FP+ will most certainly appeal to a certain category of existing WDW guest.
However, will FP+ appeal to new guests? Will there be an appreciable number who say, "I wasn't planning on going to Disney World but now that I've heard about this FastPass+ thing, I'm changing my plans and heading to Disney!"
I suggest that the answer to this is "no"; FP+ will not make an appreciable difference in attracting new guests.
Now compare that to a similar question about WWOHP: "I wasn't planning on going to Universal but now that I've heard about this Harry Potter land thing, I'm changing my plans and heading to Universal!"
Most clearly, the answer was "yes". (As a side note, I believe the same answer will apply to a new Star Wars Land at DHS; it
will help WDW's business, assuming it's done decently. IMHO, Star Wars Land is desperately needed at DHS.)
The NextGen initiative was launched at a time when corporate Disney viewed theme parks as a mature business. There was little they could do to increase overall Orlando tourism so instead focus on capturing more of WDW's guests onsite, similar to what the successful (and much less expensive) Disney Magical Express initiative did.
Bob Iger was with Disney when DAK opened in 1998 and would have seen that an entirely new and expensive theme park did not obtain the desired results. He would have observed similar disappointing results after the opening of DCA in 2001. With essentially no theme park experience, I can imagine how these events would have influenced his view of the industry and fed into the narrative that theme parks in mature markets offered limited growth potential.
So, NextGen was supposed to keep more guests (and their dollars) onsite (along with reduce opex), not drive increased attendance.
That changed with the opening of WWOHP in 2010 and Cars Land in 2012. Suddenly it became apparent that theme parks could experience significant attendance increases with the right offering, namely a highly popular IP encapsulated within an entire land. For NextGen, it was too late. Hundreds of millions had already been sunk into that project.
Now preliminary test results suggest that FP+ will have limited appeal. It will be popular among some guests but won't turn all guests into extreme planners. It won't capture guests onsite the way the much less expensive DME did. The fear within the corporate halls at Disney today is that rather than bother with the relatively steep learning curve associated with MM+, guests will simply opt for new and exciting attractions at Universal, hence the relatively recent scramble to try to do something with DHS.
Earlier it was suggested that a younger generation will embrace MM+ technology. This no doubt is true. Alternatively, I suggest that they are more likely to embrace new and exciting attractions at Universal rather than using their iPhones to book attractions that are 40 years old. My teenagers have iPhones but all would rather ride Forbidden Journey than use their iPhones to book Space Mountain 60 days out.
Delays in the deployment of FastPass+ will mean that it will go head-to-head with Universal's Diagon Alley. I know what my money's on to win that battle.
