Lightning Lane at Walt Disney World

Jrb1979

Jrb1979

Well-Known Member
MickeyLuv'r said:
One element missing from your post is the element of hope. You partly describe hoping WDW/Disney will continue, but don't use the word hope.

Just started looking at a book called "The Queens of Animation." Suffice it to say, women animators in the 1930's were not (always) treated as peers by their male co-workers. The past of the Disney company was not 100% rosy.

Yet at the same time, that was during the Depression. Disney spent a great deal of money on Snow White, and employed many people who otherwise may well have been unemployed.

The Disney Company is complex. It can be both flawed, and also a positive influence at the same time. As consumers, we can be both critical of Disney's faults, and hopeful that the company will remedy those flaws.

The parks are also not static nor linear in their development. Sometimes change = better, sometimes change = worse, sometimes change = just different.

But I hope the company will correct obvious flaws. I'm not certain they will, but I hope they will.
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I gave up any hope that Disney will make things better after they changed Epcot into MK 2.0 with all the IP. Disney was at its best when it was a mixture of IP and original attractions. Now it's all about fitting IP where they can and selling merch. What really did it for me is the Webslingers ride. It's Midway Mayhem with Spiderman slapped on it. For some reason people rave about it.
 
R

rangerbob

Well-Known Member
IF they want more money, they should just go back to the olden days. Free admission to the park and purchase tickets for the rides. No pre-purchase, good for day of only and base the pricing on the expectation. Ride Space Mountain $25.00, Mission Space $10.00
 
LovePop

LovePop

Well-Known Member
Disney is raising the prices for several other LL rides, but not RotR, despite it being the only early sold out ride. Doesn't make sense: the other rides aren't even in high demand, why should their prices be raised? I believe Disney is trying to show guests what happens if they don't raise prices for RotR, that they just won't get it if they don't get up on time or don't stay at a Disney resort. If RotR's price is never to be raised, it can be used as a big incentive for staying onsite, now that certain other incentives have been taken away. But eventually, I would think that during high crowd periods, it will be just like the boarding group situation, where LLs are gone within seconds, and whoever didn't click fast enough will miss out. If that happens, the onsite benefit will diminish unless Disney the price. But if that doesn't happen such that resort guests can always (or almost always) have a chance to get RotR, say LLs sale last at least 10 minutes so that everybody has a chance of buying it without needing fast phone fingers. then it might be tolerable. Offsite guests are, of course, out of luck but can still wait in line, especially around park closing when lines are shorter, so they are not completely out either.
In the mean time, I don't get increasing other rides' LL that was never sold out before, but maybe Disney is testing to see where is the highest profit margin. Not what's best for guests, apparently.
 
Cousin Huet

Cousin Huet

Well-Known Member
So, we just did our fall trip. First day was no Genie and the other three had Genie. Just to see how it all worked we did it all, used all the features and full embraced it. It’s works well but it is costly (about $100 per day extra for our family of 3 and for something that was free). I’ll answer any questions and breakdown some below. We use the Armed Forces Salute tickets so I feel even worse for those paying full price.

So, we stayed at Shades of Green as we do every few years as I feel obligated to support it. This caused an issue as they did not have my wife or daughter on the reservation by name. So, once we checked-in they couldn’t change it and that meant they did not show a linked resort reservation. Here are the issues that caused….
-early entry wouldn’t scan band but the Cast Members allowed them to show their Shades room key.

-2hour extra hours wouldn’t scan band so same fix. No issues in this working out because it was a human making the call.

-the BIG issue was not being able to book INDIVIDUAL LIGHTNING LANE at 7am for anyone but me. No guest service person at the parks front or inside area could fix it and neither could Shades of Green. We were still able to get all 6 Individual lightning lane passes over 3 days but Rise of the Resistance was close to not happening as we had to wait until park openings to book those due to the resort reservation issue.

Everything else worked great, we Lightning Lane’d every attraction possible in each park, had food waiting on us and didn’t rush anywhere. Moved throughout the park with next to zero backtracking and it was nice.

One odd function is that when selecting a LL pass the time you select will change once the next screen opens so I selected 1pm once and once it opened it was 1:25pm. This also means that when an attraction you want to do next is showing 4pm but it’s 12pm that if you open it it could say 12:15pm if someone cancels. We figured this out and it helped a lot but WAY TOO MUCH TIME ON PHONE.

Also, canceling a LL isn’t super quick which causes issues trying to jump around but nothing crazy as that is rare.

