Any Reformed FP- Uber Users Who Have Embraced FP+ ?

[DisneyKidds]

Again, it's not about what I did. It's about what you insist I could have done. So take those days and those times and those ADR's and those FP's and tell me how what your touring strategy would have been?

No, for me all that matters is what you got done! Sure, I can tell you what I would have tried to do, but you were there. We can surmise what it's likely you might have been able to accomplish, but tell us what you DID accomplish. Let's share info both ways!

 

[Laketravis]

In another thread a month or so ago, I used the data on the Touring Plans site to look at posted wait times at Spaceship Earth for the period from Thanksgiving Day through the following Friday. Here is what I found, with a few highlights added:

"I also looked at the wait times for Spaceship Earth each day from Thanksgiving Day through Friday, December 5. The full graphs are on the Touring Plans site for anyone who wants to look at them, but here are the highlights. I focused on 3 things: (1) peak wait time, (2) how long the peak lasted, and (3) how long the wait time was 30 minutes or longer.

Thanksgiving Day- Peak of 50 minutes hit briefly at 11:45, 30 minutes plus from 10 AM- 1:30.

Friday 11/28- Peak of 45 minutes hit briefly at 12:35; 30 minutes plus from 10-4:15.

Saturday, 11/29- Wait time went from 30 minutes at 11 AM to 60 minutes at 11:45 and briefly peaked at 65 minutes from 12 to 12:15. It then dropped back to 30 minutes by 1 PM and stayed at 25-30 minutes until 4:30 before dropping below 30 minutes for the rest of the day. (By far the longest wait times of the period, especially from 11 AM-1 PM.)

Sunday 11/30- Peak of 30 minutes from 11:15-1:15 with a drop to 20 minutes from 12-12:30. Below 30 minutes for rest of day.

Monday 12/1- Peak of 30 minutes from 11:30-12:30.

Tuesday 12/2 (AM EMH)- peak of 45 minutes from 11:15-12:15. 30 minutes plus from 10:45-12:30.
Wednesday 12/3- Peak of 30 minutes from 10:30-11:15

Thursday 12/4- Peak of 25 minutes from 10:30-11:30

Friday 12/5- Peak of 35 minutes from 11:00-12:30. Below 30 rest of day.

Except for the first 3 days and Friday the 5th, the wait time was no more than 5-10 minutes from 3 PM to park closing. "

The only day in this period in which Touring Plans reported a posted wait time of 60 minutes or more at SE was on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, and that spike only lasted for 2 hours, from 11 AM until 1 PM. The posted wait time was 30 minutes or less the rest of the day.

For the week after Thanksgiving (Monday through Friday) the posted wait time only exceeded 30 minutes (peaking at 45 minutes) for a brief time (10:45-12:30) and was 30 minutes or less the rest of the week.

So the peak time WAS the 60 minutes that I mentioned, we are just going to debate whether or not I erred citing the Saturday after Thanksgiving as the week after Thanksgiving? No thanks. I'll revert to the following Tuesday, which there can be no doubt was in the week after Thanksgiving, and it had a 45 minute wait for Spaceship Earth.

I believe your own conclusion when comparing to the previous year was that this had not happened before?

 

[Laketravis]

No, for me all that matters is what you got done!

And from the matrix I supplied, you can see that I had 3 FP's scheduled for most days. Beyond that, I'm not sure what you see?

You criticized me for referring to 3 FP's and long waits for everything else.

Get off the "absolute generalization" bandwagon for a minute and tell me exactly what your successful touring strategy would have netted on those days.

 

[Laketravis]

Oh, by the way - for the "Looks like you got a lot done!" crowd:

Thank you. I never said we didn't get a lot done IN TWO WEEKS.

Because that is exactly why we extended our stay to two weeks from one.

So that we could get a lot done.

Repeat: We extended our stay so that we could get a lot done.

Can anybody show me how we could have accomplished that in a week?

Because we sure felt like we used to. Count how many FP's we had for Space Mountain. Across how many days? Because that's pretty much how many times we used to be able to ride Space Mountain in just a day or two.

Now before the "well, you just want to ride stuff over and over" admonishments begin, keep in mind that even according to Wis, we are "like a lot of people".

 

[Laketravis]

Think about how much time you spent in transit on this day. Getting to the AK is an hour (or more, if you want to be there for RD)

We spent very little time "in transit" because it's possible to make very effective use of that transit.

An hour or more to get to AK? Where the heck do you stay? In Downtown Orlando? We would get to the CSR bus stop in less than 2 minutes from our room, the bus was typically already there or pulling up when we got there, and the ride from CSR to AK isn't more than 10-15 minutes.

