Lightning Lane at Walt Disney World

[Disney Dad 3000]

Really is mindboggling how bad they are at this.

I imagine I'm of the few, but I actually liked Genie+. Hated it my first use, but after that, perfectly happy with it. 7am was and is not great on days you want to sleep in, but the stacking nature of it is phenomenal for evening visits. Made for some great nights at DHS, MK and Epcot. Even had success with day visits with regularity.

We knew they were going this route, but 3 in advance with Tiers and ILL (if that's the end result) in play is not ideal. It's a vast improvement over 60/30 day booking, but in my eyes, do the 1 per day in advance (length of stay as this will be) to cut out the 7am issue and be done with it. Problem as has been mentioned ad nauseum is now you are charging for something that was free and opens up all sorts of cans of worms.

I'll be interested to see this in action from an availability standpoint for LL when it rolls out (both in advance and then day of once you've used your prebooked allotment). With dollars involved, and now booking in advance, it only raises expectations of your resort guests especially.

 

[TheMaxRebo]

With dollars involved, and now booking in advance, it only raises expectations of your resort guests especially.

Everyone really

"I paid for G+ and all the Slinky Dog LL return times are already booked for the entire day before I had a chance?!?!?!"

 

[CaptainAmerica]

Are you guys just making crap up again or is there actually substance to these rumors?

 

[CaptainAmerica]

how about something like this

Park	ILL (Max 1 per day)	G+ Prepay and Pick 1 for Advanced Reservation (30 days out for onsite, 15 days offsite) for each day of the length of your trip - next attraction can be selected while in park after selection is used or 1hr after park opening and each 1hr thereafter (stack limit of 2 attractions waiting to be used at a time)
Magic Kingdom	Tron	Any
Epcot	Guardians	Any
Hollywood Studios	Rise	Any
Animal Kingdom	FoP	Any

or go back to booking more than one...but without tiers

The biggest fix they need right now is to get Mine Train off of ILL and open Pirates/Jungle Cruise/Thunder for Early Entry. Rope drop at Magic Kingdom is completely broken.

 

[GhostHost1000]

The biggest fix they need right now is to get Mine Train off of ILL and open Pirates/Jungle Cruise/Thunder for Early Entry. Rope drop at Magic Kingdom is completely broken.

100%

 

[Jrb1979]

Are you guys just making crap up again or is there actually substance to these rumors?

They come from Len Testa

 

[nickys]

Are you guys just making crap up again or is there actually substance to these rumors?

I didn’t want to be the one to post Len Testa’s info but someone else has. And there are ways to see the code if you know how, apparently. So it seems this is legit - for the moment.

Granted that the 7 days / 3 days could be changed, but this is looking more and more like paid FP+ - with tiers at MK. Which apparently are coded as Tiana, Space and 7dmt being Tier 1.

I think they’ve dusted down the FP+ coding, made some tweaks and hey presto!

 

[TheMaxRebo]

The biggest fix they need right now is to get Mine Train off of ILL and open Pirates/Jungle Cruise/Thunder for Early Entry. Rope drop at Magic Kingdom is completely broken.

Only two lands open for early entry at MK is such a pain as everyone goes to the same 3 attractions

Just wait until Tiana's Bayou Adventure opens and MK has 3 ILLs

 

[TheMaxRebo]

Thinking more, the 3 days for off site guests is almost worse than day of as still will be for during your trip (don't see how it could be set to book for duration of your trip, will have to be day by day, like ADRs for off-site guests)

So now have to get up at 7am of day 2 of vacation to book your G+ LL for day 5 (for example) when maybe day 2 would be an off day and day 5 you were rope dropping anyway ... Seems potentially worse

 

[CaptainAmerica]

Double-tiering would be weapons-grade stupid. You can't have ILL and then tiers within G+. If they want to tier it, do away with ILL and just make the ILL attractions the top G+ tier.

