At the park now, FP+ lines are snaking through the park

[ethanwa]

Remember folks, the parks are VERY VERY crowded right now, especially Magic Kingdom. It's President's Week and a LOT of families have school off.

FP+ lines are normally not this long. And even when I was at Pirate's yesterday and it was snaking out, it moved VERY quickly.

It's not as bad as the pictures make it.

 

[fairyprincess88]

My favorite FP+ apolgetics.

"The FP line is too long."
"Only outside, once you get in the queue it's a walk-on!"
"But I spent 30 minutes standing outside the queue."
"But it was a walk-on inside the queue!"
"...touche'?"

This is exactly what I don't get. If I'm standing in a 20 minute or so line to get inside to the "walk on" portion of the FP+ queue then I still stood in a 20 minute or so line. Just because the line is shorter inside, does not make the outside line magically disappear. Whether it's inside or outside I still have to wait in a long line for something called a "fast pass".

 

[poeticdiabetic]

Ok, so I have a question:

Is there a regular, walk-up line? Or is it only FP and SR lines? The reason why is because if the FP line is too long, I would just jump into the regular line. Can you do that?

 

[DisneyFan2013]

Hand our jungle cruise FP+ return time and the line was snaked to magics carpets, was told by multiple CMs there was nothing they could do, called it and they said sorry too bad. We could change our FP+ but hello we actually planned per their system and it simply doesn't work.

BTMR has FP+ line snaked paste Briar Patch.

At guest relations. No solution.

Really? I'm sorry to hear this. FP+ worked pretty efficiently when I was there in November. I had no problems. I hope this isn't what I have to look forward to on my next trip!

 

[mesaboy2]

Ok, so I have a question:

Is there a regular, walk-up line? Or is it only FP and SR lines? The reason why is because if the FP line is too long, I would just jump into the regular line. Can you do that?

Yes, it's called standby. Bad idea to do that based on length of line.

 

[morethananyonex]

Just wanted to make sure everyone's aware the people standing in the FP lines are not doing it because Disney was feeling generous and offered them a free trip. They paid likely a few thousand dollars to be there between tickets, flights, hotel. Some more.

I've never really understood the "well you're still in Disney!" justification people use to minimize crappy things that happen there. Yeah, Disney is better than snow. The people waiting 20 minutes to enter a FP line paid for the privilege. Nothing stopping anyone here from doing so too.

 

[summerskye]

Ok everybody calm down.

Step away from the MB reader and go the shops. The lines at the cash register are very short. (just don't try and use that arm band thingy...)

 

[ethanwa]

Folks... at MOST rides the FP+ lines moves pretty quickly. You are not waiting "20 minutes" to get on the ride. It's just the entry point where you do your first FP+ scan is slower than handing a paper ticket to a CM (like you did with FP-), which is why the lines snakes out. But it moves quickly.

 

[Eldon_Brasche]

Here's the thing. I don't remember discussing FP return wait times much before 2012. That says something to me all by itself.

I concur Mesa. I don't recall ever having to worry about waiting in a FP line with the exception of Soarin while they queued up the next batch of guests.

 

[patty57]

Except FP lines haven't typically looked like this in the past, even on a holiday weekend.

We've been over Christmas week twice, and never saw anything that looks like these FP+ lines...not even close.

 

[JennaDeeDooDah]

My favorite FP+ apolgetics.

"The FP line is too long."
"Only outside, once you get in the queue it's a walk-on!"
"But I spent 30 minutes standing outside the queue."
"But it was a walk-on inside the queue!"
"...touche'?"

I also love, "But now you don't have to run all over the park collecting fast passes and wasting so much time in yourday!" I never ran all over the park collecting fast passes, but it was usually convenient grabbing one for Space Mountain when I finished Barnstormer and was heading to Adventureland or Frontierland. And really, even if I had run all over the park, is that really that much more a "waste" of my day than standing in a FP+ line that is now 20 minutes longer than the FP line used to be?

 

[Dallas_Lady]

Ugh, this is not good at all. That said, I'm glad people are posting about it on Twitter. It's one thing for Disney to ignore us, cause we're the crazy extremists, but it's going to be hard for them to ignore lots of bad press on social media.

