Lightning Lane at Walt Disney World

[Dranth]

It was super easy to get 6+ LLs. However I got in the buzz LL around 630pm one night and we started talking to the nice group in front of us. They saw people using the LL all day and decided to but it. It was their first LL of the day.

What someone could do, what people should do, and what people actually did are 3 different things. I'm assuming the group was probably not happy with their purchase.

I think most people got 3+ for sure

1-2 worthwhile attractions though - meaning they’re saving time, I can definitely see that happening especially at certain parks. I think there are a lot of people who don’t understand that 7 am means 7:00:00 not 7:00:43 or 7:02:00, etc. Those people start the day already behind and possibly missed out on the biggest time saving LL. And that’s assuming they actually do follow the 7 am instruction to some degree. Then we have to assume these same people understood the system enough to either book as soon as they tapped in, or set alarms for their subsequent bookings.

I think both of you are describing guest issues and not system ones. That is the type of stuff that happened under all the various system's they have used and will be the case with this one as well.

What I thought was nice about G+ and goes back to my personal belief it was the most "fair" was newcomers could learn how to best use it over the course of their trip and adjust. Sure, someone might have a bad day, but they will have another chance their next park day and be that much more informed. With this, if you don't do it right up front, you are potentially giving yourself a bad day, every day of your trip. There is a very limited ability to fix on the fly and there is no fresh slate each day.

Didn't know to grab FoP or SDD at the 7-day mark for the end of your trip first, oh well, you lost your chance unless you want to sit on the phone all day potentially before and during your trip and hope an opening appears. Didn't know that some T2s are really popular so are gone immediately? Enjoy waiting in line! Didn't understand that getting one too early or late in the day is bad because you would have had a short standby anyway? Oh well, maybe if you visit again, you can get it right next time.

That insider knowledge is what made FP+ so amazing for people in the know and so bad for those that didn't and now we are heading right back to it. Most of us here will know which rides to grab first and what time drops happen and it will improve our experience at the expense of those that don't know. We will either eat up all inventory before they get a chance or at best, leave nothing but bad times for the normal folk to fight over.

To be clear, I don't expect it to be as bad as FP+ was because of no rerides and limited number of users but it is going to have similar problems, just to a lesser degree.

 

[doctornick]

I think both of you are describing guest issues and not system ones. That is the type of stuff that happened under all the various system's they have used and will be the case with this one as well.

Indeed. I think Disney realizes that most guest complaints could have been solved by more optimal usage but there’s not a whole lot they can do to have all guests better informed and efficient. I agree that G+ was more “fair” in the setup but the outcomes were seemingly more widespread that they should be with LLMP among different guests.

(It kind of reminds me of an equality vs equity debate. Outcomes vs opportunities)

So what they did to “solve” discrepancies and improve guest satisfaction for the purchase is to have a baseline of 3 attractions for everyone that purchases (no matter how poorly versed in the system they are) and having they know those options up front before buying. I suspect 3 short waits will be “satisfactory” for more purchasers and avoid those complaints at Guest Services and demands for refunds.

if it also incentivizes on property stays (and even table service reservations too) than all the better in Disney’s eyes.

 

[Fido Chuckwagon]

Capacity remained constant through this change.

False, they removed a bunch of capacity by taking away the M&G’s and ETwB, especially at Magic Kingdom.

 

[doctornick]

False, they removed a bunch of capacity by taking away the M&G’s and ETwB, especially at Magic Kingdom.

That’s true but M&Gs have terrible put through and I’m sure that removal was a very small portion of the LL pool.

That being said, it seems odd to have removed them entirely especially as an option for families with young children to book.

 

[Fido Chuckwagon]

That’s true but M&Gs have terrible put through and I’m sure that removal was a very small portion of the LL pool.

That being said, it seems odd to have removed them entirely especially as an option for families with young children to book.

As a family with young children, this is really aggravating. My girls love meeting the characters but I’m sure as hell not going to wait 30-45 minutes to do it.

 

[easyrowrdw]

I’ve joked in the past that Disney should just go book to a ticket book but I think compared to the mess they’ve created now it may actually make sense.

$100 entry fee that includes A B C tickets and shows, D tickets are an extra $10 each, E tickets are $15-20 each.

A day with the train, tiki room, country bears, JC, PoTC ($10), HM ($10), BTM ($15), TBA ($15), IaSW, philharmagic, 7D ($10), Tron ($20), SM ($15), peoplemover… would be roughly equivalent to a current ticket price. If you want to be a power user and ride everything could add $100 to the total, if you just want a relaxing day in the parks it could cut $100 from the total. Everyone gets what they pay for though.

