This has been disproven time and time again. It's a myth that gets repeated over and over by people who don't understand queuing theory. Yes, eliminating FastPass increases the speed at which standby lines move. But it would also equally increase the number of people in those standby lines because those people are no longer in the FastPass lines.
I think the idea of these tickets are for the Florida residents who do come for one day and are upset that they wouldn't normally have fastpasses as it is last minute, so this encourages ticket sales, in my opinion.
I agree with your general theory. But do you think there is something to the fact that the FastPass+ system is causing some people to visit attractions they wouldn't otherwise have visited, thereby increasing the wait times beyond the equilibrium you're describing? For example, could there be a family who isn't really particularly interested in Dumbo, but who will end up going to that ride because when they search for FastPass times, it's one of the only things available, so they grab it?
People like to say it’s been disproven without ever actually disproving it. In your example, the water in the blue pipe doesn’t simply effect the speed of the water in the blue pipe, it also inhibits the speed of the water in the red pipe. Fastpass places you in multiple queues at once. If everyone got one fastpass at a time and standby was eliminated completely, THEN it wouldn’t be effecting wait times.
Yes, for particular attractions that's true. But you need to account for what those people would have been doing if FP+ had not been around to "push" them to Dumbo. They would have likely been in line for Mine Train or Peter Pan's Flight or another high-demand attraction. Further, to the extent that Dumbo does not always run at 100% capacity and something like Mine Train always does, there's the possibility that shifting a guest from one to the other actually has a net favorable impact on wait times. An attraction at 100% capacity that loses traffic will have shorter waits, but an attraction below 100% that adds traffic will not have longer waits until it hits that 100% limit.
But both pipes are open to everyone. Sure, if you're someone who opts out of FastPass for some reason, the existence of FastPass will mean you're standing in line longer than you otherwise would. In that way, people who don't use the system are subsidizing the wait times of people who do. I was speaking in aggregate. Average wait times for average guests who visit the average number of attractions.
Agree.
True, but I can still stand on my lawn and yell at clouds. And message boards.
Fifteen years ago you had to be at a park at rope drop and quite literally run to snag a FP for a headliner and it might be that evening, forcing you to schedule your day around a little sheet of paper you have no control over.
Agreed. Between FP+ and the crowds, we often settle for one ride on a favorite attraction when we would have done more in the past. There's no doubt we experience far fewer attractions now than we did in 1999 when we started visiting the parks regularly. Coincidentally that was also the start of FP so I can't compare it to standby only, but obviously FP has changed a lot since then. If given the choice, I would go back to those days even though it meant running across the park. We simply got to do more.
I'll have to inform my family that we never did participate in the rope drop dash for TSSM or Test Track or Soarin. Or that FPs never ran out for the day. Thanks for clearing my memories up for me there. I forgot you were the sole arbiter of pre FP+ park experiences.
Unless you're in the park the same day as these One-Day Ticketholders. Those pre-reserved FP+s are coming out of the stock of FP+s you would have coming to you after you use your first three.
