Why I may not go again

[graphite1326]

Yes it's expensive but so is everywhere else. . I went to WDW becasue I could go on line, get the hotel I wanted on the dates I wanted, pick my tickets, add things like Park hopper (yes you can still do all those things). But now I have to book my own flights and transportation somewhere else. I loved just walking down to the first floor at the airport and getting on a bus. In other words once I drove to my departing airport I was taken care of. Then there was checking in to your return flight at the resort. Loved it, I didn't have to think or worry about it I was taken care of. With all this it's still not the main reason I may not go again. I could handle these changes. It's GOTTEN TOO DIFFICULT. I don't want to pick my park months in advance and knowing if I want to change it later I could lose out all together. I don't want to get up early in the morning and try to get my "fastpasses" and pay for it too (I'm older and not that savey on a phone). I don't want to, at pretty much the same time as getting fastpasses because if you don't you won't get it, try to get on one of the rides that is not include in Genie+. Nope that's not how I want to relax and have a good time with no worries.

 

[Diamond Dot]

I have to agree. From my perspective it feels about guest control, not about guest experience or comfort and definitely not about magic. The reservation system is all about controlling guest behaviour and not about regulating guest numbers in the parks. Room checks are timed to be at the most inconvenient time for guests, so no concern for our comfort there. The food courts don't open until 7am, while the loss of FP+ forces a lot of people into doing early morning hours to get rides in, so you can choose between queuing for breakfast or queuing for transportation and the queues for MK buses were insane by 7am.
As for transportation from MCO to Disney, Virgin Holidays provided the service as part of the package via Mears Connect, but, we have to pay and book it ourselves if we book our trip through Disney.
There is no logic to the changes Disney has made, perhaps logically it's the time to look at other Disney parks like Tokyo and Paris instead.

 

[JIMINYCR]

I’m with you. The points that you began with, I am agreeing that I don’t like the changes but I can work around them. We no longer fly but now drive. If we still flew, losing the convenience of ME would be an issue, still we could work around it. Uber works well and is easy to arrange.
But the hassle to pick park days, being restricted where you can enjoy your days, having to pay more to ensure the attractions you want get done, along with excessive crowds are making me rethink whether Disney will be a destination for us. Money and higher costs aren’t as much a problem for us as other inconvenient policies. We do well to save for what we want, but what we want shouldn’t be so difficult to work out.
We aren’t going back probably for another year or two so we have time to decide what’s to come.

 

[JoeCamel]

May?

 

[NickMaio]

I really hope they ditch the park reservation nonsense soon.
It's crazy.
My friend was telling me if you get a 3 day park ticket you have 5 days to use those 3 days once you reserve your first day. That's poppycock, it used to be 2 weeks to use any ticket no matter the days.
These changes make zero sense for guest convince. It's all about saving money with staffing the parks.

It's a total PUT OFF.

 

[graphite1326]

I’m with you. The points that you began with, I am agreeing that I don’t like the changes but I can work around them. We no longer fly but now drive. If we still flew, losing the convenience of ME would be an issue, still we could work around it. Uber works well and is easy to arrange.
But the hassle to pick park days, being restricted where you can enjoy your days, having to pay more to ensure the attractions you want get done, along with excessive crowds are making me rethink whether Disney will be a destination for us. Money and higher costs aren’t as much a problem for us as other inconvenient policies. We do well to save for what we want, but what we want shouldn’t be so difficult to work out.
We aren’t going back probably for another year or two so we have time to decide what’s to come.

You said it better than I.

 

[Club Cooloholic]

Yes it's expensive but so is everywhere else. I went to WDW becasue I could go on line, get the hotel I wanted on the dates I wanted, pick my tickets, add things like Park hopper (yes you can still do all those things). But now I have to book my own flights and transportation somewhere else. I loved just walking down to the first floor at the airport and getting on a bus. In other words once I drove to my departing airport I was taken care of. Then there was checking in to your return flight at the resort. Loved it, I didn't have to think or worry about it I was taken care of. With all this it's still not the main reason I may not go again. I could handle these changes. It's GOTTEN TOO DIFFICULT. I don't want to pick my park months in advance and knowing if I want to change it later I could lose out all together. I don't want to get up early in the morning and try to get my "fastpasses" and pay for it too (I'm older and not that savey on a phone). I don't want to, at pretty much the same time as getting fastpasses because if you don't you won't get it, try to get on one of the rides that is not include in Genie+. Nope that's not how I want to relax and have a good time with no worries.