Keep the standby the same just for every single LL you pay at the moment to enter it, and the price is dependent on the wait time

25 mins? That is $5 ... 45? That will be $10, etc - just scan your MB to enter

So if you want to skip all the lines you can, but it'll cost you

You want it to be more complicated?! What's wrong with you people?

 

[GhostHost1000]

As a family with young children, this is really aggravating. My girls love meeting the characters but I’m sure as hell not going to wait 30-45 minutes to do it.

and that’s how they get people to overpay for eating character meals

 

[Saskdw]

Do we think the inventory and options will be there for resort guests or will that also be limited?

Remains to be seen. Would seem to defeat the purpose if they don‘t.

 

[TheMaxRebo]

That’s true but M&Gs have terrible put through and I’m sure that removal was a very small portion of the LL pool.

That being said, it seems odd to have removed them entirely especially as an option for families with young children to book.

Hopefully it means the standby lines for them at least move steadily now. I believe that was a big complaint they were getting that the standby lines barely moved as they had to accommodate the LL people and they have such low hourly capacity.

 

[GoofGoof]

Hopefully it means the standby lines for them at least move steadily now. I believe that was a big complaint they were getting that the standby lines barely moved as they had to accommodate the LL people and they have such low hourly capacity.

I think this is probably one of the main reasons for excluding. One thing they could do for certain meet and greets is have 2 separate lines with 2 separate characters but they can only do that where they can hide it. Can’t have 2 Mickey Mouses (Mickey Mice???) standing next to each other but if they are in different rooms….no problem. The cost is pretty negligible. Just add a few extra CMs and you can double capacity.

Another option would be to add ILL to some meet and greets. If it’s your kid’s favorite character and you don’t want to wait then pay. People pay a premium for meals with characters to get a no wait meet and greet while they eat.

 

[Purduevian]

False, they removed a bunch of capacity by taking away the M&G’s and ETwB, especially at Magic Kingdom.

You are 100% correct and I totally missed it because the conversation had steered towards riding all the tier 1 attractions at DHS in a day.

I'll amend it to say that each individual ride LL capacity remained constant through this change. My point was meant to be, if on G+ you used to be able to ride SDD, ToT, RnRC, MMRR, and MFSR all on one day, but on LLMP now you only get SDD, ToT, and MFSR... your LLs for RnRC and MMRR now go to someone that otherwise would not gotten those LLs.

Basically, one person losing out on LLs they would have gotten on G+ is another person gaining LLs on LLMP.

It still remains to be seen if the "winners" of this change will be:

1. Non-power user resort guests (due to the 7+ day prebook)
2. The uninformed groups (due to the 3 prebook/tiering)
3. No one, the same people will still figure out how to suck up all the capacity (Disney can't stop us!)

My personal belief is #2, but I actually think it will be pretty minor. I'm planning to stay offsite on my next trip and fully expect to get the same number of LLs as before... Potentially more actually because I now have 3 "tracks" to power use.

 

[Purduevian]

I wonder if this will be a money saving/power using "hack" people use. For instance, today I could buy AK for $18 and book my family an 8-9pm ITTAB. Then right now as the pass expires (9:01am) it should unlock 3 completely open LL tracks. Switch everything to MK tier 1s without ever setting foot in AK. Meanwhile those that booked MK paid $29 per person are still stuck on 1 tier 1 since the park is opening right now.

I allowed myself 5 refreshes to see what I would book. I got: 9:45am Big thunder (All refreshs gave 9:25-9:45am BTMRR), 2:40pm Tiana's (popped up on the 3rd try), 9:15am space mountain (popped up on the fourth try)

Would you rather pay $29 per person and walk in with 1 tier 1 and 2 tier 2s. or pay $18 a person and walk in with 9:15 Space, 9:45 Big thunder, and 2:40PM Tiana?

Trying this "hack" again from my house to see what I could get. AK $17 today, MK $27. If I had booked an 8am-9am ITTBAB and let it expire. I think at 9:01am I could go for 3 tier 1s at MK and save $10 per person...

I gave myself 5 refreshes:
9:40am HM, 10:05am BTMMR, and 11:10am SM. No Tiana's today, but I still think this is a better strategy than just prebooking MK.

 

[GoofGoof]

You are 100% correct and I totally missed it because the conversation had steered towards riding all the tier 1 attractions at DHS in a day.

I'll amend it to say that each individual ride LL capacity remained constant through this change. My point was meant to be, if on G+ you used to be able to ride SDD, ToT, RnRC, MMRR, and MFSR all on LLMP now you only get SDD, ToT, and MFSR... your LLs for RnRC and MMRR now go to someone that otherwise would not gotten those LLs.

Basically, one person losing out on LLs they would have gotten on G+ is another person gaining LLs on LLMP.