People will digest price increases. It's the stupid, needless complications that really erode guest satisfaction.

 

[RSoxNo1]

Pushing out the reservations to 7, 30 or 60 days ahead of the day still creates the same flawed faster finger problem at 7 AM on whatever the relevant day.

Requiring guests to be in the park is a far superior approach and one that works at every other resort around the world. It also was the approach in Disney World pre-Fastpass+. Why must we try a 4th iteration of a line skipping program when the first one worked?

 

[RSoxNo1]

Double-tiering would be weapons-grade stupid. You can't have ILL and then tiers within G+. If they want to tier it, do away with ILL and just make the ILL attractions the top G+ tier.

People will digest price increases. It's the stupid, needless complications that really erode guest satisfaction.

The current system is already remarkably complicated for the average consumer. I'm traveling with my family later this month and my family includes my autistic brother. For our family there are 6 possible ways to experience attractions and no attractions have access to all 6 possible ways. They are:

• Wait in a standby line (available at most attractions but not Cosmic Rewind or TRON)
• Get a virtual queue (only available at Cosmic Rewind or TRON)
• Pay for Individual Lightning Lane (available at 1-2 attractions per park as an additional expense)
• Pay for Genie + / Lightning Lane access (available at several attractions per park as an additional expense)
• Advanced DAS reservations (available at most Genie + / Lightning Lane eligible attractions with at least one additional exception per park)
• Day of DAS reservations (available for nearly everything in the parks except Cosmic Rewind or TRON)

This is unnecessarily complicated. Any change to the system has to simplify things and/or reduce the price.

As a side note, regarding DAS, I think the pre-registration is a great thing, as is the ability to make those reservations through MDE. I'd be curious to see what percentage of DAS guests book advanced reservations and then what percentage uses them. That was a component that I don't believe was necessary and very well could have been instituted so that they would continue to use the legacy Fastpass+ infrastructure for depreciation purposes.

 

[TheMaxRebo]

Pushing out the reservations to 7, 30 or 60 days ahead of the day still creates the same flawed faster finger problem at 7 AM on whatever the relevant day.

Requiring guests to be in the park is a far superior approach and one that works at every other resort around the world. It also was the approach in Disney World pre-Fastpass+. Why must we try a 4th iteration of a line skipping program when the first one worked?

There are some benefits/simplification of that, though two (potential) drawbacks

1) Potential for a bottleneck right inside the tapstyles as people are going on their phones right after they scan in to book their first G+
2) Favors rope droppers who already get the benefit of early entry, etc - basically gives additional benefits to only one way of touring the parks and no everyone wants to do that on vacation

You can so, oh well, too bad, this is the case everywhere in the world - but being able to prebook at least your first would allow for some resting while on vacation

(and the "running of the bulls" that happened with FP- for Toy Story Midway Mania was bordering on chaos whenever I was there, so isn't always rosey)

 

[CaptainAmerica]

Favors rope droppers who already get the benefit of early entry, etc - basically gives additional benefits to only one way of touring the parks and no everyone wants to do that on vacation

There is no system, real or imagined, that doesn't give benefit to people who are willing to be awake when other people want to be sleeping.

 

[RSoxNo1]

There are some benefits/simplification of that, though two (potential) drawbacks

1) Potential for a bottleneck right inside the tapstyles as people are going on their phones right after they scan in to book their first G+
2) Favors rope droppers who already get the benefit of early entry, etc - basically gives additional benefits to only one way of touring the parks and no everyone wants to do that on vacation

You can so, oh well, too bad, this is the case everywhere in the world - but being able to prebook at least your first would allow for some resting while on vacation

(and the "running of the bulls" that happened with FP- for Toy Story Midway Mania was bordering on chaos whenever I was there, so isn't always rosey)

The "Running of the bulls" was chaos, now it's on a phone. The first reservation can be made as you're walking into the park and increasing the wifi access at the park entrance is not a difficult task.

