Fastpass return or replacement?

[snowwhite84]

I mostly agree with your post with the exception that somehow Lightning Pass (a paid option) is a different product from FP+ (which was free). From everything I've read, the only difference is the price tag.

I agree it could very likely be similar, some of the ways I hope it’s different are: cutting down on scarcity for most popular rides, cutting down on the frantic refresh game, maybe getting rid of tiering, etc. I’m also intrigued by the free portion of the rumored plan that uses virtual standby to cut down on time physically waiting in line.

If it feels like a very similar experience FP+, yes, I will not be happy about paying. But if it’s an enhanced experience, I will feel better about it.

ETA: I’m still cautiously optimistic that the final plan will be an enhanced experience, even for guests opting to not pay in.

 

[qwerty2k]

I think the thing for me is i don't mind Disney adding additional options for an additional charge which enhance guest experience, but for me this seems like it's going to be to the detriment to the majority of non-paying guests whilst providing all the benefits to the paying guests (obviously speculating as we dont know what system will be in place, my comment is based on the latest 7 choices rumour) and i feel like this is taking away something that used to be free and locking it behind a paywall which means they aren't just adding additional options to enhance the experience but removing what we currently have without an adequete replacement.

 

[PaladinButters]

And in general, I think a Disney vacation is something that, if you’re able to afford it, already puts you in a privileged group, even if you plan a very budget conscious trip. For some families, even the cheapest Disney visit is out of the budget.

Please say this louder for the people in the back. Travel of any kind is a huge privilege.

 

[mercuryvenus]

Please say this louder for the people in the back. Travel of any kind is a huge privilege.

Exactly. Every single “problem” on here is by definition a first world problem.

 

[DisneyAuntie12]

Please say this louder for the people in the back. Travel of any kind is a huge privilege.

Agree. If you say a system is unfair to those who can’t afford to pay more, the obvious response is that it’s even less fair to those who can’t afford to go at all, and you end up basically saying that Disney trips are a universal right in the name of fairness. The only way for it to be totally fair is a system where everyone has the same chance to go in the same way.

Easier to just say that nickel and dime-ing is almost always a huge turnoff.

 

[Arym]

We have been going to Disney since DD1 was 2 (1994). We used to get APs and do two trips within a year, sometimes staying for 2 weeks at a time. We have only missed one year of being at WDW. One of the things I loved about WDW was that we felt everyone was treated equally. We were a lower middle income family and we did not often go to the movies, out to eat, etc. because our trips to WDW were our splurge and worth saving for. But, when we were walking around Disney we were treated like valued guests and equal to other guests. Yeah, I know there are VIP tour guests, Club 33 guests, etc but I mean the same as the average guest.
We've moved up in income and are probably what would be considered upper middle class in our area but we can not spend (aren't willing to with what we are already spending) what they might be asking us to with the lightning pass. We will be stuck waiting to even get in line I guess. I suppose we will feel like the poor guests who aren't valued. Not really a feeling I will like. And, not something I look forward to having to explain over and over again to my young grandsons. It's not about caring what people think about me, it's about relaxing and enjoying a vacation where I feel just as valued as the next person.
There will be eight of us going in January. It will be me, my husband, three adult daughters with the oldest daughter's husband and two children. My one daughter can afford to buy passes for herself but one is in college, and my oldest's family is not in a position to buy much extra. How do we justify spending $80 to even $200 a ride extra? I just can't do that. Do we just wander around the park waiting to be called to get in line. This all sounds so miserable. I'm hoping all this is a bad dream because right now I am not even looking forward to our trip. It sounds like a time of being glued to my phone and worrying about it telling me where to go and what to do next. I will try to make it a good trip for our grandsons because I really don't know when we will go back if it's as bad as I fear it will be.

 

[snowwhite84]

We have been going to Disney since DD1 was 2 (1994). We used to get APs and do two trips within a year, sometimes staying for 2 weeks at a time. We have only missed one year of being at WDW. One of the things I loved about WDW was that we felt everyone was treated equally. We were a lower middle income family and we did not often go to the movies, out to eat, etc. because our trips to WDW were our splurge and worth saving for. But, when we were walking around Disney we were treated like valued guests and equal to other guests. Yeah, I know there are VIP tour guests, Club 33 guests, etc but I mean the same as the average guest.
We've moved up in income and are probably what would be considered upper middle class in our area but we can not spend (aren't willing to with what we are already spending) what they might be asking us to with the lightning pass. We will be stuck waiting to even get in line I guess. I suppose we will feel like the poor guests who aren't valued. Not really a feeling I will like. And, not something I look forward to having to explain over and over again to my young grandsons. It's not about caring what people think about me, it's about relaxing and enjoying a vacation where I feel just as valued as the next person.
There will be eight of us going in January. It will be me, my husband, three adult daughters with the oldest daughter's husband and two children. My one daughter can afford to buy passes for herself but one is in college, and my oldest's family is not in a position to buy much extra. How do we justify spending $80 to even $200 a ride extra? I just can't do that. Do we just wander around the park waiting to be called to get in line. This all sounds so miserable. I'm hoping all this is a bad dream because right now I am not even looking forward to our trip. It sounds like a time of being glued to my phone and worrying about it telling me where to go and what to do next. I will try to make it a good trip for our grandsons because I really don't know when we will go back if it's as bad as I fear it will be.

