Lightning Lane at Walt Disney World

[Basil of Baker Street]

That's the thing I don't get. One the complaints is that on busy days people are lucky to get 2 LL a day. Yet many here are saying they were happy with 3 FP+ they pre-booked in the old days. Something doesn't add up.

For me it's simple. It's all about having it all taken care of well in advance. I know when and where I need to be each day.

 

[lazyboy97o]

The biggest complaints I ever heard was that (some) people didn’t like the pre planning and locking their days in to set itineraries, not that 3 FP+s weren’t enough

The pre-planning didn’t go away. The hard limit on three did go away.

For me it's simple. It's all about having it all taken care of well in advance. I know when and where I need to be each day.

All of that planning doesn’t work at scale unless you severely curtail visitation. It all goes to hell if something goes down.

 

[Chi84]

All of that planning doesn’t work at scale unless you severely curtail visitation. It all goes to hell if something goes down.

I keep hearing that, but it was never our experience. I know that people who didn't like FP+ liked to make it seem as though the planning involved rocket science and that one minor mishap would send the whole plan tumbling into the abyss. We visited once or twice every year FP+ was in existence and this was just simply not the case for us. I'll admit that our vacations now are a bit slower than they were in 2000, but even in the early days we never had issues with entire days going to hell under FP+.

In any event, I know that people vacation differently and that many wanted the freedom to visit the parks with no plan and just wing it. I assume those are the guests who prefer Genie+ to FP+. But there are a good number of guests who wanted the best chance possible to get the rides they wanted at the times they wanted without wasting time in line on their very expensive vacation and didn't mind the planning in order to achieve this.

I wasn't necessarily opposed to the ILLs because there were some people (never happened to us) who couldn't get a FP+ for certain rides at 60 days. Now they have the opportunity to buy them if they want to start every day of their vacation on the phone competing for rides. It's not my idea of a good vacation and Disney got an earful from me about this after our October vacation. I guess we'll just have to wait to see how many people are okay with this new system.

 

[doctornick]

The pre-planning didn’t go away. The hard limit on three did go away..

There was no "hard limit" before. It's more accurate to describe it as a 3 attraction minimum with potential for more if desired.

Now, there's no guarantee one would even get 3....

 

[doctornick]

Lots of complaints on the old system. It felt almost Soviet at times: Can we go to Space Mountain now? No, you know we have an ADR scheduled 2 months ago and we can't be late!

Dining reservations are still available/booked in advance (yes, less far in advance, but still) and you have to reserve a park. So, it's not like pre-planning has gone away, it's just less of the day that is scheduled. Conversely, as a result of not being able to lock in any rides ahead of time, people who like to pre-plan are more stressed about having to figure out stuff on the fly.

Seems to me that Disney has effectively annoyed both people who want to pre-plan and those who want to be spontaneous. Congrats Disney!

 

[pdude81]

I keep hearing that, but it was never our experience. I know that people who didn't like FP+ liked to make it seem as though the planning involved rocket science and that one minor mishap would send the whole plan tumbling into the abyss. We visited once or twice every year FP+ was in existence and this was just simply not the case for us. I'll admit that our vacations now are a bit slower than they were in 2000, but even in the early days we never had issues with entire days going to hell under FP+.

In any event, I know that people vacation differently and that many wanted the freedom to visit the parks with no plan and just wing it. I assume those are the guests who prefer Genie+ to FP+. But there are a good number of guests who wanted the best chance possible to get the rides they wanted at the times they wanted without wasting time in line on their very expensive vacation and didn't mind the planning in order to achieve this.

I wasn't necessarily opposed to the ILLs because there were some people (never happened to us) who couldn't get a FP+ for certain rides at 60 days. Now they have the opportunity to buy them if they want to start every day of their vacation on the phone competing for rides. It's not my idea of a good vacation and Disney got an earful from me about this after our October vacation. I guess we'll just have to wait to see how many people are okay with this new system.

People bitched and moaned that they didn't want to plan so early and that they wanted something like Maxpass since it seemed like it worked so well and required no planning.

The thing is that maxpass worked reasonably well because there were plenty of attractions to choose from out there with no fastpass lines in addition to the couple things you used passes for. The different systems were designed to cater to different locations and different types of fans, and now we seem to have the worst of both. I'm likely to do alright with it since I was in my phone all the time refreshing for new passes, but this has got to be ugly for people who don't visit regularly.

