-
Welcome to the WDWMAGIC.COM Forums!
Please take a look around, and feel free to sign up and join the community.
Lightning Lane at Walt Disney World
- Thread starter wdwmagic
- Start date
Fido Chuckwagon
Well-Known Member
I think he means that it won’t be 90 percent that know about genie, it will be something less then that. Not that 9 out of every 10 people in the park won’t have heard of it. I think that’s certainly reasonable. A fair number of disney guests didn’t know about or use the free fastpass system.
Fido Chuckwagon
Well-Known Member
This isn’t a conspiracy theory. Disney does this **now**. They take trains out of service and reduce staffing when the crowds are lower. You really think they won’t do this more at the margins to get an “optimal” wait time for each ride? Why wouldn’t they? It both allows them to reduce staffing AND drives people to their paid system.
Fido Chuckwagon
Well-Known Member
You are not giving the correct optimal strategy. The really popular rides are going ot fill up fast. There’s no reason to think you couldn’t grab like a splash mountain LL for like 11 am at 7:05, on a busy day, then grab something else at 9 am for like noon.
Fido Chuckwagon
Well-Known Member
People keep making this statement and it is simply not true. They manipulate lines **now**.
mikejs78
Premium Member
But there's not a monetary component to it now. There's no consumer issue for them manipulating lines because there is no product by which those line manipulations would matter.
But with Genie+, it becomes a consumer issue. If they manipulate lines to goose G+ or ILL$ sales, that borders on fraud, and then it becomes a consumer protection issue subject to oversight by the FTC.
tl; dr; of course they always manipulated lines, but it didn't matter from a consumer protection standpoint. It does now with G+.
Yes, they staff less for days they expect less crowds.
And it bites them in the end when it turns out it's not a low-crowd day.
But with park reservations that shouldn't be happening any more, since they'll know pretty close to exactly how many people will show up.
Now, saying that WDW purposely understaffs even tho they know it will be crowded in order to get people to buy ILLs/IA$s... now *that's* the conspiracy theory your hawking here.
I remember when WDW had the park-hopping van service and everybody was saying WDW purposely let their transportation system go to rot in order to get people to buy into the van service. Meanwhile, WDW was actually spending hundreds of millions of dollars on new and bigger busses, dedicated bus lanes, new parking garages, new parking lot and entrance configurations, new highways, removal of stop lights in favor of ramps, the Skyliner, bus tracking on MDE and video screens at the bus stops. So, it was a conspiracy theory that was false. It was based on the belief that "Disney is evil, therefore, we can proclaim Disney is pursuing this evil act I just made up, so, let's all be mad about it."
It was basically a lie. As almost all conspiracy theories are.
CaptainAmerica
Premium Member
No. They're not. The "really popular" rides aren't even on Genie+.
When (paper) FastPass was free to EVERYBODY, this only ever happened at Toy Story Mania. It would probably happen at Frozen, Rat, FoP, Rise, etc., but those things aren't on Genie+ anyways.
CaptainAmerica
Premium Member
Not at the IAS attractions, they don't. Those things run full-bore pretty much open to close. We're not talking about running fewer boats in Splash Mountain when it's 60 degrees outside, you're suggesting that they're going to cut back on ride vehicles in things like *Rise of the Resistance.*
CaptainAmerica
Premium Member
Park Pass will give them less advance knowledge than FastPass+ did.
Agree with the rest of your post.
mightynine
Well-Known Member
Starlight, star brightDisney Genie
First start I see tonight
I wish I may, I wish, I might have the wish
I wish tonight
Make a wish and do as dreamers do
That they'll buy Genie+
And ILLs two
I disagree a bit there. They know how how park guests will start their day and will be until at least the early afternoon. Before, even with FP+, they could start their day in another park before heading over to where the first pass was.
They'll have to be nimble day-of but I'm sure they're fine-tuned whatever their baseline staffing amount is.
Last edited:
While FP+ gave crowd indications at 60 days for some and 30 days for the rest. Park Reservations can give indications much further back in time. When I bought tickets in the beginning of 2021 for this December, I also told WDW which parks I was going to each day with Park Reservations.
CaptainAmerica
Premium Member
I think the opposite is likely to be more common, especially among locals/passholders/frequent visitors. Once we're fully out of COVID and capacity returns to normal, there really won't be any reason to book your Park Pass ahead of time because the parks aren't going to sell out.
mikejs78
Premium Member
Most people spending $$$ on a Disney vacation aren't going to want to risk not being able to go to a park on their vacation.
CaptainAmerica
Premium Member
1. There is no risk of that. Magic Kingdom fills to capacity 1 or 2 times per year. The other parks fill to capacity exactly never.
2. Park Pass is not advertised the way FastPass+ was. A lot of people won't do it just because they don't know it exists.
3. A huge percentage of guests are something other than plan-months-in-advance-and-spend-thousands-of-dollars-for-six-nights-at-Yacht-Club.
2 - advertised, no - but mentioned often when booking a vacation package or purchasing a park ticket or booking dining - yes. Once you have a package/room/ticket booked, you WILL receive email and MDE app reminders to make sure you have park pass reservations and they will tell you that you won't be able to enter a park without them.
Chip Chipperson
Well-Known Member
I'm guessing that the combination of the Park Pass reservation system, the limitations of multiple FL resident AP tiers, and their historical data on local Passholder visitation habits will allow them to have an estimate for crowd levels that will be accurate enough. If too many local Passholders don't book their reservations far enough out, Disney could always reallocate some of those spots to resort guests to encourage the local Passholders to at least make some of their reservations further out.
Park Pass is forever. So says Chapek and our insiders.
Now, for most days post-pandemic, there will be availability at all the parks and it'll be easy to switch them around last minute. But, there will be peak times that APers will find themselves locked out of, which will encourage them to always grab a Park Pass as far in advance as they can. Not to mention all those black-out days when WDW knows what groups of APers will not be showing up.
Not to mention that all the day-ticket holders now have to declare when they plan to use those tickets. There are no more anytime day-tickets.
nickys
Premium Member
I remember getting to Epcot about 10:30 and the fastpass return time for Soarin was 7pm.
CaptainAmerica
Premium Member
You're missing my point.
I don't care if Chapek leaves Park Pass turned on. I'm not going to use it. There's absolutely zero reason for me to book my reservation 30, 60, or any number of days in advance. With FastPass+, I had a reason to tell them my park plans 60 days out. When parks were filling to the COVID-limited capacity, I had a reason to tell them my park plans as far out as possible. With neither of those things, I'll book my park pass the day before.