This is exactly why it's pointless to respond to your multitudes of false logic.

 

[MrInfinity]

Again, it's not about what I did. It's about what you insist I could have done. So take those days and those times and those ADR's and those FP's and tell me how what your touring strategy would have been?

It's all about what you did. You are the one asserting one can only get on 3 rides and then have long waits for everything else. If that is your case, then back it up.

An hour or more to get to AK? Where the heck do you stay? In Downtown Orlando? We would get to the CSR bus stop in less than 2 minutes, the bus was typically already there or pulling up when we got there, and the ride from CSR to AK isn't more than 10 minutes.

This is exactly why it's pointless to respond to your multitudes of false logic.

And this, folks, is called redirection. Pick a random irrelevant detail from a long, well thought out, response to a personal request that I evaluate your plan. I spent a good 20 min replying to you, and your only reply is to debate whether it is an hour to get from AK to CSR. Disney recommends an hour to transfer park to park. I've found that's approximately the case in real life. That was my basis. It's 10 min to get out of a park, 5 min to the bus stop, up to 20 min wait, 20 min in transit, 5 min into the next park, and 10 min to the place in the next park you want to be. So yes. It's an hour to decide... shoule we go on this ride here, or to some other ride at another park, all things considered.

But if I'm going to give you a clear, long, analysis of your trip -- at your request, and all you'll reply with is how you can get to CSR in less time, then great. I've showed that you got on way more than 3 and done, you know you did, you could have gotten on -- even taking the dinner time and afterwards off... 5 headliners plus 5 secondary rides, allowing for over 4 hours of transit time and everything after 5:30pm dedicated to having a nice dinner. Which means if you could travel in less time, then you should have gotten on EVEN MORE than I depicted.

I guess if you're just going to redirect like this then you didn't really want to discuss. Otherwise, go back and answer some of the many questions I posed to you in that post #672 about what I suggested you could get done, vs what you did get done, and whether you really only got on 3 things that day.

 

[wisblue]

So the peak time WAS the 60 minutes that I mentioned, we are just going to debate whether or not I erred citing the Saturday after Thanksgiving as the week after Thanksgiving? No thanks. I'll revert to the following Tuesday, which there can be no doubt was in the week after Thanksgiving, and it had a 45 minute wait for Spaceship Earth.

I believe your own conclusion when comparing to the previous year was that this had not happened before?

No reason to get defensive. I am just putting your statement about a 60 minute wait at SE into a broader factual context.

Everyone can decide for themselves whether the Saturday after Thanksgiving is part of "the week after Thanksgiving" and how significant it is that a ride had a certain wait time for an hour or two over the course of more than a week. Then they can decide if that would significantly affect their day or if they would just choose to ride that attraction at one of the many times earlier or later in the day when the line was much shorter.

 

[Rebekkap]

So would it be a fair statement of fact to say that if utilization of the old FP had approached 100%, the usefulness of the FP system would have approached zero?

y = 100/x where:

y = Number of rides per 90 minutes of park time

x = percentage of guests utilizing FastPass

Let me tell you what happens when use of fastpass approaches 100% - I was at Tokyo Disneyland last week, on what was apparently one of the quietest days of the year. The two most popular rides are Pooh's Hunny Hunt and Monster Inc Ride and go seek. We were there half an hour before park opening. I queued nearly half an hour to get a fastpass for Monsters Inc, because everyone in Tokyo uses fastpass. Then we waited 80 minutes to ride Pooh's Hunny Hunt. By the time we came out, there were no FP left for anything, the standby queue had gone to 120 minutes, and the mountains were all over 70. High levels of use of FP- suck in a major way. Give me FP+ and I *might* go back to Tokyo Disneyland - at least I'd know I'd get to do three rides without over an hour of wait time!

 

[Laketravis]

And this, folks, is called redirection.

No, "folks", it's not. How can I trust your recommendations when you claim it takes at least an hour or more to get to AK?

What's stupendously ironic, however, is how your "analysis" is riddled with falsehoods yet you continue this ridiculousness because I made a comment about having to wait in long lines after using 3 FP's. Days ago.

You really aren't seeing that? Seriously? Not at all?

 

[MrInfinity]

No, "folks", it's not. How can I trust your recommendations when you claim it takes at least an hour or more to get to AK?

What's stupendously ironic, however, is how your "analysis" is riddled with falsehoods yet you continue this ridiculousness because I made a comment about having to wait in long lines after using 3 FP's. Days ago.

