Spirited News, Observations & Thoughts IV

[ford91exploder]

Only went to The Game once...not as important to me as an undergrad.

Same here but it did break the routine in the late fall

 

[wogwog]

This is me right now.. we just got back from a quick trip to WDW and I realized that I can book FP+ for our mid Oct trip. But I cannot even fathom what I want to do. I messed around with it a bit on the Disney site, but ugh. And the only reason we went down last week was to squeeze in a last minute trip before school starts, that trip was literally booked 3 weeks ago.

I also do NOT like the idea of having 3 FPs tied to 1 park per day. My 11yr old was not happy when she found out she cannot book Pooh in the morning and then Star Tours in the late afternoon. She said "Disney needs to get its act together". LOL Listen the kids TDO! THey are your future dollars!!

Mickey, do not annoy the Princess!

 

[wogwog]

You want to relax on vacation? Are you some kind of radical? Removing tongue from cheek now. Seriously, if you have not already taken a MM cruise try it. All the pixie dust and great guest service with out the Mickey Mouse minus. At least so far.

 

[ford91exploder]

They don't sell aluminum foil at the resorts to begin with.

Except for Fort wilderness Campground, I believe it sold there.

Better off going to Publix or Walmart if you're searching for aluminum foil.

Tin foil hats actually amplify the mind control rays in use at Disney, (Buy, Buy, Buy, Buy mass quantities..)

See this study from MIT

http://web.archive.org/web/20100708230258/http://people.csail.mit.edu/rahimi/helmet/

 

[Clever Name]

They don't sell aluminum foil at the resorts to begin with.

Except for Fort wilderness Campground, I believe it sold there.

Better off going to Publix or Walmart if you're searching for aluminum foil.

I bet they will start selling aluminum foil at the resort gift shops now!

 

[wdisney9000]

And you might even get a few "extras" for participating. Don't know what exactly, but it could be pretty good I would think.

What "extras?" A bonus FP? Is it really worth it IF you have problems with your MB and they give a few bonus FP's as compensation? Is it even a bonus at that point if its just making up for something else? I seriously do not like that they are giving bonus FP's to testers as it is obvious that it is solely to make sure they are happy with the experience. Its great for the testers but it gives such flawed feedback. Its a shame for the people who think they will be able to book more than one D ticket FP per day because they read a review of someone saying they rode Splash and Space on the same day using FP+

 

[wogwog]

I bet they will start selling aluminum foil at the resort gift shops now!

Would it be wrong to pay for the foil with a MB? Will the foil have a Mickey picture?

 

[Tom Morrow]

My brother was a Fantasyland CP in Spring 1999 and saw firsthand the direct impact of a before-FP/after-FP MK. He complained about it to me every night when we talked (we're twins and it was our first time separated, lol...it's okay to laugh, but we're close!), and complained about how it negatively impacted Guests. It was a very popular topic of discussions in break rooms and Vista Way at the time, apparently.

It's another one of those Disney Forums debates I typically avoid, because some people will assert that it doesn't make lines longer or create a negative experience, no matter how much evidence you give them.

It continues to be a popular topic even to this day. Long story short, the average guest thinks Fastpass is great because,they have this illusion that by grabbing a Fastpass, they are avoiding what the majority of guests are doing and being smart by getting a "skip the line" pass.

In reality, grabbing a Fastpass, at least for any attraction with demand (as in, not so much something like Living with the Land or Maelstrom), means you are scheduling a time to enter a line that much more closely resembles the standby line than the actual, physical standby line.

As intended, 80% of the attraction's capacity is devoted to the Fastpass queue. However, since Fastpass does not play out in real life the way it was intended on paper, and people show up to use their Fastpasses in surges rather than in an even flow, the Fastpass to Standby ratio of 4:1 is adjusted to accommodate influxes in Fastpass queue demand, meaning as high as 95% (or more!) of the ride's capacity could be devoted to the Fastpass line.

This is why its basically a gamble to queue up in a long standby queue these days. It could currently be posting a 40 minute wait, but you have no idea how many "Fastpass surges" will happen while you are standing in line, effectively increasing your wait time to much higher than 40 minutes. Conversely, a huge gap in returning Fastpasses could occur that was not anticipated, and the 40 minutes reduces to 15 minutes - problem is, how many people did not enter the line because it was posting 40 minutes and then opted to get a Fastpass instead, which will then inflate the standby line later?