Picking the park at least has some potential to help me as a guest know they MAY be capping crowds. But the waking up at the crack of dawn on "vacation" to pay to reserve for a ride everyday and then having to be on my phone all through the day to keep checking opening times is stress inducing and not "fun". One of the few good things about visiting during the first year of the pandemic was there were no fastpasses or Genie. It was all standby and it made for a more relaxed trip. We missed doing some things due to lack of time and too long of a line but that was ok, it wasn't like I failed at securing them because I woke up at 7:15 instead of 6:45, or my phone had a bad wifi connection. And honestly if they just had longer park hours that would have allowed us to do most of the rides we wanted.

 

[SamandplanningUK]

We are going in July, we will NOT be using Genie, this is a vacation and not a work day where we have to wake up on a schedule and stick to it all day so that's a hard no from us. Plus, what's the point in paying for something that you might not be able to use during busy periods anyway, literally throwing our money away doesn't appeal, we are happy to queue.
My husband and I are on our phones all day for work, want to put them in my bag and leave them there!
I believe Disney has kept the reservation system because they knew the crowd levels would be high on the first year people started to feel safe to vacation again. I'm ok with this, by not using Genie we still have flexibility on the day to ride what we want, when we want (to a degree!)
My biggest problem with Disney right now is how 'loud' their issues are in the media/forums. Better to run things as quietly and efficiently as possible behind the scenes to allow the magic to continue. I know this is ignorant but hey, it's holidays!
EDIT: just realised that last sentence might sound like a dig at people posting about it, it's not mean to be that way at all, apologies!

 

[graphite1326]

I'm surprised that people feel the same as I do. I was preparing for backlash and negative comments.

 

[John park hopper]

Done with Disney for so many reasons expense, required planing, Genie, crowds, add to it Disney politics, condition of parks

 

[WondersOfLife]

It’s ridiculous. At least the Florida resort is now. Only reason I’m going in June and august is due to promising to take a few first timers. After august that’s it.

 

[DisneyDave71]

The 2 things that bother us the most are park reservations and genie+. Paying for genie+, while annoying, is understandable, but why not just use the old FP+ system, where you could do it for your whole trip 60 days out, and then just charge us for that. The idea of having to go through the stress of essentially what we did for the RotR virtual queue (which was fine for one ride) every day of our vacation is crazy. How is it that nearly everyone could get a minimum of 3 FP+s/day before, and the lines still weren't crazy, but now the lines seem to be backed up through the park like we've never seen before. Same with park reservations. Sometimes on past trips we might change our minds which park we want to start out at the next day, or maybe get to the park, use our FPs, and then by 11 or so want to hop to another park. Now we have to wait until 2. And insane lines back up throughout the parks - doesn't seem like "crowd management" is working - or it doesn't mean what we think it means...

 

[Diamond Dot]

We are going in July, we will NOT be using Genie, this is a vacation and not a work day where we have to wake up on a schedule and stick to it all day so that's a hard no from us. Plus, what's the point in paying for something that you might not be able to use during busy periods anyway, literally throwing our money away doesn't appeal, we are happy to queue.
My husband and I are on our phones all day for work, want to put them in my bag and leave them there!
I believe Disney has kept the reservation system because they knew the crowd levels would be high on the first year people started to feel safe to vacation again. I'm ok with this, by not using Genie we still have flexibility on the day to ride what we want, when we want (to a degree!)
My biggest problem with Disney right now is how 'loud' their issues are in the media/forums. Better to run things as quietly and efficiently as possible behind the scenes to allow the magic to continue. I know this is ignorant but hey, it's holidays!
EDIT: just realised that last sentence might sound like a dig at people posting about it, it's not mean to be that way at all, apologies!

The Genie+ is a scam, plain and simple. I know from personal experience. I found it impossible to get reservations for the non premium lightning lanes and yet, where we're the people who were managing to get these reservations because I rarely saw any kind of lines at these attractions lighting lanes.

 

[JusticeDisney]

I wish everyone who said that they are done with WDW would actually be done with WDW. Would result in a lot shorter lines for the rest of us!

 

[Diamond Dot]

The 2 things that bother us the most are park reservations and genie+. Paying for genie+, while annoying, is understandable, but why not just use the old FP+ system, where you could do it for your whole trip 60 days out, and then just charge us for that. The idea of having to go through the stress of essentially what we did for the RotR virtual queue (which was fine for one ride) every day of our vacation is crazy. How is it that nearly everyone could get a minimum of 3 FP+s/day before, and the lines still weren't crazy, but now the lines seem to be backed up through the park like we've never seen before. Same with park reservations. Sometimes on past trips we might change our minds which park we want to start out at the next day, or maybe get to the park, use our FPs, and then by 11 or so want to hop to another park. Now we have to wait until 2. And insane lines back up throughout the parks - doesn't seem like "crowd management" is working - or it doesn't mean what we think it means...

