FP+ Has it calmed down?

[pjpoppins]

So I usually plan hardcore up until the 180 day mark and then take a break. I really have been lax this time since we are starting to become "vets" and I just couldn't take the FP+ rants. So now that some people have experienced it, how bad is it? I don't see much about it on the first few pages so I'm thinking people overreacted (like the beer and wine at BOG, Starbucks, etc). I've kind of been stressed about it as we are going for the first time in August (September and April in the past) but should I be? Thanks.

 

[TinkerBelle_325]

I'm really curious about this too. I haven't seen any reports of lengthy FP+ lines and that they are snaking out onto walkways, causing congestion etc.

I'll see how the system works for myself in May. I was able to test it in Sept but that was when legacy FP was still in place. Personally, I think it was likely an overreaction, but only time will tell.

 

[JRawkSteady]

It's still awful. Nothing has changed unfortunately... People can only complain about the same thing so much before it turns into apathy.

I tour the parks now as I did when there was no Fastpass. And it's been great for me.

 

[gottaluvPluto]

I just came back and it is AWFUL!!!! EXTREMELY AWFUL!!!!! I think May should be better just because it isn't as busy; however, August ..... I hate to see FP+ in the summer months.

If you are staying on property, go to EMH because then you might get to ride some rides.

 

[Lyndarella]

I was there in Feb. and my main problem was with the MB not working much of the time. I pre-planned my FPs but was often told I had none reserved. Sometimes it started working again later in the day. The FP lines were not long when I was there, and I did stand-by only early in the day.

I have no interest in struggling with an app to make or change FPs while I am already on my vacation. Or to stand in line at a kiosk to find out when I can stand in line for a ride. That is not how I want to spend my time. In my opinion (and experience) the way to ride what you want is to go at rope drop, and just hope that your FPs show up later in the day.

Some people don't want to ride many rides and prefer to arrive late in the day. They need their FP+ to work. Many people have great results with their FP+/MB. It seems to be unpredictable.

 

[Love Tink]

I think it's more a matter of people thinking they have already said everything they need to say, and since nothing about the execution/parameters of FP+ has changed in the last little while, there's nothing new to say. If anything changes, or any new information comes out, I think the discussions will explode again.

Although, if you consider the discussions "rants" (i.e. wild, unreasonable tirades) why did they make you concerned in the first place?

 

[bwang123]

The parks are empty because everyone stopped going because of FP+

 

[redrosesix]

So I usually plan hardcore up until the 180 day mark and then take a break. I really have been lax this time since we are starting to become "vets" and I just couldn't take the FP+ rants. So now that some people have experienced it, how bad is it? I don't see much about it on the first few pages so I'm thinking people overreacted (like the beer and wine at BOG, Starbucks, etc). I've kind of been stressed about it as we are going for the first time in August (September and April in the past) but should I be? Thanks.

The "rants" I read in January helped me re-organize our trip and it was much much better than it would have been. We chose to spend half of it offsite and had great park days at US and SW when we had only been planning wdw days before that.

But for August? who knows? Lots could change by then so it isn't going to help you much to stress about it now. I say just keep yourself informed, be ready to choose your FPs at the 60 day mark (in case offsiters get to book in advance by then), and again when FPs for parades and fireworks come out closer to your dates. At least in August you basically know what the weather will be like --- hot.

I think it's more a matter of people thinking they have already said everything they need to say, and since nothing about the execution/parameters of FP+ has changed in the last little while, there's nothing new to say. If anything changes, or any new information comes out, I think the discussions will explode again.

Although, if you consider the discussions "rants" (i.e. wild, unreasonable tirades) why did they make you concerned in the first place?

This. Plus I got tired of the arguing, especially from people who hadn't used the FP+ system on crowded park days. No matter what the issue was, I was labelled a FP+ hater if I didn't say I absolutely loved FP+ and/or found wdw just as magical with all of the changes. I still don't like that the SB waits are longer now, I just don't post about it anymore.

 

[CarlaLovesDisney]

The parks are empty because everyone stopped going because of FP+

Wouldn't doubt it. But that means less lines for me

 

[xie]

Just judging from the recently posted trip reports, it has not calmed down, and the FP kiosk lines are long, as are standby lines for rides.

