So, FP+ basically not affecting anyone's wait time. Now what?

[ses1230]

Disney wants everyone to be in the same boat regardless of if you want to take advantage of it or not. Everyone is at the same level as far as availability of fastpasses and rides.

Hm, that sounds like legacy FP to me.

 

[SuperRob]

Using 5-6 FPs per day did not involve any tricks or loopholes at all. It simply required the stamina and intelligenc eto get there early and always get a new FP when the window opened and using them within the windows printed. No tricks, no loopholes, just a good pair of legs and a brain. Am so sick of those who claim anyone who tours efficientyl is tricking the system or being unfair to others who choose to tour differently.
Everyone had the opportunity to have many FPs per day, some just chose to not take advantage of it.

That is not to say there weren't loopholes or ways to abuse the system. For example, sometimes a ride comes off the FP system. It distributes passes, still has the same rules applied to them, but is not attached to the network so that you could get another FP for a different ride in the same time slot. This is abusing the system. The rules (written on the pass) say you can't do it. But the enforcement mechanism is broken.

Frequently you hear people complain (usually LOUDLY) when Disney adds a way to enforce rules that were already there, like RapiFill. The people who were complaining were almost always either abusing the system or using a loophole to extract additional value for themselves. Leveraging a disconnected FP machine is an example. Suggesting that the old system could not be abused is simply not true.

Yes, this is less FastPasses than you were used to being able to get. Let's ignore the obvious benefit of being able to pick a time (which everyone gets), or doing it in advance (which everyone will be able to get soon). People's biggest complaint is that three is simply not enough. What is the right number, then? Remember, you now have a LOT more guests using the system because many people were simply unaware of it (or thought it cost money) before. So maybe your five or six FP were only possible because other guests weren't using them. Doesn't it make sense for Disney to start lower while they're figuring out how many people will use them, rather than give out so many that the system flat out fails?

 

[Angel Ariel]

Disney wants everyone to be in the same boat regardless of if you want to take advantage of it or not. Everyone is at the same level as far as availability of fastpasses and rides. We all get 3.

Everyone is not at the same level of fp availability. Onsite guests get to choose.fp 2 months before offsite guests do. There is mathematically less availability for offsite guests on the day of, because a certain % of availability is already taken.

 

[Golf4283]

Everyone is not at the same level of fp availability. Onsite guests get to choose.fp 2 months before offsite guests do. There is mathematically less availability for offsite guests on the day of, because a certain % of availability is already taken.

You have the same option as me to book a room at a Disney resort. It's your choice to forego that option and therefore not get the early access. It's called a benefit. Some people get the benefit and others choose not to. As with any benefit you usually pay for it.

I guess the only issue is the AP holders. I don't know the specific rules on them at the moment because I don't live in Florida and am not an AP holder.

 

[Angel Ariel]

That is not to say there weren't loopholes or ways to abuse the system. For example, sometimes a ride comes off the FP system. It distributes passes, still has the same rules applied to them, but is not attached to the network so that you could get another FP for a different ride in the same time slot. This is abusing the system. The rules (written on the pass) say you can't do it. But the enforcement mechanism is broken.

Please explain to me how getting a FP for Mickey (which was disconnected), reading the bottom of the Mickey FP that said I could get another FP in 5 mins, and then getting that other FP when the FP stated I could is breaking the rules.

The FP clearly wrote on it when another FP could be pulled. I followed its rules.

View image of MM legacy FP here

You can see at the bottom right of the FP, in small print, that the FP was pulled at 5:16pm (17:16). The FP clearly states that "Another FASTPASS ticket will be available after 5:20pm.

There is *nothing* on this pass that states that it is against the rules to pull another FP at 5:20.

 

[Shaden]

I guess I stand corrected. I still meant what I said though. I don't fault anyone for using those tricks or loopholes because they existed. I'm just saying Disney has a different vision for how the system should work.

In the end it's their system and their money. If you don't want to give them your money put it somewhere else I suppose.

Let me fix that ....

In the end it's their system and OURmoney. If you don't want to give them your money put it somewhere else I suppose

 

[Angel Ariel]

You have the same option as me to book a room at a Disney resort. It's your choice to forego that option and therefore not get the early access. It's called a benefit. Some people get the benefit and others choose not to. As with any benefit you usually pay for it.

I guess the only issue is the AP holders. I don't know the specific rules on them at the moment because I don't live in Florida and am not an AP holder.

