Standby lines are longer. One of the reasons is that there are more rides that accept FP+ than accepted FP-. It is unremarkable and non-controversial that when you add a FP option to an attraction, the people with FPs benefit, but the people in SB lines suffer. If you were a person who used to ride 20 rides in a day, 5 of them with FPs and 15 of them in SB lines, and now you have to ride 3 of them with FPs and 17 of them in SB lines, it is easy to see that you will be negatively impacted. If you were a person who did not use FP- and have been converted over to FP+, you will benefit.
FP lines are longer. The big reason here is the inability of the CMs to marry with the technolgy. In the past, a quick wave of the hand by "dad" with the FP tickets got his entire family of 6 into the FP return line in a nanosecond. Now, each person has to scan their Mickey and the failure rate (due to the system in some cases, but guest error in many others) is unacceptably high right now. Instead of getting waved through, CMs are (correctly) making people "try again. OK, now try again. This time, try turning your wrist a little like this. Wait. The Mickey has to re-set. Now try again. OK. You got the green light. Go ahead." I am not making that up. Happened over and over and over to people we were behind. (We used hard plastic tickets instead of MB and had no issues). So now, it might take a family of 6 between 30 seconds and a minute and a half to get through the first Mickey instead of one second. Doesn't sound like much, but when 12,000 people use the FP return line and only one out of 10 has a problem, things back up a lot. I have ridden EE probably 50 times with FPs. I never entered the FP queue outside of the covered entrance. On 2/15, I entered the FP return line outside of the building, clear over the bridge, at the Nemo theater. While the line moved fairly quickly, my timed wait was 23 minutes. That is much longer than any FP return line I have ever been in for EE. The same thing happened at the Safari, at Space Mountain, at BTMRR, at RnR and at ToT. FP return lines were running between 13-23 minutes. Not horrible. But longer than before.
As with the other thread, this one will probably devolve into discussions of earnings calls, increased shopping opportunities, and the ability of people to arrive in the afternoon at a park and utilize the benefits of FP whereas before they could not. All interesting discussions for a philosophy or economics class. But empirically and anecdotally, wait times are running a bit longer. This does not surface so much on light days. But on crowded days, it shows up in spades.
