Epcot FP+ tiers gone...for now.

[AmyB2006]

I am leaving Friday and Saturday I am going to DHS. I was able to change Fantismic to the 7 show. Swapped out American Idol for TSM, but got a time over our ADR supper, so I chose 8-9 p.m. I will post and report how it went. I think I will print out hard copies today. I almost forgot how important it is anyway to have backup. Ohana never has my name and I am always glad that I could give them my confirmation # and miraculously they find my name.

Please do, report back. I leave win 9 days. If it shows in the system as a scheduled FP I don't see how it would turn blue but oh well.

 

[Oomiak]

Well, it was fun while it lasted! I'm glad myself and a good number of other people were able to grab up an extra tier 1 fastpass. I feel good about it too, I don't feel like I snatched up a bag of money that someone dropped

 

[JanaDee]

Please do, report back. I leave win 9 days. If it shows in the system as a scheduled FP I don't see how it would turn blue but oh well.

I hope it works for you and others that were able to change their FP+.

 

[Shaden]

Well, it was fun while it lasted! I'm glad myself and a good number of other people were able to grab up an extra tier 1 fastpass. I feel good about it too, I don't feel like I snatched up a bag of money that someone dropped

Yea I booked a couple days of our 15 in Epcot with 2 Tier 1s, which is MUCH better, still not the best, but hey, it was better.

Of course, I couldn't book the rest of my trip because we have family joining us for the second week and have to coordinate with them, which can't be done at a whim, which is yet another failure of this system unfortunately.

 

[JimmyV]

I wish the powers that be at Disney could read this thread and see how excited people were at finding what appeared to be a work-around to the repugnant tiering they're imposing on guests. They really need to ditch it.

They wouldn't care. The people who don't like FP+ are a very small minority of Dis Board sycophants who just keep shouting and shouting to hear themselves rant. Remember? I suspect that the people who have filled page after page of this thread are the same 5 people who log in under different user names, and their views do not overlap with any of the millions of people who are not members of this Board. The "vast majority" of FP+ users really like tiers and do not want to see that feature change. Or so I am told.

 

[FireDancer]

It looks like it was a mistake in a setting that was found out and corrected. I suspect Disney will see how many people doubled up on Tier 1 FPs and decide what they will do about it. They might do nothing and let everyone use them or they might contact everyone via email and let them know one of the two will be invalidated if you don't change one yourself, or they might do a combination of the two depending on the time of year you are traveling. I suspect it was a low enough number that they will just chalk it up to a learning experience and not make that mistake again but you never know.

Coming here and talking about it is a surefire way to get the mistake fixed more quickly. Had those who found it kept it to themselves it might have been a lot longer before the error was found and corrected.

The rush to book more then one shows me there is a market for them so hopefully Disney finds a way to monetize that demand.

 

[Laketravis]

They wouldn't care. The people who don't like FP+ are a very small minority of Dis Board sycophants who just keep shouting and shouting to hear themselves rant. Remember? I suspect that the people who have filled page after page of this thread are the same 5 people who log in under different user names, and their views do not overlap with any of the millions of people who are not members of this Board. The "vast majority" of FP+ users really like tiers and do not want to see that feature change. Or so I am told.

True. Thanks for reminding us that Tiers, no more than 3, same park and no attraction twice are for our own good to keep us from harming ourselves or others, and that the tiny number of us that don't understand that are but a small speck on the scale of exceptions. Because the fact is the overwhelming majority of paying customers prefer those restrictions. Ooops.... I mean, "Features".......

 

[TLSnell1981]

. Again she is just another cast member so I don't know how accurate the FP+ tiering not being honored part is. But she did say Disney was aware of the glitch which seems like they are kind of on top of these things. Shame it wasn't something official :/

call agin, and you're likely to receive a different answer

Stockholm Syndrome?

Kool aid, pixie dust, Mickey bars..?

They might do nothing and let everyone use them or they might contact everyone via email and let them know one of the two will be invalidated if you don't change one yourself, or they might do a combination of the two depending on the time of year you are traveling. I suspect it was a low enough number that they will just chalk it up to a learning experience and not make that mistake again but you never know.

Coming here and talking about it is a surefire way to get the mistake fixed more quickly. Had those who found it kept it to themselves it might have been a lot longer before the error was found and corrected.

.

Seems to me, that would be a waste of money and manpower.

Yeah, I almost kept my mouth shut (and did for a while). It wasn't really much of an advantage, unless it was during F&W.

 

[roomthreeseventeen]

It looks like it was a mistake in a setting that was found out and corrected. I suspect Disney will see how many people doubled up on Tier 1 FPs and decide what they will do about it. .

They won't do anything about it, especially if it was a test and not a glitch, which we have no way of knowing.

 

[JimmyV]

Coming here and talking about it is a surefire way to get the mistake fixed more quickly.

But that assumes that folks at Disney read this Board, pay attention to it, and consider the views expressed here to be something more than the idle musings of 1/100th of 1% of all WDW guests. I was told in no uncertain terms that Disney doesn't care what goes on here, or about the views expressed herein. Hmmm. Interesting hypothesis. Disney doesn't care about complaints voiced in social media, but will be quick to act on blips that it finds out through social media. I suppose that could be true.

 

[ktlm]

Hmm. Did a couple of days successfully. And now... I can't. At about 10:20 CST, it seemed to change back... That was after getting LOTS of "technical difficulty" errors. Me thinks they fixed the glitch...