And yet, Disney has stated over and over that FP+ service is included with theme park admission. And their own marketing material makes it explicitly clear that they consider the FP+ service to be prebooking. They make this very clear in the 2014 vacation planning DVD. This is not being marketed as an onsite perk in the way of EMH/Dining Plan/etc. This is being advertised as something available to *everyone* with theme park admission. Even the terms and conditions of MDE spell that out.

Supposedly in the future offsite guests are supposed to have access to prebooking, but in the meantime their theme park admission does not give them equal access.

ETA: And no, not everyone has the option to book a room onsite. Just ask families who have 5 or more people and can't afford to book multiple onsite rooms or one of the very expensive (not value priced) AoA family suites.

 

[Golf4283]

Let me fix that ....

In the end it's their system and OURmoney. If you don't want to give them your money put it somewhere else I suppose

Please don't put words in my mouth. It's their money. Not yours. Let's not argue semantics here because that's just stupid.

 

[Shaden]

You have the same option as me to book a room at a Disney resort. It's your choice to forego that option and therefore not get the early access. It's called a benefit. Some people get the benefit and others choose not to. As with any benefit you usually pay for it.

I guess the only issue is the AP holders. I don't know the specific rules on them at the moment because I don't live in Florida and am not an AP holder.

Isn't booking a room a trick or a loophole to get better access to FPs !!?!? Shouldn't we be calling people out for this !?!?!?

 

[Golf4283]

And yet, Disney has stated over and over that FP+ service is included with theme park admission. And their own marketing material makes it explicitly clear that they consider the FP+ service to be prebooking. They make this very clear in the 2014 vacation planning DVD. This is not being marketed as an onsite perk in the way of EMH/Dining Plan/etc. This is being advertised as something available to *everyone* with theme park admission. Even the terms and conditions of MDE spell that out.

Supposedly in the future offsite guests are supposed to have access to prebooking, but in the meantime their theme park admission does not give them equal access.

Yea I see what you're saying there.

My vision for the FP+ going forward is that the onsite guests get the early access and the non resort guests can pay some sort of fee to pre-book. Therefore enticing people to stay on-site.

Remember too that the disney planning DVD is catered towards staying on-site so they really advertise the package that is the MDE experience as being part of your on-site stay.

 

[DizFanSLD]

We just got back last night from a Seven day visit to the World, onsite. Our observation of the lines was that the occasional backups of the FP+ line was nearly always due to people just not understanding the system and how it works yet. People on the Disboards are staying pretty current on the vagaries of the system, so when we arrived, I understood exactly how the band readers worked, etc. My DH had a hard time using his band the first couple of times because he hadn't been reading up on it like I had. But we saw people who would move the band away before the Mickey went green, so they had to re-scan, or they thought the band was a "magic ticket" to every ride, and had to have it explained by the CM, or a party of 6 would go thru one at a time instead of using both scanners, even with the CMs trying to get them to use both. You would see a backup of FP+ guests waiting to be scanned, but then there would be no line inside the attraction.

We saw the worst backups outside Star Tours, but we finally figured out that a huge part of it was that the line backed way up during Jedi shows, because people in line would get caught up watching it and not pay attention to moving along in line.

Standby line times seemed pretty consistent with what we have seen before at similar crowd levels.

The lines that shocked me were the Day-Guest lines for getting FP+ reservations. At Epcot, the rope-drop crowd was considerably thinner for the first hour just because the FP+ Kioskd lines were sucking up so many people.

We never waited in a FP+ line, either inside or outside an attraction, for longer than 5-10 minutes total, which was also pretty standard for legacy FP.

 

[SuperRob]

Please explain to me how getting a FP for Mickey (which was disconnected), reading the bottom of the Mickey FP that said I could get another FP in 5 mins, and then getting that other FP when the FP stated I could is breaking the rules.

The FP clearly wrote on it when another FP could be pulled. I followed its rules.

View image of MM legacy FPhere

You can see at the bottom right of the FP, in small print, that the FP was pulled at 5:16pm (17:16). The FP clearly states that "Another FASTPASS ticket will be available after 5:20pm.

There is *nothing* on this pass that states that it is against the rules to pull another FP at 5:20.

I'm not talking about Character FP, which were not intended to be part of the network. I'm still talking about attractions, and it's pretty common knowledge that occasionally a ride will become disconnected from the FP network, and despite still having the same rules (printed on the ticket), lacks a way to enforce them.

