To the OP and other feeling much the same, you have to understand that there are people here whose intent is to make you feel bad about a Disney vacation. I don't know the reason -- maybe they are bitter because they can't take one themselves, maybe they just like causing trouble -- but their purpose in being here is to make you feel like WDW is no longer a fun place to be. And those folks dominate a lot of the conversations about things like FP+ and ADRs and pricing strategies. They may have valid points, but the overriding sentiment to their postings is that Disney used to be great, now it sucks for reasons X, Y and Z. They pretend to love it there -- may even have a bunch of trips in their sig -- but in reality they are trying to make others feel about about upcoming vacations. They lament changes that cannot be undone, the extrapolate a single experience to a universal condemnation. That's the tactic.
I have a friend who just got back from a week at DLR, which many are portraying as Nirvana because they still have the old FP system. And she's a planner, a rope-dropper, a collector. She said that the vacation as rough -- crowded, didn't get to as much as they had in the past, stuff like that. But, she said, the photos were wonderful. And that's what Disney wants -- they aren't in the theme park business, they are in the photo op business. The point is to give visitors enough great memories to make them put up with a lot of things that from a distance make no sense. But think about it -- if there were no FP+, then every morning would be a race at rope-drop; if the window for ADRs was not 180 days out, then whenever reservations opened up there'd be the same kind of rush. There are 30,000 rooms in the resorts -- all of them, and the rest of the visiting public, want their shot at the most fun possible.
Disney is more crowded now than it was in the past, and i think everyone laments that for their particular trip. But the only alternative -- limiting visitors or raising prices even higher -- would create just as much bad feeling. More and more people want to be there, and everyone tries to find strategies to maximize their vacation. That's natural and human nature. But WDW isn't interested in maximizing YOUR vacation, they are interested in giving everyone who goes those photo ops, those 20 or so memories that will make them come back. So they restrict the rules to the point where everyone has a chance at at least most of what they want to do, creating the photo ops.
If you're done, then you're done. But I hope you don't let these boards make that call for you. There are sometimes nefarious things that go on around here, and they often come in the nicest of disguises.