Also I don't understand people saying that the original fastpass was better than this, as that required rope dropping to get any chance at certain rides, no control at all over the time windows, and massive abuses by tour groups who would flood entrances by the hundreds or park out at a distribution kiosk for 25 minutes. As much as people complain about the 7am dash, at least you don't have to have already left your hotel room for the 8am sprint.

 

[Chip Chipperson]

I keep hearing that, but it was never our experience. I know that people who didn't like FP+ liked to make it seem as though the planning involved rocket science and that one minor mishap would send the whole plan tumbling into the abyss. We visited once or twice every year FP+ was in existence and this was just simply not the case for us. I'll admit that our vacations now are a bit slower than they were in 2000, but even in the early days we never had issues with entire days going to hell under FP+.

In any event, I know that people vacation differently and that many wanted the freedom to visit the parks with no plan and just wing it. I assume those are the guests who prefer Genie+ to FP+. But there are a good number of guests who wanted the best chance possible to get the rides they wanted at the times they wanted without wasting time in line on their very expensive vacation and didn't mind the planning in order to achieve this.

I wasn't necessarily opposed to the ILLs because there were some people (never happened to us) who couldn't get a FP+ for certain rides at 60 days. Now they have the opportunity to buy them if they want to start every day of their vacation on the phone competing for rides. It's not my idea of a good vacation and Disney got an earful from me about this after our October vacation. I guess we'll just have to wait to see how many people are okay with this new system.

To add to this point, there is nothing about G+ that is any better about preventing that negative outcome if a ride goes down, either. A popular ride going down is always going to add people to the queues for other rides - and if you paid for that specific ride via an ILL selection then you're not going to just happily accept a different ride as a replacement, so you're stuck either waiting around until the ride reopens (IF it reopens that day, assuming it didn't go down too close to closing time) or getting a refund. Either way, your plans for the day are messed up as soon as that ride goes down. Even if it reopens in time for you to ride it, there will be a backlog of people who also paid for that ride which will make the LL line longer than it would have been if it had operated normally all day.

Even with G+, that still puts added people in queues for other G+ rides. Maybe the ride that went down was your "must-do" ride or maybe it wasn't, but it's still an interruption to your day and will lead to longer LL wait times at other rides as people redeem their replacement choices. And if your plann was to make a loop around Magic Kingdom, for example, to avoid walking across the park multiple times then a ride going down can certainly throw a monkey wrench into that plan. Heck, G+ in general can throw a wrench into that plan because you have no idea what rides will be available at what times when you purchase G+. At least with FP+ you could book your choices in the order you wanted to limit how far you had to walk in each park so you weren't criss-crossing the park and fighting your way through crowds at choke points multiple times. Now, you might start in Adventureland but only find Pirates with an early return time and Jungle Cruise with an afternoon return time. But you want to ride both and don't want to start your day in the middle of the park, so what do you do? Switch your plan to start in Tomorrowland instead and consider purchasing Space Mountain, but what if the next available times for Space and Buzz aren't that close together, either? Maybe it works out, maybe it doesn't. But that doesn't sound like an improvement over FP+ to me - especially when FP+ was free and G+ is an upcharge.

 

[danv3]

Now, there's no guarantee one would even get 3....

Less for more. (tm)(c) Disney 2021.

 

[lazyboy97o]

I keep hearing that, but it was never our experience. I know that people who didn't like FP+ liked to make it seem as though the planning involved rocket science and that one minor mishap would send the whole plan tumbling into the abyss. We visited once or twice every year FP+ was in existence and this was just simply not the case for us. I'll admit that our vacations now are a bit slower than they were in 2000, but even in the early days we never had issues with entire days going to hell under FP+.

In any event, I know that people vacation differently and that many wanted the freedom to visit the parks with no plan and just wing it. I assume those are the guests who prefer Genie+ to FP+. But there are a good number of guests who wanted the best chance possible to get the rides they wanted at the times they wanted without wasting time in line on their very expensive vacation and didn't mind the planning in order to achieve this.

I wasn't necessarily opposed to the ILLs because there were some people (never happened to us) who couldn't get a FP+ for certain rides at 60 days. Now they have the opportunity to buy them if they want to start every day of their vacation on the phone competing for rides. It's not my idea of a good vacation and Disney got an earful from me about this after our October vacation. I guess we'll just have to wait to see how many people are okay with this new system.