If you do not at least give my responses some honest replies, Lake, I will not spend my time giving you advice just so you can playfully banter.

Yes it takes an hour to get to the AK. i.e. if you are planning on rope drop, you should be leaving your hotel room by an hour before. 8am for a 9am park day. You cannot leave your hotel room at 8:50 and make a 9am rope drop. Period. You will want to be there by 8:40 in case they let the rope at 8:50, which means w even a 10-min ride, you'll want to be at your bus stop shortly after 8 to account for the 5 to 20 min wait for the bus.

If you feel things are falsehoods, then answer my questions, or point out what is false inasmuch as it relates to the number of rides you get on. You still refuse to state just how many rides you got on. Can you say if it's more or less than the number I have asserted? You're being deliberately coy because you probly got on a ton that day. Between rope drop at the AK and 3 fast passes at the MK. Plus you should acknowledge that FP+ works awesome for your touring style of liking to pop in to the MK, ride quick, and get out midday.

 

[Laketravis]

Oh - and I'll tell you what IS a potentially huge waste of time.

Standing in line waiting for an FP+ Kiosk for what usually turns out to be a crappy FP for something that would have taken just as long to get in the SB line for.

Try adding that time up over the course of a day times several days.

I think the best advice we could give anybody on these boards is "Don't waste your time with an FP+ kiosk if there is a line. Because there is a line, there probably isn't anything decent left. And honestly, if there isn't a line at the kiosk, the SB line for what you want may not be very long at all".

Wanna bet what these people ended up with? My money's on such coveted FP's as The Great Movie Ride or The Muppets:

 

[MrInfinity]

Lake. You made the case that because of FP+, one can only get on 3 rides fast. I demonstrated, even given what I consider a pretty inefficient use of time doing lots of transit, that you could easily have gotten on 5 headliners and 5 secondary for a total of 10 rides without much work at all at very bad times of day on busy days of the year, and this being far more than you could have done using the same strategy under FP-. You had the Fast Passes lined up this way on purpose and you rope dropped at the AK knowing this. The post is here...

http://www.disboards.com/showpost.php?p=52896989&postcount=672

You asked me to comment on your plan. I put thought and time into doing so, for you, and at your request. If you choose to ignore all my suggestions and questions, and everyone's requests to tell something real about what you actually got on then there isn't much to discuss any more.

 

[HollieS]

Oh, by the way - for the "Looks like you got a lot done!" crowd:

Thank you. I never said we didn't get a lot done IN TWO WEEKS.

Because that is exactly why we extended our stay to two weeks from one.

So that we could get a lot done.

Repeat: We extended our stay so that we could get a lot done.

Can anybody show me how we could have accomplished that in a week?

Because we sure felt like we used to. Count how many FP's we had for Space Mountain. Across how many days? Because that's pretty much how many times we used to be able to ride Space Mountain in just a day or two.

Now before the "well, you just want to ride stuff over and over" admonishments begin, keep in mind that even according to Wis, we are "like a lot of people".

I would never use the strategy of am, pm, and dinner all being different locations, so I instantly have a bias that your plan just sucked. But I will assume this is what your family enjoys.

On Sun 23, BOG QS lunch at 1, an hour later you ride SM, so it was 2:20ish technically your next FP didn't have to be used until 4, what did you do for 90 minutes? Right after sdmt you could have done BTMR so it's 5:20 and you have an hour to walk to CR for chef mickey. Slow dinner, slow walk back, plenty of time to see the night shows. ride at least 2 rides from 10:30 to 12am.

Most days it looks like you could do two FP+ back to back at the end of one window and the beginning of another then do your 3rd at the end of it's window. It gives you a 90 minute window to do something else almost every day.

 

[Laketravis]

You're being deliberately coy because you probly got on a ton that day.

Aww, Fuzzy, you know what? You got me, man. You're right. I rode Carousel of Progress like "probly" 10 times. And that's not all - I'm pretty sure we OD'd on People Mover too. Wanna know why?

Because the SB lines for all the other stuff were really long.

Let's see - you say it takes an hour or more to get to AK but backtrack when I call you on it. That's not what you meant at all, you meant from when you get out of bed until the time you're walking into the park at rope drop.

We are going back and forth on this because I made a comment about having to wait in long lines after using the 3 FP's. You simply can't accept that, and the more you argue against it the more you do exactly what you are accusing me of.

 

[MrInfinity]

Aww, Fuzzy, you know what? You got me, man. You're right. I rode Carousel of Progress like "probly" 10 times. And that's not all - I'm pretty sure we OD'd on People Mover too. Wanna know why?

