DCTooTall, I understand your concerns completely. Again, though, until MyMagic+ is deployed and has a few months of operation, we won't know what the end result is in FastPass ratios. And while not everything needs FastPass, many visitors are foreign or first time visitors - Guest who are unfarmiliar with the offerings of parks.
I, personally, love Living With The Land. It's a great way to relax and kill some time. However, this attraction goes unnoticed by many of the aforementioned Guests, who (based on MyMagic+s personal assessments) may also enjoy this attraction. Think much bigger. Think about a system that tries to make sure that everything you do is enjoyable.
I believe the end result is (hopefully) to direct Guests to things they would enjoy - remotely educate them.
Disney has not yet released the final policies on MyMagic+, so there is still no knowledge of how many fastpasses you can prebook, or how it will work. I simply say we need to wait until the program is out to pass judgement. Until then we should be excited and hopeful that the program is both beneficial, and sustainable.
Here's the thing..... Disney already has a lot of attractions that are enjoyable. There are actually very few "bad" attractions at the park. (bad compared to what they replaced... such as Imagination... maybe.... but outright bad attractions... not seeing it.... other than maybe SGE which is bad, and even worse when compared to AE). If Disney was just trying to get people to check out some of the attractions which are overshadowed or get less love than some of the bigger E-tickets, There are much simplier ways of doing it..... such as actually doing a better job of letting people know about them outside of the park map.
I'm also not going to look at "look at what it can do/Add!", instead I'm trying to keep myself just looking at what it's immediate impact is or will be. These would be items like the reports we had earlier this year from people reporting 2hr Standby times as they were trying to "tweak" the fastpass system by letting in 1 Standby family per 10-20 Fastpass groups.
Based off Disney's track record for the past few years, I'm very hesitant to give Disney ANY credit just based off the potential of a new system. We've seen all too often where when given the choice between something that has an immediate bottom line impact and something that may not be as easy to directly translate into a bottom line positive, They've chosen the short sighted immediate option. Some of these we've started to see turn back around (like Resort specific merch, or WDW/DL merch instead of just generic "DisneyParks"), but that's only after Disney has seen the long term negative impact of their decision. (IE. Sure, you save money on creating multiple shorter run unique merchandise items.... but the result is those repeat guests who "must have everything" and are spending a lot more on stuff are no longer buying as much because it's all the same and there's nothing there telling them they need to get this NOW).
So based off this logic, SURE.... Disney can do all sorts of wonderful things to educate guests about some of the hidden treasures they may have skipped in the past... but they are much more likely to shove more fastpasses thru Toy Story Mania even if it pushes that 2hr standby time to 4 hrs. And Again, if Educating guests about the other wonderful options at the park was their goal, It'd be much easier/cheaper to actually highlight these attractions by even mentioning them on some of their advertising and planning materials (like the Free Vacation DVD) instead of continueing to just mention the E-tickets.....which just so happen to be the rides already with Fastpasses.
it's the ole' self fulfilling prophecy.
On a side note, if we all love these places so much we should remember that Disney is not an operation we could direct. Though we all think we could do better, we are not the Board of Directors, industrial engineers for the company (although someone may be) and don't know the true operational challenges that these places face. The Magic Kingdom is the buisiest theme park in the world with a capacity in the high 60,000s that closes regularly during peak times. They need to do something. They have bigger plans than we know, and its not our place to assume we know better than them.
True..... But I also look at the way the parks ran, felt, and operated 10, 20, even 30 years ago.... and compare them to today. It's easy to see the trends on how the goals, priorities, and general direction of the parks has had a major shift from where they once were.
It used to be you could count on the engineers (and imagineers) having a pretty good say in the design and implimentation of new things at the parks. Now, it could be easily argued that if they are even consulted, it's only to put a nice wrapper and spin on the design plans put together by the bean counters.
There was a time when you could see the belief by the BoD that you had to spend money to make money. If they did not invest in the parks, then they couldn't hope to generate more money from the parks. Now with cutbacks in services, food quality, maintenance, staffing, etc... You can see where the thought process has changed to more of a "if we didn't spend so much on the parks, we could make more profit!"
There was a time when the powers that be could see the Monorails getting old and becoming a bottleneck getting guests to/from the Monorail, and deciding that it would be worth investing the money to replace and upgrade the trainsets before they became a liability, disrupted guest flow/experience, and ended up a black eye. Now we have Powers that Be that have continued to push the current trainsets beyond their design-life while cutting back on maintenance, and let their appearance degrade to the point of reminding some guests of the stench/look of some municipal subway systems.... ultimately leading to them becoming a liability, often breaking down or having delays which cause massive guest flow/experience impacts, and really have become a HUGE black eye that's hard to miss for any offsite guests... or those staying in the most expensive onsite "Deluxe" monorail hotels........ and are still showing no signs of willing to invest to replace the trains despite their quickly approaching 25yrs in service.
I have no problems with trusting someone who understands the engineering or quirks of running a themepark. But I do wonder if that person is the one actually in the drivers seat in a project like that, Or if it's just another glorified beancounter who understands the numbers without knowing or caring about all the information behind those numbers. (Which is obviously a much bigger issue that goes beyond Disney in our current world).
Just because someone may be a great salesperson.... or an executive who understand all the intricacies and details of running a movie/television studio.... doesn't mean they are qualified or have a complete grasp of all the factors they'd need to understand when managing or making detailed decisions regarding the operation of a theme park and tourist destination with hundreds of moving parts and larger than some cities.
(And I won't even get into the fact that unlike city's with managers who answer to the citizens who their decisions directly impact, The people making the decisions at Disney answer to money people who know even less about the business and who likely aren't impacted at all by the real-wold consequences of those decisions on the ground)
