Some FP+ Info

[andyman8]

It's time for some more math! Let's explore the possibility of running standard FP and FP+ at the same time. For now, let's just look at one extremely popular attraction; we'll use Space Mountain. These calculations are based on those found in my previous post.

I don't know the specific numbers, but I've heard estimates of Space Mountain's hourly capacity being somewhere near 2,000 riders. Now, we'll again assume Disney is using twelve slots, so well divide 2,000 by 12 to get 165 (rounded down from 166.666 because you can't go above capacity), so that means that in every slot you can only have a total of 165 potential riders. Now, assuming every FP+ user who has a FP+ within that particular slot returns around the same time, you have 100 people now able to ride the attraction in the FP+ queue and only 65 people able to ride in the standby queue. To decrease FP+ wait times, many more FP+s holders will be let on to the attraction then standbyers.

To further put that into perspective, each hour 1,200 FP+ users will be able to ride while only 800 standby guests will be able to ride. Imagine WDW also distributes 300 standard FPs each hour (so 25 FPs per slot). Now, you have only 25% of hourly riders coming from the standby queue.

So, while Disney could use FP and FP+ together, standby lines would skyrocket. That being said, we don't know if there will be a decrease (or increase?) in guests using the standby queue after FP+ is implemented.

[ManyMinnie]

Originally Posted by andyman8

It's time for some more math! Let's explore the possibility of running standard FP and FP+ at the same time. For now, let's just look at one extremely popular attraction; we'll use Space Mountain. These calculations are based on those found in my previous post.

I don't know the specific numbers, but I've heard estimates of Space Mountain's hourly capacity being somewhere near 2,000 riders. Now, we'll again assume Disney is using twelve slots, so well divide 2,000 by 12 to get 165 (rounded down from 166.666 because you can't go above capacity), so that means that in every slot you can only have a total of 165 potential riders. Now, assuming every FP+ user who has a FP+ within that particular slot returns around the same time, you have 100 people now able to ride the attraction and only 65 people able to ride in the standby queue.

To further put that into perspective, each hour 1,200 FP+ users will be able to ride while only 800 standby guests will be able to ride. Imagine WDW also distributes 300 standard FPs each hour (so 25 FPs per slot). Now, you have only 25% of hourly riders coming from the standby queue.

So, while Disney could use FP and FP+ together, standby lines would skyrocket. That being said, we don't know if there will be a decrease (or increase?) in guests using the standby queue after FP+ is implemented.

So my high school Algebra teacher was right when he assured me I'd need this information later in life? *sigh*

[dadddio]

Originally Posted by Mad Hattered

This. We have two non-expiring tickets, one with 6 days and one with 10 days. Will they end up converting those two tickets to RFID or will I have to go to a ticket booth every time I'm there and switch them out for the number of days I want to use?

You just go to Guest Services and have your ticket swapped.

Originally Posted by Mad Hattered

I still don't understand the 3 or 4 FP per day for one park only, though. Are they trying to phase out the PH option as well??

I'm missing the connection between being able to preschedule 3 or 4 FPs and phasing out PH. Currently, we can't preschedule any FPs. Why would being able to preschedule some be the death of hopping?

Originally Posted by andyman8

Taking it further, let's say Disney wanted to increase the amount of FP+s available during a given slot up to 100 (so increasing the amount distributed by 11) for Peter Pan, Space, and Thunder, they'd then have to take away 11 FP+s from less-popular attractions bringing the amount of those available down to 78 per slot. Here's the catch, though: Disney has to take those FP+s away from attractions in the same category or tier, so they can't just take them away from Pirates or PhilharMagic, they need to take those away from Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin, Enchanted Tales with Belle, Town Square Theater: Meet the Disney Princesses, and Splash Mountain (the last one could be optional as they only need to decrease three). Something similar could be done in the second tier.

Why would they need to take away slots from one attraction to increase slots at another?

[Elandon]

The addition of FP+ is a fascinating experiment of human behavior. I think I would choose to adjust my strategy as follows: arrange my FP+ attractions at, say, epcot for after 4 or 5 PM. I would then head to magic kingdom at RD and do as much as I could at the beginning of the day. I think this might work because FP+ will encourage people to plan attractions for later in the day so they can sleep in and miss RD, thus, making the first couple of hours even better than they are now.

[LOVEMY3KIDDOS]

I have not been following this info until reading this...sort-of resisted and now kicking myself. I am not totally against this. I can see how this could be very good for planners. But, I have a couple of questions that I am sure have been asked...so sorry for that.

1. Is there a list (or a speculated list) for each park of rides/attractions that will be included in this? Or will it be everything right down to the Tiki Room and other less popular things? (Just pulled that out of the top of my head as an example.)

2. Will child swap remain the same?

3. I'm wondering how this will be received by those travelling with wide age ranges? For instance, this fall my family is going with my BIL and SIL and their kids. My kids are bigger and ride everything from Dumbo to TOT. Their kids...not so much. So, I am thinking we will not all be reserving the same FP's each day? Kinda forces us to split up?

