Lightning Lane at Walt Disney World

[DisneyNittany]

There seems to be two separate arguments going on and both can be true.

1. FP+ didn't work
   • I've watched the video that @Sirwalterraleigh posted awhile back and it's hard to argue otherwise
2. FP+ worked almost flawlessly for resort guests

I was #TeamFP+, so I'm biased, but any/every time we stayed onsite, it was damn near perfect for us. We'd get our top rides between 10a-2p, get to the park around 9a to knock out some "less popular" rides, back to the pool or to a lounge during the hottest hours, and then back to the parks at night. We'd easily get ~10 rides/day in, PLUS ample amounts down time.

The only time we ever had an "issue" is if we booked a last minute weekend trip and/or stayed offsite. Even then, a few refreshes of the app and we'd usually be able to grab something worth while.

Like others have said, there's nothing inherently unfair with incentivizing guests to spend more money to stay onsite. If I'm going to pay more money to stay in a glorified motel room, there should be some incentives that neither offsite nor locals "deserve".

Because, as William Munney said: "Deserves got nothing to do with it."

 

[mmascari]

FP+ was nowhere near planning every ride though… people act like it took hours of planning, we’d talk about the 3 rides we wanted per park and we’d book them at whatever time they were available, not exactly rocket science.

It's not about hours of planning. Since, as you pointed out, it's not like you were picking at time for each like movie theater tickets. It was about having 3 fixed points in time months before your trip with no thoughts to the weather, how you're feeling, or anything that may have changed in the last two months. If you were going to spend the entire day in the park (which many here probably do), then it may not have mattered as much. But, if you do days split across many activities, multiple parks, throw in some resort time or a water park, like to adjust based on the weather as some parks are more fun than others in the rain or heat. Or, maybe you've got an EPCOT dinner every night. Then, those 3 fixed points established months in advance can feel restrictive and controlling.

We used to do fast passes the day before mostly. Which was clearly not the power user process, but was less stressful for us.

Planners clearly liked the pre selection part of FP+ significantly. Others, not so much.

Getting a park reservation at DL now is infinitely harder than getting FP reservations was at WDW.

The park pass system should be taken to a farm up state and never return.

Side note: There is quite literally no shade at all between SW:SGE and Toy Story land. I swear they teamed up with the weather and tried to kill us last week. We went to DHS an extra day ANYWAY because it's where our reservation was. A reservation made in case we didn't get RotR the first time. We did, at the forced rope drop, followed by SR and TS. A LL for MMRR and SDD. The only ride missed the first day was Muppets. So, at least we did that on the second reservation day when we had to tap in before going anywhere else.

 

[mmascari]

the point is, its only 1 day..........what do i do my 6 other park days?

6 more VIP tours obviously.

Make it rain for someone in VIP tour booking.

 

[Vegas Disney Fan]

It's not about hours of planning. Since, as you pointed out, it's not like you were picking at time for each like movie theater tickets. It was about having 3 fixed points in time months before your trip with no thoughts to the weather, how you're feeling, or anything that may have changed in the last two months. If you were going to spend the entire day in the park (which many here probably do), then it may not have mattered as much. But, if you do days split across many activities, multiple parks, throw in some resort time or a water park, like to adjust based on the weather as some parks are more fun than others in the rain or heat. Or, maybe you've got an EPCOT dinner every night. Then, those 3 fixed points established months in advance can feel restrictive and controlling.

We used to do fast passes the day before mostly. Which was clearly not the power user process, but was less stressful for us.

Planners clearly liked the pre selection part of FP+ significantly. Others, not so much.


The park pass system should be taken to a farm up state and never return.

Side note: There is quite literally no shade at all between SW:SGE and Toy Story land. I swear they teamed up with the weather and tried to kill us last week. We went to DHS an extra day ANYWAY because it's where our reservation was. A reservation made in case we didn't get RotR the first time. We did, at the forced rope drop, followed by SR and TS. A LL for MMRR and SDD. The only ride missed the first day was Muppets. So, at least we did that on the second reservation day when we had to tap in before going anywhere else.

Probably helped we were frequent visitors also, for the once in a lifetime or once a decade visitors there’s much more pressure, we are DL regular and visit WDW once a year on average so if we had a FP for SDMT and decided we wanted to go back to swim at the resort we’d just modify it to something else, if that meant we missed it that trip we were ok with that.

There were also days we’d have FPs booked at one park and wake up and decide we wanted to go to a different park (I miss that flexibility), we’d just cancel them all and wing it at the other park, not ideal but we’d survive just fine.

Flexibility was key to making FP work.