I say hang in there and see what rolls out. I know Disney wants to be profitable, but I cannot believe they want to build a system that makes guests miserable. Have faith!

 

[OhDannyBoy]

Please say this louder for the people in the back. Travel of any kind is a huge privilege.

It certainly is.

I would never say what Disney does in "unfair" to anyone anymore than I'd say having a month long holiday in Mulan is "unfair" to those who cannot.

I can only speak for myself though, and the cost of a Disney trip was already pushing what we can afford for what we got. That's starting to tip. We are going in February. Depending on how that trips goes, we may just break ties with Disney. It's sad as we were considering getting AP and all of that, but honestly I don't see any value in it anymore.

Let's see how this goes.....

 

[mi*vida*loca]

I just can’t see it being $80-200 a ride for a family of 4. WDW has way too many rides for that. 5-10 rides and you’re almost at 1k for the day. How many people will truly spend that or have the means to do that all week long? Even if those are the prices I don’t think it’ll be that many people paying for that many rides. Or am I underestimating peoples pockets ?

 

[StarrySkye21]

When they close a standby lane and go to a virtual waitlist, will they give us an approximate time that we will need to get back to physically stand in the standby line? I see this being an issue if say you go to Space Mountain and the physical line is closed so you get put on the virtual list to be called back. Not sure when you need to come back, you wander over to Buzz that has a 30 minute wait and the standby line is physically open. So you stand in line and 10 minutes in you are called back to Space Mountain. Do you have to get out of line at Buzz or do they give you enough time to finish the ride you are queueing? If they give you enough time, then they need to make sure none of the other rides physical standby lines go above that window.

 

[emilymad]

Based on the rumors, the feeling I get is that Disney is going to be telling me how to do my vacation instead of me choosing how I want to plan it unless I want to spend the $10-$20 per ride. Hopefully it doesn't translate to that in reality but the rumors have those vibes. And if so, who wants a vacation where they are told what to do the entire day.

I personally want to either be able to plan in advance or know that lines won't be an issue. I feel like neither of these options will be available which just pushes me to select a different vacation destination. I don't want to be stressing all day if I happen to get a surprise pass, etc. I have used MaxPass in DL and hated it in comparison to FP+. I don't want to be on my phone all day and I don't want to stand in line more than 30 minutes. Disney has trained us to be this way so if the new system ends up being worse for us personally I don't see how we will continue to visit.

 

[dato63]

I wrote what I thought was a careful and thoughtful email a month ago expressing my concerns about the lack of fastpasses. I never got a phone call --- just a little-more-than-generic form email in response. It was was pretty disheartening.

I wrote a couple of months ago, received a form email response. Then someone actually called over the weekend. Sadly, it was long enough ago I couldn't remember exactly what I wrote in that email. And as it was a form on their website, I don't have a copy in my sent file.

I called back, got their voicemail. I left a message admitting I couldn't remember what concerns I wrote about, and that while I appreciated the effort of a call I couldn't see how anyone could help alleviate my worries regarding closed dining, no fast passes, crowds, etc. I closed my voice mail with thanking her for reaching out. I thought that would be the end of it. But, the CM called again yesterday. I was driving home from work at the time, so missed that call too.

So, just saying - you never know. You could still hear from them. It had been at least 2 months since I sent that email.

 

[Arym]

I say hang in there and see what rolls out. I know Disney wants to be profitable, but I cannot believe they want to build a system that makes guests miserable. Have faith!

I'm trying.

I just can’t see it being $80-200 a ride for a family of 4. WDW has way too many rides for that. 5-10 rides and you’re almost at 1k for the day. How many people will truly spend that or have the means to do that all week long? Even if those are the prices I don’t think it’ll be that many people paying for that many rides. Or am I underestimating peoples pockets ?

I don't know if you were responding to me or just in general but I was saying $10 - $25 based on previous posters guessing and our group of 8. Could you imagine? If we even bought 3 passes per park per day of our vacation we are looking at $1680 (@$10 each) to $4200 (@$25each). If I think about maybe a little more realistically, let's say 3 passes at MK, DHS, and AK for 2 days each, and 1 at Epcot for 1 day and let's use $15 per pass on average. That's $2280 for our family of 8, $1140 for a family of 4. That's after paying $4400 or so for tickets.

 

[::danielle::]

Can someone explain how the DAS system works?

I wonder if instead of having a DAS system for those who need it, could the DAS concept be expanded to everyone as the new Genie System?

