FP+... who hates it

[Cormoran]

In general review sites are going to elicit more negative returns than the overall population would return.

I don't know if I agree with your assertion, based on reviews I've read on Trip Advisor. It seems that there are more above average reviews than negative reviews.

 

[Planogirl]

The popular wisdom was that supposedly for every vocal complaint that there is some larger number that never bother to say a word. I suspect that that is true of both sides of the discussion. The truth is that no one really knows, it's all conjecture. I can only speak for how I feel which is not impressed.

 

[Cormoran]

The popular wisdom was that supposedly for every vocal complaint that there is some larger number that never bother to say a word. I suspect that that is true of both sides of the discussion. The truth is that no one really knows, it's all conjecture. I can only speak for how I feel which is not impressed.

How many times have you used FP+? We head down in 2 weeks for out 2nd FP+ trip.

 

[Planogirl]

How many times have you used FP+? We head down in 2 weeks for out 2nd FP+ trip.

Just once but I have a feeling that that is enough. I hope that you have a great time and that the crowds have died down a bit when you go.

I will only add that even if just a small percentage dislikes FP+ then that's not good. Businesses usually try to minimize the number of unhappy customers and I doubt that Disney would be any different.

 

[Cormoran]

Just once but I have a feeling that that is enough. I hope that you have a great time and that the crowds have died down a bit when you go.

I will only add that even if just a small percentage dislikes FP+ then that's not good. Businesses usually try to minimize the number unhappy customers and I doubt that Disney would be any different.

Agreed. So far, I'm in the same camp as you. I did not enjoy planning this next vacation. I know we'll enjoy our vacation, but I'm prepared

 

[MrInfinity]

Is the trouble with this picture FP+ or is the trouble the person stumbled upon a thread dealing with trying to eek out the absolute maximum benefit out of FP+? Supposed instead of FP+ we were dealing with legacy FP and the same person stumbled upon a thread talking about FP runners and disconnected machines and non enforcement of return windows and people coming up with the "plans of attack". Then someone from Disneyland chimed in where for a while some of the "disconnected machines" were conditionally disconnected. For Example,if I remember correctly, if you pulled a FP for BTMRR you could immediately pull a FP for something else. But, if you pulled the other FP first you couldn't pull a BTMRR FP until 2 hours or the return windows started.

And this is why FP+ is so successful overall. Yeah, it's bad for the folks who learned to use the FP- system well, and who do not want to relearn a new system or change how they planned or toured to get most of the benefit... (even tho they were willing to tour a particular way to get the most out of FP-)

Most people are simply not analyzing things as deeply as someone out here who is trying to min/max their trip. I know it's hard to believe that people go to Disney World without a plan, but -- they do. Most guests are perfectly fine with just going to Disney world. This is why they never used FP-, and now, why it's perfectly fine to be handed 3 rides, not overthink it, and go. For most guests, it is a benefit that they never got before. It's easy to use. It's not hard planning. I bet 99% of guests going to WDW do *not* create a spreadsheet, nor have ever heard of wdwinfo, touringplans, etc.

At it's heart FP+ is easy, you scan your ticket you get 3 return times.

It really is! You sign up on the website, you pick 3 rides. Anyone who is able to post pics to facebook or something like that can handle the tech involved in picking 3 rides on the app. No elaborate planning, no spreadsheet, no colorful schedules. It's not that complicated to think of 3 things you might want to ride in a day at Disney World. The system practically walks you thru it. Pick a park. Check some rides you might like, then it gives you 3 rides with 3 return times. Done! Any further micromanaging is totally by choice.

 

[Angel Ariel]

I absolutely agree that there are many out there who just want to go to Disney World and don't do any kind of planning beforehand...who don't know about the DIS, touringplans, EasyWDW, etc. The fact that these people* never wanted to do the preplanning is precisely why, IME, they balk at the idea of picking times for rides 2 months before their trip. They* don't like the idea of ADRs, much less ride reservations.

*By "these people" I am only referring to people I have personally interacted with. I am not making a generalized statement, rather one about my personal experience.*

So while yes, some people who like to tour without a plan may be thrilled at being handed 3 rides, that can't be generalized to everyone who vacations that way.

As always it boils down to the fact that everyone has different touring styles and different vacation styles. There's never going to be a 100% consensus on a system like this. And that's OK.

 

[AriesAriel]

It really is! You sign up on the website, you pick 3 rides. Anyone who is able to post pics to facebook or something like that can handle the tech involved in picking 3 rides on the app. No elaborate planning, no spreadsheet, no colorful schedules. It's not that complicated to think of 3 things you might want to ride in a day at Disney World. The system practically walks you thru it. Pick a park. Check some rides you might like, then it gives you 3 rides with 3 return times. Done! Any further micromanaging is totally by choice.

