Lightning Lane at Walt Disney World

[Disstevefan1]

This is silly. First LL has development costs, infrastructure, implementation costs, maintenance, hosting costs., ect., all of which cost/costs the company money.

Second its not greed, its a busienss, the company is supposed to make money. It has a product that people want. Contrary to some on these message boards, people do NOT want to go back in time over 25 years ago to when there were no fast passes.

Third, why is it unfortunate that WDW has found something people want to buy, and are selling it at a price that people think has value? If you don't like it, that's fine don't buy it. But on the limited amount of time I can get away from work, and get my family on a vacation, we are not going to waste time standing around in lines. We, and it appears enough other customers, are willing to pay additional amounts to skip past lines. But i know some people (mostly without kids) who don't mind going to the parks, and just casually walking from drink spot to snack stand, to show, and will just hop on whatever rides they want, that have good wait times. They don't want/value the same things I do, and i like that Disney has different pricing features so that we both get what we want.

You are right, TWDC is a business and must make money to survive, especially they way they burn through money in their movie and streaming businesses.

In my opinion, today, folks are feeling they MUST (they feel forced to) purchase LL, not that they are purchasing it because they see any value in it.

Also, in my opinion, folks are feeling Disney can easily manipulate the wait times as they wish on any attraction to again, force folks to purchase LL to be able to get on a few attractions in a park day.

Also, in my opinion, LL costs take away dollars from food and merch purchases and those teams hate that.

 

[JD80]

The topic of the thread is Disney World. There is no need to be specific in which location he's referencing.

Sure but context matters.

 

[JD80]

A dollar here -a dollar there -it all adds up ----death by a thousand cuts

You don't need LL to enjoy your day at any of the parks.

 

[Disstevefan1]

You don't need LL to go on any attractions to enjoy your day at any of the parks.

FIFY

 

[JMcMahonEsq]

First I wish you and others would stop looking down on other parks. They are not roadside attractions but parks that draw millions of guests a year.

Second just cause people buy it doesn't necessarily mean it's good. Disney guests have been programmed to think they need LLs to enjoy the parks.

I look down on other parks bc they are generally not of the same quality, don't have the characters I like, nor the lavish rides as opposed to just thrill type coasters.

But all that being said, my comment wasn't a put down. As far as other/road side parks go, I happen to love Gatorland. I do not think calling it a roadside park, which it clearly is, is an insult. But to my point you an't compare Gatorland to WDW. Nor does it change my point that WDW is a destination location type trip. People aren't just spur of the moment saying, "Hey i got nothing else to do this afternoon, lets drive up to MK and see what there is to do there. I wonder how much a ticket is for this afternoon. That was the point of my reply, no one is walking up to the ticket booth and getting confused about ticket prices bc they have been online reviewed the costs prior to going to the park, and already bought all their tickets.

As to your second point, yes it really does. Listen I dont' care about what your personal opinion is about what is good and isn't, or what you think is needed to enjoy the parks. WDW doesn't care what your person opinion is either, nor do they care what my personal subjective opinion is. They care about what their target demographic thinks and what their customers are willing to purchase. If enough people want something, it they think it is better to have it than not, and creates a more enjoyable day at the park to have it than not, then it makes it an objectively desirable/good product.

 

[JMcMahonEsq]

Also, in my opinion, LL costs take away dollars from food and merch purchases and those teams hate that.

I didn't have any comment on the other part of your post but this one surprised me. I actually thought LL and the old fast passes had an increase in food and mech purchases. For us knowing we have a set time to get to a ride and then not have to wait in line means we are willing to stop at the snack cart to get an icecream or a fronze lemonade (the minute maid frozen lemonade in frontier land has to have crack in it, only way to explain why it is so good.) Or during the old days of FP and LL pre-purchase you could build your quick/sit down meals around your rides. with the 1 hour window to use your time, it really didn't matter if we took an extra 5-15 minutes getting to the ride, since are skipping the main line anyway, so we get the extra treat, or take a look at some pins, ect. What do you think is the negative effect on the food and merch purchasing from the LL model?

 

[JMcMahonEsq]

Really high, just like it is really high at Universal (more than the regular ticket in many cases). You would see a lot less people use this than the current system.


Exactly. Simplify it.

But would that really be a better system for the majority of guests? Personally i don't think i have a dog in this fight. We are fortunate enough that we would not ever be priced out of the express pass market. If they had it, we would buy it really without looking at cost because we enjoy not waiting in lines.

But I also recognize that isn't everyone. Isn't it a better system that people who can't afford that extreme extra cost for purchasing a single item that lets you skip everything, can still target certain rides/days that are most important to them, and get those at a cost they can afford? I mean if you are a mountain person, isn't it better to offer something that they can selectively try to target those rides, and those alone b/c they don't care about little mermaid?