Disney just won the lawsuit against them involving the Mother whose DAS accommodated son was unable to tour the park in a specific way. I almost wonder if Disney was waiting for the outcome of the lawsuit before they green lighted the final phase of the Genie App project. Basically, they decided the exact direction they would head with the features after the lawsuit. This would explain why they’re still making decisions and aren’t ready to launch the new system. If they were ruled to have made reasonable accommodations then they could proceed to make the same reasonable accommodations to every park guest, regardless of DAS status. Since that’s what happened, I’m guessing they chose that path for App development and all guests will have the option to get in a virtual queue.

 

[JoJoGirl]

Can someone explain how the DAS system works?

Here is a great comprehensive description of DAS and how It works:
https://www.disboards.com/threads/w...15-digital-das-on-tickets-magicbands.3178976/
It will indeed be very interesting to see how DAS is integrated into the new system.

 

[SarahWI]

It will indeed be very interesting to see how DAS is integrated into the new system.

I am honestly going to struggle if DAS holders are provided something free that everyone needs to pay for. I’m hoping whatever is rolled out provides equal but not superior access.

 

[krybandt]

When they close a standby lane and go to a virtual waitlist, will they give us an approximate time that we will need to get back to physically stand in the standby line? I see this being an issue if say you go to Space Mountain and the physical line is closed so you get put on the virtual list to be called back. Not sure when you need to come back, you wander over to Buzz that has a 30 minute wait and the standby line is physically open. So you stand in line and 10 minutes in you are called back to Space Mountain. Do you have to get out of line at Buzz or do they give you enough time to finish the ride you are queueing? If they give you enough time, then they need to make sure none of the other rides physical standby lines go above that window.

This is what the TP post speculated about how a Standby pass might work: "When you request a Standby Pass, you’ll be given a return window that starts at the next available time, say, 11:05 AM. Like the old FastPass system, you’ll have a window of time to return to ride, which I think will be 30 minutes. So you’ll need to show up between 11:05 a.m. and 11:35 a.m. to redeem your Standby Pass. When you return to ride, you’ll be able to enter the Standby Line for your 65-minute wait to ride."

I take that to mean we get a "free" pass to wait in line 65 minutes (in this example). You still have to come back within that window and physically stand in line for those 65 minutes. The only benefit I can see is they'd be capping the wait time for certain rides. Unless I'm reading it wrong, this is the "free" option, while Lightning Lane would give access to a shorter line, similar to what we had for free with FP+, but would could cost quite a lot, especially for families. I sure hope this is wrong.

 

[krybandt]

I wrote a couple of months ago, received a form email response. Then someone actually called over the weekend. Sadly, it was long enough ago I couldn't remember exactly what I wrote in that email. And as it was a form on their website, I don't have a copy in my sent file.

I called back, got their voicemail. I left a message admitting I couldn't remember what concerns I wrote about, and that while I appreciated the effort of a call I couldn't see how anyone could help alleviate my worries regarding closed dining, no fast passes, crowds, etc. I closed my voice mail with thanking her for reaching out. I thought that would be the end of it. But, the CM called again yesterday. I was driving home from work at the time, so missed that call too.

So, just saying - you never know. You could still hear from them. It had been at least 2 months since I sent that email.

I sent an email a couple of weeks ago and got one back saying "At this time, the Walt Disney World® FastPass+ program has yet to resume and we would like to note that policies and procedures can differ between parks. Announcements that are made at a particular park such as Disneyland® Paris may be applicable only to that park potentially. Since there currently are no announcements regarding when or if FastPass+ will resume or the format in which it will take, we recommend that all of our Guests visit and bookmark our Parks and Tickets Know Before You Go website page which are updated frequently."

 

[mercuryvenus]

I am honestly going to struggle if DAS holders are provided something free that everyone needs to pay for. I’m hoping whatever is rolled out provides equal but not superior access.

DAS is meant to give reasonable accommodation to those with disabilities. I think we all should be understanding of that reality.

 

[malba2366]

My kids are 19 and 16 now, my stepkids are 26 and 30, and we have been taking them to Disney almost every year since they were born. I lived in Fla. as a kid and had a resident pass. Somewhere I think my parents still have ticket booklets (missing all the E tickets, of course).

I have seen every iteration of WDW. It has always impressed me as the antithesis of money-grabbing parks (looking at you, Universal) where the more you paid, the better you were treated.

If they implement paid Fast Pass, I will regretfully stop going to WDW. There must be ways to monetize the parks that don't involve setting up a blatant class system. It goes against everything Walt believed it.

Paying more should not get you better treatment, if it gets you shorter waits on a line that is a value added service. It is not a class system...people can chose to pay for it if they want or wait in line if the don't. Similarly some people chose to eat at quick service restaurants while others spend more at a sit down meal again not a class thing, just different people paying for what they prefer. Also Disney is a publicly traded company...at this point the management has a greater responsibility to create shareholder value rather than sticking to some ideals from the past.