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

Hence why i suggested to overpay for say a year to bring people back in net net its a win all around for everyone. Oh trust me i agree as i said years of neglect finally caught up with them... overlays vs additions dont work

How does one overpay for a year?

 

[Jeff4272]

How does one overpay for a year?

hiring bonus

 

[crazy4disney]

How does one overpay for a year?

you can do 1 of 2 things either offer an cash incentive upfront to agree for working a full year or simpley give them extra money per hour hence overpaying than the current going rate to get people in but let them know that after a year it may revert back to the standard wages.... bottom line everyone has a price and bottom line if they wanted o get people to work they imo could but just like everything else they are just too cheap or cant think outside the box or some beancounter tells them no....

 

[mmascari]

How does one overpay for a year?

Technical problem. That ones easy, it's called a signing bonus, paid out in installments every 3 months. So, it's part of your first year but not part of your salary.

I'm not suggesting that would work. Just that the technical problem of paying extra for the first year is solvable.

Disney was closed for what, 4 months? And they carried everyone for first month right? (Except the College Program?) So, they traded away not carrying, even at some reduced level, everyone for 3 months by letting them all go. Now, 24 months later they're still struggling to rebuild that workforce. Sure, for some of that 24 months, they didn't need all of them. Still seems like they were penny wise and pound foolish here. That some of the trouble getting people back is that those laid off just moved on to other stuff.

And yes, I understand that the penny in this case is millions of dollars. Still, at some point, the reduced service for a long time is going to cost them more than the short term savings of eliminating everyone. I find it hard to believe they wouldn't have been able to handle keeping everyone originally.

(Except the College Program, those are temps anyway.)

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

you can do 1 of 2 things either offer an cash incentive upfront to agree for working a full year or simpley give them extra money per hour hence overpaying than the current going rate to get people in but let them know that after a year it may revert back to the standard wages.... bottom line everyone has a price and bottom line if they wanted o get people to work they imo could but just like everything else they are just too cheap or cant think outside the box or some beancounter tells them no....

Cash incentives are a joke. People don’t he really fall for them - nor should they.

Did you just say a “temporary” pay rate??

…hold on…I’m gonna teleconference in the 10 leading labor experts on the planet…they’re gonna LOVE this one

 

[crazy4disney]

Cash incentives are a joke. People don’t he really fall for them - nor should they.

Did you just say a “temporary” pay rate??

…hold on…I’m gonna teleconference in the 10 leading labor experts on the planet…they’re gonna LOVE this one

Like i said. You need to think outside the box. So if it means overpaying hourly so be it. If it means paying someone 5k upfront to get them to work so be it. Again. Think outside to box. Find a number that works to bring people in. Im sure it will still
Bring in profits. Its a disgrace places are still shuttered rides are still closed attractions etc and they are hiding behind covid etc in alot of cases. As i said. Everyone has a price. Find it. But people like you will keep defending and in this case mocking the idea of some incentive to get people to work win for them make disney more money win for them make guests happy with more option win for them. Lmk what your experts say when you get thru to them

 

[Chip Chipperson]

Nobody here is saying Genie+ is better. For that matter both systems suck. Having return times is the dumbest part of it. I understand why they do it, to direct guests around the parks. IMO they should scrap the whole thing and move to an Express Pass system with only being able to use it once per ride. At the same time limit sales of it.

They'll never please everyone. It seems to me that FP+ pleased more guests than G+ does and likely pleased more guests than your Express Pass idea would.

 

[DCBaker]

According to an update from Disney, the Star Wars Launch Bay Meet and Greets will be added to Genie+ when they return on July 17th -

 

[lazyboy97o]

Altho i disagree that FP as you say didnt work... rolling out a system in the middle of capacity issues and a pandemic etc probably was not the best move either. end of days years of neglect not adding capacity has finally caught up to them but again these issues did NOT exist when FP was around hence why i find it hard to say FP didnt work

Yes, those issues did exist, you just weren’t stuck dealing with them.

 

[crazy4disney]

Yes, those issues did exist, you just weren’t stuck dealing with them.

i guess myself and so many others all these years never experienced it i must be extremely lucky maybe ill hit the lotto tonight... i had more issues w genie+ in November than i ever had in ALL the years of any version of FP but go ahead keep defending genie or knocking FP saying it didnt work.... like i said i guess i was lucky and everyone else was as well.... again insiders have made it clear Disney A) wanted to profit off FP and used the guests didnt want to plan as an excuse to get rid of it and introduce genie instead of simply charging for FP which they 100% could have gotten away with....

 

[lazyboy97o]

We'd easily get ~10 rides/day in, PLUS ample amounts down time.

