FP+ poll

[wisblue]

That has been claimed repeatedly and vehemently. As such a prolific poster, surely you must have noticed at least SOME of them.

I have noticed people saying that there is a core group of posters who have expressed their opinions over and over and over for the better part of 2 years now and that that creates a false impression about how many people hate FP+.

But I honestly don't remember seeing anyone say that that core group of posters are the only people who prefer paper FP over FP+ and that everyone else loves it.

 

[cakebaker]

I'm not sure what difference it really makes how many people prefer paper fp over fp+. Is it a vocal minority who like it or don't ? I don't know and it doesn't matter. Paper isn't here anymore and I think most people concede it's not coming back. Would seem to me, the energy lamenting it's passing is better spent optimizing the current system.

 

[Shaden]

I appreciate the fact that the most vocal opponents of FP+ are just dying to come up with something to prove that FP+ is a major failure. But, I don't see that polls showing that 20% or 40% or whatever minority percentage it is would prefer paper FP provides that proof. Those numbers (if they are the real ones) would mean that 80% or 60% of guests think FP+ is an improvement over paper FP. And, IMHO, those numbers are pretty good for something that, by its nature, is going to please some people and upset some others.

In Business, those are terrible numbers ... terrible.

A restaurant - well 60% of people who eat here like the food.

A Doctor - Well 60% of people were satisfied with their surgery results

A Car Company 60% of people who bought a Mazda 11 like it !

Tooth Paste 6 out of 10 Dentists would tell you to use Toothbrite !

Really, a 40% or even a 20% dislike rate for a business is bad.

 

[wisblue]

In Business, those are terrible numbers ... terrible.

A restaurant - well 60% of people who eat here like the food.

A Doctor - Well 60% of people were satisfied with their surgery results

A Car Company 60% of people who bought a Mazda 11 like it !

Tooth Paste 6 out of 10 Dentists would tell you to use Toothbrite !

Really, a 40% or even a 20% dislike rate for a business is bad.

I just don't see those as comparable when you are talking about a feature of a product as opposed to the product itself.

If only 60% of the people who visited WDW said they enjoyed their visits, THAT would be a problem.

Before FP+, what percentage of Disney guests said they liked or disliked the paper FP system? That is the more relevant measuring point. If Disney has increased satisfaction in the FP system, while increasing, or at least not decreasing, overall guest satisfaction, then FP+ should be seen as a success.

And, if you're going to look at MM+ as a whole, you also have to consider guest satisfaction with Magic Bands.

If you want to use the restaurant analogy, what would your reaction be if a restaurant changed its recipe for a certain dish and 60% of guests liked the change and 40% preferred the old recipe? Maybe you would like a higher percentage, and hope that it would increase over time, but it would seem pretty foolish to go back to the old recipe that a minority prefers.

 

[Shaden]

I just don't see those as comparable when you are talking about a feature of a product as opposed to the product itself.

If only 60% of the people who visited WDW said they enjoyed their visits, THAT would be a problem.

Before FP+, what percentage of Disney guests said they liked or disliked the paper FP system? That is the more relevant measuring point. If Disney has increased satisfaction in the FP system, while increasing, or at least not decreasing, overall guest satisfaction, then FP+ should be seen as a success.

And, if you're going to look at MM+ as a whole, you also have to consider guest satisfaction with Magic Bands.

That's a fair point, but they have spent a LOT of money on this, so its all relative to other costs and opportunity costs. Investments like this when made are done so at the cost of other potential investments. If you are only marginally increasing the satisfaction of park attendees with an investment of this size ... failure. Even if on balance people keep going back, if there are very few people who decide not to go to WDW because of FP+, that isn't really the metric to judge the success or failure of the system. The real question is how much this leads to -more- business. Of course we have seen the full court press on this, Iger talking about how individual spending is up etc, of course its also up due to increased costs.

Now I don't, and we (as board people) don't have the information to know how this has shifted the needle, what the impact on the over all trip has been for what % of people. I mean I don't like the system on balance, and yes we did cancel one trip, but we are going back in November. We just will not ever have all the info needed to make a complete judgement, people are just going to spin and run with their narratives, and yadda yadda, but these polls do indicate that there is a significant number of people who are unsatisfied with FP+, THIS has real implications.