I am the exact opposite. Flight of Pandora is about the extent of my thrill riding, and when forced/guilted by my mom or wife, i will go on 7d. But i am not doing Tron, or Everest, or even Slinky, ect. But if the single EP is the only option, I am buying it so i don't wait in line at haunted mansion or Jungle cruise, while anyone who would have wanted to skip one of the other rides is locked out from the opportunity.

 

[JMcMahonEsq]

Really though? It's a pretty crappy system that was built off the backbones of the existing IT infrastructure and the existing FP+ system, which is part of the reason why it is so buggy. It's not like they developed it from the ground up. Maxpass already existed at Disneyland and this was just a paid version of that.

Even if built off of existing IT and infrastructure, all that still had costs, which were likely amortized over a number of years. Some of the original stuff might have been paid off, but I would guess there were expenditures when they made the transition from FP+ to Genie that were new.

I will also be honest I have never experienced any buggyness with the FP+ or Genie+/LL systems. You could argue the UI isn't the smoothest, thought it really hasn't bothered me that much, but I do not ever remember any extended downtimes, or non-responsiveness from the system. I will admit I don't follow it all that closes, but i don't remember there being an abnormal amount of software patching being announced for the system either.

But in general yes, no matter the start up/investment costs, I would be surprised if the annual operating cost for almost any system was 50% of the creation/infrastructure and delipment costrs.

 

[Disstevefan1]

I didn't have any comment on the other part of your post but this one surprised me. I actually thought LL and the old fast passes had an increase in food and mech purchases. For us knowing we have a set time to get to a ride and then not have to wait in line means we are willing to stop at the snack cart to get an icecream or a fronze lemonade (the minute maid frozen lemonade in frontier land has to have crack in it, only way to explain why it is so good.) Or during the old days of FP and LL pre-purchase you could build your quick/sit down meals around your rides. with the 1 hour window to use your time, it really didn't matter if we took an extra 5-15 minutes getting to the ride, since are skipping the main line anyway, so we get the extra treat, or take a look at some pins, ect. What do you think is the negative effect on the food and merch purchasing from the LL model?

I was saying folks have less money to purchase food and merch because they are spending money on single and multi LL. And (I have heard. I have no data) the food and merch teams are feeling it.

 

[JMcMahonEsq]

I was speaking folks have less money to purchase food and merch because they are spending money on single and multi LL. And (I have heard. I have no data) the food and merch teams are feeling it.

Oh just less discretionary spending going to this as opposed to snacks and food. I guess i could see that.

 

[Vegas Disney Fan]

Putting everything else aside. Do you really think Disney should have kept FP/Genie/Whatever the new name Free of charge & miss the opportunity to monetize it?

100% yes, I’d rather they raise ticket prices and keep perks like Magical Express, FP, luggage delivery, etc… the end price may be the same but at least I felt I got value for my money, now it just feels like we’re being nickel and dimed to death the whole time we’re at the parks.

It’s why we fly United and Delta over Spirit and Frontier, you pay more but you get more for your money. Disney feels like Spirit airlines now and they should find that insulting.

I think comparing a cruise experience to parks experience is tricky. Yes, with a cruise you don't have to wake up at 7 am for VQ, LL but there's also no attractions at all. But food is included in price you've paid and no micro transactions as you mentioned amd also no fighting crowds/lines.

If you visit WDW, you could treat it similar to a cruise and just wake up, skip the parks and do the same things you would on the boat, ie relax at the pool, eat, stroll around and have a drink sans ocean view of course. If you have dining plan, food would be included similar to a cruise.

The sad thing is we’ve discussed doing resort only vacations at WDW and there’s a very real possibility we will in the future. MK and HS are our least favorite parts of a WDW vacation, we still enjoy the less-ride focused parks like EP and AK though so we’ll probably continue to visit them also. What used to be 6-7 days at WDW is quickly turning into 3 though.

 

[Fido Chuckwagon]

Even if built off of existing IT and infrastructure, all that still had costs, which were likely amortized over a number of years. Some of the original stuff might have been paid off, but I would guess there were expenditures when they made the transition from FP+ to Genie that were new.

I will also be honest I have never experienced any buggyness with the FP+ or Genie+/LL systems. You could argue the UI isn't the smoothest, thought it really hasn't bothered me that much, but I do not ever remember any extended downtimes, or non-responsiveness from the system. I will admit I don't follow it all that closes, but i don't remember there being an abnormal amount of software patching being announced for the system either.

But in general yes, no matter the start up/investment costs, I would be surprised if the annual operating cost for almost any system was 50% of the creation/infrastructure and delipment costrs.

The bugginess I am referring to mostly is the number of days they have had crashes where the system just didn’t work at all, for hours at a time.