Dumbo and Barnstormer are two frequently "used" ones, but there have been occasions where others would be disconnected for a time as well, like Dinosaur.

 

[Angel Ariel]

Yea I see what you're saying there.

My vision for the FP+ going forward is that the onsite guests get the early access and the non resort guests can pay some sort of fee to pre-book. Therefore enticing people to stay on-site.

Remember too that the disney planning DVD is catered towards staying on-site so they really advertise the package that is the MDE experience as being part of your on-site stay.

That may be your vision, but that is not what Disney has said. I watched teh 2014 vacation planning DVD this week. It explicitly says that FP+ service is included for *everyone* with theme park admission. And it explicitly describes the FP+ service as pre-booking. There is no small print to say that this is an onsite perk (as there is when they discuss EMH, or Magical Express).

 

[EEPETEZ]

When I read he article all it made me think was lose-lose. Disney kept the SB wait the same and they have limited FP availability. Great we have gotten less than nothing out of this "big improvement". I'm thrilled.....

 

[Angel Ariel]

I'm not talking about Character FP, which were not intended to be part of the network.

Since when were character FP not intended to be part of the network? I know the FP I pulled for the princesses right after I pulled Mickey was part of the network.

 

[SuperRob]

That may be your vision, but that is not what Disney has said. I watched teh 2014 vacation planning DVD this week. It explicitly says that FP+ service is included for *everyone* with theme park admission. And it explicitly describes the FP+ service as pre-booking. There is no small print to say that this is an onsite perk (as there is when they discuss EMH, or Magical Express).

FP+ is a perk for everyone. Early scheduling of them, on the other hand, is limited for the time being. But anyone can get them.

Since when were character FP not intended to be part of the network? I know the FP I pulled for the princesses right after I pulled Mickey was part of the network.

My understanding was that Characters were supposed to be on their own separate FP network. Maybe that never actually happened. But Mickey is an anomaly because it specifically says on the ticket that you can get another one in five minutes. It's not really "disconnected" in the way I'm talking about. The attractions I'm talking about have the standard rules on them.

Anyway, the point I was trying to make is that saying that it wasn't possible to abuse the FastPass system isn't true. It might not have been a widespread problem, but it was definitely possible.

The FP+ limitations are clearly there until Disney figures out what the extra demand is going to be, since it will be more accessible and obvious to guests that they can use it. It always shocked me how often I'd run into guests at the parks who would ask me how I got a Fastpass, not knowing it was available to everyone. Then again, plenty of guests would also ask where Harry Potter Land was, so ...

 

[gwmort]

Here's a loophole in the old system:

Legacy Fastpasses were non-transferable, written right on the ticket, but many families would use tickets from children too small to ride the headliners to get multiple fastpasses for older kids or adults to ride said headliner multiple times. A violation of the rules and resulted in the violators getting more fp rides a day and causing longer standby lines from their corrupt park practices.

This includes the "dust dealers" who would pull fps and intentionally transfer them against the rules and policies to others of their choosing to get some sort of perverted philanthropic thrill.

 

[EMode]

When I read he article all it made me think was lose-lose. Disney kept the SB wait the same and they have limited FP availability. Great we have gotten less than nothing out of this "big improvement". I'm thrilled.....

What's not to love, limited FP+s and SB lines just as long!

FP+ is a perk for everyone. Early scheduling of them, on the other hand, is limited for the time being. But anyone can get them.

True, and I don't think there is anything wrong with Disney giving a perk to its on-site guests.
However if one is going to take the stance that FP+ is more fair than FP- they would be wrong.

 

[Angel Ariel]

FP+ is a perk for everyone. Early scheduling of them, on the other hand, is limited for the time being. But anyone can get them.

I understand everyone can get them. My point is that Disney is not advertising prebooking as an onsite perk. The vacation planning DVD advertises it as something that is available to everyone with their theme park admission included.

 

[EMode]

Here's a loophole in the old system:

Legacy Fastpasses were non-transferable, written right on the ticket, but many families would use tickets from children too small to ride the headliners to get multiple fastpasses for older kids or adults to ride said headliner multiple times. A violation of the rules and resulted in the violators getting more fp rides a day and causing longer standby lines from their corrupt park practices.

This includes the "dust dealers" who would pull fps and intentionally transfer them against the rules and policies to others of their choosing to get some sort of perverted philanthropic thrill.

I don't think anyone really doesn't get that there was a possibilty of some using loopholes. My issue is the blanket thought that anyone getting 5,6,7 were doing that.