I love planning vacations. I booked our DVC rental last July for our trip in May. I couldn't wait to book dining reservation at 180 days out and had some initial planning of which days we'd spend on which parks based on crowd calendars. I even got a BOG dinner reservation & was excited. Up until this week when I made our FP+ reservations, I had enjoyed planning.

I went to Disney without kids in 1996 (no fast pass, that I remember?). I went to Disney with 3 kids in 2001 (legacy fast pass). This time I am taking my family of 4.

I can say that I did NOT enjoy staying up until midnight just so that my daughter can meet Elsa & Anna. I was up til 2am making FP selections. Even still, since then I've tweaked and tweaked based on Touring Plans evaluating my plan and times which should be obtainable. It's truly too.much.planning. And this is someone who, for the most part, loves planning vacations & dreaming of a "can't come soon enough" vacation and how it will look.

We have one child that is 39.5" (please pray she grows! LOL!) and switching out the fast passes so that one adult could always be with her is absolutely NOT "intuitive" or easy. My son said he didn't want to meet E&A so I canceled him off and was going to just put him with my sister's party on her FP for Space Mountain. I spent 2 hours on Tuesday morning trying to get it worked out. And I am anything BUT computer illiterate. The problem is with having to always select 3. Once I cancelled him off, then couldn't get him added back on just one, there was a panic of "oh great, my 6 yr old has no FP but the rest of us do." I couldn't cancel ours or I'd for sure lose E&A. And in order to get him on one of our reservations, I had to cancel all of my sister's plans for the day and add him as a member of her party. It truly should NOT be that difficult!! If someone in my sister's party also wanted A&E, then what? I couldn't have canceled hers! And when I called Disney they were no help.

I feel D.O.N.E. And now I feel like I need a vacation from my vacation.

 

[Alfalfa]

Conventions like "People are more likely to complain than compliment" and "Negative opinions spread faster than positive ones" were common marketing ideologies formed before the advent of social media when it took a bit of effort to produce a response.

Social media has reduced that effort to a click of a like button or a short typed comment that doesn't have to be folded, stuffed into an envelope, and mailed with postage or dialed from a telephone and investing several minutes worth of verbal dialog. Anonymity also facilitates positive rebuttals to negative comments as evidenced by these very threads.

It's worth re-thinking any concept that negative opinions only seem to be more prevalent because they are louder, easier to post, or more inclined to be shared.

 

[JimmyV]

In general review sites are going to elicit more negative returns than the overall population would return.

I don't know if I agree with your assertion, based on reviews I've read on Tripadvisor. It seems that there are more above average reviews than negative reviews.

I think Cormoran is correct here, because with the tremendous expansion of social media, the "review sites" have become "the overall population". They are now one in the same. TripAdvisor and Yelp and Urban Spoon and Facebook can no longer be called "review sites" that are a self-selected subset of the population. They are the population. And if the general population tends to give more positive feedback than self-selected critics, then so too will TripAdvisor, Yelp, Urban Spoon and Face Book. The idea that "people tend to post more negative results than positives" is simply not borne out statistically on any of the sites mentioned. Just by way of example, here are the scores for Tony's Town Square restaurant on Tripadvisor:

Excellent.......284
Very Good.....353
Average........253
Poor.............110
Terrible.........63

You can't go to any social media review site and find that "negative reviews outnumber positive reviews". So when these same sites start to show a trend toward people disliking FP+, it can't be written off under the assumption that "people tend to post more negative reviews". That simply isn't the case since the general public overwhelmed the review sites. The posting population is no longer as self-selected as it used to be.

 

[Cormoran]

I think Cormoran is correct here, because with the tremendous expansion of social media, the "review sites" have become "the overall population". They are now one in the same. TripAdvisor and Yelp and Urban Spoon and Facebook can no longer be called "review sites" that are a self-selected subset of the population. They are the population. And if the general population tends to give more positive feedback than self-selected critics, then so to will TripAdvisor, Yelp, Urban Spoon and Face Book. The idea that "people tend to post more negative results than positives" is simply not borne out statistically on any of the sites mentioned. Just by way of example, here are the scores for Tony's Town Square restaurant on Tripadvisor:

Excellent.......284
Very Good.....353
Average........253
Poor.............110
Terrible.........63

You can't go to any social media review site and find that "negative reviews outnumber positive reviews". So when these same sites start to show a trend toward people disliking FP+, it can't be written off under the assumption that "people tend to post more negative reviews". That simply isn't the case since the general public overwhelmed the review sites. The posting population is no longer as self-selected as it used to be.