Because the SB lines for all the other stuff were really long.

Let's see - you say it takes an hour or more to get to AK but backtrack when I call you on it. That's not what you meant at all, you meant from when you get out of bed until the time you're walking into the park at rope drop.

We are going back and forth on this because I made a comment about having to wait in long lines after using the 3 FP's. You simply can't accept that, and the more you argue against it the more you do exactly what you are accusing me of.

Again redirection. Dude. And I didn't back track. I held my position. And it's a correct one.

Tell us what rides you got on. Tell us just how many headliners you got on and how many secondary rides you got on. Don't be silly and tell us about the Carousel of Progress. Be honest.

And no. I did not say from the time you get out of bed. You misquote. Quit quoting people wrong, then saying they're wrong. I refer to transit time. Which is the time to get from where you are to where you want to be. Disney recommends an hour or more to get from a hotel to park or park to park.

Answer the rest of my question too. To ask me to give you my thoughts then not engage the conversation is just rude.

 

[Shaden]

Exactly. I'm not saying you're going to like the planning aspect. There is indeed some more than there used to be. But if you do it, it's definitely possible to get on a lot of rides with FP+.

But is it possible, or more importantly more or less likely to get as many rides as under Legacy FP ?

 

[Laketravis]

I would never use the strategy of am, pm, and dinner all being different locations, so I instantly have a bias that your plan just sucked. But I will assume this is what your family enjoys.

On Sun 23, BOG QS lunch at 1, an hour later you ride SM, so it was 2:20ish technically your next FP didn't have to be used until 4, what did you do for 90 minutes? Right after sdmt you could have done BTMR so it's 5:20 and you have an hour to walk to CR for chef mickey. Slow dinner, slow walk back, plenty of time to see the night shows. ride at least 2 rides from 10:30 to 12am.

Most days it looks like you could do two FP+ back to back at the end of one window and the beginning of another then do your 3rd at the end of it's window. It gives you a 90 minute window to do something else almost every day.

I think you're smarter than Fuzzy and the Kidd, and if you set aside your bias that moving around a lot takes a lot of time (it doesn't have to when done properly and in our case we are fast walkers with no handicaps), I think you are on to the fact that yes, we could have (and perhaps did?) accomplish an awful lot because of the way the times are structured and what our strategy was.

I'm just waiting for Fuzzy and Kidd to catch up with that - that I actually do have a very efficient touring strategy that allows us to accomplish quite a bit in spite of only being able to get 3 FP's a day for anything worth a darn while facing long lines for anything else we wanted to do.

Because the only thing they seem unable to accept is that there is a possibility that over a holiday week and the week after, there are long standby lines. Maybe because once they accept that, they know it leads to a discussion as to whether or not FP+ has anything to do with it.

 

[Laketravis]

Don't be silly and tell us about the Carousel of Progress. Be honest.

I'm being completely honest about that. Seriously, dead center gut wrenching honest. When you are in Tomorrow Land and everything is an hour or more except those two (and maybe Stitch but let's not go there) and you don't have any FP's left, they can sometimes seem to be viable options. Other areas of the park? Experience tells us it probably wouldn't be much different.

Tell me something, Fuzzy. Do you think my suggested advice above in regards to Kiosks is valid?

 

[estherhead]

Ok. So before actual mean verbal punches get thrown, LakeTravis just give us a six hour time period using fp- and using fp+ and tell us what you used to accomplish and what you can now. With the rides. Let's take an AK morning from 9-12. Then take out your lunch and let's say 45 minutes to switch to MK. Then show us your 3 hour afternoon at MK. In the format that's common around here. Example: we rode ride X. Then ride y, etc.

Show us what you could do and what can do now attraction wise.

The personal fights about words and travel times aren't helpful. The reasons people are interested in this topic is because we care about OUR trips. So show us. Then people can see and choose to keep going to WDW and can see what's realistic.

 

[Love Tink]

Sometimes when someone says that he "couldn't" do something, he doesn't mean that he literally was physically unable to do the thing.

He might mean that he chose not to do the thing because it was too difficult or unappealing.

Like if I walk by Space Mountain with my kids and there is a 100-minute stand-by wait and my kids say, "Let's ride Space Mountain!" I will say, "No, we can't right now." I don't mean we can't because we literally can't (like the park is closed or the ride is down), but I mean we can't because it just doesn't make any sense or sound like any fun.

Why is it so important for some of you on here to insist that everything people say must be taken literally, and defended? If somebody says he couldn't ride more rides, it means he felt he couldn't ride more rides. Why should he have to justify that to you?

A lot of us know exactly what he means.