Lightning Lane at Walt Disney World

[Waters Back Side]

I’m speaking about the people who don’t purchase G+ and just pay for LL cuz the BG and VQ are filled by G+ users.

I have no issues admitting I may be missing something.

Rise and Rat could be purchased by anyone. Not just a Genie user. I can opt not to buy Genie + for my Epcot day and pay to ride Remy (or land a free BG if lucky enough) and I believe..not 100% sure they will only have a Lightning lane for guests who purchase or land a BP. Not the typical Line for Lighning Pass like other rides.

 

[lightningtap347]

The big one is any ability to not use the standby line and get through some rides with a shorter wait. Some of this is toddler problems. I have a son who is just under 2. We were in Disney in July. It is tough to keep a toddler in a line for more than 30 minutes when all he wants to do is go explore. He has a nonstop motor and lines aren't great for a kid who keeps moving, lol. This helps with that. Also, with rider swap where he is not tall enough. My wife and I could swap quicker with this on some attractions so one person isn't flying solo for too long.

Probably also worth noting that we typically stay for a week but only go to parks on 2 or 3 days. As such it isn't as costly as someone who goes to parks for 7 days and would want this for every day.

I don't understand, you could have already done that under the free fastpass system? I don't see what this does for you that is any different than the previous option.

 

[dreday3]

Why did they announce this piecemeal?

Why not just drop all the news at once - pricing, when?
Do they still not know the above yet?

 

[Missing20K]

Rise and Rat could be purchased by anyone. Not just a Genie user. I can opt not to buy Genie + for my Epcot day and pay to ride Remy (or land a free BG if lucky enough)

Right. So for the customer that doesn’t want G+, but does want to pay for SM, what do they do if the G+ users have all the standby VQ reserved and the standby line is closed and the paid LL option is gone, it’s just too bad, so sad?

This is as much a question as a criticism, btw.

 

[montyz81]

This could be the final straw for me. I say “could be” because I am holding out hope for what the redo of Epcot will be when it’s done.

 

[TimeTrip]

The standby lines might be longer than they were before, and there will be a couple of attractions in each park that will require a boarding pass. So, you may be doing less attractions each day, and missing some completely.

This has been debated a ton on other threads, but I think there is a chance that standby lines will be shorter than the FP+ days. Also given that the boarding pass ones didn't really have standby to begin with, I'd say that that isn't much of a change either.

 

[mgf]

I can't decide if I am frustrated by this change or will just ignore it and not pay. Really going to have to wait to see what happens in reality in the fall.

 

[lightningtap347]

I wonder how the guest experience will be if/when families purchase this service and then do not receive the rides they want.

I have to imagine there will be a lot of refund requests, but we haven't seen this system in use to determine if a situation like this will happen.

 

[TimeTrip]

Right. So for the customer that doesn’t want G+, but does want to pay for SM, what do they do if the G+ users have all the standby VQ reserved and the standby line is closed and the paid LL option is gone, it’s just too bad, so sad?

This is as much a question as a criticism, btw.

I'm assuming here you mean Space Mountain? And that is "Tier 1" i.e. not part of G+. There isn't a situation where "G+ users have all the standby VQ reserved". G+ can't reserve anything. Why would standby close aside from park closing? The whole "VQ" was a possibility discussed from the DLP system, but hasn't been part of the WDW Genie announcement discussion at all AFAIK.

ETA: perhaps you are discussing Tier1 rides that would be *boarding pass* only, like RoTR. In that case, if all the passes are gone, and the "individual attraction" purchases are sold out, then yes.. too bad so sad... unless for some reason they get through everyone significantly before park closing that they open standby...

 

[Jeff4272]

I don't imagine that particular scenario would play out very often except on the busiest of days. In which case.. its a busy day, clearly $15 isn't going to provide the same value as on a slow day.

Also, it hasn't been clarified if you get a set "next selection available" time separate from the return time. The chatter seems to be that this is the case. E.g. you can book another at the following:

1. When you use your current reservation
2. If you booked before open: 90 minutes after park open, if that's earlier than your use of the current reservation
3. If you booked after open: 90 minutes after you picked your current time, if that's earlier than your use of the current reservation

Gotcha. But what will be chances of some rides being “sold out”? Except for MK, the other parks don’t have a ton of rides

 

[mightynine]

Has there been any announcement on pre-booking dining? You would think they'd have to limit that somewhat to be able to suggest places to eat with Genie, unless it's just gonna push you to quick service.

I wonder how the guest experience will be if/when families purchase this service and then do not receive the rides they want.

I have to imagine there will be a lot of refund requests, but we haven't seen this system in use to determine if a situation like this will happen.

I think they'd prefer refunds over giving out a pass formerly known as fast. Easier all around.

 

[Waters Back Side]

Right. So for the customer that doesn’t want G+, but does want to pay for SM, what do they do if the G+ users have all the standby VQ reserved and the standby line is closed and the paid LL option is gone, it’s just too bad, so sad?

This is as much a question as a criticism, btw.

I think the line for Rise and Rat serve the same purpose as the Lighning Lanes for the genie plus rides. Only difference is people who got a BG or paid will be in that line. I could be wrong though.

The way I understand it is there is stand by and Lightning lane. For genie + rides you get in lightning lane if you paid the 15 for the day. For the headliner non genie rides you pay for individually and get in their lighning lane. But that lane is not a combination of guests because they cant be chosen as the genie Ligtning passes.

