Lightning Lane Premier Pass

Jrb1979

Jrb1979

Well-Known Member
How do any of you manage when you go to a park like Dollywood or Cedar Point? Unless you're paying $150 or more per person to have short waits, you will be in 45-90 minute waits all day.
 
LSLS

LSLS

Well-Known Member
Jrb1979 said:
How do any of you manage when you go to a park like Dollywood or Cedar Point? Unless you're paying $150 or more per person to have short waits, you will be in 45-90 minute waits all day.
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Depends on when you go. We went Saturday just for Halloween stuff, and absolutely the case (it was the busiest I have EVER seen the park). But it's the only time. Took my daughter and her friend on a Sunday in September to Cedar Point, and they rode 11 coasters plus a bunch of flat rides in the 7 hours we were there. BUT, there is a large difference in the Cedar Point fast pass vs these Lightning Lanes. There are less of them, and no restrictions. And I will reiterate, it feels different when the lines are moving.
 
ConfettiCupcake

ConfettiCupcake

Well-Known Member
Jrb1979 said:
How do any of you manage when you go to a park like Dollywood or Cedar Point? Unless you're paying $150 or more per person to have short waits, you will be in 45-90 minute waits all day.
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I think you might be coming at this from the angle of being a theme park person first Disney person second. Whereas a lot of other people on Disney boards are coming from the angle of being Disney people first theme park people second if at all. You’re comparing it to other theme park experiences. Some here are comparing Disney to its former self and don’t visit other theme parks in the same way they visit Disney.
 
J

JMcMahonEsq

Well-Known Member
Jrb1979 said:
How do any of you manage when you go to a park like Dollywood or Cedar Point? Unless you're paying $150 or more per person to have short waits, you will be in 45-90 minute waits all day.
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People don't.

It's been discussed before, but why would you think people on a Disney Fan board, who are discussing WDW, would be at all concerned about Dollywood or Cedar Point? Its like going on a Red Sox fan board and asking about how people deal with lines at Yankee Stadium, because they both involve baseball.
 
Jrb1979

Jrb1979

Well-Known Member
JMcMahonEsq said:
People don't.

It's been discussed before, but why would you think people on a Disney Fan board, who are discussing WDW, would be at all concerned about Dollywood or Cedar Point? Its like going on a Red Sox fan board and asking about how people deal with lines at Yankee Stadium, because they both involve baseball.
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I'm not saying to be concerned about other parks. I will say there is no way the majority of Disney guests don't visit other parks ever. I'm sure there is a lot of cross over.
 
KrzyKtty

KrzyKtty

Well-Known Member
jaklgreen said:
I think that if the parks weren't always so busy, that it would bother people a whole lot less. They need to do better, by either lowering how many people they let in or extend hours. Bring back MK being open until 2am. Everyone is feeling the pinch now, both financially and with the time they spend waiting in line. Disney is quickly reaching the tipping point of ing off just about everyone.
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Well apparently they are trying to lower admission by pricing others out, but at lot of complaints about that too 🤣.
 
KrzyKtty

KrzyKtty

Well-Known Member
Jrb1979 said:
I'm not saying to be concerned about other parks. I will say there is no way the majority of Disney guests don't visit other parks ever. I'm sure there is a lot of cross over.
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For every amusement park my family visits, we ALWAYS pay for the skip line option. 🤣 So we just budget the extra price per person.
 
jaklgreen

jaklgreen

Well-Known Member
Splash4eva said:
Im strictly talking about people who choose to spend their “10k” vacation money at DCL instead of say WDW… end of day Disney is getting the 10k. Thats all im referring to…
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Well that is not me. There is no way that I would spend as much on the cruise as I did at the parks. It is not like people plan a vacation based on a set amount of money and then spend all of it just to spend it.
 