How many hours would you spend in the park on those days? When people talk about stand-by only they typically assume the capacity to actually support such operations which would mean being able to do ten attractions in about 7 hours.

Like others have said, there's nothing inherently unfair with incentivizing guests to spend more money to stay onsite. If I'm going to pay more money to stay in a glorified motel room, there should be some incentives that neither offsite nor locals "deserve".

The problem is when incentives cause distributions elsewhere, including disruptions that impact resort guests.

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

Technical problem. That ones easy, it's called a signing bonus, paid out in installments every 3 months. So, it's part of your first year but not part of your salary.

I'm not suggesting that would work. Just that the technical problem of paying extra for the first year is solvable.

Disney was closed for what, 4 months? And they carried everyone for first month right? (Except the College Program?) So, they traded away not carrying, even at some reduced level, everyone for 3 months by letting them all go. Now, 24 months later they're still struggling to rebuild that workforce. Sure, for some of that 24 months, they didn't need all of them. Still seems like they were penny wise and pound foolish here. That some of the trouble getting people back is that those laid off just moved on to other stuff.

And yes, I understand that the penny in this case is millions of dollars. Still, at some point, the reduced service for a long time is going to cost them more than the short term savings of eliminating everyone. I find it hard to believe they wouldn't have been able to handle keeping everyone originally.

(Except the College Program, those are temps anyway.)

Signing bonuses haven’t worked. Never really have there.

First…they aren’t big enough
Second…word gets out quick that bout 35% is withheld.

Great idea…but doesn’t fit the problem or market

 

[lazyboy97o]

i guess myself and so many others all these years never experienced it i must be extremely lucky maybe ill hit the lotto tonight... i had more issues w genie+ in November than i ever had in ALL the years of any version of FP but go ahead keep defending genie or knocking FP saying it didnt work.... like i said i guess i was lucky and everyone else was as well.... again insiders have made it clear Disney A) wanted to profit off FP and used the guests didnt want to plan as an excuse to get rid of it and introduce genie instead of simply charging for FP which they 100% could have gotten away with....

They did start charging for FastPass. Genie+ is still a reservation system. The problem is the number of reservations allocated to the system. Disney can’t support more reservations, doesn’t matter if they’re made day of or months in advance.

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

i guess myself and so many others all these years never experienced it i must be extremely lucky maybe ill hit the lotto tonight... i had more issues w genie+ in November than i ever had in ALL the years of any version of FP but go ahead keep defending genie or knocking FP saying it didnt work.... like i said i guess i was lucky and everyone else was as well.... again insiders have made it clear Disney A) wanted to profit off FP and used the guests didnt want to plan as an excuse to get rid of it and introduce genie instead of simply charging for FP which they 100% could have gotten away with....

You had lowered expectations…Bob did it intentionally.

You just probably didn’t track it over time.

Also…you never paid for fastpass+ In a line item.
The psychology is different.

Imagine if they charged you $5 a pop for splash, tiki room and the barnstormer in 2017. You would have been ed. And then you could search the website for the rest of the day for the leftovers and occasionally grab a released by fate big thunder mountain.

That’s exactly what + would have been with the fee.

The genie - ridiculous as it is - makes you mad upfront paying…but also provides the benefits of a deterrent.

But you have to rig it. I did last week. Did I want to pay? Hell no. Did i think for a second I could get around it? Hell no

Please…I worked in guest services, revenue and sales in the swamp. You can’t “get around” a revenue system. The only way that ever happens is if it’s REJECTED immediately and publicly. That didn’t happen here.

 

[crazy4disney]

They did start charging for FastPass. Genie+ is still a reservation system. The problem is the number of reservations allocated to the system. Disney can’t support more reservations, doesn’t matter if they’re made day of or months in advance.

charging for FP in the aspect of the extra 3 concierge deluxe were allowed or charging in regards of genie? either way Genie is awful & FP was no way near this inferior... so again what gives and again if ILL is causing this charge 10 more and include it w genie or as ive stated maybe allowing people to choose times made this system more viable but again speaking for myself resort guests never had issues booking and adding on in parks were always an option so again still cant grasp how genie is such a debacle and how they didnt see it coming w ALL the data they have

 

[GhostHost1000]

Thats awful.........waiting for a bus..........having to buy Genie+ and then hoping your fingers are quick enough so you dont have to wait 110 mins at FOP at 7:15 am......

Thanks but no thanks

Exactly. It was interesting seeing all the people standing on the bus holding on with one hand with a phone in the other all trying to book things at 7am. Made me wonder how many people are driving towards the parks with a phone in their hand too