According to Len Testa, an 80% a restaurant approval rating is below average on the Unofficial Guide WDW Survey when everything is averaged out on a bell curve. This demonstrates that most reviews are positive, at least for the Unofficial Guide.

 

[JimmyV]

I know it's hard to believe that people go to Disney World without a plan, but -- they do. Most guests are perfectly fine with just going to Disney world. This is why they never used FP-, and now, why it's perfectly fine to be handed 3 rides, not overthink it, and go.

I agree with the first half of this, but I think the last conclusion is a leap. Why do you think that the casual guest who just wants to go to Disney World and who never used FP- is going to appreciate being handed 3 FP+? Are you certain that this person is going to pre-book their FP+s? Isn't it just as likely that they show up without anything booked? And if they try to book when they show up, aren't they either going to get shut our or get options for times that are the least desirable? We hear all the time that "my style of touring was to show up at DHS in the afternoon and when I did this under FP-, I couldn't get a FP for TSMM. Or if I could, it was for a time during dinner and that never worked for us because we book the Fantasmic! package. Now with FP+, I can pre-book a 2:00 time!" And they would be right. This is the dream scenario for FP+. Cannot be better. But consider the same scenario for a casual guest who doesn't pre-plan. They hop into DHS at 1:00. They go to the kiosk to try to get a FP for TSMM. What do you think they are going to find? Either nothing, or a time during dinner. So nothing has changed....for people who do little to no planning. Things change greatly for people who plan. I just don't see the huge upside for non-planners. So I'm not ready to buy into the notion that the casual guest who is fine just going to WDW and who never used FP- is going to see a significant change. FP+ works for the new breed of NextGen Commandos and for people who study and plan. The idea that FP+ is a panacea for Type B non-planners just isn't materializing. (And I'm not sure it is supposed to. I think one of the major points behind MME and FP+ was to force people to think ahead and plan. And "too bad--so sad" if you don't.)

 

[Jennytoon]

It really is! You sign up on the website, you pick 3 rides. Anyone who is able to post pics to facebook or something like that can handle the tech involved in picking 3 rides on the app. No elaborate planning, no spreadsheet, no colorful schedules. It's not that complicated to think of 3 things you might want to ride in a day at Disney World. The system practically walks you thru it. Pick a park. Check some rides you might like, then it gives you 3 rides with 3 return times. Done! Any further micromanaging is totally by choice.

I love planning vacations. I booked our DVC rental last July for our trip in May. I couldn't wait to book dining reservation at 180 days out and had some initial planning of which days we'd spend on which parks based on crowd calendars. I even got a BOG dinner reservation & was excited. Up until this week when I made our FP+ reservations, I had enjoyed planning.

I went to Disney without kids in 1996 (no fast pass, that I remember?). I went to Disney with 3 kids in 2001 (legacy fast pass). This time I am taking my family of 4.

I can say that I did NOT enjoy staying up until midnight just so that my daughter can meet Elsa & Anna. I was up til 2am making FP selections. Even still, since then I've tweaked and tweaked based on Touring Plans evaluating my plan and times which should be obtainable. It's truly too.much.planning. And this is someone who, for the most part, loves planning vacations & dreaming of a "can't come soon enough" vacation and how it will look.

I feel D.O.N.E. And now I feel like I need a vacation from my vacation.

AriesAriel, I don't think your experience contradicts MrInfinity's statement -- in fact, I think it highlights it to some extent. You didn't enjoy staying up to make your FP+ at 60 days out, and since you wanted A&E you probably did have to do that for one of your MK days. I think it's good to remember though what options for this M&G would have been in the FP- days, when character M&G was all by standby. Having once waited 2 hours in a line in the hot sun for DD to meet Ariel in her grotto ... I did not really enjoy that either. The point I'm trying to make is that I think this is a pick-your-poison scenario, hot-ticket character M&G has always involved some amount of less than optimal arrangements.