[LOVEMY3KIDDOS]

Originally Posted by Elandon

The addition of FP+ is a fascinating experiment of human behavior. I think I would choose to adjust my strategy as follows: arrange my FP+ attractions at, say, epcot for after 4 or 5 PM. I would then head to magic kingdom at RD and do as much as I could at the beginning of the day. I think this might work because FP+ will encourage people to plan attractions for later in the day so they can sleep in and miss RD, thus, making the first couple of hours even better than they are now.

A couple of things here...that is a great plan. And, you could do this with all the parks, interchanging them. I agree that it would make people more relaxed and allow sleeping in. That, in turn opens the mornings which is nice. Also, it is quite possible the Heads have considered this whole scenerio...which could encourage adding PH's. We had them on a couple of trips. We are not married to them nor are we against them. We were not planning to get them this time as we felt that it took time away. But, if we save time running for FP's and can get some good am touring in at one park, go back to resort and swim, then go ride our FP rides at another park...they become a strong possibility again.

[dadddio]

Originally Posted by andyman8

Now to the bolded. Oddly enough, I just wanted to say that I agree with the last part of your post (bolded). I originally saw FP+ as a good thing (who wouldn't want to guarantee FPs before you got to the park?) but Disney's official T&C on their site do suggest that FP+ and FP will be mutually exclusive or FP will just go away. If that's the case, I'm not in favor of the new system. For now, I'm basing my position on the official T&C.

I think that the confusion has to do with how we are defining 'FP'. To some, 'FP' means any same-day fastpass received at the parks. To others, it is a same-day paper fastpass received via the current FP machines. It is certainly possible that the current FP machines will go away, but same-day FPs will still be available via the FP+ kiosks or smartphone apps.

[mom2rtk]

Originally Posted by andyman8

It's time for some more math! Let's explore the possibility of running standard FP and FP+ at the same time. For now, let's just look at one extremely popular attraction; we'll use Space Mountain. These calculations are based on those found in my previous post.

I don't know the specific numbers, but I've heard estimates of Space Mountain's hourly capacity being somewhere near 2,000 riders. Now, we'll again assume Disney is using twelve slots, so well divide 2,000 by 12 to get 165 (rounded down from 166.666 because you can't go above capacity), so that means that in every slot you can only have a total of 165 potential riders. Now, assuming every FP+ user who has a FP+ within that particular slot returns around the same time, you have 100 people now able to ride the attraction in the FP+ queue and only 65 people able to ride in the standby queue. To decrease FP+ wait times, many more FP+s holders will be let on to the attraction then standbyers.

To further put that into perspective, each hour 1,200 FP+ users will be able to ride while only 800 standby guests will be able to ride. Imagine WDW also distributes 300 standard FPs each hour (so 25 FPs per slot). Now, you have only 25% of hourly riders coming from the standby queue.

So, while Disney could use FP and FP+ together, standby lines would skyrocket. That being said, we don't know if there will be a decrease (or increase?) in guests using the standby queue after FP+ is implemented.

Given the speculation that they have flooded the FP system with additional slots to see how many they can use for FP+, isn't this pretty much what is going on now? And haven't we seen thread after thread complaining that standby waits have been much longer than expected?

Welcome to the future.

[golf4miami]

Originally Posted by dadddio

I'm missing the connection between being able to preschedule 3 or 4 FPs and phasing out PH. Currently, we can't preschedule any FPs. Why would being able to preschedule some be the death of hopping?

The word on the street from the officials is that you are only going to be able to schedule FP+ in one park a day. So the only way to park hop really would be to schedule all your FP+ rides either in the morning and then go to another park at night, or visa versa. I hate this idea. I like being able to go from park to park and get fastpasses for whatever I want, whenever I want.

Overall I think the thing that I dislike most about FP+ is that they are taking a system that works on current demand and making it more speculative.

[WillAustin]

Originally Posted by Elandon

The addition of FP+ is a fascinating experiment of human behavior. I think I would choose to adjust my strategy as follows: arrange my FP+ attractions at, say, epcot for after 4 or 5 PM. I would then head to magic kingdom at RD and do as much as I could at the beginning of the day. I think this might work because FP+ will encourage people to plan attractions for later in the day so they can sleep in and miss RD, thus, making the first couple of hours even better than they are now.

That's what our plans will look like as well. Rope drop at one park, schedule FP+s at a different park in the afternoon/evening.

[mom2rtk]

Originally Posted by Elandon

The addition of FP+ is a fascinating experiment of human behavior. I think I would choose to adjust my strategy as follows: arrange my FP+ attractions at, say, epcot for after 4 or 5 PM. I would then head to magic kingdom at RD and do as much as I could at the beginning of the day. I think this might work because FP+ will encourage people to plan attractions for later in the day so they can sleep in and miss RD, thus, making the first couple of hours even better than they are now.

