Can anyone provide a creditable link or knowledge on what percentage FPs are allocated for a ride? Example, I heard that upwards of 70% of Operational Ride Capacity is reserved for FP, an astounding number that proves why Fast passes are a broken system leading to way over crowed common areas.
-
Welcome to the WDWMAGIC.COM Forums!
Please take a look around, and feel free to sign up and join the community.
Percentage of FP's allocated for Rides (WDW)
- Thread starter Drewdifu
- Start date
Sirwalterraleigh
Premium Member
You won’t find it...that’s proprietary info that is protected.
But the number would be high.
Fast pass is a ride rationing system. The only way that works is to ration most of the rides.
The tiers should have tipped everyone off
Would be an interesting number to find.... I suppose if someone wanted to stand by a fastpass entrance for a particular ride all day and count the number of people that used fastpasses that you could come up with a close estimate. Simply map out the number that used a fastpass in 15 minute increments, verify that the fastpasses for that ride were unavailable for any of the times that day and then assume that X percent issued were used. I suspect the maximum number handed out each pay for any given ride is probably fairly stable, from day to day... you can find the through put for any given ride online.... so you could probably get a very close approximation of the numbers...
But in the end... the real question is what difference would it make? Everyone knows the stand-by lines are horrible. Everyone knows Disney isn't going to get rid of the fastpass no matter how much you or I might hate it.... so what would the value of that information be to the average guest?
Seems like obtaining the information would be tiresome to get and aside from being an interesting bit of trivia it would have no real value.
Am I missing something?
Tom Morrow
Well-Known Member
Any cast member who has worked a popular WDW attraction will confirm - 70-80% of the ride's capacity is allotted for Fastpasses. At popular attractions, the CM merging the Fastpass and Standby line is doing a 4:1 ratio of Fastpass:Standby for the majority of the day, sometimes even more.
Sirwalterraleigh
Premium Member
That would confirm the simple eye test.
A 2 hour line for splash mountain would wrap to Windermere and back prior to fastpass...now one relative “short” would have a 2 hour posted standby wait.
WDW lacks capacity - plain and simple. We are quickly getting to a situation where it’s pointless to try without fast pass after about 9 am....many of us experienced travelers already are.
Where have you gone, joe DiMaggio?
Tom Morrow
Well-Known Member
Essentially you have to use Fastpass if you want to experience the same amount of attractions you would if Fastpass didn't exist.
Except you still won't be able to experience the same amount of attractions that you could in the pre-fasspass+ days because there is a limit to the number of fastpasses you can get in a day. Unless you are an onsite guest that gets logged in to the system very close to the 60 day windows opening you won't be able to get all your fastpasses very early you'll almost always have the last of the three in the early afternoon. And you can't try for additional fastpasses until your last one is over.... That is a limiting factor which means that anyone that is just going to Disney for rides will be stuck in those long lines for a lot of the rides they want to ride.
The fastpass, beyond being a marketing tool to provide onsite resorts with another perk, would appear to also be intended to make the guest ignore the long lines on most rides by providing them a very shot line on the few fastpass rides that they get. I guess they figure if you get a near walkon for mine train or Peter Pan that you'll just remember that experience and not think about the 2 hours you spent waiting for Haunted Mansion or Splash Mountain.
Sirwalterraleigh
Premium Member
This is correct...
Fast pass+ has taken the ability to capitalize on “slower” days completely off the table...because everything is booked up anyway.
In the past people had to go with the day organically and that allowed for ebbs and flows. Now with prebooked rides and hard dining...there is effectively none.
It’s like a job now...all that “magic”
Ten rides/shows a day was fairly easy to do in the past...now you have to rig it - If you both overrig the planning AND have the patience
Tom Morrow
Well-Known Member
Correct. To rephrase: "You have to use Fastpass, which now typically involves advanced planning, to experience a similar number of attractions as you would if Fastpass didn't exist at all."
With the old system this wasn't quite as detrimental because the playing field was level for everyone. If I arrived early to DHS, I could either get a Toy Story Mania pass, or alternatively a Rock n Roller Coaster and Tower of Terror within about 2-3 hours. Now, non-resort, non-DVC/AP holders are at a massive disadvantage because those are likely already booked up.
Disney doesn't want people to know the numbers and logistics behind Fastpass, because people are happy if they believe the perception of it.
The perception: "By using Fastpass for an attraction, I am in a smaller percentage of guests that are skipping the longer line."
The reality: The majority of guests riding any major attraction entered using Fastpass. It is not a "skip the line" pass, but rather a form of crowd control/manipulation and virtual queuing.
With the old system this wasn't quite as detrimental because the playing field was level for everyone. If I arrived early to DHS, I could either get a Toy Story Mania pass, or alternatively a Rock n Roller Coaster and Tower of Terror within about 2-3 hours. Now, non-resort, non-DVC/AP holders are at a massive disadvantage because those are likely already booked up.
Disney doesn't want people to know the numbers and logistics behind Fastpass, because people are happy if they believe the perception of it.
The perception: "By using Fastpass for an attraction, I am in a smaller percentage of guests that are skipping the longer line."
The reality: The majority of guests riding any major attraction entered using Fastpass. It is not a "skip the line" pass, but rather a form of crowd control/manipulation and virtual queuing.
justintheharris
Well-Known Member
A 100 fastpass to 10 standby is not unheard of.