 

[Jrb1979]

But would that really be a better system for the majority of guests? Personally i don't think i have a dog in this fight. We are fortunate enough that we would not ever be priced out of the express pass market. If they had it, we would buy it really without looking at cost because we enjoy not waiting in lines.

But I also recognize that isn't everyone. Isn't it a better system that people who can't afford that extreme extra cost for purchasing a single item that lets you skip everything, can still target certain rides/days that are most important to them, and get those at a cost they can afford? I mean if you are a mountain person, isn't it better to offer something that they can selectively try to target those rides, and those alone b/c they don't care about little mermaid?

I am the exact opposite. Flight of Pandora is about the extent of my thrill riding, and when forced/guilted by my mom or wife, i will go on 7d. But i am not doing Tron, or Everest, or even Slinky, ect. But if the single EP is the only option, I am buying it so i don't wait in line at haunted mansion or Jungle cruise, while anyone who would have wanted to skip one of the other rides is locked out from the opportunity.

In theory having it available is the right idea. Problem is they don't have enough capacity for it to work. You're seeing it with every version of this system. Many attractions are sold out and very quickly.

The other benefits to limiting how many people buy it are that those who do buy wouldn't have to worry about availability as it would be wide open all day. Two is standby wouldn't be slowed down as much as less people would be in the LL queue

 

[Vegas Disney Fan]

In theory having it available is the right idea. Problem is they don't have enough capacity for it to work. You're seeing it with every version of this system. Many attractions are sold out and very quickly.

The other benefits to limiting how many people buy it are that those who do buy wouldn't have to worry about availability as it would be wide open all day. Two is standby wouldn't be slowed down as much as less people would be in the LL queue

This frustrates me beyond words, had they just built rides rather than spending billions on mymagic and line schemes we’d all be better off.

Disney needs more capacity, instead we got schemes to monetize their lack of capacity.

 

[Laketravis]

You need to consider the source...

Consider that the original source was Josh as reported here:

Disney Caught Inflating Walt Disney World Wait Times Up To 300% To Sell Lightning Lane

A Walt Disney World guest claims that the Walt Disney Company is inflating wait times for its rides up to 300%.

thatparkplace.com

Regardless, my comment was tongue in cheek

 

[RKpb]

Seems like Disney might be going in a downward spiral? Attendance is down, wait times inflated, and so the cost is going up to maintain profits. Not a good situation to be in since Disney is mainly a theme park entertainment company.

 

[KDM31091]

Seems like Disney might be going in a downward spiral? Attendance is down, wait times inflated, and so the cost is going up to maintain profits. Not a good situation to be in since Disney is mainly a theme park entertainment company.

Unfortunately, it is not a great time to be a Disney parks fan, IMO. 95% of my visits as a local are spent enjoying the classic attractions that made Disney, Disney. It's not anything new is inherently bad, but the choices they've made lately almost across the board have been mind bogglingly bad. They don't seem to understand what got them to their level of success and are resting on reputation and nostalgia while continuing to hike prices up and up. Projects that were hyped and hyped like Epcot and Tiana were very under delivered. This is why I have not much faith in Tropical Americas or Cars or Villains being executed well.

As far as lines go, they created this problem. There's not enough capacity. They inflate the wait times to make LL seem like a better deal and rope people into spending money. It's anecdotal but almost in every single case that I've experienced, the standby wait is significantly shorter than the posted time. The past two Sundays I've enjoyed the party mornings at MK and went to SDMT first thing. Both weeks, it said ~45 or 50 mins wait and I was on the ride in 25 mins or less. So spending the money on an ILL would have been silly. This has happened many other times on other attractions, too.

I get inflating it a bit so that people don't run to guest relations and complain that their wait was 5 mins longer than intended, but this inflation is purely to sell LL and basically, rip people off. Which leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Yes you're a business, but that doesn't mean you need to rip off customers with LL when you're already charging $150 a head just to get in.

 

[yensid1967]

#1- I would like to know the REASON for the price hikes? The argument on crowd size doesn't work!
#2- Does that $1 really making that much of a difference to a large company like Disney?

 

[Epcot81Fan]

Anecdotally, the “water cooler” reaction I hear from people that have returned from WDW in the past couple of years is fundamentally different than a decade ago.

Disney underestimates the long-term impact of these negative experiences on future visits from them and their peers.

Sure, you coerced them to pay this time, that doesn’t mean that it was a positive experience.

You can shear a sheep many times, but you can only slaughter it once.

 

[Disstevefan1]

You need to consider the source...

View attachment 818582

View attachment 818583

Yes there are channels out there who like to bash Disney but if there are folks who don't think that the wait times are inflated most of the time (no matter what the cause may be), they are not looking at the posted wait times.

I am sure the fact that most wait times are inflated is purely coincidental or its just Disney cannot accurately measure wait times since they got rid of the red cards on the lanyards.