When are the 4th, 5th, etc FassPass+ Bookings Going to be Available via MDE?

[WDWYankee15]

I assume it is only temporary that you cannot book additional FastPasses on your mobile device when you use you original 3 in a day. I may be wrong but I figured they are working on programming and logistics to make it work. Like when the initially rolled out FP+ to offsite guests, these guests had to use the in park kiosks to book FP's. Now they can use the MDE on their mobile apps. In fact it was fairly short lived how long they were limited to just kiosks.

So this brings up the questions, when are the 4th, 5th, etc FassPass+ bookings going to be available via MDE?

 

[Tom]

That's a good question. I have no idea why guests have to book additional FPs at the kiosks. Sounds like extremely poor planning on their part. Why roll out a feature if the app isn't ready to handle it? Oh, wait....

 

[Rob562]

That's a good question. I have no idea why guests have to book additional FPs at the kiosks. Sounds like extremely poor planning on their part. Why roll out a feature if the app isn't ready to handle it? Oh, wait....

Probably because they knew they can make changes to their in-house software system quickly and easily and roll the feature out to appease all the people loudly complaining about no park hopping or additional FP+ choices.

It takes a while to develop and implement a change to an app and get it rolled out to the phones.

-Rob

 

[cw1982]

Probably because they knew they can make changes to their in-house software system quickly and easily and roll the feature out to appease all the people loudly complaining about no park hopping or additional FP+ choices.

It takes a while to develop and implement a change to an app and get it rolled out to the phones.

-Rob

This. And, based on what I saw this week, there are some bugs that need to be ironed out of the app before they allow for park hopping those passes from phones.

Clearly, Disney doesn't want people booking an extra FP for one park while they are still in another, as evidenced by the fact that the kiosks only work for attractions in their respective parks. This makes perfect sense to me, because they wouldn't want people booking an extra FP and not allowing enough time to get to the other park to use it. Depending on how well the app was working each day, some (most) days it knew which park I was in right away and would pull up wait times for the park I was in, and some days it would automatically pull up MK wait times. Either way, since we can pull up wait times from anywhere for any of the parks, I would say they need to put something in place that only allows the phone to book the extra FP when you are actually in the park of that attraction. Given that the component of the app that tells which park you're in didn't work consistently, I would think this would need to be fixed first.

 

[rt06]

I think in this manner, people will move a bit more expeditiously through the rides, exits, dump shops, just to get to a kiosk.

 

[cw1982]

I think in this manner, people will move a bit more expeditiously through the rides, exits, dump shops, just to get to a kiosk.

Honestly, it wasn't too bad for us last week. The kiosks are all over the place, and I never had to wait more than a few minutes to get to the front of a line. They usually have several people working them, so things move pretty quickly. I never really felt the need to rush to a kiosk, because we were never that far from them to start with, and honestly the wait times for most things weren't generally bad enough to make getting that extra pass necessary. It was more of a "let's look and see what else we can get a fastpass for" than a "hurry up and get in line so they don't run out of HM passes!" But maybe that was just us. We had already booked our first three for our top priorities each day, so anything else was gravy.

 

[Tom]

Probably because they knew they can make changes to their in-house software system quickly and easily and roll the feature out to appease all the people loudly complaining about no park hopping or additional FP+ choices.

It takes a while to develop and implement a change to an app and get it rolled out to the phones.

-Rob

I know.....but this feature wasn't a surprise to anyone, including Disney. The app should have been designed to accommodate it from the beginning, with a simple "toggle" to activate it and customize it. More work is being done on the server-side anyway, not by the actual app. It's just a graphical interface that reads/writes to the same set of data the kiosks and website access.

It just doesn't make sense that they'd roll out such a major change to the system and not have it even remotely accommodated by the app.

