Lightning Lane at Walt Disney World

[nickys]

Yeah for PhilharMagic and Frozen Sing-Along.

How about Christmas Eve or New Years Day? Perfectly possible to picked up Pirates, Big Thunder, Buzz, HM, Soarin, Mission Space, all after 6pm on the above days.

 

[mikejs78]

How about Christmas Eve or New Years Day? Perfectly possible to picked up Pirates, Big Thunder, Buzz, HM, Soarin, Mission Space, all after 6pm on the above days.

Yeah, this is why I think LL is nowhere near the same capacity allocation as FP+ was.

 

[Touchdown]

Yeah, this is why I think LL is nowhere near the same capacity allocation as FP+ was.

And that’s the only thing I like about G+

 

[bubbles1812]

There’s so many bad aspects of genie and it’s hard to pick the worst one but i would say is waking up at 6:50am EVERY day is the worst. Either that or the cost. Or that it doesn’t hold your selected time. Or you have to cancel instead of replacing. Or that you have to be on your phone all day. Or that every good ride sold out at HS before I booked my second genie. Or that you can’t choose return times. Or that ILL sell out in less than 30 seconds. Or that you need 3 people on separate mde accounts to book. Or……..oh never mind, you get the point

Ehh, this part is relative. I am a natural born rope dropper. 5:30-6:30 am wake up times are the norm for my family, so getting up every day at that time isn’t super upsetting to me as we are always there for park opening. (Once Upon a December 2019, we were even crazy enough to get up at 330 am (twice) to go wait in line with the other crazies for ROTR the week it opened ).

I’m guessing there are many others who won’t be bothered by the 650 am wake up, not to discount your experience.

 

[mikejs78]

Ehh, this part is relative. I am a natural born rope dropper. 5:30-6:30 am wake up times are the norm for my family, so getting up every day at that time isn’t super bothersome to me. (Once Upon a December 2019, we were even crazy enough to get up at 330 am (twice) to go wait in line with the other crazies for ROTR the week it opened )

I’m guessing there are many others who won’t be bothered by the 650 am wake up, not to discount your experience.

I'm a rope dropper too. But l would rather not be scrambling for a LL pass every day while trying to get out the door with the kids to go to the parks.

 

[HoustonHorn]

Yeah, this is why I think LL is nowhere near the same capacity allocation as FP+ was.

I'm almost sure you're correct. I daresay I would call the LL ratio miniscule compared to FP+.

And that’s the only thing I like about G+

ABSOLUTELY. If you scored an LL, it generally was incredible. Other than the 30-minute HM fiasco my parents had Sunday that was discussed 10 or so pages back.

 

[HoustonHorn]

I'm a rope dropper too. But l would rather not be scrambling for a LL pass every day while trying to get out the door with the kids to go to the parks.

Or having your bus park at Animal Kingdom at....7:00 on the dot. It was funny. He parked, and everyone just stayed seated pounding their phones. #thanksnewdisney

 

[wutisgood]

I try not to use the busses for rope drop anymore since they don't run as consistently.

 

[Mander]

No you wouldn't have. The mad scramble you experienced at 7am today would have still happened at 7am 60 days ago.

This just doesn't seem comparable to me. One early morning 60 days out where I can use my computer to book instead of a phone versus having to do the same scramble every single day of my vacation. As the person who plans for my family, I'm really not looking forward to having to do that almost every day we are there. I get that FP+ was broken but I'd much prefer they'd gone with MaxPass exactly than this.

 

[Jeff4272]

How about Christmas Eve or New Years Day? Perfectly possible to picked up Pirates, Big Thunder, Buzz, HM, Soarin, Mission Space, all after 6pm on the above days.

No way Jose

 

[CaptainAmerica]

This just doesn't seem comparable to me. One early morning 60 days out where I can use my computer to book instead of a phone versus having to do the same scramble every single day of my vacation. As the person who plans for my family, I'm really not looking forward to having to do that almost every day we are there. I get that FP+ was broken but I'd much prefer they'd gone with MaxPass exactly than this.

I'm old enough to remember almost the entire fan community and moaning that they hated how Disney "forced" them to plan "every second" of their vacations two months in advance.