It still remains to be seen if the "winners" of this change will be:

1. Non-power user resort guests (due to the 7+ day prebook)
2. The uninformed groups (due to the 3 prebook/tiering)
3. No one, the same people will still figure out how to suck up all the capacity (Disney can't stop us!)

My personal belief is #2, but I actually think it will be pretty minor. I'm planning to stay offsite on my next trip and fully expect to get the same number of LLs as before... Potentially more actually because I now have 3 "tracks" to power use.

Except for the most busy times I believe it is likely to be most of all 3 Due to the tier limits I am assuming that on all but the most busy days there will be many more tier 1 slots than people to pre-book them meaning that combined with day of drops (which we will figure out timing on) there will be plenty of opportunities to get multiple or all of the tier 1s in one day of use.

#1 and #2 who were not power users will now get a tier 1 and whatever 2 tier twos they want. If these people were unaware of the time of drops and the need to constantly refresh under Genie+ then it’s likely those 3 reservations will be at least as good and likely better than what they would have gotten under Genie+. People are also less likely to buy later in the day which was never a good idea. The power users will figure out how to use the system and as you said, having 3 tracks to work could actually be better than Genie+ for power users spending the day at a park and even for park hopping. The obvious exceptions are that you cannot repeat rides so anyone wanting to do that loses out and you can’t do the evening stack so anyone wanting to do that is also losing out. So I think it’s fair to assume most power users will figure this out and get most of what they want.

We need to wait and see how capacity looks once fully ramped up. So far in very early reports it looks like maybe the new system is at least as good at 3 of 4 parks with more issues at MK.

 

[nickys]

You are 100% correct and I totally missed it because the conversation had steered towards riding all the tier 1 attractions at DHS in a day.

I'll amend it to say that each individual ride LL capacity remained constant through this change. My point was meant to be, if on G+ you used to be able to ride SDD, ToT, RnRC, MMRR, and MFSR all on LLMP now you only get SDD, ToT, and MFSR... your LLs for RnRC and MMRR now go to someone that otherwise would not gotten those LLs.

Basically, one person losing out on LLs they would have gotten on G+ is another person gaining LLs on LLMP.

It still remains to be seen if the "winners" of this change will be:

1. Non-power user resort guests (due to the 7+ day prebook)
2. The uninformed groups (due to the 3 prebook/tiering)
3. No one, the same people will still figure out how to suck up all the capacity (Disney can't stop us!)

My personal belief is #2, but I actually think it will be pretty minor. I'm planning to stay offsite on my next trip and fully expect to get the same number of LLs as before... Potentially more actually because I now have 3 "tracks" to power use.

Replying to your post because it seems quite appropriate. And is an example of #3 in action, albeit with only a day to learn the new system.

Two Disney newbies had half a day in DHS pre-cruise. They planned to arrive at DHS around 1pm for Savii’s and had an ADR at Ogas around 6ish.

Being newbies they asked a friend to help them, who booked the following for them on Wednesday @ 7am for Thursday:

Single LL for Rise
Multipass LLs for Slinky, TSMM and ToT

On Thursday he directed them around the park from his home and this is what happened:

Started with Muppets before doing Savi’s.

They rode TSMM and he booked an LL for MFSR.
Then they rode Slinky and he searched for RnR without luck so booked an immediate Star Tours, which he pushed back so they could eat.
They also decided to skip ToT so that was modified to MMRR (again no RnR available).
They rode Rise & Star Tours, and he managed to book RnR for them for after their Ogas reservation.

Everything ridden except for ToT (their choice) and Aliens.

Over the course of the day he had modified MFSR and RnR to earlier times and ST to a later time.

Rise went down just before they boarded the escape pod so they managed to squeeze it in later using their multi-experience pass.

That’s a pretty good day. Obviously helped by the fact that no one had pre-booked earlier than one day ahead.

 

[GoofGoof]

Replying to your post because it seems quite appropriate. And is an example of #3 in action, albeit with only a day to learn the new system.

Two Disney newbies had half a day in DHS pre-cruise. They planned to arrive at DHS around 1pm for Savii’s and had an ADR at Ogas around 6ish.

Being newbies they asked a friend to help them, who booked the following for them on Wednesday @ 7am for Thursday:

Single LL for Rise
Multipass LLs for Slinky, TSMM and ToT

On Thursday he directed them around the park from his home and this is what happened:

Started with Muppets before doing Savi’s.

They rode TSMM and he booked an LL for MFSR.
Then they rode Slinky and he searched for RnR without luck so booked an immediate Star Tours, which he pushed back so they could eat.
They also decided to skip ToT so that was modified to MMRR (again no RnR available).
They rode Rise & Star Tours, and he managed to book RnR for them for after their Ogas reservation.