We cancelled both of our on-property stays this year, based on our experience there in January (we stayed onsite for a week).

However, as fate would have it, we are going to be in Central Florida next week. Since our annual passes don't expire until May, we are going to visit one or two of the WDW parks while we are in the area. We won't be staying on property though. And we won't be normal "day guests" since we still have the magic bands from our January onsite stay attached to our annual passes. I went ahead and booked FP+ so we won't have to do the kiosks.

I'll post when we get back. The way we see it, since the passes are paid for, we may as well have one last go at it. We already have booked trips elsewhere over the next 18 months so this will be our last WDW visit for awhile.

 

[kay1864]

Just judging from the recently posted trip reports, it has not calmed down, and the FP kiosk lines are long,

Not surprising, as more offsite people become aware of FP from Disney publicizing it. These lines won't "calm down" until offsite guests have advance booking of FP available, probably sometime this year.

as are standby lines for rides.

Also not surprising, but due more to increased crowds than to FP+.

 

[Kate and Family]

As to the reports.. for whatever reason..

I am seeing more positive reports than I did in February. Many reporting that they went with a bit of dread after the posts here, but were pleasantly surprised. But there are still plenty of negative reports from people who have actually been this year. (I tend to discount folks who have not actually gone yet)

It seems to be that most
-Believe that 3 FP+ (especially at MK) are not near enough
-That park hopping your FP+ should be allowed
-No one seems to be in love with tiers

Many felt they were quite happy with the attractions they were able to do, and found it more relaxing to not run around after fastpasses

Many LOVE MBs finding them convenient. But for the people with glitches in the MB (getting in and out of gates, rooms) - their experience was awful.

MDE - Seems to be improving, maybe?? Not sure. When the app worked it was loved. But for many it was real glitchy and slow.

FP+ Kiosk are busy and a mess. This has been a problem particularly for people offsite - but also for folks trying to use a glitchy MDE app. I understand that this may change. In the meantime, some of the kiosk are less busy - look for one of those.

You cannot always gauge by length of lines. Many have reported about the long, long return lines for FP+ returns. As it turns out these are people hanging out at the return place, waiting for their time frame to come up. This gives the impression of long lines. People have been reporting that they actually were as fast (or faster) than before. The opposite for Standby lines. Standby lines just come to a standstill when their are FP+ folks. So long lines, will in actuality be long lines - and move slower than before.

My conclusions from reading trip reports.
- Things are improving
- As before FP+ - rope drop is a good idea. (I was thinking sleeping in would be nice)
- If your enjoyment is tied to riding headliners over and over again -some of the magic will be loss for you. How much and how much you can adjust you touring style is going to be an individual matter.
- For me.. it will be a relief to not have to run to get FP. (I can not run fast, even with rope drop, I missed Toy Story Mania! lol)
- I am looking forward to MB
- MDE- For setting things up, I have come to the conclusion that it is best to set up via website. Save the app for the parks - and then cross your fingers.

 

[JanaDee]

Nothing has changed. It still doesn't work for many, many people and never will.

I can only speak for myself, but I got tired of arguing constantly about it and being labeled a "hater, negative, etc".

 

[wuzzy6]

We stayed onsite 3/14-17 and had a great time! Magic Bands and FP+ worked beautifully. The MDE App was buggy at times, specifically with regard to making dining reservations on-the-fly. Overall, it was much better than I'd anticipated.

 

[Kate and Family]

Nothing has changed. It still doesn't work for many, many people and never will.

I can only speak for myself, but I got tired of arguing constantly about it and being labeled a "hater, negative, etc".

I agree that it will not work for many people - and never will (while others will find it an improvement)

I am sorry that you felt you needed to keep arguing constantly - I have found that to be less than useful. Arguing most loudly, most often, does not make you right or wrong.

As to labeling - I agree. "negative", "wears Disney colored glasses", "hater", "drinking the Disney kool-aid" (Always wondered how the folks at kool-aid feel about that one.) It is so discouraging. The complaining about being called "hater" or "wear the Disney glasses" is almost as annoying as the name calling.

Folks, just give us the facts. When you were there. What you found. What were your conclusions. Let these speak for you.

