that is true at other parks with the skip the line pass. I was just at Dollywood on Monday and purchased the timesaver pass. On some rides my wristband was scanned and I was assigned to a row to board immediately (or at least on the next car). On other rides the scan location was not quite in the boarding area. It was more like the merge point for FP+ in Soarin, Thunder Mountain, 7DMT, etc.
This is how I think of it:
In theory the price would fluctuate depending on the time of year and/or the projected business of the park....so a Tuesday in January would be say $120 but a weekend at Xmas or Summer break would be say $500
But FP+ as a resort guest basically did that already and pretty much at the time you wanted for free!
FP+ was good for on site guests and the planners of the world. For everyone else it was awful. Genie+ isn't better. TBH they should have went the Universal route. A much better system and the best part is no return times.
I wouldn't say you were screwed, but certainly at a disadvantage. My first ever trip to Orlando I never knew a thing about FP+ (never even knew it existed till I was inside the park and overheard someone) - I immediately downloaded the app, created my account and I was on my way in Magic Kingdom an 30 minutes after park opening booking FP+...granted it wasn't Seven Dwarves or Jungle Cruise, but I did manage to FP+ most things that day and queued for 7D which was only a 60 minute wait...I also managed to swap some good rides by people changing their plans and swapping out something, so I jumped in.
On our recent trip we stayed 1 night at Portofino Bay which got us Express passes for check in day (saturday) and check out day (sunday) - On Saturday we had no luck at all with it and ended up leaving the park at 2pm as the Express lines were still long waits. Obviously not as long as the stand by lines but on certain lines it wasn't far off....and actually on JP river adventure the guy running the queue clearly hated those with Expres passes as he was hardly letting any on....so the stand by queue was almost empty and the EP line was 50 deep - I was convinced he thought it was the single rider line!!
I would be perfectly fine paying for the old version of FP+. What i dont understand is why they didnt just increase hotel prices even more to “hide” the cost of FP & simply start chArging for non resort guests.
Don't worry, they'll do that too.
Its like with the parking fees that were so “controversial” could have easily added $10-30 acrossboard based on category & allocate that directly to parking line item. Would have generated more $ and less negative feedback.Don't worry, they'll do that too.
However, the parking fees are a specific disincentive for bringing a car. If the goal is more to control behavior than to raise revenue, that doesn't help.
Wasn’t the parking decision less of a money maker and more of a car volume reducer? I could be wrong on that.
For anyone that did not stay on property, or book long duration trips, Genie + is a better option than FP+. All of the better FP selections were gone 60 days out prior to off site guests ever getting a shot at them.
Not really.