If Disney bothered to monitor guest movements in and out of the parks they would see that resort guests go in early and many leave the parks late morning when the numbers increase, leaving them around 2 or 3 hours to kill before they can park hop. If they insist on keeping this pointless system they should change the parkhopping time to 11am and this business of having to unlock your parkhopper needs to go. They should allow you to visit any park you want without unlocking the parkhopper after midday.

 

[harryk]

Picking the park at least has some potential to help me as a guest know they MAY be capping crowds. But the waking up at the crack of dawn on "vacation" to pay to reserve for a ride everyday and then having to be on my phone all through the day to keep checking opening times is stress inducing and not "fun". One of the few good things about visiting during the first year of the pandemic was there were no fastpasses or Genie. It was all standby and it made for a more relaxed trip. We missed doing some things due to lack of time and too long of a line but that was ok, it wasn't like I failed at securing them because I woke up at 7:15 instead of 6:45, or my phone had a bad wifi connection. And honestly if they just had longer park hours that would have allowed us to do most of the rides we wanted.

"No fastpasses or Genie .....all standby and it made for a more relaxed trip" This is the reason I have always been against the fast-pass system. Standby is more 'equitable'.

 

[Pepper's Ghost]

If Disney bothered to monitor guest movements in and out of the parks they would see that resort guests go in early and many leave the parks late morning when the numbers increase, leaving them around 2 or 3 hours to kill before they can park hop. If they insist on keeping this pointless system they should change the parkhopping time to 11am and this business of having to unlock your parkhopper needs to go. They should allow you to visit any park you want without unlocking the parkhopper after midday.

Huh? Is this really a thing? That's a sincere question. I've not been back to Disney for many years, mostly because I hate that they make you a slave to your phone while on property.

Funny thing is, if they scrapped Genie+, LL, reservations, and FP altogether (I'd prefer they add back ME too), I'd probably book a trip for this Fall despite price increases. Because of all of these things, I'm not going for the foreseeable future. Btw, I understand not everyone agrees with my points about FP, but that's just my opinion. I'm not trying to convince anyone else to agree. I'd be okay with them going back to paper FP system, only not paper. Walk over to the FP kiosk, and scan your Magic Band, or a QR code on your phone, and you now have a FP on your Magic Band for use at a later time that you can see on your app or whatever. It doesn't have to be actual paper. To me that solves SOOO many problems. You're no longer a slave to your phone constantly trying to find open FPs. You don't have to wake up at some ungodly hour to book FPs. It's just a better way to institute the last iteration of FP that I personally believe worked fairly well. AND, people can go back to talking to each other in standy-by queues and enjoying their vacation rather than burning up their phone charge, and ignoring the "World" around them.

 

[DisneyDave71]

The 2 things that bother us the most are park reservations and genie+. Paying for genie+, while annoying, is understandable, but why not just use the old FP+ system, where you could do it for your whole trip 60 days out, and then just charge us for that. The idea of having to go through the stress of essentially what we did for the RotR virtual queue (which was fine for one ride) every day of our vacation is crazy. How is it that nearly everyone could get a minimum of 3 FP+s/day before, and the lines still weren't crazy, but now the lines seem to be backed up through the park like we've never seen before. Same with park reservations. Sometimes on past trips we might change our minds which park we want to start out at the next day, or maybe get to the park, use our FPs, and then by 11 or so want to hop to another park. Now we have to wait until 2. And insane lines back up throughout the parks - doesn't seem like "crowd management" is working - or it doesn't mean what we think it means...

Of course, all that said, we are going for 2 weeks in July. It's still our favorite vacation spot, and still magical. We don't really get into the political stuff, or else we'd never enjoy anything. Just hope some of these non-sensical operational decisions are changed sometime soon.

 

[eliza61nyc]

I'm surprised that people feel the same as I do. I was preparing for backlash and negative comments.

????really. On this site? Every week we get these type of threads or very similar. I think people who enjoy wdw and still go really don't hang out on this thread or site.
Now IMO it's mainly old timers that don't like any of the changes.
I'm more shocked if someone says something nice about Disney.
Of course the standard answer will be how they really "love " wdw.

Happy vacations wherever you may go.

 

[marni1971]

Every week we get these type of threads or very similar.

I’ve noticed that too. Roughly only in the last five years or so. And it’s accelerating. There were virtually none a decade ago.

Says something….