BrianLo

BrianLo

Well-Known Member
ConfettiCupcake said:
I agree with you I think this phase is working out things like pricing and how far they can push capacity/availability. Given the way they’re referring to this as a pilot rollout with the deluxe resorts, I’m anticipating the goal is expanding it as far as they reasonably can before it starts impacting the LLMP/SP availability that enough that people actually stop buying that.

People seem very optimistic this will not have an impact on anyone but the users of it. I am not one of those people, and I think once this is fully fleshed out they will be selling as much of the excess capacity that allows for the 4th and beyond LLMP entries especially that they can get away with. That is IMO historically what has happened when they figure out how to profit off of ‘excess’ capacity. Just look how they’ve become masters of monetizing park hours they used to be included in the regular ticket, while not hurting their sales of regular tickets.

I think this is intended to be more mainstream than the VIP tours, club 33, and Golden Oak groups that the level of access and impact on regular guests is being compared to.
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Undoubtedly more people will use this more than figured. Just look at how people are tripping over themselves for the Tokyo Disney Sea vacation packages. At numbers far exceeding a few hundred dollars per person, per day. Inevitably, this sells well to guests who get overwhelmed or don’t want to do the work themselves. Disney will happily book it all for you, at triple the price. It’s not magnanimous, but there is relatively some demand for it.


That said, I don’t think this breaks the current systems. This is all coming out of excess DAS usage. These also are guests that were obviously going to buy LLMP and Single passes up the whazoo. We aren’t flipping people who weren’t going to pay to begin with.

I think the goal here is not to convert everyone towards this system, but to test uptake, usage and price it accordingly. I honestly think Disney is worried it’s priced too low… really. Disney fans are crazy. Again, pointing to everyone recommending the Tokyo vacation packages at like 2.5k-5k for two days.

We’re still down attendance from 2019. LLMP or whatever it is called next is still gate kept behind a price wall. There’s still a bit more perceived valuable ride capacity than there was in 2019. They still are limiting guests to one single slot per ride. So I don’t foresee it becoming less usable than FP+ anytime soon. There’s far more excess than we had 5 years ago.
 
BrianLo

BrianLo

Well-Known Member
jaklgreen said:
Well that is not me. There is no way that I would spend as much on the cruise as I did at the parks. It is not like people plan a vacation based on a set amount of money and then spend all of it just to spend it.
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Vegas Disney Fan said:
They get far less of it though, we have also turned to DCL, as we’ve become more and more frustrated with the parks, but spending an additional $5k a year on a DCL cruise isn’t even close to offsetting the thousands they’re losing from us not having keys at DL anymore, and going a dozen times a year, or WDW becoming a rare trip rather than an annual trip.
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While true, Disney has alluded to how they prefer to capture more money for less effort. They like high yield guests and the cruise ships are high yield for number of days spent with the company. Everyone is a whale, even in the cheapest cabin. They have your room, your food, your entertainment all captured.

Even if they are losing out on whatever the extra 50% of your money, they probably needed to work 300% more for it. Factoring in the discounting on annual passes, etc.

Unlike other operators, DCL isn’t really cheaper than their land vacations on a per hour usage basis. Better perceptual value by being all in and perceived quality than WDW, but they aren’t cheap. Other operators are working to close that gap, but since DCL is typically twice the price, they clearly already have.

Vegas I think you summed it up best. They are getting 50% of your money, but you are spending like 25% of the time with the company’s products now.
 
D

DisneyCane

Well-Known Member
MickeyLuv'r said:
Yes, well partly.
In the days of paper FP, if your return time was less than 2 hours out, you could pull another FP as soon as you used that FP. If your return time was more than 2hours out, you had to wait 2hours.
Also back then, many parkgoers didn't use FP, so that also changed the dynamic.
A few rides ran out of FP fairly early in the day, like Toy Story Mania and Soarin', when both were 'the new big ride' in each park, but many did not.

If demand for FP was soft, then the return times for many rides would be less than 2 hours out. That was part of the incentive to be quick getting to the FP kiosk for TSM. At rope drop, you could pull a FP for TSM that was less than 2hours out, ride it standby before the line got too long, then use the FP- in under 2hours. But those who arrived half an hour after rope drop, you might not get a TSM FP at all.