Bummer! I was really excited to see there were no tiers yesterday. I was hopeful tiers were going away and was actually thinking if that happened, maybe I would go ahead and book our regular trip this year. I think we could deal with FP+ without the tiers, although we did not like it on our pre-tier trip. It would still be worse than our last trip, because we had FP- to fall back on, which we did because FP+ was way too confining and inconvenient and MDE was about impossible to use in the parks to change anything. This is the first time in 6 years that by this point I haven't had a trip planned. Oh well, I figured it was too good to be true.

 

[clsteve]

They won't do anything about it, especially if it was a test and not a glitch, which we have no way of knowing.

Well, then the have a very "unique" testing methodology I haven't seen before. Maybe it's called the "Oops, Better Fix That One Quick" Methodology.

 

[roomthreeseventeen]

Well, then the have a very "unique" testing methodology I haven't seen before. Maybe it's called the "Oops, Better Fix That One Quick" Methodology.

Your criticism doesn't make any sense. Testing implies trying things for random or specified amounts of time. They don't owe you a backstage tour of their test.

 

[FireDancer]

But that assumes that folks at Disney read this Board, pay attention to it, and consider the views expressed here to be something more than the idle musings of 1/100th of 1% of all WDW guests. I was told in no uncertain terms that Disney doesn't care what goes on here, or about the views expressed herein. Hmmm. Interesting hypothesis. Disney doesn't care about complaints voiced in social media, but will be quick to act on blips that it finds out through social media. I suppose that could be true.

I think they do monitor social media, including message boards, but not for complaints from the uber-fans and over-planners who micromanage every minute of their vacation. They hopefully just filter out that noise. What I hope they look for, and what I'd have someone looking for if I were the project manager, are threads like this or the work around thread and see how people are taking advantage of accidental loop holes so they can be closed.

That is assuming this was a mistake and not a test though from implementing these kinds of projects is does appear to be a configuration mistake strictly looking from this side of it. I have no actual knowledge of which it actually was. Test or mistake I suspect we just verified a potential income stream for them.

 

[JimmyV]

Test or mistake I suspect we just verified a potential income stream for them.

I doubt it was a test. Too many people traveling on too many spread-out dates to see if booking only headliners at DHS and/or Epcot would crater the system. I think you'd have to have 20,000 people go to Epcot on the same day with pre-booked FP+s for both TT and Soarin' to get a feel for how the elimination of tiering might flood the system.

In any event, your last statement could portend the future of a "Super FP+" that can be acquired at an increased cost, just like the DxDP vs. DDP. It is there for the taking if Disney wants to do that. But it would start to smell an awful lot like the FoTL pass sold by their competitor, and I don't think they want to go there.

 

[sweetpea29488]

Thinking of changing my fastpasses back to what they where. I don't want to get there and lose my fastpasses. Is anyone else thinking about doing this or is everyone planning to keep them and see how it goes?

 

[geckodani]

Bummer. Oh well.

 

[clsteve]

Your criticism doesn't make any sense. Testing implies trying things for random or specified amounts of time. They don't owe you a backstage tour of their test.

That's a perfectly valid comment for a system in test- not in the final stages of a production rollout. It ceased to be in test long ago.

And there's no need to even dive into the specific details of an implementation life cycle. By any definition, when 100% of the users are on a system, with no other option to complete their tasks- a system is in production. It's that simple.

Disney is the one still implying it's a test- not hard to understand why....

 

[Oomiak]

Thinking of changing my fastpasses back to what they where. I don't want to get there and lose my fastpasses. Is anyone else thinking about doing this or is everyone planning to keep them and see how it goes?

Ummm, no. What's the worst that an happen? I miss out on using the Spaceship Earth fastpass I swapped for a second tier 1 fastpass? I'll take my chances and keep TT and Soarin'.

 

[FireDancer]

I doubt it was a test. Too many people traveling on too many spread-out dates to see if booking only headliners at DHS and/or Epcot would crater the system. I think you'd have to have 20,000 people go to Epcot on the same day with pre-booked FP+s for both TT and Soarin' to get a feel for how the elimination of tiering might flood the system.

In any event, your last statement could portend the future of a "Super FP+" that can be acquired at an increased cost, just like the DxDP vs. DDP. It is there for the taking if Disney wants to do that. But it would start to smell an awful lot like the FoTL pass sold by their competitor, and I don't think they want to go there.

I think we will see a way for guests to get additional FastPasses or remove tiering. I don't think it will be a flat out sale of additional FPs but I have said all along they can and should be used as an incentive.

They could give an additional free FP to anyone staying at a deluxe, remove tiering for anyone staying concierge, add an additional FP after the fifth consecutive day in the parks for the remainder of your trip. I suspect it will look more like that then "for and extra $100 you can get a second Tier 1 FastPass".

I also see a time when FP+ won't be limited to one park but will be used as an incentive to purchase hoppers or even as a way to get people from one park to another when used in conjunction with MDE and the RFID technology in the MBs. I think people often forget how integrated the components of the NextGen project really are. We are just way too early into it for those integrations to be visible to the majority of guests. The testing of NextGen and the testing of FP+ are too interrelated to separate the two and FP+ will remain in a test mode, even after all guests are using it, until all the integrations are fully implemented and debugged. It will probably take a few more years.