Fastpass return or replacement?

[DVCcurious]

I don't know why Disney has such trouble creating a FP system the WORKS. All I want is:

Arrive at the park whenever I feel like it
Ride all the best rides
Never wait more than 30 minutes for any ride

Why is that so hard for them to figure out?

 

[luv2cheer92]

I don't know why Disney has such trouble creating a FP system the WORKS. All I want is:

Arrive at the park whenever I feel like it
Ride all the best rides
Never wait more than 30 minutes for any ride

Why is that so hard for them to figure out?

That was easy peasy with FP+

 

[cakebaker]

I don't know why Disney has such trouble creating a FP system the WORKS. All I want is:

Arrive at the park whenever I feel like it
Ride all the best rides
Never wait more than 30 minutes for any ride

Why is that so hard for them to figure out?

I think they did have it figured out how to do just that. We certainly did that with FP+. The problem they're having now is figuring out a way to make us pay for it. And until they do, there will be nothing.

 

[DVCcurious]

I am no FP expert and we only go to WDW once per year. However I am a businessman and I want to look at this topic from purely a business perspective. If I was in charge how would I analyze the situation?

First let's look at why FP was created (I think it was around 2000). Disney was trying to address two problems. First, guests complained that they had to wait in long lines. Second, Disney wanted guests to spend more in the stores. The idea behind FP (look this up on youtube and you'll see interviews saying this) was that a guest would shop rather than standing in line. Here was the vision: a guest wants to ride Thunder Mountain. They walk over and see a 1 hour wait time. But there is a fastpass machine! So the guest inserts their ticket and gets a return time an hour away. Instead of standing in that 1 hour line they are free to go buy a snack or buy a souvenir and then return to the ride one hour later and ride without a wait. The guest rides Thunder Mountain at the same time (1 hour away) so they are happy and they spend money on crap so Disney is happy. Win/Win!

We now have 20 years of data on what happened with Fastpass (doesn't matter if it was paper or FP+). I'd ask two questions from my analysis. First, did customer complaints from 2000-2019 decrease compared to 1980-1999 (of course adjusted for attendance)? Second, did spending increase (again based on attendance)? If the answer to one or both of those questions is "no" then there is no way I'd bring back Fastpass in any form close to what it was. As a businessman I realize Fastpass costs money. You have a separate line, you have employees checking to make sure the person has a FP. With FP+ you have technology support costs. So if it's not making the company more money than it's costing the company it should be scrapped entirely.

Would I give up on the Fastpass idea? No. I'd look at the competition. What does Universal do? What does Six Flags do? They both have paid FP options. I think universal has something for people who stay on site. The Six Flags Flash Pass annual pass addition costs 4 TIMES more than the normal annual pass. That is what I would choose for Disney if I was the CFO or Chief Parks Operations Executive. I'd go with a FP option that makes the company the most money. And I don't think paper FP or FP+ did that (of course I'd actually look at the data, but I personally think the data would not show any more spending or any fewer customer complaints).

 

[WVU Disney Fan]

I’m ok with paid fast passes so long as it’s in place before we go in November. A few months ago I was very confident some form of FP would be in place by Oct 1st. The closer we get the less confident I am that FP in some form will be back by our November trip. We aren’t typically rope drop people and really relied on FP for the headliners.

 

[cdurham1]

I am no FP expert and we only go to WDW once per year. However I am a businessman and I want to look at this topic from purely a business perspective. If I was in charge how would I analyze the situation?

First let's look at why FP was created (I think it was around 2000). Disney was trying to address two problems. First, guests complained that they had to wait in long lines. Second, Disney wanted guests to spend more in the stores. The idea behind FP (look this up on youtube and you'll see interviews saying this) was that a guest would shop rather than standing in line. Here was the vision: a guest wants to ride Thunder Mountain. They walk over and see a 1 hour wait time. But there is a fastpass machine! So the guest inserts their ticket and gets a return time an hour away. Instead of standing in that 1 hour line they are free to go buy a snack or buy a souvenir and then return to the ride one hour later and ride without a wait. The guest rides Thunder Mountain at the same time (1 hour away) so they are happy and they spend money on crap so Disney is happy. Win/Win!

We now have 20 years of data on what happened with Fastpass (doesn't matter if it was paper or FP+). I'd ask two questions from my analysis. First, did customer complaints from 2000-2019 decrease compared to 1980-1999 (of course adjusted for attendance)? Second, did spending increase (again based on attendance)? If the answer to one or both of those questions is "no" then there is no way I'd bring back Fastpass in any form close to what it was. As a businessman I realize Fastpass costs money. You have a separate line, you have employees checking to make sure the person has a FP. With FP+ you have technology support costs. So if it's not making the company more money than it's costing the company it should be scrapped entirely.