Standby waits were also managed differently. We rarely waited more than 20minutes for any ride, but the FP queue was often 15minutes long. If ever we arrived to use a FP, and the standby was 20min or less, we usually hopped in the standby instead of using our FP.

Park goers could pull multiple FP for the same ride multiple times in a day.
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It was when your window opened that you could get another FP. It allowed thing like running to 'Soarin at rope drop. Grabbbing a FP with a return window of something like 9:35-10:35. Riding 'Soarin and then going over to TT and getting a FP at 9:35 that would have something like a 10:45-11:45 return time. Riding TT standby because the wait wasn't that long yet, heading back to 'Soarin to use the FP.

Then we would grab a bite to eat go to TT and use our FP. On the way in we'd see how late the return times were getting, specifically looking for a window opening after 5:30 PM. If it reached that point we'd grab one if not use our TT FP first. We'd then leave Epcot with TT FPs with an evening return time and go to lunch and another park.

Then we'd return to Epcot in the evening with a FP for TT and get to do that and SSE and a couple of other things. Basically we would get to do 'Soarin twice and TT 3 times in a day with either FP or a very short standby queue because of rope dropping. Yes, we took advantage of figuring out a strategy and we were hurting other guests ability to get fastpasses but what we were able to do is impossible to achieve with any of the current systems and that one was free.
 
LSLS

LSLS

Well-Known Member
JMcMahonEsq said:
People don't.

It's been discussed before, but why would you think people on a Disney Fan board, who are discussing WDW, would be at all concerned about Dollywood or Cedar Point? Its like going on a Red Sox fan board and asking about how people deal with lines at Yankee Stadium, because they both involve baseball.
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That's not correct at all. You think being fans of Disney is like that of a sports team? And that Cedar Point is the Arch Enemy of Disney? There is almost no similarity, in no small part because Disney doesn't need to beat Cedar Point to advance. Not a great analogy, but it's probably a lot more like going to Texas Roadhouse vs. Ruth Chris. Lots of people on this board have discussed going to other parks and their experiences. We are season pass holders at Cedar Point, which I have discussed multiple times. There is plenty of overlap, and if you honestly think going to Universal or Dollywood or some other park is somehow a horrible attack, not sure what to tell you.
 
Wall-e

Wall-e

Well-Known Member
DisneyCane said:
It was when your window opened that you could get another FP. It allowed thing like running to 'Soarin at rope drop. Grabbbing a FP with a return window of something like 9:35-10:35. Riding 'Soarin and then going over to TT and getting a FP at 9:35 that would have something like a 10:45-11:45 return time. Riding TT standby because the wait wasn't that long yet, heading back to 'Soarin to use the FP.

Then we would grab a bite to eat go to TT and use our FP. On the way in we'd see how late the return times were getting, specifically looking for a window opening after 5:30 PM. If it reached that point we'd grab one if not use our TT FP first. We'd then leave Epcot with TT FPs with an evening return time and go to lunch and another park.

Then we'd return to Epcot in the evening with a FP for TT and get to do that and SSE and a couple of other things. Basically we would get to do 'Soarin twice and TT 3 times in a day with either FP or a very short standby queue because of rope dropping. Yes, we took advantage of figuring out a strategy and we were hurting other guests ability to get fastpasses but what we were able to do is impossible to achieve with any of the current systems and that one was free.
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Those were the days. We had a lot of fun just bouncing from attraction to attraction that way. We’d usually strategize to grab a FP and then stay nearby and wait it out in a nearby standby line. Grab a FP for BTM and wait in line at SM while we waited for our return time. The LLMP worked similar to that old strategy at DL since there is greater concentration of rides and easier (quicker) park hopping ability.

Haven’t had a chance to use it at WDW but based on our experience we expect it wouldn’t be as effective at AK or Epcot where there would be less available times due to less available rides.
 

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