Everything ridden except for ToT (their choice) and Aliens.

Over the course of the day he had modified MFSR and RnR to earlier times and ST to a later time.

Rise went down just before they boarded the escape pod so they managed to squeeze it in later using their multi-experience pass.

That’s a pretty good day. Obviously helped by the fact that no one had pre-booked earlier than one day ahead.

For reference, according to touring plans 7/25 was a 7 crowd level at DHS. So not peak crowds, but not empty either. No pre-booking could be a factor but that’s a significantly better outcome than what some people feared.

 

[JD80]

You want it to be more complicated?! What's wrong with you people?

I've said a long time ago that if they were gonig to have a pay skip system, I would have had a pay per ride. Make everything a LLSP/ILL and make the cost subject to demand like ordering an Uber.

Teacups would be a dollar and Tron would be $20.

Pretty simple and it would work like mobile order.

 

[JAB]

I've said a long time ago that if they were gonig to have a pay skip system, I would have had a pay per ride. Make everything a LLSP/ILL and make the cost subject to demand like ordering an Uber.

Teacups would be a dollar and Tron would be $20.

Pretty simple and it would work like mobile order.

The problem with this is that, there's nothing limiting how many people can enter the express lane at any given time. As we've seen, there's far more demand for an express lane than there is supply, and that's by design. If everyone could just pay to enter an express lane at any time, not only would the express lanes now have long waits, it would make the FP/LL issue of making standby waits longer even worse, and I think it would actually make the average wait time go up for a lot of people, if not most. Seems like a lose/lose for everyone.

 

[TheMaxRebo]

Replying to your post because it seems quite appropriate. And is an example of #3 in action, albeit with only a day to learn the new system.

Two Disney newbies had half a day in DHS pre-cruise. They planned to arrive at DHS around 1pm for Savii’s and had an ADR at Ogas around 6ish.

Being newbies they asked a friend to help them, who booked the following for them on Wednesday @ 7am for Thursday:

Single LL for Rise
Multipass LLs for Slinky, TSMM and ToT

On Thursday he directed them around the park from his home and this is what happened:

Started with Muppets before doing Savi’s.

They rode TSMM and he booked an LL for MFSR.
Then they rode Slinky and he searched for RnR without luck so booked an immediate Star Tours, which he pushed back so they could eat.
They also decided to skip ToT so that was modified to MMRR (again no RnR available).
They rode Rise & Star Tours, and he managed to book RnR for them for after their Ogas reservation.

Everything ridden except for ToT (their choice) and Aliens.

Over the course of the day he had modified MFSR and RnR to earlier times and ST to a later time.

Rise went down just before they boarded the escape pod so they managed to squeeze it in later using their multi-experience pass.

That’s a pretty good day. Obviously helped by the fact that no one had pre-booked earlier than one day ahead.

That is pretty good and about what I got done our last trip using G+ where we "slept in and stacked" - only thing was I was getting 1 tier 1, then another, then another and then moving to tier 2, vs now coming in with one tier 1 and two tier 2s and then going from there. But if people are able to do what they got done on most days, that is sufficient I think

 

[JD80]

The problem with this is that, there's nothing limiting how many people can enter the express lane at any given time. As we've seen, there's far more demand for an express lane than there is supply, and that's by design. If everyone could just pay to enter an express lane at any time, not only would the express lanes now have long waits, it would make the FP/LL issue of making standby waits longer even worse, and I think it would actually make the average wait time go up for a lot of people, if not most. Seems like a lose/lose for everyone.

This is probably not worth discussing because it'll never happen, but I'll leave it at this (DM me if you want to continue the convo because I find it interesting).

If there are 100 slots to sell per hour. The first 10 slots cost $5 the next 30 cost $10 then next 30 cost $15 then the next 30 cost $20. Anything over 100 is now $40. As demand drops and time passes, it makes its way back down to 10 based on how many people are in the LL.

You can write a simple dynamic script that sets the price.

 

[doctornick]

Ah, I hadn't thought of it that way. I saw another comment that the system isn't really designed for you to use it on every ride, even as that's how I want to do it. We'll see how things shake out.

Yeah, there’s no way that everyone purchasing G+ or LLMP could all get a pass for every eligible attraction. The capacity just isn’t there. I would spitball and say the average number of attractions that can be booked is probably around 4 per purchaser, maybe 5.

In order the have it function as a “everyone gets one pass for every eligible ride” system they would have to sell a ton fewer G+ or LLMP. And if they did that, we’d be looking at a price many times greater (like $75-100 per person per day) to make up for the revenue. And that would have bad PR I would think both in being unaffordable for “regular” families and also being unfavorable compared to Uni’s system that is more similar but allows unlimited rides.