I just love all the optimistic people who assume there will be enough FP+ slots to accommodate everyone getting their headliner FP+ slots late in the day. The people who do rope drop still want late day FPs (myself included) but so do the late sleepers.

I do think the ones who get those later slots will be far more tempted to sleep in. But the ones who slept in on the day they were supposed to book their Soarin, TT or TSMM FP slots could very well be "stuck" with only early AM slots anyway.

What I'm most interested in seeing is how many of those folks really show up for the early FP+ slots. Because if they do, that could busy up the mornings enough to balance things out in the end.

If there are only early openings, do you book it and hope you can be there? Even if there are same day in the park FPs available, you won't know whether any will still be available to replace your early appt time if you decide to sleep in and pass on it.

I really just wish they'd get going on this. I'm honestly curious to see how it plays out.

[Cinderumbrella]

Originally Posted by mom2rtk

Given the speculation that they have flooded the FP system with additional slots to see how many they can use for FP+, isn't this pretty much what is going on now? And haven't we seen thread after thread complaining that standby waits have been much longer than expected?

Welcome to the future.

I'm not sure that the future will necessarily look like this. I think they are currently adding as many as possible to see how many the system can handle before standby gets outrageous. If the goal is to get everyone out of line and into the shops/restaurants to spend money I think the number of FP+ issued will have to be less then what we have seen reported over the past few weeks/months since I think we can all agree that the reported standby lines for the headliners has been outrageous.

I am still quietly keeping an eye on all the rumors to see how it will impact me. But it really is getting to be that time when I need to figure out which tickets to buy (From UT at a discount and upgrading to AP's on site or just ordering the APs in advance.) I really hope that they are ironing out all the technical kinks, plus listening to some of the negative feedback, and figuring out exactly how they will roll this out. But it would be REALLY nice if they would just give a timeline.... (coming early this summer, late this summer, this fall etc)

[dadddio]

Originally Posted by andyman8

So, while Disney could use FP and FP+ together, standby lines would skyrocket. That being said, we don't know if there will be a decrease (or increase?) in guests using the standby queue after FP+ is implemented.

Obviously, more people obtaining FPs will result in fewer people waiting in the SB line. The ideal situation would be that if every guest who was interested in riding a specific ride was able to obtain one FP for it. The only people who would then need to be in the SB line would be those people wanting an additional ride. The SB line would therefore become fairly short, but the wait time would be as long as it needed to be.

[mom2rtk]

Originally Posted by dadddio

Obviously, more people obtaining FPs will result in fewer people waiting in the SB line. The ideal situation would be that if every guest who was interested in riding a specific ride was able to obtain one FP for it. The only people who would then need to be in the SB line would be those people wanting an additional ride. The SB line would therefore become fairly short, but the wait time would be as long as it needed to be.

This is one of the pieces I'm really curious to watch. If you can only get 3 or 4 FPs, and only 1 or 2 of those are for headliners, then lots of folks are going to have to stand in standby lines. I think there are just too mnay unknowns to predict how this will pan out. But the pile of threads recently from folks frustrated by standby waits certainly has my attention. Many of them report entering the SB line when it was very short, but standing for extended periods of time watching dozens of FP folks feeding in while they wait. For them it doesn't matter that there weren't many other folks in the standby line. For them, it was a very negative experience.

[mom2mickeyfan]

Originally Posted by mom2rtk

I just love all the optimistic people who assume there will be enough FP+ slots to accommodate everyone getting their headliner FP+ slots late in the day. The people who do rope drop still want late day FPs (myself included) but so do the late sleepers.

I do think the ones who get those later slots will be far more tempted to sleep in. But the ones who slept in on the day they were supposed to book their Soarin, TT or TSMM FP slots could very well be "stuck" with only early AM slots anyway.
What I'm most interested in seeing is how many of those folks really show up for the early FP+ slots. Because if they do, that could busy up the mornings enough to balance things out in the end.

If there are only early openings, do you book it and hope you can be there? Even if there are same day in the park FPs available, you won't know whether any will still be available to replace your early appt time if you decide to sleep in and pass on it.

I really just wish they'd get going on this. I'm honestly curious to see how it plays out.

This what I wonder/worry about. I believe I makes it seem more important to be there if the FP+ was picked in advance. It will make it feel like if they don't make it to that time, they will be stuck in a 2 hour standby line. I think there is a chance that mornings may become busier.

I just spoke to someone I know that just got home from a 5 day trip to Disney and she told me her DD was disappointed because they were unable to ride several of the thrill rides she wanted to ride because there were no FPs, the FPs were too late or the standby lines were 90 to 120 minutes. This was a one time trip. They won't be back next year to catch these rides next time. So for them, this trip was a bit of a disappointment. She did say that she didn't know it was going to be so busy. So it seems they didn't do much research about the travel time.