 

[snayak]

I'm torn on the issue. On one hand, it would be super convinient to be able to book the 4th fastpass via app as soon as the 3rd one is done - on the other hand, then people would randomly book fastpasses and not actually have any incentive to use it (eg, stay at the pool longer vs head to Epcot just for a Soarin' FP).

At least by limiting to people who are IN the park there is a higher chance it will actually be used and not go to waste - currently the way to do that is physically via kiosk.

 

[Brian Noble]

I'm going to guess "Never." Or, at least, "Not for a very long time."

It can't be too easy to get a 4th (and subsequent) FP+. After all, if there were capacity for that many for everyone in the park to begin with, it seems likely that they'd just extend the pre-reservation limit to four. Furthermore, this is not at all well-advertised. It was announced on the Blog. Once. But, there's no in-park signage that I am aware of. This looks to me like a bone thrown to the former "power-users" of FP, not something meant for everyone in the park.

 

[Dwarful]

Well, we ran into what I would consider 'longer' wait times in the MK, but only in a few locations. Mainly in the Kiosk area by the restroom between Adventureland and Frontierland. We have been going to WDW for years...usually 2 - 3 trips per year with APs even though we live in Illinois. We were used to being able to use 10+ FPs in the Mk on an average day. This trip it took more planning, and longer waits vs. me just taking all five of our passes and going to the FP machine with the shortest line. The Kiosk area I mentioned above also seemed to be the one with the CMs most likely to NOT let you make your own selection.

It would be great to be able to skip the kiosks but I don't see that happening for quite a while or never based on what we experienced and comments above.

I will say that we ran into several first time guests who had no clue what FP was all about. we were in line for the carousel in MK about 8 PM one night when the family behind us got into a bit of an argument over FPs. It was a large group of two families and grandparents all together. The teen kids in the group kept telling the adults FPs were free and the two dads and grandpa kept saying "Nothing in Disney is free!". So finally, we struck up a conversation and tried to explain how it works. that poor family spent the entire day one of their vacation w/o using the benefit of FPs. They had done Universal earlier in their vacation and assumed it would cost like Uni's. We also ran into one mom on day one at 12:30 in MK asking for help on making her first three FP selections and linking her cards. So, for all of us who know how to work the system there are still many first timers that don't have a clue.

 

[cw1982]

@Dwarful I agree that the kiosks at the restrooms at the juncture between Adventureland and Frontierland were easily the most crowded. I think they were just the most visible. Great opportunity to remind ourselves to check the maps... the kiosk in front of Jungle Cruise wasn't far from there at all and never got that busy.

As far as the complaint I'm seeing on various threads about CM's not letting guests do the kiosk thing themselves (not directing this at you, just making a general comment here)... I had a different experience on that one. I did get to touch the screen at the kiosk in that very spot in front of those restrooms, and I immediately felt the need to go scrub my hands down... and I am NOT a germophobe! That screen had some kind of gunk on it that made it difficult for the screen to sense my touch. They really should have shut that one station down long enough to clean that crap off... but instead, the CM came over when he saw the screen wasn't working for me, saw how gunked up it was, and told me to use my fingernail. That worked better, but it was a bit unsettling that he didn't seem to be too embarrassed about how dirty that screen was lol.

So, ever since our first night, I had no qualms letting CM's touch their own screens. Cuts down on germs being transferred, and for most people (not us who have played with the system since January, but the people who don't know much about the system) it actually probably makes the line move more quickly to have someone working the passes who knows what they're doing. Sure, it's an annoyance for people who DO know what they're doing, but Disney has no way to differentiate between the two, so IMO it's easier for them to streamline it for everyone and keep the lines moving.

 

[GrumpyFan]

I'm going to guess "Never." Or, at least, "Not for a very long time."

It can't be too easy to get a 4th (and subsequent) FP+. After all, if there were capacity for that many for everyone in the park to begin with, it seems likely that they'd just extend the pre-reservation limit to four. Furthermore, this is not at all well-advertised. It was announced on the Blog. Once. But, there's no in-park signage that I am aware of. This looks to me like a bone thrown to the former "power-users" of FP, not something meant for everyone in the park.