No issues were had checking into a LL as the 5min and 15min early/late grace exists but others had issues and the usual folks that stop at entrances/exits and tops/bottoms of escalators still exist.

Too much to go over it all but that is our experience. We had a great trip with it but ultimately the ORIGINAL Fastpass system was the best and most fair to guests. They now have a way to raise the prices on rooms, tickets, food, merch, transportation, fast passes and experiences. It’s gross but it is what it is. Definitely makes the park easy like the OG gas pass but the $$$ and the phone time aren’t fun. I’ll go less with this system.
 
LovePop

LovePop

Well-Known Member
Sirwalterraleigh said:
It very much is the great movie ride…through the worst of the 3 sets of SW movies.

magic
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I don't think RotR is based on the sequels either. It's not like there's anything in there that is similar to the movies, like Frozen Ever After or Under the Sea, which are a replay of the movies. It has some characters from the sequels, but that's about it. And not many at that. Man I hate the sequels.
 
LovePop

LovePop

Well-Known Member
ImperfectPixie said:
The dining plan is a scapegoat. It all boils down to squeezing the most pennies out of every aspect of operations.
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And yet they are blowing money elsewhere, like spending one billion on Galaxy's Edge that ended up with only 2 rides. I was looking forward to at least 5 rides. What's the point of squeezing pennies if you are going to spend a billion on 2 rides?
 
MickeyLuv'r

MickeyLuv'r

Well-Known Member
Jrb1979 said:
I was talking about Cedar Point. I agree the food has gone downhill at Disney. I blame that on the Dining plan.
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If a pre-paid DDP had an impact on food quality, what impact has pre-paid DVC have on WDW's hotel (or over-all) quality?

Will - more or less- paid FP have an impact on ride quality? I also don't think it will be long before WDW includes Genie+ and ILL into some of their pre-paid hotel package bundles.
 
Jrb1979

Jrb1979

Well-Known Member
MickeyLuv'r said:
If a pre-paid DDP had an impact on food quality, what impact has pre-paid DVC have on WDW's hotel (or over-all) quality?

Will - more or less- paid FP have an impact on ride quality? I also don't think it will be long before WDW includes Genie+ and ILL into some of their pre-paid hotel package bundles.
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I don't see that happening at all. They lose money that way.
 
F

fgmnt

Well-Known Member
LovePop said:
And why aren't they raising the price of RotR? The way it is now, offsite guests don't have a chance of getting it.
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I think it will happen sooner rather than later, but it's one thing to announce a range of prices and immediately move some attractions up the range, another to immediately break a ride beyond the range. I don't see the $15 maximum surviving the Guardians opening, if it isn't struck down before that.
 
Parker in NYC

Parker in NYC

Well-Known Member
fgmnt said:
I think it will happen sooner rather than later, but it's one thing to announce a range of prices and immediately move some attractions up the range, another to immediately break a ride beyond the range. I don't see the $15 maximum surviving the Guardians opening, if it isn't struck down before that.
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Why should Disney throw away free money? I still think it’ll go up higher than $15.
 
ImperfectPixie

ImperfectPixie

Well-Known Member
LovePop said:
And yet they are blowing money elsewhere, like spending one billion on Galaxy's Edge that ended up with only 2 rides. I was looking forward to at least 5 rides. What's the point of squeezing pennies if you are going to spend a billion on 2 rides?
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Personally, I think it's because those making these decisions don't understand their product or why people feel connections with it.
 
NickWilde

NickWilde

Well-Known Member
I really think that this sort of system is the beginning of the end for Disney. I could somewhat tolerate the other budget cuts and price gouging, simply because of my love for Disney, but this is just egregious, the cherry on top of Bob Paycheck's sundae. I will be boycotting Disney parks until either this is pulled or Paycheck steps down, which isn't easy for me to do but I feel I have no other choice.
 
PSM

PSM

Well-Known Member
Forgive me if this has been asked 100 times, but is there any way to "test drive" any of the Genie / Genie+ stuff on the app before my trip? My son and I will be there in less than three weeks, but we only have enough tickets for the days we will be in the parks, and they are all currently used for park reservations, so I can't "pretend book" one for today or tomorrow, if that's the only way to do it.

Thanks to everyone who's been posting updates and responding to questions! This is all super-helpful, if a bit overwhelming since this thread is over 400 pages lol. The FAQ was also a nice summary of typical questions.
 

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