So we just got back from our week trip to Disney and both my wife and myself thought the magic bands and FP+ were awesome. Now I will preface this by saying that I never needed to use a kiosk although I didn't see any that were 30 people deep as others are reporting. Must have been the days we were there as it was a very rainy week. In Epcot around 10:00am on Thursday there were four or five agents with iPads and zero people waiting.
Anyway, the magic bands are so incredibly convenient. My wife left her wallet in the room the whole trip and I had mine as a backup but never needed it. Scanning your band for everything from the dining plan, FP+, getting your pictures, paying for merchandise and more was incredibly convenient. Every day when we got back to the room my 5.5 year old daughter asked if we could use her band to get in. She thought it was the coolest thing. By the second day we were pros lining up Mickey to Mickey and we didn't experience any bugs with ours. Considering we are only about 3-4 months since the wide release I think that is pretty admirable of Disney.
On to FP+, it made our trip better than it had been in the past and we used to pull regular fastpasses. We saw Ana and Elsa around 12:45pm after waiting about 5 minutes. The people behind us had gotten in line at rope drop so waited over 3.5 hours. This made it an absolute winner as the amount we had gotten done in those same 3.5 hours (about 12 rides and lunch) was incredible and all b/c we had the FP.
We got to experience TSMM for the first time on our third trip to Disney World b/c of FP+ and also we had a general game-plan for the park each day. I also didn't have to worry about leaving my wife and the family to grab a paper FP at the other end just to head back and meet up with them. We were easily able to modify our FP at the room the night before based on what we decided we wanted to change (my daughter decided she was ready to try Thunder Mountain). The only issue we had was on Friday when I couldn't access the system in the park to make a change and later learned it was b/c they opened up Mine Train to FP and it crashed the site. Considering that Apple's servers often crash on iPhone releases and HBOGO just crashed for the Game Of Thrones Season 4 premiere I can give Disney a pass for this type of abnormal high volume type of day.
Everybody around here warned us to wait until we experienced the horror that was FP+ before giving it the benefit of the doubt. I can't comment on how it worked back in January and February, but after having experienced it last week I'm a fan. I'm guessing it will only get better and as soon as they allow the 4th or 5th FP to be booked through the app so people don't ever need to wait at the kiosks I think people will be hard pressed to argue that the old system was better than the new one (from a macro level).
Anyway, the magic bands are so incredibly convenient. My wife left her wallet in the room the whole trip and I had mine as a backup but never needed it. Scanning your band for everything from the dining plan, FP+, getting your pictures, paying for merchandise and more was incredibly convenient. Every day when we got back to the room my 5.5 year old daughter asked if we could use her band to get in. She thought it was the coolest thing. By the second day we were pros lining up Mickey to Mickey and we didn't experience any bugs with ours. Considering we are only about 3-4 months since the wide release I think that is pretty admirable of Disney.
On to FP+, it made our trip better than it had been in the past and we used to pull regular fastpasses. We saw Ana and Elsa around 12:45pm after waiting about 5 minutes. The people behind us had gotten in line at rope drop so waited over 3.5 hours. This made it an absolute winner as the amount we had gotten done in those same 3.5 hours (about 12 rides and lunch) was incredible and all b/c we had the FP.
We got to experience TSMM for the first time on our third trip to Disney World b/c of FP+ and also we had a general game-plan for the park each day. I also didn't have to worry about leaving my wife and the family to grab a paper FP at the other end just to head back and meet up with them. We were easily able to modify our FP at the room the night before based on what we decided we wanted to change (my daughter decided she was ready to try Thunder Mountain). The only issue we had was on Friday when I couldn't access the system in the park to make a change and later learned it was b/c they opened up Mine Train to FP and it crashed the site. Considering that Apple's servers often crash on iPhone releases and HBOGO just crashed for the Game Of Thrones Season 4 premiere I can give Disney a pass for this type of abnormal high volume type of day.
Everybody around here warned us to wait until we experienced the horror that was FP+ before giving it the benefit of the doubt. I can't comment on how it worked back in January and February, but after having experienced it last week I'm a fan. I'm guessing it will only get better and as soon as they allow the 4th or 5th FP to be booked through the app so people don't ever need to wait at the kiosks I think people will be hard pressed to argue that the old system was better than the new one (from a macro level).