 

[tink_lover]

We tried out the FP+ in October. Lots of glitches, starting with none of our choices that were pre-picked at home actually getting attached to our MB.

Trying them again this week. The biggest thing is only getting 3 per day. That is not a lot of rides during busy time. Maybe because we got to be such experts at the old FP system, we were able to ride A LOT of rides, even though we visit during busy times.

I wish you could choose windows of time when pre-selecting at home. The system doesn't allow for that. We made most of the choices for this trip anticipating that we will do single rider for the rides that allow it and didn't FP+ those rides. Luckily, the kids are all old enough to do that, it wouldn't work for little ones.

 

[ktlm]

No sense stressing out. Been there, done that, and yes FP+/MDE are awful.But, it is still Disney, and you can still have a great time even if it might be hampered a little by the new system. Also noone knows what changes there will be by August.

No it isn't calming down- if anything, it seems to be getting worse since FP+ opened up to offsite too. You still have to guess 60 days in advance where you will be at any given time of day within the park, and whether the ride will even need a FP at that time of the day. We found that even our best guess being annual visitors that follow roughnly the same schedule wasn't right (other than for TSM and Soarin- which used to be our first FP runs of the day, which are always crowded, and which we just put our FP+ around the time we usually rode it with regular FP). Instead of pulling what you need on a given day based on lines and where you are in the park- you are stuck locked in with very little possibility to make any changes with the glitchy MDE app, and even less now that FP+ is open to everyone so there is less availability and changes are about impossible. Even so, it is what it is and being at Disney is still better than being home at work! Hopefully it will change for the better by your trip.

 

[cheesemouse]

From my personal perspective, FP+ is awesome. Seriously. We just got back from 6 days at WDW and stayed onsite. FP+ is the best thing FOR OUR FAMILY. I totally get that it may not be great for other families. But for us, it's so great. We are a RD family and tour in the morning when crowds are lighter. We leave around 1pm most days and return in the evening around 5-6pm. We have 3 young kids, one of which is under 40".

Being able to book the FP+ in advance was a huge help and I loved not having to run around the parks getting FPs and having to take whatever time the FP machine was spitting out. And I loved having the magic bands and not having to fish out park tickets and FP tickets all the time.

We loved being able to schedule different FPs for the same time. This allowed my DH and the older 2 kids to ride thrill rides while I did other rides or character meets with my littlest one. That never was an option in the past because I wasn't willing to wait in huge lines with a 1 or 2 year old.

We loved being able to have a FP+ for MSEP. Probably our best use of FP+ the entire trip. We showed up at 8:30, got a great spot in front of the castle, everyone could see and no one showed up 2 minutes before the parade and stood in our way. I loved not having to stake out a spot for 90 minutes like trips in the past.

We liked being able to adjust the FPs as necessary, although we didn't adjust too much. Availability was very good through the night before our FPs were scheduled. The day of availability was much less, obviously because off site guests were booking their FPs.

The only park we would maybe have used more than 3 was MK. And obviously that's because there's a ton more attractions there. But even at MK, 3 was fine for us.

Our magic bands worked perfectly the entire trip - magical express, room entry, park entry, FP+, paying for food and merchandise. Zero failures, which was a pleasant surprise.

Now, our biggest observation is that we think it really stinks for offsite guests. The FP+ kiosk lines were pretty long a lot of the time. And I sure wouldn't want to spend the first 30-60 minutes of park time in line for FP+. It really reinforced that we will continue to stay on site.

2nd observation (and nothing new) is that the FP+ lines are longer than the old FP lines. This is simply due to the fact that it takes a lot longer for our family (and every other family) to scan in at each FP+ stop than it did to flash a set of FP cards in the past. Also, the FP+ lines are often bogged down by guests who get a "blue mickey" instead of a green one and then proceed to have a 5 minute conversation with the CM about why they got a blue mickey. Many, many guests have no clue about FP+.

So that's our take on FP+. I know there are a lot of people here on the boards that don't like FP+. But there are others that it works well for. I think you just have to try it out yourself.

