From an inside view, NextGen really is a disaster. So many things haven't worked as planned.
- Interactive queues - No further investments on changing queues. Either they are an operations nightmare or things break or things just aren't used thus not worth the money spent.
- Gateless Turnstiles - In a perfect world, these do make it quicker and easier to get into the park, but everyone with old tickets has to wait in line to get new tickets which doesn't make people happy. On top of all that, during this year's party season they have realized that every single paper e-ticket for the Halloween & Christmas parties requires assistance from a Guest Relations cast member which is over half of the party visitors. As the article pointed out, during phase closing there isn't much preventing guests from storming the gates or lack there of.
- Wi-Fi & Mobile Networks - WDW has had to create a wi-fi network equivalent to an entire cities worth of wi-fi hot spots. The problem is both mobile and wi-fi connections can be spotty and heavily overloaded resulting in slow connections and dead areas. On the plus side, this is improving greatly, but at a huge cost. Also all of those touch points are using a mobile or wifi connection. Even the grounded touch points are not hard wired.
- Confusion & Learning Curve - As with any new system, there is going to be a learning curve, but many cast are finding out that guests don't want to necessarily learn. They want someone else to do it for them or for it to magically happen. Some guests aren't customizing their MyDisneyExperience accounts or their MagicBands. Guests are entering the park with no Fastpass choices selected and no knowledge of how to do so. The ones that do are having trouble navigating the app or learning how it works. You think the guest complains for Stitch's Great Escape are bad, this is much worse.
- Lack of Help - Need help with your Fastpass+ selections, simply visit a kiosk.
4 kiosks at Magic Kingdom with Frontierland and Tomorrowland not currently having one. Guests are coming up to legacy FP kiosk to get FP and can't with a MagicBand. They either don't speak English, don't have a smartphone, or can't seem to get the app to work. So they have to walk all the way to a kiosk on the other side of the land to get help. Only a hand full of cast seem to know exactly how it works too. That's because Disney hasn't rolled out the experience to cast members. They all haven't experienced it themselves or had time to work through the system as a guest.
- Technical Difficulties - Want to change your FP+ reservation to an earlier time that is maybe 30 mins from now! Sure! Good luck having it read correctly when you show up. Parties are showing up with screenshots of their selections to have to prove they made their choices. Some members of the party have a FP and others have issues. Extra Magic Hours over the past two weeks has been a nightmare too. New devices are supposed to read each MagicBand, but instead the batteries are dying, the apps are freezing, and it works when it feels like it.
- Slowing Things Down - While MyMagic+ has made things quicker to enter the park (in general) and quicker to pay (in general), it has really slowed down operations. First we now have FP+ installed at attractions that never had it resulting in growing standby lines. The average time to get a family of 4 in through a Fastpass Return point with paper tickets is maybe a second or two. The average time to get family of 4 through with MagicBands for FP+ is about 10 seconds (in general). You can see it this holiday season already, there are lines to get into the Fastpass queues resulting in some situations where there is FP line outside of the return point, but not one inside. God forbid, guests have troubles at the touch points. In fact, DAS has be the least of operations' nightmares since it has been rolled out. FP+ is the major problem with guests getting upset.
- Poor Choices & Feeling Tricked- The choices for guests using FP+ are terrible. At two of the four parks, guests can only pick one headliner attraction and then are forced to use their remain 2 FP+ choices on trivial selections some of which are a complete joke. Guests are also discovering this, especially first time visitors. Sure Monsters Inc Laugh Floor, Journey into Imagination, American Idol Experience, and its tough to be a bug are all attractions a first time visitor might want to enjoy, but on a typical visit (not peak capacity), these attractions don't hardly have waits. Guests use their FP+ and realize it wasn't needed and think they wasted their FP+ choice, which they did. Again the problem is that they really didn't have any other choice. Limiting it to three is also making guests quite angry. They are seeing non-MagicBand guests walk up to kiosk to get FP how they want and multiple headline attractions sometimes exceeding three in a day and they realize they can't do that. They don't care that they can book ahead or do it on their smartphone. That doesn't matter once they are in the park and see the wait times. Let's be honest, adding FP+ was an terrible idea, especially when many attractions were hardly using or removing legacy FP such as Haunted Mansion, Stitch's Great Escape, Mission:Space, LIghts Motors Action, Voyage of the Little Mermaid, MuppetVision3D, Captain EO, and its tough to be a bug.
Overall, MyMagic+ and NextGen has been awful. Either the roll out was too slow or it has been too fast. It is now at the point that they can't go back easily and the problem is that they are suffering from so many issues that the guest experience is suffering. The frontline Cast Members have seen it all along, but it is just now trickling up. I'm pretty unhappy about it all. It's pathetic when WDW fans get excited for new restrooms or free poster give aways when down the road they are offering new lands and new attractions.