For the rest though ... I'm also a planner by nature, but I recognize that there comes a time for any plan where you've reached the point of diminishing returns. Changes to your plan make it different, not significantly better, especially if planning at a level of detail that is not likely to survive the encounter with reality. I have most of my touring plans done for our trip in August, and I definitely notice that changes I make at this point ... they adjust the total wait time from 73 minutes to 68 minutes, or 68 minutes to 73 minutes ... five minutes difference over a total of 5 hours in the park. I truly don't know what your circumstances are that are causing you to make continuing changes, and I am not in anyway criticizing your actions. To me though, when I see the words tweaked and tweaked, I have to ask the general person in your general situation who might be using that description:

1) Are your changes really significantly improving your plan?
2) Are the changes you're making in your plans now likely to have significantly less impact than changes you're going to make on the spur of the moment in the park?
3) Would you be able to end up with the same plan and FP+ times 5 days from now if you waited until 5 days from now to do another round of tweaking, instead of tweaking daily or multiple times / day?

If the answer to the first question is no, then this general person should make the decision on whether to keep tweaking based on whether they are having fun. Since continued micromanaging is not making real gains it is, as MrInfinity says, by choice.

If the answer to the second question is yes, then again, the tweaking and tweaking is a function of choice, not the ability to gain real improvement.

If the answer to the third question is yes, then even if the new plan is significantly better than the old plan frequent tweaking represents a choice on the part of the tweaker, since there is no benefit that comes specifically as a result of the high-frequency tweaking. The general person who answers yes in this situation could put everything away, bring it out a week later without thinking about it once in the interim, and have another look with fresh eyes -- without any harm done to their ability to change their plan.

I think there is a problem with the way FP+ is marketed, in that it unnecessarily causes people to feel that if they don't maximize what they get out of it they will be somehow making their vacation less than perfect. I believe what MrInfinity wrote though, is closer to the truth.

 

[Jennytoon]

According to Len Testa, an 80% a restaurant approval rating is below average on the Unofficial Guide WDW Survey when everything is averaged out on a bell curve. This demonstrates that most reviews are positive, at least for the Unofficial Guide.

There is a logical fallacy here ... "Most reviews are positive" is not the same as "people are equally likely to comment whether they had a positive or negative experience".

1000 customers, 10% have a negative experience. That's 100 people with a negative experience.
If 400 of those customers post reviews, including everyone who had a negative experience, then

People with a negative experience will have posted a review 100% of the time
People with a positive experience will have posted a review 33% of the time

Most of the reviews (75%) will be positive, but people with a negative experience will be far more likely to have posted a review of their experience.

 

[JimmyV]

There is a logical fallacy here ... "Most reviews are positive" is not the same as "people are equally likely to comment whether they had a positive or negative experience".

1000 customers, 10% have a negative experience. That's 100 people with a negative experience.
If 400 of those customers post reviews, including everyone who had a negative experience, then

People with a negative experience will have posted a review 100% of the time
People with a positive experience will have posted a review 33% of the time

Most of the reviews (75%) will be positive, but people with a negative experience will be far more likely to have posted a review of their experience.

Sure. But you could flip-flop the words "negative" and "positive" in the above example and it would be equally true. Without actually knowing the numbers and the percentages, we're just making stuff up.

 

[Jennytoon]

In general review sites are going to elicit more negative returns than the overall population would return.

I don't know if I agree with your assertion, based on reviews I've read on Trip Advisor. It seems that there are more above average reviews than negative reviews.

According to Len Testa, an 80% a restaurant approval rating is below average on the Unofficial Guide WDW Survey when everything is averaged out on a bell curve. This demonstrates that most reviews are positive, at least for the Unofficial Guide.

Sure. But you could flip-flop the words "negative" and "positive" in the above example and it would be equally true. Without actually knowing the numbers and the percentages, we're just making stuff up.

100% agreed ... but since the starting point of the discussion was the first quote referenced above, I was merely pointing out that the anecdotal observation from the second post and the data-based observation in the third one do not actually contradict the first statement in the way that Cormoran was proposing.

 

[NavyDad]

I think Cormoran is correct here, because with the tremendous expansion of social media, the "review sites" have become "the overall population". They are now one in the same. TripAdvisor and Yelp and Urban Spoon and Facebook can no longer be called "review sites" that are a self-selected subset of the population. They are the population. And if the general population tends to give more positive feedback than self-selected critics, then so too will TripAdvisor, Yelp, Urban Spoon and Face Book. The idea that "people tend to post more negative results than positives" is simply not borne out statistically on any of the sites mentioned. Just by way of example, here are the scores for Tony's Town Square restaurant on Tripadvisor:

Excellent.......284
Very Good.....353
Average........253
Poor.............110
Terrible.........63

You can't go to any social media review site and find that "negative reviews outnumber positive reviews". So when these same sites start to show a trend toward people disliking FP+, it can't be written off under the assumption that "people tend to post more negative reviews". That simply isn't the case since the general public overwhelmed the review sites. The posting population is no longer as self-selected as it used to be.

