GimpYancIent
Well-Known Member
Now you're talking! I say don't let anyone have it. Scrap it, do away with it. As in shelve it in the deepest recesses of the Disney storage vault.
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Lightning Lane at Walt Disney World
- Thread starter wdwmagic
- Start date
el_super
Well-Known Member
Yeah to clarify... just in case... I didn't mean to imply that wanting to plan was indicative of some abnormal behavior. Instead of saying normal, I meant that it wasn't typical for a majority of the guests going to the parks.
Chi84
Premium Member
I can understand people trying to do objective analyses of the operational aspects of Genie+ and FP+, but the problem for Disney is that the decision to visit WDW is based entirely on subjective factors of enjoyment and value. A system that benefits the most but makes no one happy (or at least satisfied) may work well for governments and union contracts, but it won't play well for an entirely discretionary, very expensive vacation.
It's true that FP+ benefited resort guests and those who liked to plan in advance. I can only speak for myself and the friends and family members who used it, but we liked it well enough. Non-resort guests didn't like being at a disadvantage, but understood the idea behind perks being offered to those who stayed on property. If a guest didn't get everything they wanted, they figured "well, it's a free system and you get what you pay for." In other words, people were somewhat forgiving of its deficiencies.
A paid system is an entirely different thing. It's not good enough for Genie+ to be better than FP+; it actually has to provide a satisfying experience for those using it, and people are going to be much less forgiving when they're being charged per day or per ride. People who have to choose between standing in long lines and paying for a system that has aggravating features/insufficient value are going to quickly find a third option.
It's true that FP+ benefited resort guests and those who liked to plan in advance. I can only speak for myself and the friends and family members who used it, but we liked it well enough. Non-resort guests didn't like being at a disadvantage, but understood the idea behind perks being offered to those who stayed on property. If a guest didn't get everything they wanted, they figured "well, it's a free system and you get what you pay for." In other words, people were somewhat forgiving of its deficiencies.
A paid system is an entirely different thing. It's not good enough for Genie+ to be better than FP+; it actually has to provide a satisfying experience for those using it, and people are going to be much less forgiving when they're being charged per day or per ride. People who have to choose between standing in long lines and paying for a system that has aggravating features/insufficient value are going to quickly find a third option.
ToTBellHop
Well-Known Member
GimpYancIent
Well-Known Member
The only party / entity deriving any actual satisfaction from G+ are the Disney executives that are right now patting themselves on the back for developing a scheme to scam more $$$ off the monetary resource (i.e. GUESTS).
lazyboy97o
Well-Known Member
It’s not really managing the situation and the goal of again trying to avoid resolving the root problem is still there. Any incentive to add capacity would be for marquee, limited capacity experiences so that the scarcity can be monetized. What’s really needed though is experiences with high hourly and instantaneous capacity that people can do on a whim and, if there is an insistent on maintaining a virtual queue system, something virtual queue spot holders can quickly utilize between reservations. Any desire to add capacity on the operations side is also hindered by Walt Disney Imagineering’s ridiculous costs.
Jrb1979
Well-Known Member
I say make it like Universal's but don't give it away free for any one. Scrap the ridiculous return time part and limit how many are available. Stop trying to use it to control crowds. Standby only is a terrible idea.
lazyboy97o
Well-Known Member
Disney already offers a skip the line program, they’re not going to want to devalue that offering.
GimpYancIent
Well-Known Member
By all means it should be FREE! The price to enter a park is enough for the product currently being generated. Want to charge more? Then up the game.
pdude81
Well-Known Member
I don't believe the goal here is to avoid adding capacity; it's to make more money. With FP they gave away skips for free to every attraction they add.
I believe this reset in ride management is an opportunity to change the model and that there even would be incentive to add spinners they could add to Genie+ as that still allows more guests to be served by the system and increase perceived value. Also when you add a new E-ticket for ILL, that may allow a former ILL to slide down into G+ and create more buyers for that offering.
I agree that the (slow) speed and (massive) cost of major attractions lately has been nuts, and I hope the WDI move to Florida will adequately shake things up. That seems like another opportunity taken for a "reset".
el_super
Well-Known Member
I'm surprised at this point, that no one has suggested going with the (almost always considered superior) Tokyo Disneyland method of just having a mad dash and a lottery at park opening. Physically working to attain park reservations is the only way to be fair.