Just go to the park and get in line. You're under no obligation whatsoever to buy ILL. I hate it too, but it's easy enough to avoid.

 

[Mander]

I'm old enough to remember almost the entire fan community ******** and moaning that they hated how Disney "forced" them to plan "every second" of their vacations two months in advance.

Just go to the park and get in line. You're under no obligation whatsoever to buy ILL. I hate it too, but it's easy enough to avoid.

I'd be happy if they went back to standby only. Standby when others are using G+/LL isn't quite the same.

And I can promise you never heard me complain about the previous planning. I loved that I could have a rough outline of our day ahead of time and not worry once we were there.

Somehow the combination of Genie+, park reservations, and park hopping limits just makes it all feel worse.

 

[bubbles1812]

I try not to use the busses for rope drop anymore since they don't run as consistently.

That I’ll give you about the consistency. We didn’t have a problem at rope drop but we waited 90+ minutes to catch a bus from AK back to Caribbean Beach at about 230 pm on Nov 1st.

The Disney buses have never been perfect, but I had never experienced that before. Nor had I ever talked to Disney Customer Experience and Disney Transport on the phone before. Ended up with 75$ in compensation from Disney as we missed a reservation elsewhere.

 

[Casper Gutman]

I'd be happy if they went back to standby only. Standby when others are using G+/LL isn't quite the same.

And I can promise you never heard me complain about the previous planning. I loved that I could have a rough outline of our day ahead of time and not worry once we were there.

Somehow the combination of Genie+, park reservations, and park hopping limits just makes it all feel worse.

The parks were designed for standby. It’s embedded in a whole host of design decisions that can’t be changed unless you basically rebuild the parks from the ground up. Any line-skipping system very literally breaks the park. Now, maybe some systems break it in a way that benefits (or seems to benefit) a small group of guests who do the park in a very particular way, but even they likely experience the breakage as an inconvenience at some point. Disney has thrashed around through so many different line-skipping systems because they keep trying to fix a broken system by breaking it in a different way.

Standby and capacity increases. That’s it. That’s what will work in the existing parks. A line-skipping system will only work if it’s so expensive that the number of people using it is minuscule and it’s impact on the parks is negligible.

 

[Patcheslee]

So guesses now. Will Disney increase ILL price for Thanksgiving Day, or will they stick to the Mon-Thur & Fri-Sun pricing pattern?

 

[G00fyDad]

Ehh, this part is relative. I am a natural born rope dropper. 5:30-6:30 am wake up times are the norm for my family, so getting up every day at that time isn’t super upsetting to me as we are always there for park opening. (Once Upon a December 2019, we were even crazy enough to get up at 330 am (twice) to go wait in line with the other crazies for ROTR the week it opened ).

I’m guessing there are many others who won’t be bothered by the 650 am wake up, not to discount your experience.

Right there with ya!

 

[G00fyDad]

So guesses now. Will Disney increase ILL price for Thanksgiving Day, or will they stick to the Mon-Thur & Fri-Sun pricing pattern?

My guess is that tomorrow people are going to wake up to find RotR at $24.

 

[LittleBuford]

The parks were designed for standby.

Perhaps they were, but the problem is that people (myself included) don't want to wait in long queues.

 

[ImperfectPixie]

Perhaps they were, but the problem is that people (myself included) don't want to wait in long queues.

The queues wouldn't be intolerably long if Disney built to correspond to demand.

 

[UNCgolf]

Perhaps they were, but the problem is that people (myself included) don't want to wait in long queues.

This is a Disney capacity problem, though. The parks were designed for standby, but not for long waits.

With a bunch of VQs, we get the situation we've seen in recent years where everywhere in the parks are absolutely slammed with people waiting for their next FP slot, completely filling all the shops, seating areas, and walkways. However, the queues generally weren't designed to handle the number of people they're expected to handle now either.

Basically, the parks were designed for both standby only and for manageable wait times for the vast majority of attractions. As attendance has ballooned, they haven't even come close to building enough capacity to make up the difference.

A brand new park (like Epic Universe) could probably be built from the ground up to rely mostly (or entirely) on VQs, but it would probably be a giant sprawl. I don't think it's very likely to happen.