Sirwalterraleigh
Premium Member
Which makes it 100% crowd control and makes standbys effectively useless
Marc Davis Fan
Well-Known Member
This. And even though you're not waiting in a line for every attraction, the lines you are waiting in (for the attractions that have FP) will move more slowly. So, people should average the same amount of time spent in line, since the capacity of the attractions hasn't changed. But, the lines will move more slowly (when I was a CM, we were told to let in 80 FP guests for every 20 standby guests), and therefore I think the overall sense of being in "long, slow-moving lines" is INCREASED. Before FastPass, the lines moves at a pleasantly quick pace, so that when queues were themed well, it rarely got boring. Now, we stand in place for a long time, move a few feet, stand in place for another long period, etc., and it makes the whole "line" experience very different and much less pleasant, I think.
That being said, some people here have stated that since fewer people are in the standby lines, FP doesn't actually make them longer (only slower, but that's counteracted by the smaller number of people in them). There are two things I can't square with that claim:
(1) At Disneyland, when an attraction comes back from refurbishment early (e.g., Matterhorn or Space Mountain), FastPass isn't available, the wait times always appear to be substantially shorter. And it's not about the season, etc., because you can see the wait times jump the very next day.
(2) FastPass also seems to make the actual line length longer, and evidenced by how they tested and removed FastPass at DL's Pirates, because it made the lines spill too far into the guest areas. (Unless that was just because they had less space for the standby queue? But it wasn't by much...)
Maybe @lentesta has done an analysis on the effect of FastPass on standby queue length, controlling for all other variables as much as possible?
Tom Morrow
Well-Known Member
When people try to counter argue that if Fastpass didn't exist, theoretical Fastpass holders would just be in the standby line and it would be physically longer but take the same amount of time, they are wrong. They aren't allowing for the fact that by having a second line which takes in on average 80% of the ride'a capacity, this allows for more people to ride before you than what would be possible with only one queue, because it allows people who arrive long after you queue up to ride before you.
An attraction's capacity is fixed. I'll use Expedition Everest as an example. With five trains, Expedition Everest dispatches a train about once a minute, aside from delays. That's 34 people a minute, or 2,040 riders per hour (making it among the highest capacity single-track roller coasters in the world, btw). To make this easier, I'll round to 2,000.
With only one line: You queue up and there are 500 people ahead of you. You will ride in about 15 minutes because 100% of the seats are filled from your queue. If about 34 people continue entering the queue every minute, the line will remain at about a 15 minute wait.
With Fastpass: You queue up in the standby queue and there are 500 people ahead of you in line. Only 8 riders per train are taken from the standby queue and 24 from the Fastpass queue. You will ride in about one hour, pending there isn't an influx of Fastpass which causes them to go to 10-Fastpass:1-Standby. Essentially 1,500 people rode before you in addition to the 500 that are physically in front if you, despite that most of those 1,500 Fastpass holders queued up after you joined the Standby queue. They couldn't be ahead of you in line with only one line if they arrived after you.
Also, I urge everyone to observe just how fast the Fastpass queue moves, especially at a high capacity, rapidly dispatching ride with no pulsing points (such as a pre-show) like Expedition Everest. If there were only one line, it would move even faster than that, which negates how there would be more people physically waiting in the standby queue if it was the only queue.
Fastpass is a broken, garbage system that we're unfortunately forced to use if we want to experience the same amount of attractions we could if it didn't exist. It exists to theoretically allow people to virtually wait for rides and spend more time spending money in shops and restaurants, however it doesn't even accomplish this because you are waiting in slower lines for any attraction you don't have a Fastpass for.
Fastpass+ has only further ensured that the Fastpasses are booked all the time and the Fastpass queues are always full. At the very least, I wish we could return to the old system, or some hybrid of the new and old system that eliminates advanced booking and returns to the old "one at a time" rules.
An attraction's capacity is fixed. I'll use Expedition Everest as an example. With five trains, Expedition Everest dispatches a train about once a minute, aside from delays. That's 34 people a minute, or 2,040 riders per hour (making it among the highest capacity single-track roller coasters in the world, btw). To make this easier, I'll round to 2,000.
With only one line: You queue up and there are 500 people ahead of you. You will ride in about 15 minutes because 100% of the seats are filled from your queue. If about 34 people continue entering the queue every minute, the line will remain at about a 15 minute wait.
With Fastpass: You queue up in the standby queue and there are 500 people ahead of you in line. Only 8 riders per train are taken from the standby queue and 24 from the Fastpass queue. You will ride in about one hour, pending there isn't an influx of Fastpass which causes them to go to 10-Fastpass:1-Standby. Essentially 1,500 people rode before you in addition to the 500 that are physically in front if you, despite that most of those 1,500 Fastpass holders queued up after you joined the Standby queue. They couldn't be ahead of you in line with only one line if they arrived after you.
Also, I urge everyone to observe just how fast the Fastpass queue moves, especially at a high capacity, rapidly dispatching ride with no pulsing points (such as a pre-show) like Expedition Everest. If there were only one line, it would move even faster than that, which negates how there would be more people physically waiting in the standby queue if it was the only queue.
Fastpass is a broken, garbage system that we're unfortunately forced to use if we want to experience the same amount of attractions we could if it didn't exist. It exists to theoretically allow people to virtually wait for rides and spend more time spending money in shops and restaurants, however it doesn't even accomplish this because you are waiting in slower lines for any attraction you don't have a Fastpass for.
Fastpass+ has only further ensured that the Fastpasses are booked all the time and the Fastpass queues are always full. At the very least, I wish we could return to the old system, or some hybrid of the new and old system that eliminates advanced booking and returns to the old "one at a time" rules.
Last edited:
Vacationeer
Well-Known Member
- In the Parks
- No
Fast forward 5 years and standby is only allocated 10% of ride capacity. I’m exaggerating… it’s actually 11% 
Tom Morrow
Well-Known Member
Yeah, now that there's money to be made by purchasing it, we're lucky the standby line moves at all.