Once again, it is about how the system operates as a whole, not how you like things. If people have reservations then they expect them to be fulfilled. If everything is overloaded with reservations then there is no slack in the system for people who don’t have reservations whether that be due to ignorance, choice or downtime.

There was no "hard limit" before. It's more accurate to describe it as a 3 attraction minimum with potential for more if desired.

Now, there's no guarantee one would even get 3....

There was a hard limit when FastPass+ premiered.

 

[Chi84]

The people who post here are a small, rather unique sample of the guests who visit WDW. As much as some want the parks to be more like the local Six Flags where little to no planning is required and almost no one is willing to pay for an express pass, WDW does not fit that mold. Visitors making that once in a lifetime trip at great expense actually want the ability to plan their experience so they have the best chance to see and do all they've heard about on TV and from family and friends. After using both systems, I thought FP+ achieved this goal better than Genie+, but it remains to be seen how the average guest responds to the new system.

It's too early to get a good sample of people who used both systems, so a lot of what we're hearing is opinions based on others' reports of their experiences or assumptions about how Genie+ and ILLs will work once the system has had some time to settle. "What people like" vs "operations as a whole" may work at places people are required to be (airport, hospital, DMV), but I don't believe it's going to work well for people's vacations. If they don't like the experience, they won't come back - or even worse, they'll tell others not to bother because the experience was not worth the cost. Having a system that makes no one happy is not the way to go for WDW and I think Disney knows that. It's too early to say, but my guess is that there will be a very different system (or a radically changed Genie+) in place just a few years from now.

 

[flynnibus]

There was no "hard limit" before. It's more accurate to describe it as a 3 attraction minimum with potential for more if desired.

there was a limit… then they started allowing more after you used hour three… and added park hopping.

 

[lazyboy97o]

The people who post here are a small, rather unique sample of the guests who visit WDW. As much as some want the parks to be more like the local Six Flags where little to no planning is required and almost no one is willing to pay for an express pass, WDW does not fit that mold. Visitors making that once in a lifetime trip at great expense actually want the ability to plan their experience so they have the best chance to see and do all they've heard about on TV and from family and friends. After using both systems, I thought FP+ achieved this goal better than Genie+, but it remains to be seen how the average guest responds to the new system.

It's too early to get a good sample of people who used both systems, so a lot of what we're hearing is opinions based on others' reports of their experiences or assumptions about how Genie+ and ILLs will work once the system has had some time to settle. "What people like" vs "operations as a whole" may work at places people are required to be (airport, hospital, DMV), but I don't believe it's going to work well for people's vacations. If they don't like the experience, they won't come back - or even worse, they'll tell others not to bother because the experience was not worth the cost. Having a system that makes no one happy is not the way to go for WDW and I think Disney knows that. It's too early to say, but my guess is that there will be a very different system (or a radically changed Genie+) in place just a few years from now.

Theme parks are not some bizarre anomaly without operational requirements. How they operate is directly tied to satisfaction with the experience. FastPass+ was not creating satisfaction which is why Disney panicked and dropped in two clones to quickly add something. The fundamental problem is capacity. No scheme of reservations is going to fix that. Providing adequate capacity is what will satisfy the most visitors and allow for the greatest variety of visitation preferences to be served.

 

[Chi84]

Theme parks are not some bizarre anomaly without operational requirements. How they operate is directly tied to satisfaction with the experience. FastPass+ was not creating satisfaction which is why Disney panicked and dropped in two clones to quickly add something. The fundamental problem is capacity. No scheme of reservations is going to fix that. Providing adequate capacity is what will satisfy the most visitors and allow for the greatest variety of visitation preferences to be served.

Yes I think everyone knows that. The parks aren't going to shut down until they build adequate capacity, so the question is which inadequate solution is best right now. I vote for FP+ (even a paid version) because the system worked perfectly for us, others will choose Genie+ although I haven't seen too many reports of people singing its praises. Only time will tell what Disney ultimately chooses, but I hope this nonsense of getting up at 7 am not knowing what you're going to do that day and having to compete for rides that will fit around your dining reservations and other plans isn't it.