The main argument against this is usually: "if there was only one line, everyone entering the Fastpass queue would be entering the standby queue and the wait time would be about the same anyway." This is false, and here's why: if there were only one queue that everyone entered through and no Fastpass, you have a set number of people front of you that can not change. For instance, let's say there are 500 people in line ahead of you waiting to ride. You only have to wait for those 500 people to ride before you.

Now, with a Fastpass queue taking at least 80% of the attraction's capacity, you have the 500 people physically in front of you, in addition to every single person "skipping ahead" oh you in the Fastpass queue, which in the end is a higher number of people that could ever physically be in front of you if only one queue line was used.

I've said this several times in this thread and I'll say it again. With (legacy) Fastpass, you are making extra effort to essentially ride the same amount that you would be able to ride if it didn't exist at all. Fastpass is the way it is because this enables you spend more of your time shopping and eating, IE spending money. That's it.

In addition to all of this, another negative impact Fastpass has had on the parks is many people now think even 20 minutes is too long to stand in line since they have the option to "skip it", and would rather go through the hassle of grabbing a Fastpass and then backtracking an hour and a half later.

Now, when Fastpass+ eventually replaces "legacy Fastpass" (and hopefully, the extreme GAC card and rider switch abuse which has been well documented and discussed in other threads), and the number of Fastpasses you can use is restricted to three or four per day yet opening them up to basically every attraction, I think we can expect two things to happen:

1. The current high demand Fastpass attractions will see a reduced number of people using the Fastpass queue, and thus will see somewhat shorter wait times in the standby queues.
2. Attractions that previously did not have Fastpass but now do will see somewhat increased wait times as well as a slower moving standby queue due to now having a merge point in the line that was not there before to accommodate Fastpass+.


(edited for clarity)

 

[PeoplemoverTTA]

Now, when Fastpass+ eventually replaces "legacy Fastpass" (and hopefully, the extreme GAC card and rider switch abuse which has been well documented and discussed in other threads), and restricting the number of available Fastpasses to three or four per day yet opening them up to basically every attraction, I think we can expect two things to happen:

1. The current high demand Fastpass attractions will see a reduced number of people using the Fastpass queue, and thus will see somewhat shorter wait times in the standby queues.
2. Attractions that previously did not have Fastpass but now do will see somewhat increased wait times as well as a slower moving standby queue due to now having a merge point in the line that was not there before to accommodate Fastpass+.

Excellent breakdown - thank you! I hope you're right on #1. And I hope that the potential shorter line for Splash offsets the headache that will become the SSE, HM or PoTC queues. We'll see!

 

[WDW1974]

The most offensive aspect of the Next Gen initiative is the fact that it's so blatant an effort to squeeze money out of guests without providing any substantive benefit in return -- there's absolutely nothing subtle about it. And the lies on which Next Gen's marketing is premised are so obvious that it should be an insult to the intelligence of any park guest who thinks about what he or she is really getting out of it, versus what Disney's getting.

This is not to say that corporations shouldn't be concerned about profits. But a good corporation will naturally profit simply by creating a quality product that consumers desire: giving consumers what they want, and making money, are not two mutually exclusive things. Indeed, for corporations that are both financially and creatively successful, the two go hand-in-hand.

In contrast, Next Gen is entirely about making money while providing virtually nothing of value to the consumer: the convenience of not having to carry around a paper Fastpass or take one's wallet out to pay for a purchase is so insubstantial a benefit that it doesn't come anywhere close to justifying the staggering cost of implementing the Next Gen scheme.

Even putting aside the privacy and data-mining concerns -- and even assuming that the project's total cost is closer to $1 billion than $2 or 3 billion -- Next Gen is still an inconceivably poor investment. For those of us who don't have a money bin filled with three cubic acres of cash -- $1 billion is a lot of freakin' money. A lot. Properly and efficiently allocated, $1 billion could be used to add multiple original attractions throughout the four WDW parks, as well as make less visible -- but no less necessary -- changes in infrastructure to improve overall guest experience.

When you're dealing with that much money, you'd better be extremely certain that what you're spending it on is going to be worth it. If you were sinking that amount of money into an attraction or a themed land, for example, you'd be foolish to gamble on a lesser-known property, as opposed to a guaranteed success like Harry Potter.

