The lady and I were at the parks yesterday, thanks to the invitation of our good friend working there. A few thoughts:
- Show: The parks look good overall, the maintenance is still at a good level. Most effects were working fine, including lift 3 of BTM. The castle rehab is imo a success, as the original vision is not denatured and it's a good and much needed refresher. Orbitron looked good too!
- Paid Fastpass (Lightning lane/Premier Access/whatever) : so we actually tested this with my friend on a few rides, and we are a bit shocked at the usage. Granted, the day was pretty busy.
For Rat, our first ride, the LL queue was more full than the usual Fastpass queue! The standby was at 70'. We waited around 10'.
After a ride on Catastrophe Canyon (+some garbage), we went to ToT also through LL. Posted standby 60'. Here the LL queue was almost empty, 5-10 ppl, we immediately got in the library.
We then went to the actual theme park and tried it on PM, posted standby 35'. 4-5 ppl in the LL.
Last LL of the day was BTM were it was also heavily used, we were in the train after a bit more than 5' due to where the queue merges in.
Overall, I've noticed that the tipping point around 50'-60' standby, and mostly on family rides. The return times were within the next 30 min max, usually you could return instantly. The impact on standby was very noticeable on family rides, and less so on the more thrilling rides.
I've overheard a few guests ask questions about this new queue to CMs and to my surprise, they were actually ok what the idea that yeah, that queue is a paying add-on.
- App usage: the app was heavily advertised at the turnstiles so I've seen a lot of people on it. Obviously to also try and sell more paid Fastpass. I've overheard some discussions like a kid asking his mom whether she was able to book their spots for the Lion King show, and the mom surprised that this feature was not for COVID purposes but that it was also actually chargeable.
- Friendliness of CMs: maybe it was because I was recently in Port Aventura, but woaw I once again was so pleasantly surprised by how kind, patient and accommodating the CMs were. They really made our day so much better. Even when our friend had to go and it was just the lady and I, they were regardless extremely friendly.
We had a good day, only disappointment was of course the canceled entertainment (Illuminations...) and that the latest Christmas parade was during daytime (16:45).
numbers.