I have followed your posts for a long time and I cannot believe that in your heart of hearts you actually believe that social media review sites are representative of the total population...

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4115258/

The linked study is very interesting IMO. They were studying game addiction among World of Warcraft players. Obviously we are not discussing something as serious as addiction but you can make some comparisons between two large online groups of people and the sub-groups involved. I found the methodology and the data to be interesting.

For those that don't want to read the whole study here is the conclusion:

Conclusions
Because of the important differences between the self-selected samples and the randomly selected sample, and despite the acknowledged limitations, the study invites careful consideration of the conclusions made from online self-selected samples and the possibility of an overrepresentation of subgroups of more involved or more concerned users.
Therefore, it does not appear possible to draw general epidemiological conclusions from Internet-based self-selection surveys (eg, on the prevalence of game addiction among website users or the general population). However, the studies may be of high interest to subgroups of users who are more involved in the game and the study purpose. In particular, such studies may allow the linking together of different assessed variables (such as mood, motives, or personality and a given behavior) in the studied sample. This remains important, particularly because of the possible advantages of online studies (eg, large sample sizes, possible access to people who are usually more difficult to reach, access to stigmatized behaviors).
The possible collaboration with webmasters may further improve understanding of the representativeness of self-selected samples by the random selection of the users (ie, contacting users by email to build a random sample as control group) or by comparison of the responders to non-responders regarding general characteristics such as features related to website use or, to some extent, potential biases regarding clinical variables (eg, game addiction).

 

[JimmyV]

100% agreed ... but since the starting point of the discussion was the first quote referenced above, I was merely pointing out that the anecdotal observation from the second post and the data-based observation in the third one do not actually contradict the first statement in the way that Cormoran was proposing.

Agree. The problem is, the first quote starts off: "in general", and that is where the whole discussion derails.

 

[JimmyV]

I have followed your posts for a long time and I cannot believe that in your heart of hearts you actually believe that social media review sites are representative of the total population...

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4115258/

The linked study is very interesting IMO. They were studying game addiction among World of Warcraft players. Obviously we are not discussing something as serious as addiction but you can make some comparisons between two large online groups of people and the sub-groups involved. I found the methodology and the data to be interesting.

For those that don't want to read the whole study here is the conclusion:

Conclusions
Because of the important differences between the self-selected samples and the randomly selected sample, and despite the acknowledged limitations, the study invites careful consideration of the conclusions made from online self-selected samples and the possibility of an overrepresentation of subgroups of more involved or more concerned users.
Therefore, it does not appear possible to draw general epidemiological conclusions from Internet-based self-selection surveys (eg, on the prevalence of game addiction among website users or the general population). However, the studies may be of high interest to subgroups of users who are more involved in the game and the study purpose. In particular, such studies may allow the linking together of different assessed variables (such as mood, motives, or personality and a given behavior) in the studied sample. This remains important, particularly because of the possible advantages of online studies (eg, large sample sizes, possible access to people who are usually more difficult to reach, access to stigmatized behaviors).
The possible collaboration with webmasters may further improve understanding of the representativeness of self-selected samples by the random selection of the users (ie, contacting users by email to build a random sample as control group) or by comparison of the responders to non-responders regarding general characteristics such as features related to website use or, to some extent, potential biases regarding clinical variables (eg, game addiction).

"On line surveys" have nothing whatsoever to do with sites like the ones to which I am referring. They are not surveys. The number of users and contributors to such sites is way, way too big not to make them representative of the general population. How could FB not be representative of the entire population? It is the entire population. Almost, any way. For now. Until something else comes along and takes its place.

"TripAdvisor branded sites make up the largest travel community in the world, reaching 315 million unique monthly visitors**, and more than 200 million reviews and opinions covering more than 4.5 million accommodations, restaurants, and attractions. The sites operate in 45 countries worldwide, including China under daodao.com. TripAdvisor also includes TripAdvisor for Business, a dedicated division that provides the tourism industry access to millions of monthly TripAdvisor visitors."

**Source: Google Analytics, average monthly unique users, Q3 2014; does not include traffic to daodao.com

The idea that 315 million unique monthly visitors to a site constitutes a self-selected group gives new meaning to the term.

 

[NavyDad]

I don't know if I agree with your assertion, based on reviews I've read on Trip Advisor. It seems that there are more above average reviews than negative reviews.

Read my quote again and then read what you wrote. I was comparing the rate of return on a review site as opposed to the general population.

You are comparing the positive posts on a review site to the number of negative posts on a review site.

Those are two completely different things...