I think you're right. I would venture to guess they're not going to rush to have it on the app, at least not yet.
Having it only available at the kiosks allows them tighter control over how many are distributed also.
So, for now we can consider it an insider's perk or tip.

Honestly though, when we were there in May, we used it once for something, but by the time our FP+ time came around, the standby line was less than 15 minutes making it almost unneeded.

 

[Dwarful]

cw1982 I agree completely. The CMs over in Tomorrowland told us to use our fingernails when we made our selection. But they primarily did it for us. I too felt the need to clean my hands and was glad I had wipes and sanitizer until I could get to the RR.

 

[Dwarful]

I'm going to guess "Never." Or, at least, "Not for a very long time."

It can't be too easy to get a 4th (and subsequent) FP+. After all, if there were capacity for that many for everyone in the park to begin with, it seems likely that they'd just extend the pre-reservation limit to four. Furthermore, this is not at all well-advertised. It was announced on the Blog. Once. But, there's no in-park signage that I am aware of. This looks to me like a bone thrown to the former "power-users" of FP, not something meant for everyone in the park.

I think you are 100% right. We only did the 'power - user' method this trip in MK. One day in MK the CM said to me "Wow! You sure have used a lot of 4th FP's today" and I said "Yes, we sure have".

 

[cw1982]

I think you are 100% right. We only did the 'power - user' method this trip in MK. One day in MK the CM said to me "Wow! You sure have used a lot of 4th FP's today" and I said "Yes, we sure have".

On our 2nd MK day, we kept going back to the same kiosk over and over (in front of Jungle Cruise) to get our next FP. First for Jungle Cruise, then as soon as we got off we got one for Pirates, then went right back and did Haunted Mansion. The same girl helped us all three times... by the time that third visit rolled around, she was jokingly saying, "you again?!?" as we smiled and headed her way. It was quite funny.

 

[Dwarful]

we used that one a lot in MK and then the one between Buzz and Monsters Inc. I avoided the one in Fantasyland like the plague because it was always jammed up like the one by the Adventureland restrooms.

 

[sjhym333]

When I hear someone say that they used 10+ FP's in the MK under the old system that boggles my mind.

 

[Violiav]

I just don't understand how people are so clueless about going to Disney World. I just don't get it. Where people are paying for a thousands dollar vacation how can they not know anything about where they're going? I've never even set foot there and I feel fairly well prepared. Granted, I'm sure there's things I won't have anticipated, because I've never been there before- but such is life.

 

[GrumpyFan]

I just don't understand how people are so clueless about going to Disney World. I just don't get it. Where people are paying for a thousands dollar vacation how can they not know anything about where they're going? I've never even set foot there and I feel fairly well prepared. Granted, I'm sure there's things I won't have anticipated, because I've never been there before- but such is life.

The original Fastpass system was around from 1999 up thru the end of last year (14 years), and even on our trip in 2013, I still saw lots of guests who did not know what it is. This is the same reason why so many go to Disney and spend SO much, and then complain about it, because they didn't get their money's worth.
Most people don't want to spend a lot of time planning and preparing for a vacation, they just want to go and be entertained.

 

[cw1982]

The original Fastpass system was around from 1999 up thru the end of last year (14 years), and even on our trip in 2013, I still saw lots of guests who did not know what it is. This is the same reason why so many go to Disney and spend SO much, and then complain about it, because they didn't get their money's worth.
Most people don't want to spend a lot of time planning and preparing for a vacation, they just want to go and be entertained.

Yep! This was my husband. I think I drove him crazy planning everything these last few months... totally worth it though! Even just coming here and reading these forums gave us a phenomenal amount of information that really made our trip better! In this day and age, there's no reason why most people who are going to WDW can't plan appropriately and have a great time.