As the person who may have made the spreadsheet/calendar remark, I can only really offer my personal experience using the system. And yes I had to do most of those things. I would book ADRs 100 days out, with a rough plan of which parks I wanted to vist based on the ADRs, but if Fastpasses for certain things (like FoP or Mine Train) were not available on those days, I would have to adjust things around. The Fastpasses ran out quickly, so I had to be able to adjust my plans based on what the priority was (and sometimes that was a specific restaurant, but most times it was specific attractions). Changing which park/ADR/Fastpass to change was, certainly to me, a complicated dance that required taking notes and making decisions based on those spreadsheets. It also, sometimes failed spectacularly, as was the case when I had a 6:00PM FOP Fastpass and an 8PM Ohana reservation. Thank goodness for grace periods.
I won't say it's better or worse than it is now (I haven't been to the parks since Genie+ rolled out). But I definitely don't think that Fastpass+ was the "normal" way of visiting the parks. I guess I'm just old enough to remember when the only real planning you needed to do was to rope drop King Stefans (or Blue Bayou at DLR) for a dining reservation, while sending the kids off to ride Peter Pan. Back then normal was walking thru the parks, looking at the wait time and deciding if it was worth it, right then and there. Not crisscrossing the park, skipping from land to land in the course of an hour, just to make sure you've hit all the big ones before lunch.
TikibirdLand
Well-Known Member
My DW is the planner in the family. She absolutely used a spreadsheet to plan FPs and ADRs. I'm simply the driver. We'd execute the plan we (OK, she) made. The actual trip was pretty un-eventful. With G+, it looks like all that planning will be done during the actual trip. That sounds AWFUL. They've added the arcade action of attempting to get a ride ticket via your phone to this mix.
hsisthebest
Well-Known Member
My biggest gripe with G+ is that even when paying for the service, you are guaranteed nothing- just a chance at getting a LL reservation. For the ILL it doesn't matter how much money I want to spend if all slots are gone at a few minutes after 7 and I am staying offsite. At least with Universal EP you a guaranteed 1 ride on all included rides- it is much more expensive, but I know exactly what I will get.
el_super
Well-Known Member
It isn't really a matter of being being forgiving of Fastpass+, because ultimately Fastpass+ wasn't being judged by it's own merits. Even in the Fastpass+ days, we had people waiting 120+ minutes for the headliner attractions, and all those people waiting all that time, were the ones actually passing judgement on Fastpass+. Genie+ was being introduced, not to make Fastpass easier for the people who use Fastpass, but to make the standby waits more manageable, by reducing the number of people trying to skip the line.
It's not working because Disney, once again, underestimated how much people are willing to spend.
el_super
Well-Known Member
Yeah... at this point I think it's pretty clear that if Disney wants to offer any sort of line-skipping service, they need to significantly raise the prices on it. That they've tried to keep the system as low-cost as they have is a testament to their focus on guest satisfaction, but it's doing more harm than intended.
LittleBuford
Well-Known Member
As I understand it, there were long lines before the introduction of Genie+, and that was during a pandemic when visitor numbers were lower than they would normally be. I’ve seen no evidence that getting rid of line-skipping systems results in significantly shorter standby waits.
G00fyDad
Well-Known Member
Because it doesn't.
flynnibus
Premium Member
Did people switch to only eating dinner now? And only visiting one day?
surd it’s simple in isolation- but that’s the crux.., it’s not in isolation. It is 3 fp plus up to three adr per day… and what you prioritize is also dependent on your other days.
lets say you want CRT for your daughter. You don’t get it when you first book and you make your fp+ reservations.
now sometime later, A CRT reservation opens up… but it is not the day you planned on being in MK. You take tge spot, but now have to shift what park you planned to vidit that day. Now thr whole house of cards comes crashing down as you gotta release your adr and FP bookings on likely multiple days and try again with today’s availability. Good luck…
Chip Chipperson
Well-Known Member
Definitely. Genie+ is the situation that exists now. Had Disney bothered asking for my opinion after my recent trip, I would have told them what I dislike about it. They don't seem interested in hearing what I think at the moment, but maybe one day they will again.
Perhaps there was a miscommunication in the beginning of the discussion, because I was comparing FP+ to G+ while others are simply trying to say, G+ is here now so it is what it is - but at least some people seemed to be trying to explain away FP+ with its flaws (whether they were real or imaginary like the need for online calendars and spreadsheets) as a defense of G+. To me, if you have 2 flawed systems, but one is free and one is an upcharge I'll prefer the free one unless it is so overwhelmingly worse than the upcharge - but even then, there's no excuse for knowingly creating a flawed system and charging for it. I'm not even opposed to upcharges. I gladly paid for the Very Merriest After Hours event and it was the most enjoyable park time I had all trip. Maybe G+ is just Step 1 in a plan to solve the issues that exist, but I'll believe it when I see it (and when they address some of the glaring flaws with G+ like putting Passholders at a disadvantage). For now, it seems like you can sum up their strategy with this Dilbert strip: https://dilbert.com/strip/2021-12-17