Instead, those massive sums have essentially been deployed in service to one primary goal: to keep guests on-property and spending their own money, the only way Next Gen can hope to recoup its cost. As has already been shown with regard to DME and DVC, however, that overall strategy begins to falter when the staleness of your substantive offerings outweighs the relative burden of renting a car and driving yourself somewhere else in the Orlando area.

The worst part, of course, is the fact that whatever money has been sunk into Next Gen is money that can't be spent on other projects going forward. In light of the rapidly escalating "arms race" among central Florida theme parks, that error could potentially be one with consequences that last longer than even the synthetic materials in a MagicBand.

Great post. Well worth a re-read ...or in case you missed it.

I have apparently missed 16 pages of fun.

 

[Clamman73]

It continues to be a popular topic even to this day. Long story short, the average guest thinks Fastpass is great because,they have this illusion that by grabbing a Fastpass, they are avoiding what the majority of guests are doing and being smart by getting a "skip the line" pass.

In reality, grabbing a Fastpass, at least for any attraction with demand (as in, not so much something like Living with the Land or Maelstrom), means you are scheduling a time to enter a line that much more closely resembles the standby line than the actual, physical standby line.

As intended, 80% of the attraction's capacity is devoted to the Fastpass queue. However, since Fastpass does not play out in real life the way it was intended on paper, and people show up to use their Fastpasses in surges rather than in an even flow, the Fastpass to Standby ratio of 4:1 is adjusted to accommodate influxes in Fastpass queue demand, meaning as high as 95% (or more!) of the ride's capacity could be devoted to the Fastpass line.

This is why its basically a gamble to queue up in a long standby queue these days. It could currently be posting a 40 minute wait, but you have no idea how many "Fastpass surges" will happen while you are standing in line, effectively increasing your wait time to much higher than 40 minutes. Conversely, a huge gap in returning Fastpasses could occur that was not anticipated, and the 40 minutes reduces to 15 minutes - problem is, how many people did not enter the line because it was posting 40 minutes and then opted to get a Fastpass instead, which will then inflate the standby line later?

The main argument against this is usually: "if there was only one line, everyone entering the Fastpass queue would be entering the standby queue and the wait time would be about the same anyway." This is false, and here's why: if there were only one queue that everyone entered through and no Fastpass, you have a set number of people front of you that can not change. For instance, let's say there are 500 people in line ahead of you waiting to ride. You only have to wait for those 500 people to ride before you.

Now, with a Fastpass queue taking at least 80% of the attraction's capacity, you have the 500 people physically in front of you, in addition to every single person "skipping ahead" oh you in the Fastpass queue, which in the end is a higher number of people that could ever physically be in front of you if only one queue line was used.

I've said this several times in this thread and I'll say it again. With (legacy) Fastpass, you are making extra effort to essentially ride the same amount that you would be able to ride if it didn't exist at all. Fastpass is the way it is because this enables you spend more of your time shopping and eating, IE spending money. That's it.

In addition to all of this, another negative impact Fastpass has had on the parks is many people now think even 20 minutes is too long to stand in line since they have the option to "skip it", and would rather go through the hassle of grabbing a Fastpass and then backtracking an hour and a half later.

Now, when Fastpass+ eventually replaces "legacy Fastpass" (and hopefully, the extreme GAC card and rider switch abuse which has been well documented and discussed in other threads), and the number of Fastpasses you can use is restricted to three or four per day yet opening them up to basically every attraction, I think we can expect two things to happen:

1. The current high demand Fastpass attractions will see a reduced number of people using the Fastpass queue, and thus will see somewhat shorter wait times in the standby queues.
2. Attractions that previously did not have Fastpass but now do will see somewhat increased wait times as well as a slower moving standby queue due to now having a merge point in the line that was not there before to accommodate Fastpass+.


(edited for clarity)

I'm hoping #1 happens...#1 will happen more as people see the benefit of fastpass at meet-and-greets

 

[WDW1974]

I'll point out that it was reported today that MAJOR tech companies such as google, facebook and microsoft have been getting paid by the NSA. Something is very fishy about this NGE and billions of dollars that disney in the past would have never committed to a project let alone allow overruns like is happening. Spirit is right. This whole thing smacks of a government program. It sounds to me like an R and D project for Uncle Sam

Just to be clear again, even though people will misstate my views to suit their agendas, I am not saying the government is involved in any form. BUT ... I am saying that Disney is doing business with a lot of people that have nothing to do with trust, faith and pixie dust.

And anyone who can not see any possible real world/security applications for Disney's NGE is just refusing to see reality.