 

[Purduevian]

The "Running of the bulls" was chaos, now it's on a phone. The first reservation can be made as you're walking into the park and increasing the wifi access at the park entrance is not a difficult task.

Big advantage to the current system vs running of the bulls.

1) Can be done from hotel bed
2) Only 1 member of the party needs to be awake

Back in legacy FP days, we were staying at the beach club when Soarin was the hottest ticket in town. My dad usually gets up around 5am for work, so sleeping in until 6:30 was a treat. He took all of our park tickets on our epcot day and rope dropped the FP at Soarin. Unfortunately, the ticket will only give a return FP if that person had already scanned into the park.

No as the dad, I am the only one that needs to be up at 7am to get LL for everyone.

 

[TheMaxRebo]

There is no system, real or imagined, that doesn't give benefit to people who are willing to be awake when other people want to be sleeping.

but some systems amplify that more than others

FP- amplified it more than FP+, that was all my point. I know lots of people that like to sleep in on vacation and if G+ was bookable only after you entered the park then they would just never get it and see it as a negative structure for their vacation vs other options

 

[TheMaxRebo]

Big advantage to the current system vs running of the bulls.

1) Can be done from hotel bed
2) Only 1 member of the party needs to be awake

Back in legacy FP days, we were staying at the beach club when Soarin was the hottest ticket in town. My dad usually gets up around 5am for work, so sleeping in until 6:30 was a treat. He took all of our park tickets on our epcot day and rope dropped the FP at Soarin. Unfortunately, the ticket will only give a return FP if that person had already scanned into the park.

No as the dad, I am the only one that needs to be up at 7am to get LL for everyone.

yup - agree. and comparing that vs everyone having to be scanned into the park before being able to book a G+LL there are definitively advantages (like you outlined) to the current system. It definitely isn't "far superior" as was posted, for everyone

 

[RSoxNo1]

Big advantage to the current system vs running of the bulls.

1) Can be done from hotel bed
2) Only 1 member of the party needs to be awake

Back in legacy FP days, we were staying at the beach club when Soarin was the hottest ticket in town. My dad usually gets up around 5am for work, so sleeping in until 6:30 was a treat. He took all of our park tickets on our epcot day and rope dropped the FP at Soarin. Unfortunately, the ticket will only give a return FP if that person had already scanned into the park.

No as the dad, I am the only one that needs to be up at 7am to get LL for everyone.

Personally, I don't want to be up at 7 AM on my vacation and I hate the idea of everything being so incredibly scheduled. Your points are valid, but there needs to be some balance between fastest finger and otherwise equitable. A requirement that you're in the park has been the best way to stagger guests and avoid the fastest finger component. I understand the sentiment / convenience side of things but the two ideals cannot exist simultaneously.

One thing that would absolutely be a huge step backwards would be a reversion to 3 advanced bookings. Until such time that the attraction count increases at EPCOT, DHS and DAK, those parks simply cannot handle 3 advanced bookings.

If there needs to be a hybrid of everything that also allows for simplification on a paid system:

• You can pay for Genie+ ahead of your visit
• You can make a single advanced booking per person per day that is unencumbered by what you do day of. Resort guests would have access to this at some arbitrary time ahead of their trip (say 7 AM, 7 days out + the length of their trip like the old 60+9 rules)
• Day of, you have your advanced booking + a rotating reservation that you can book upon checking into a park for the day.
• Once you've checked into a park for a day you can book reservations for other parks without having to be in those parks. You can also go back to your hotel or even leave property and book those reservations.

Those rules are essentially what is currently happening at Disneyland + an additional advanced reservation. The distinction of individual lightning lanes and tiers adds a layer of complexity that Disney executives don't care about because they're getting 6 figures + a day per attraction.

 

[Splash4eva]

if I pay for G+ and can only book 1 in tier one all day, it's not worth it

If this is the case they will have once again find a way to take a terrible system and somehow make it worse!