 

[doctornick]

Not so much all I ever wanted, but certainly something I was content with. If I got the 3 rides I wanted close to or at the times I wanted them, I did not feel the need to grab another. That is not to say if I was allowed to have four or five to start I would not use them. And 2 months in advance I knew what rides I was going on. It was not a mystery as to if I would actually be able to get FPs for them like it is now up to the day of.

I'm right there with you. With the 3 attractions we'd have booked for each day, we mostly were set with all the rides that we wanted to do (that would have long waits). If there were a couple not scheduled, we'd make it a point to rope drop those on the days we went to parks early.

Would we ever add on more beyond the three? Sure, if it worked out. At the MK in particular you could generally find some decent options available even later in the afternoon (stuff like BTMRR or Splash). But I will say that I never stared at the phone endlessly - when we used our last of the 3, I'd go on the phone, see what was available and book whatever. When we used that, I did the process again. I never bothered to change what we had booked or keep checking if something opened up since we already were pretty well set just from the original FP+ booked at home.

We are a big party though - generally 8 of us go together - so finding extra FP+ wasn't easy and it's even more of a hassle to split the party up to do multiple searches. Doing that months in advance was easy. And we always stayed on site (DVC) and go to the parks for like 6-7 days so we got plenty of FP+ for everything even with tiering. And we'd typically have some days to go to the water park or hotel pool and not go to the parks until later which it gave us that flexibility.

 

[lazyboy97o]

Yes I think everyone knows that. The parks are going to shut down until they build adequate capacity, so the question is which inadequate solution is best right now. I vote for FP+ (even a paid version) because the system worked perfectly for us, others will choose Genie+ although I haven't seen too many reports of people singing its praises. Only time will tell what Disney ultimately chooses, but I hope this nonsense of getting up at 7 am not knowing what you're going to do that day and having to compete for rides that will fit around your dining reservations and other plans isn't it.

The solution that requires committed, full staffing to barely function isn’t the one that would work right now.

 

[doctornick]

Yes I think everyone knows that. The parks aren't going to shut down until they build adequate capacity, so the question is which inadequate solution is best right now. I vote for FP+ (even a paid version) because the system worked perfectly for us, others will choose Genie+ although I haven't seen too many reports of people singing its praises. Only time will tell what Disney ultimately chooses, but I hope this nonsense of getting up at 7 am not knowing what you're going to do that day and having to compete for rides that will fit around your dining reservations and other plans isn't it.

Right. It would be interesting what kind of feedback Disney is getting and what specifically people don't like about Genie+. I mean, obviously people will not like the cost but there's various other aspects that could be getting criticism and they would have different solutions

No system is going to work great for everyone (due to a general lack of capacity compared to crowds) as it is all just shuffling deckchairs. But there's probably some system (even if it is paid) that would be most accepted and "liked" and I don't think Genie+ is it. Considering how much goodwill is being burned through right now, the company would benefit from figuring out a system that would be viewed more positively by most guests and encourage return visits in the future.

 

[Chi84]

Right. It would be interesting what kind of feedback Disney is getting and what specifically people don't like about Genie+. I mean, obviously people will not like the cost but there's various other aspects that could be getting criticism and they would have different solutions

No system is going to work great for everyone (due to a general lack of capacity compared to crowds) as it is all just shuffling deckchairs. But there's probably some system (even if it is paid) that would be most accepted and "liked" and I don't think Genie+ is it. Considering how much goodwill is being burned through right now, the company would benefit from figuring out a system that would be viewed more positively by most guests and encourage return visits in the future.

Very well-said. They do send out fairly specific guest experience surveys - I would love to know how the average guest is responding to this new system.

 

[GimpYancIent]

Well, one service was free while the other costs $15. It’s not surprising to me that people resent not getting their money’s worth.

Yep! Not a good to feel ripped off.

 

[danv3]

Very well-said. They do send out fairly specific guest experience surveys - I would love to know how the average guest is responding to this new system.

If the questions and answers are as leading as they usually are in Disney surveys, then the data will show that guests uniformly love the system.

 

[Chip Chipperson]

The solution that requires committed, full staffing to barely function isn’t the one that would work right now.

Maybe I'm missing something, but why would FP+ require more staffing than G+? The same rides/shows are included (aside from possibly some shows that haven't reopened) and the park hours are whatever WDW says they are no matter which system is in place. If anything, they need more people at the Guest Services umbrellas throughout the parks because people need help with or have complaints about G+.