 

[WDW1974]

In fact, it often seems quite the opposite. Over the last few years, Disney seems intent on imposing the largest price increases on its most loyal customers. Consider what they've done in recent years to Annual Pass holders:

• Annual Pass prices up 17.3% in 2 years.
• Children under the age of 10 now are charged the full adult AP price.
• AP merchandise discount cut in half.
• TIW price up 33% along with more blackout days and excluded restaurants.

It's a bizarre business model, one that I believe would fail miserably in other service industries, such as airlines or hotels, that offer free upgrades, free tickets, etc.

It seems Disney wants to squeeze out every penny from those infected with pixie dust.

I feel the need to once again quote Kevin Bacon in Animal House:

"Thank you sir may I have another."

(Sorry no video; it's inappropriate for a family friendly site.)

From what I've been told from insiders, one major goal of NextGen is to identify more opportunities to squeeze out more pennies.

Rhetorically, why isn't the place that once was cited as the gold standard for customer service willing to implement something so basic as a loyalty program?

It is a funny way of taking care of your most loyal guests, isn't it?

32 years as an APer (forgetting my many years as an AP holder in Anaheim, numerous years in Paris and HK too ... All those cruises and merchandise etc) and they haven't sent me as much as a nice card or LE pin. A few years ago I was paying $298 for it. Now, I'm paying $398. Basically a 25% price increase in about three years.

but they don't want guests like me ...Hell,we remember when Disney actually washed its CMs costumes and didn't send them off property with them. We remember themed merchandise. We remember real menus at restaurants. We remember standards ...Disney standards. would they ever want us any longer?

But Disney is looking for a dumber guest. One who thinks the place has never been better and that the MK has never had shade or working fountains or clean pavement or quick serve locales. They want DVCers. They want addicts. They want rubes. But they are also OK with 'one and dones'because they ignorantly believe there is a never-ending supply out there of folks who will come and blow five grand or 10 in a week or two. They are very mistaken.

 

[ford91exploder]

Just to be clear again, even though people will misstate my views to suit their agendas, I am not saying the government is involved in any form. BUT ... I am saying that Disney is doing business with a lot of people that have nothing to do with trust, faith and pixie dust.

And anyone who can not see any possible real world/security applications for Disney's NGE is just refusing to see reality.

Well Said!

 

[WDW1974]

If you're interested in the possibilities of a technology would you really get overly focused on a company with a poor track record in the field?

No one ever said our government acts intelligently. And Disney is very good at controlling people while on its property. The better question would be why in the world wouldn't the government be interested and intrigued by the possibilities of what Disney is attempting?

 

[WDW1974]

I'm not arguing in favor of FP+ because I have no idea how it will effect standby times or the overall experience. I'm arguing in favor of "let's just wait until full rollout when we actually SEE how it's going to work and, if necessary, we can hate it then."

I don't want to wait. Two reasons: I possess common sense and Disney has lost all trust and goodwill about its ability to actually improve my vacation experience (and not instead make it worse).

 

[Clever Name]

...Hell,we remember when Disney actually washed its CMs costumes and didn't send them off property with them.

Yeah but when you see your favorite princess in a local bar smoking a cigarette and drinking a beer, it makes you think you've got a chance of making your dreams come true!

 

[WDW1974]

If they supplied a huge Petri dish that includes a cross section of the economic strata in a controlled environment, yes I would be interested.

Nothing to add. Again, I just see lots of great points get buried.

 

[flynnibus]

Right, let me read trip posts of a select few people on the internet.

How about I rely on all the CMs I know who work at WDW for their accounts since they were there everyday.

I'll type this slowly for you...

The people that were complaining here... have since stopped complaining about this change even after being in the parks under the new rules. All their tales of doom and gloom passed. And somehow they have managed to survive the parks since.

Why is that so hard for you to comprehend the scope of that point?

Yes I'm talking about 'people on the internet'.. because they were the specific complainers I was pointing to!

Why on earth would I use the complaints or praise of 3rd parties to point to the lack of complaints from someone in particular.

You can belabor this all you want with the woes of the front line CMs... but when the context of the discussion is the community contributors here, I'll use their own words.

 

[scout68]

Anyone catch the segment on 60 Minutes last night?

I am far from a "Big Brother" is gonna' getcha' type of person
but I found this www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50153673n a bit unnerving.

It outlines just how far advanced facial recognition has become.