as simple as selecting the time someone plans to enter. From there give an available time.
The wake up and get to the park early is what made DL less of an interest to us when looking into it.

 

[biggy H]

How did you manage your FP+s before?

On a PC before going on holiday.....

 

[BrianLo]

Reading a lot of people's interpretations, I really don't think a lot of people understand this. It's just paper Fastpass (Maxpass), except the phone is your kiosk and it is no longer free. Which sucks if you don't want to pay and is going to be better if you do (less utilization is guaranteed).

There is no incentive to "rope drop" a fast-pass if you aren't going to be in the park until the afternoon. Just wait until you actually want to wake up. Just like old FP except you have the slight added advantage of booking your first one when you are en route. Just because you CAN book a fastpass from bed does not mean you have to or even should.

On the flip side, the two up-charge attractions are highly dubious, particularly for WDW where the top two attractions represent the majority of the good attractions.

This is probably going to be amazing in DLR though - IF they don't go crazy and try to upcharge more.


Maybe I'm being optimistic, but I really don't see attractions selling out with any expediency. Outside of maybe Rise, FOP and the rare new attraction.

 

[Waters Back Side]

There is no incentive to "rope drop" a fast-pass if you aren't going to be in the park until the afternoon. Just wait until you actually want to wake up. Just like old FP except you have the slight added advantage of booking your first one when you are en route. Just because you CAN book a fastpass from bed does not mean you have to or even should.


Maybe I'm being optimistic, but I really don't see attractions selling out with any expediency. Outside of maybe Rise, FOP and the rare new attraction.

This is the key. Availability and how they spread it out. It seems apparent that with only 2 rides in each park not being Genie + eligible rides like FEA, Soarin, MMRR, MFSR, Navi amongst others are all rides that fall into the Genie + tier. If those rides were available at mid day after not selecting it at 7am for best available time slot especially on the busier weeks, then I'm worrying for no reason.

 

[Willmark]

I’m reading through this and have several times and I’m failing to see the benefit of Lightning Pass or the new system overall. Did they drop ticket, well really admission prices? (Note that last sentence was sarcasm).

I get that it’s just like the old paper kiosks for Fast Pass.

My point is that I wanted something like Cedar Point’s system where depending on which is purchased I can ride what I want when I want without waiting in much of a line. Cost for the top tier is in line with what I’d expect in that case.

With Genie+ it’s Lightning Pass to get 1 ride at a time at a predetermined return time at any park and then another, etc. and then for the really popular rides ,aka the ones those actually want, it’s a gaming system micro transition purchase on a sliding scale.

I might be missing it but I don’t really see any benefit to the customer and is not of good value when compared to competitors.

And this isn’t wanting a return of the old FastPass+ this noticing that this offering isn’t really that impressive.

 

[Muffinpants]

This is the key. Availability and how they spread it out. It seems apparent that with only 2 rides in each park not being Genie + eligible rides like FEA, Soarin, MMRR, MFSR, Navi amongst others are all rides that fall into the Genie + tier. If those rides were available at mid day after not selecting it at 7am for best available time slot especially on the busier weeks, then I'm worrying for no reason. Especially

Capacity was an issue even with old fp+. The reason people hated it was because you woke up early and since other people's trip dates melded into yours most things were taken already. With day of that race is more even but still the same amount of people trying for the rides. So waking up early to make sure to snag the must do genie + ride might be a nightmare.. I hope not tho.

 

[cslafferty]

Thank you. So a day at HS for 15 dollars means unlimited tier 2 rides..Tower of Terror, TSM,Rock N Roller Coaster etc.. what about the headliners on a busy week like New Years? Is that TBD in terms of pricing still? Will resort guests get one free?

Unlimited tier 2 rides as long as they have slots available . . . You could conceivably ride 2 rides and go to get a time for a 3rd and have Genie+ tell you “Sorry all time slots are full” Right??

 

[Waters Back Side]

Capacity was an issue even with old fp+. The reason people hated it was because you woke up early and since other people's trip dates melded into yours most things were taken already. With day of that race is more even but still the same amount of people trying for the rides. So waking up early to make sure to snag the must do genie + ride might be a nightmare.. I hope not tho.

I never walked into a park before 10am in 7 trips. Ever once. Staying late a different story. But with FP+ I booked my 3 rides 60 days in advance. I woke up at 7am one day and chose my FPs for every park day once and that was it. And I got my 1 headliner and 2 tier 2s always later in the day. To me that seems more flexible.

Genie + has potential. Some things I like about it...they seen to be very lenient and open to including some previous headliner rides and you can book your next ride right after checking into your previous one.

I do believe (someone can correct me) if I want a ride and at 7am I choose it for next available and it's late in the day i can still pick my next ride 90 minutes after the park opens (the 90 minute or you use your last pass rule before booking another) so I can handle getting one for much later in day in thst case. But if I waited until after 7 for a little while hoping to get a later slot and it's gone that will be a problem for people.

 

[Waters Back Side]

Unlimited tier 2 rides as long as they have slots available . . . You could conceivably ride 2 rides and go to get a time for a 3rd and have Genie+ tell you “Sorry all time slots are full” Right??

This is a different case. You chose to make that 3rd ride 3rd in your list. That's on us. I do not like it either but that is our doing. My issue is the first one at 7am being booked for a time too early or that conflicts with something else.