Maybe they shoudn't have put all that free wifi in the parks

 

[JennaDeeDooDah]

Folks... at MOST rides the FP+ lines moves pretty quickly. You are not waiting "20 minutes" to get on the ride. It's just the entry point where you do your first FP+ scan is slower than handing a paper ticket to a CM (like you did with FP-), which is why the lines snakes out. But it moves quickly.

I was there the last week of January - what is supposed to be one of the slowest times of the year - and I faced this at multiple rides. I experienced long lines leading up to the scanner at Soarin, Thunder Mountain, Safari, Everest, and Jungle Cruise. I ended up not using multiple FP+ because of the longer wait when compared to the stand by line. So, while some people experience things very different from this, other do experience things similar to this. Personally, knowing that it's going to be a roll of the dice on whether or not I'm going to have a long line before I ever even get my bracelet scanned isn't a big comfort.

 

[poeticdiabetic]

The reason why I was asking about the SB line is because I was looking at the wait times and they are around 60-75 minutes for the popular rides at MK. That is about the same as US/IOA.

At issue is the FP+ system is issuing too many fastpasses at a time. Normally during the peak days, the fastpass system would give out a certain number of fastpasses and stop. So by the time it reached a certain number, you couldn't fastpass the ride.

What needs to occur is to redo the math. They need to reduce the fastpass count to ensure that the fastpass lines are shorter.

 

[mesaboy2]

Folks... at MOST rides the FP+ lines moves pretty quickly. You are not waiting "20 minutes" to get on the ride. It's just the entry point where you do your first FP+ scan is slower than handing a paper ticket to a CM (like you did with FP-), which is why the lines snakes out. But it moves quickly.

Yeah, I'm gonna go with the pictures for now. And I'd be willing to bet that if that line starts "moving quickly", it's because the CM at the entrance temporarily chucks the mandatory scan to alleviate it, as I've read multiple times before.

 

[Laketravis]

I went back and looked at those Twitter pictures about an hour later and those people are still standing in the same spots.

 

[Senator Tressel]

Fastpass line waits should have nothing to do with attendance levels. Capacity is constant. If it's busy, it should still be the same max number of people being able to enter the fastpass line that there is on any other day. Sure, some slots will not reach capacity on the slowest days, but there is still clearly a problem. If there has been no breakdown, fastpass lines should not be backed up no matter what.

 

[TinkerBelle_325]

We had a pretty good time but only because:
a) we knew it was going to be crowded
b) we have been to WDW lots of times
c) we were able to prioritize what we wanted to do

On Sunday we ping-ponged between DHS and Epcot and, with severely lowered expectations, ended up having a relatively good time, though did not actually do a lot of rides/attractions.

Didn't start out too well though. Got to DHS just after opening and TSM standby was already at 50 minutes (usually more like 30 at that time).

Went to Epcot and had a nice breakfast at the Land and got FP's after breakfast for TT (our main goal for Epcot that day as they were all gone when we got there Saturday later afternoon).

Went back to DHS and spent the afternoon doing rides (just 2 - TSM and StarTours with a FP) and shows.

Then left for Epcot to finish the day with our ride on the new TT. There was a line out the door for FP holders but it moved fairly quickly.

Just a note: when we returned to TSM for our FP time there was a line out the door and down past the FP kiosks for FP holders. The line for standby was very short but the wait time for standby was 3 hours. The CM said they were letting in about 40 FP holders for every 4 standby

Original thread: http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=3067288

This quote is made up of parts of a report from President's Day Weekend 2013....hmmmm looks like the legacy FP entrances were backed up well past the standby line as well....imagine that...WDW was busy on a holiday weekend in 2013 and they were busy again on a holiday weekend in 2014. And both resulted in larger and longer than average FastPass return lines!

 

[annacali]

And when you are done waiting in that "looks really long but don't worry it moves fast" FP+ line for your allotted 3 rides, remember that you are stuck with the "May not look all that long but doesn't move at all" standby line for everything else you wanted to do each day.

Our experience ( as off site guests w no access to FP+) at Thanksgiving was that standby lines were a slow painful walk to nowhere when the FP+ line was backed up--- so much so that we abandoned the park rather than enter them when FP- ran out. Any evidence that this has changed!? I can't imagine going back with only 3FP+ per day after that experience.

 

[summerskye]

I went back and looked at those Twitter pictures about an hour later and those people are still standing in the same spots.

Must not be pictures from Harry Potter where the pictures move...