 

[gottaluvPluto]

From my personal perspective, FP+ is awesome. Seriously. We just got back from 6 days at WDW and stayed onsite. FP+ is the best thing FOR OUR FAMILY. I totally get that it may not be great for other families. But for us, it's so great. We are a RD family and tour in the morning when crowds are lighter. We leave around 1pm most days and return in the evening around 5-6pm. We have 3 young kids, one of which is under 40".

Being able to book the FP+ in advance was a huge help and I loved not having to run around the parks getting FPs and having to take whatever time the FP machine was spitting out. And I loved having the magic bands and not having to fish out park tickets and FP tickets all the time.

We loved being able to schedule different FPs for the same time. This allowed my DH and the older 2 kids to ride thrill rides while I did other rides or character meets with my littlest one. That never was an option in the past because I wasn't willing to wait in huge lines with a 1 or 2 year old.

We loved being able to have a FP+ for MSEP. Probably our best use of FP+ the entire trip. We showed up at 8:30, got a great spot in front of the castle, everyone could see and no one showed up 2 minutes before the parade and stood in our way. I loved not having to stake out a spot for 90 minutes like trips in the past.

We liked being able to adjust the FPs as necessary, although we didn't adjust too much. Availability was very good through the night before our FPs were scheduled. The day of availability was much less, obviously because off site guests were booking their FPs.

The only park we would maybe have used more than 3 was MK. And obviously that's because there's a ton more attractions there. But even at MK, 3 was fine for us.

Our magic bands worked perfectly the entire trip - magical express, room entry, park entry, FP+, paying for food and merchandise. Zero failures, which was a pleasant surprise.

Now, our biggest observation is that we think it really stinks for offsite guests. The FP+ kiosk lines were pretty long a lot of the time. And I sure wouldn't want to spend the first 30-60 minutes of park time in line for FP+. It really reinforced that we will continue to stay on site.

2nd observation (and nothing new) is that the FP+ lines are longer than the old FP lines. This is simply due to the fact that it takes a lot longer for our family (and every other family) to scan in at each FP+ stop than it did to flash a set of FP cards in the past. Also, the FP+ lines are often bogged down by guests who get a "blue mickey" instead of a green one and then proceed to have a 5 minute conversation with the CM about why they got a blue mickey. Many, many guests have no clue about FP+.

So that's our take on FP+. I know there are a lot of people here on the boards that don't like FP+. But there are others that it works well for. I think you just have to try it out yourself.

I'm glad it worked out for you. It sounds like your family had a great time.

I think if people rushed to the parks early in the morning and then took a break to do the night time, it would work better. However, for the people that want to sleep in and take the time to get to the parks ... FP+ will not work for you.

I did like the bands for rooms and charging food, but that is it. I guess I could say one advantage to FP+ is we didn't really do any shopping because we waited too long in lines for rides. I saved money this trip!

 

[supercarrie]

I am here right now (at AoA, moving to AKL in the morning). So far, we have been to Epcot and AK. Overall, my family loves FP+. A few notes from the past couple days:

-We did not find the FP+ return lines to be long at any point. We've waited a max of 10 minutes (for Kali River Rapids) when the standby line was 60 minutes long. I have kept an eye on others as we've walked around and have not noticed them to be long.

-Off-site guests are still having a VERY tough time of it. The FP+ kiosk lines were extremely long from about 1 hour after park opening through the early evening. By 11am this morning at AK, Kali River Rapids, Kilimanjaro Safari and Finding Nemo were all gone for the day. If they got there right at opening, no lines and lots of CMs waiting to help out. If I was staying off site right now, I would seriously consider whether it is worth going during peak season right now, until Disney rolls out their more finalized version.

- FP+ can be improved by at the minimum, adjusting it to allow park hopping. Once they get a better idea of crowd patterns, I hope an increase above 3 per day will be made as well.

It works well - for us. We expected very high crowds (it being spring break) so have rope dropped each morning, then hit our FP+ attractions later in the day as the lines started to build. We managed to do almost all of Future World, come back to the room and take a 4 hour break, and do almost all of World Showcase yesterday evening with careful planning of rope dropping and FP+ planning. Today at AK, similar strategy, but did Wild Africa Trek in the middle of the day when crowds were at their highest.

Bearing in mind this is spring break, and we arrived very cautious about magic bands and FP+, so far, we have been very impressed. MK and DHS to go, so we'll see how those parks work out.