Someone can correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[Trauma]

Why did they announce this piecemeal?

Why not just drop all the news at once - pricing, when?
Do they still not know the above yet?

Maybe they are gauging blowback before revealing more prices.

Although at this point it’s would be willing to believe they just have no idea what they are doing

 

[Waters Back Side]

When can an onsite guest purchase Genie + in advance on the MDE or with an agent? Is it when it goes live or before?

 

[Raineman]

I can't decide if I am frustrated by this change or will just ignore it and not pay. Really going to have to wait to see what happens in reality in the fall.

I have a feeling attractions that normally have low waits, like CoP, LWTL and Gran Fiesta Tour are going to get busier, as people that won't pay will be looking for shorter lines.

 

[Sandurz]

On a personal level I do not know a single person that did not like the old 3free Fp system. I have read that people did not like online, but I do not know anyone personally and I must know at least 25 AP holder from my FL neighborhood, they are all mad about this.

Die hards like the system that heavily benefits die hards, you don't say? AP holders are a vocal minority when it comes to most things about the parks and grossly overstate their financial importance to the company. Having said that, there probably should be some token AP discount on a day of Genie+, or a handful of free days to use throughout the year.

FastPass+ in it's previous form had huge positives for people who knew how to play the system, and negatives for everyone else in the form of bloated standby wait times. This is a re-calibration: less FP throughput means more standby throughput, and shorter FP return lines. So the non-savvy guest in standby has a better time with less waits, and the savvy guest using Genie+ spends less time in return lines and can presumably book more passes than before.

 

[corran horn]

Disney literally stated they made these changes in response to guests comments.

Generally I think anything that makes APs unhappy is good (had one for years when we lived down there and actually got one for a trip that happened two minutes before covid because we stayed so long) but by 'guest comments' my assumption was they asked people 'would you pay money to make this a better experience' and most said yes.

Money is all relative and generally people when they see crowds think they are above average (like Lake Wobegon everybody thinks they are above average) in income and thus can absorb this trade of money for convenience more easily than others can.

If everybody pays for this it'll break it. If nobody pays for it it'll break it. There'll be a mix so it'll probably work for Disney's purposes but certainly people who can just barely make the trip financially are going to suffer.

 

[TimeTrip]

Gotcha. But what will be chances of some rides being “sold out”? Except for MK, the other parks don’t have a ton of rides

It could be much worse at a park like Epcot, but that might balance out with a lower purchase rate because of the lowered perceived value. We won't know til it's out there.

 

[hopemax]

Unless I wanna ride an E that has no BG/VQ left and only $LL remaining. Then it’s a $4-$24 increase pp/ride.

The system since RotR opened already meant once the BGs are gone you had no option to ride at all. It's up to people to decide if having the option to buy in at $24 is preferable over the "cost" of not being able to ride at all.

I finally got my Dad on RoTR in May. I failed at 7AM boarding group, because even though I knew what I was supposed to do, when it came time to do it, the connection had a blip, and it spun on one of the pages. Thankfully, at 1PM the connection was more stable, so we got to ride, but my Dad is convinced that he can't click the phone fast enough to ever get one on his own, as long as the window is only 8-15 seconds. Paying money isn't a happy solution, but it does provide someone like him with a solution.

The biggest thing this system does is jumble up the winners and losers. The losers have been clogging lines at Guest Services since FP+ went into effect. The people who didn't have their tickets before arriving and couldn't prebook. The people who didn't know they were even traveling at 60 days and missed out. The people who could only book at 30 days, or 7 days and found some rides already sold out. The people who didn't know which rides their family would like, because they've never done Disney before. The FP+ system didn't allow people to fix the mistake of not knowing they needed to wake up early on the right day before they even left home. Now, a bunch of previous winners are starting to see how they could end up a loser and are freaking out about being a loser. Disney has apparently learned that those previous losers spend a lot of money too, and they would like to get more of that and give them a last resort option to be a winner.

Now, Disney is responsible for creating a situation where there are only one or two "best" rides per park, that can only make14K-20K guests per day winners in parks with 30K, 45K, 60K guests per day. I am not giving Disney a pass here. But when you've only been a winner, you can't appreciate how giving the people that have been losers for the last 6 years another option might be seen as a relief and a benefit. The FP+ system did not work for a lot of people. I am not convinced this will work either, given the capacity limitations and the FOMO effect. In 1980, there were like 9 E-ticket rides in the MK and because of the ticket books and stingy parents maybe you could only choose 6 of them. But you had many solid choices to build a satisfying day. Now, we've got parks and mentality where you miss one specific thing and it's a disaster. And we've also got parks where there aren't even 6 or 9 E-tickets to build a day around.

 

[A Whole Tano Magic]

I don't understand, you could have already done that under the free fastpass system? I don't see what this does for you that is any different than the previous option.

I agree. Nothing different except fastpass doesn't exist anymore, hasn't for a year and I think everyone pretty much expected wouldn't come back the same. Don't get me mistaken, I would have preferred the old system to come back but that wasn't going to happen and as noted, I would prefer not to pay, but the cost isn't so much for me since we aren't park crazy everyday. So, this is better than what exists now. Also, since there is a cost now, I don't think as many people will use it so it might be less people in those LL lines than normal fastpass times and might make availability to get passes slightly easier. That last part is a little wishful thinking. We won't know for sure until the system is in place for a while.