Would I give up on the Fastpass idea? No. I'd look at the competition. What does Universal do? What does Six Flags do? They both have paid FP options. I think universal has something for people who stay on site. The Six Flags Flash Pass annual pass addition costs 4 TIMES more than the normal annual pass. That is what I would choose for Disney if I was the CFO or Chief Parks Operations Executive. I'd go with a FP option that makes the company the most money. And I don't think paper FP or FP+ did that (of course I'd actually look at the data, but I personally think the data would not show any more spending or any fewer customer complaints).

Yes, exactly. Well written. I know everyone wants to ride everything with no wait. But that's not happening unless you are willing to pay up.

There's an expensive paid option coming. I feel very confident about that. We don't have access to the data that the Disney analysts do. Historically, Disney is pretty good at finding the price points that balance supply and demand and maximize their profits. I think people are going to be floored and shocked when Disney actually announces the pricing. It is going to be significantly more expensive than the general expectations. The prices at Disneyland Paris are going to look downright cheap compared to what happens in WDW (just my guess).

 

[DVCcurious]

That was easy peasy with FP+

No it wasn't. It was impossible. Did you ever TRY to get a FP+ to ride the 7 Dwarfs, Flight of Passage, or to meet Anna and Elsa back in 2014-2016 during peak Frozen mania? You couldn't get those FP+ at all. Sure maybe they were available the first 5 minutes after your 60 day window opened up, but if you tried 11 minutes after your window opened up they were gone. I don't even know what the thumbnail for the Anna Elsa meet and greet looked like because I never saw it! And if you stayed offsite, my god you couldn't even get splash mountain for a decent time that worked for you.

So, sure, if you were an OCD uber planner who counted down the seconds when your window opened I'm sure FP+ was great. But if you had a life and forgot precisely the second your 60-day window opened up then FP+ was pretty poor. Or maybe you went on Wednesdays in September and never had a problem. But if you are normal and have kids who go to school then FP+ did NOT work. It, frankly, sucked. You'd end up with Haunted Mansion, Pirates, and Thunder Mountain. And Pirates/HM didn't even HAVE paper FP because they never had long waits. So what did FP+ do for regular people? Make things much worse.

 

[cdurham1]

Of course, another way to deal with park crowding and the FP issue is to build another park. Like in Texas, for example.

 

[cdurham1]

No it wasn't. It was impossible. Did you ever TRY to get a FP+ to ride the 7 Dwarfs, Flight of Passage, or to meet Anna and Elsa back in 2014-2016 during peak Frozen mania? You couldn't get those FP+ at all. Sure maybe they were available the first 5 minutes after your 60 day window opened up, but if you tried 11 minutes after your window opened up they were gone. I don't even know what the thumbnail for the Anna Elsa meet and greet looked like because I never saw it! And if you stayed offsite, my god you couldn't even get splash mountain for a decent time that worked for you.

So, sure, if you were an OCD uber planner who counted down the seconds when your window opened I'm sure FP+ was great. But if you had a life and forget precisely the second your 60-day window opened up then FP+ was pretty poor.

Yeah, the OCD uber planners had a significantly different and better experience than others under the FP+ system. That gap in experience has narrowed in the absence of FP. A small percentage of guests (a lot of people on the Disboards, for example) had tremendous experiences, while the vast majority had some serious disappointments. They still had a good time, but the 2 groups were far apart. I would think Disney views this as a failure and would like to flatten that experience curve, so that people have a more uniform experience. Bottom line, whatever FP comes back as is probably not going to work as well for us uber planners as the old system did.

 

[luv2cheer92]

No it wasn't. It was impossible. Did you ever TRY to get a FP+ to ride the 7 Dwarfs, Flight of Passage, or to meet Anna and Elsa back in 2014-2016 during peak Frozen mania? You couldn't get those FP+ at all. Sure maybe they were available the first 5 minutes after your 60 day window opened up, but if you tried 11 minutes after your window opened up they were gone. I don't even know what the thumbnail for the Anna Elsa meet and greet looked like because I never saw it! And if you stayed offsite, my god you couldn't even get splash mountain for a decent time that worked for you.

So, sure, if you were an OCD uber planner who counted down the seconds when your window opened I'm sure FP+ was great. But if you had a life and forgot precisely the second your 60-day window opened up then FP+ was pretty poor. Or maybe you went on Wednesdays in September and never had a problem. But if you are normal and have kids who go to school then FP+ did NOT work. It, frankly, sucked. You'd end up with Haunted Mansion, Pirates, and Thunder Mountain. And Pirates/HM didn't even HAVE paper FP because they never had long waits. So what did FP+ do for regular people? Make things much worse.

Yes, sure did. I had no problem getting FPs for those rides... at all. Even well before I knew how to work the system. My trips in 2015 and 2016 we got our first 3 FPs and that was it. And I had no trouble getting those rides (well, FOP wasn't open yet), with at least 2 or 3 of those trips being offsite. I was not even close to an uber-planner until about 2018. But even just basic research was all you needed. Something any reasonable person should do for any vacation.

But once you could start doing it all from your phone (the first year or two of FP+ you had to go to a kiosk to get more), there was no planning required at all. You could get pretty much anything you wanted same day. Including SDMT, FOP, SDD, etc. Yes, larger groups would have a harder time, but even mid-tier rides were easy.

 

[WVU Disney Fan]

I don’t think you have to be an “ocd uber planner” to benefit from FP. Simply mark on your calendar when the 60 day window is and you wake up early 1 morning book your FPs and your done. Don’t have to be obsessed with it.

 

[cakebaker]

Yeah, the OCD uber planners had a significantly different and better experience than others under the FP+ system.

I am neither OCD or an uber planner and I certainly have a life and had no problems getting FP+. It's not hard to set an alarm ( I'm awake at that hour, no problem here) to wake up 5 minutes before your window opens and spend 5 minutes picking up the handful of hard to get FP's. The rest of them, I would do whenever I got around to it that first week after my window opened. A great many of them I could wait a very long time to get.

It took literally minutes to do and couldn't have been much easier.

 

[perpetualplanner]

We preferred the paper fastpass system to FP+ but I can see how a lot of people didn't

 

[New Mouse]

So basically the failure of fp/fp+ combined with the complaints of long lines and large crowds has again proven that Disney parks just dont have enough to do.

If they did, all of those problems wouldnt exist.

 

[cakebaker]

We preferred the paper fastpass system to FP+ but I can see how a lot of people didn't

While I preferred FP+, we were able to make paper FP work for us too. I certainly didn't hate it.

 

[Lashed34]

The core design of FP+ was flawed from the beginning. For example, If you have a 10,000 people going to MK on Jan 1st for 2 weeks and then another 10,000 going on Jan 7th for 1 week the vast majority of FP have gone for that 2nd week, and so it rolls on. Now multiply that ten fold, all year round and you have a huge issue with people unable to get FP for the most popular rides.

It was a flawed system to start with and got worse as the years went by. Just look at all the new on site accommodation that has been build since FP+ was introduced, it became impossible for the system to work - even more so when some accommodation got to book FP+ even further out from arrival.

 

[New Mouse]

It was a flawed system to start with and got worse as the years went by. Just look at all the new on site accommodation that has been build since FP+ was introduced, it became impossible for the system to work - even more so when some accommodation got to book FP+ even further out from arrival.

When the system was built, the question was asked who would want a fastpass for something like Indiana Jones. The answer to that question was no one, but in order to make the system even appear to remotely work they needed to add the capacity of things like that to make sure there was actually something for people to get.

 

[jujubiee4]

So basically the failure of fp/fp+ combined with the complaints of long lines and large crowds has again proven that Disney parks just dont have enough to do.

If they did, all of those problems wouldnt exist.

Yet people continue to flock to parks. I see complaining all the time and people still go. Resorts
booked up. Pictures of large crowds. You would think there was no where else to vacation. There
are other choices out there but for many WDW... bad faults and all is the only choice.

I will be curious how all this plays out next year.

 

[Datfan1]

Free or Paid. Give us something. Anything. We spend a lot of $$$ and most like to plan to minimize the chaos and make best use of our time. Come on Disney!!

 

[::danielle::]

Here’s a new idea to consider:

What if the lack of FP right now is intentional so that Disney can get new data that analyzes guest behavior when they have to stand in long lines for rides?

The reasons why FP was implemented are solid. But when was the last time they had reliable data about shopper behavior when it’s a level playing field for all park guests? I bet whatever data they have is completely outdated.

This season before the 50th is a perfect time to get that data.

As for the future of FP, it’s quite obvious that there’s going to be a segment of people on DisBoards who will hate the new system, a segment who will love the new system and a segment who will acclimate to the new system while pining for the Good ‘Ol Days of FP/FP+.

Trying to make everyone happy is an impossible feat. Disney knows this.

Which group will Disney choose to cater to? The group the reaps the most profit.

I presented this theory earlier and I’ll share it again because I still think it’s the most likely.

There will be paid FP but it will have variable pricing based on demand. As the wait time increases, the FP price will increase.

Most people are wired to make impulse decisions that circumvent logic. Hence the lovely display of candy bars at the grocery checkout. Add a Disney “high” or a mid-trip meltdown to the impulsivity and people will whip out their credit cards fast if it solves problem right now.


This will get more $$ out of the first time visitors who didn’t realize you had to plan your trip 180 days before you go while allowing us planners to show up 45 minutes before rope drop to sprint through MK to get on the Tron ride before the wait is 240 minutes long.

I think on-site resort guests will get a FP credit amount on their account to use at their discretion. The credit will vary based on the resort tier and various incentives.