When someone pops in here and says look FP+ is great because I was able to book what I wanted last minute or day of, or there were no kiosk lines therefore FP+ is awesome. There is no need to prebook, its great to fly be the seat of your pants !!! - We Know that is not a universal experience, and its bad to give that advice because if people follow it, they might be like the other 40 or 50% of people who didn't have that kind of experience.

When someone insists that its only a vocal minority here who doesn't like FP+ (and I honestly can't believe you haven't seen this, its been written MANY times, and you have been in those threads) - we know that isn't true.

When someone says that "Disney knows what its doing" and therefore people must love this system because they follow their inside information and wouldn't do anything that their customer base doesn't like - we know that's not true either.

We know a lot of people aren't happy with the change to FP+ ... pure and simple.

 

[BugsDaddy]

In Business, those are terrible numbers ... terrible.

A restaurant - well 60% of people who eat here like the food.

A Doctor - Well 60% of people were satisfied with their surgery results

A Car Company 60% of people who bought a Mazda 11 like it !

Tooth Paste 6 out of 10 Dentists would tell you to use Toothbrite !

Really, a 40% or even a 20% dislike rate for a business is bad.

Are you saying that only 60% of WDW guests like WDW? If not, then your examples do not make sense. If that was the case, WDW would have been out of business long ago instead of people climbing over each other to get reservations. A very high percentage of people who go to McDonalds, for example, LOVE McDonalds, but maybe only 60% like the Filet O Fish. That would be a better example.

Regardless of the "poll" results which show a lot of "new" members of the DIS who happen to be voting against FP+ (ahem), there are obviously a lot of people that like FP+ and some who don't.

 

[Ambear]

It is quite clear, looking at all the polls, even if they aren't representative of the real world (and we can argue which way, more positive, less positive) ... but lets take worse case scenario, Lets take the 40% here then assume its twice as negative as the general public, so only 20% of the general public dislike FP+ ... That's pretty damn bad news for Disney. 1/5th of your guests dislike the center piece of your attractions/parks management system. OUCH. That's just. not. good. In fact, its BAD.

So there's the minority or majority, whichever it really is, that dislikes or hates fp+. So then how much of this group still go to Disney anyway? I've seen some people say they still go to wdw and try to make it work. I've seen some people say they just go to Disneyland now for paper fp. But either way doesn't disney get money? So attendance might increase at DL and stay the same or increase at wdw... I've seen a few people say they won't vacation at Disney ever so those people might be lost.

I don't know, but it's definitely not a simple question of whether negative feelings of fp+ affect disney enough. I figure if it does they WILL make changes. A lot of people say that because they spent billions they won't change it. But it'd make no sense that if fp+ were hurting their bottom line that they'd keep it.

 

[WillAustin]

I haven't seen too many people trying to prove FP+ is a failure.

Disney has listened to some of the complaints and the system has evolved quite a bit already. I expect it will continue to change over time.

 

[WillAustin]

Regardless of the "poll" results which show a lot of "new" members of the DIS who happen to be voting against FP+ (ahem), there are obviously a lot of people that like FP+ and some who don't.

I was noticing that on both lists.

 

[crmscotland]

Interesting reading the different opinions on this thread, thanks to everyone who has posted.

Until my family & l have experienced FP+ in the parks for the first time this summer l'm still sitting on the fence so to speak. Hoping despite it's drawbacks that we find FP+ is an improved recipe for us, to use an earlier poster's restaurant analogy. As the saying goes the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

 

[sherezada]

Just back from our trip. I really wanted to love FP+; I'm a big planner and also a big techie, so I loved the idea of being able to do your selections/changes online. Unfortunately it made for a very stressful and somewhat miserable trip when we had to make last minute changes. We decided to reschedule one of our days due to a downpour, and it was one of our MK days, which means we lost some hard-to find FPs. Also my dad decided to join us last minute, which meant I had to scramble to see if I could reschedule the FPs I had left to fit him in with us. I had to spend the majority of our trip either on my phone scouring for last min FP openings/juggling overlapping times to make it work or waiting in long lines because we couldn't schedule enough FPs for everyone. I felt like I wasn't able to enjoy the experience. In hindsight I wish I just would have forgotten about the darn FPs and just done what I could without them.

 

[Astridia]

Just back from our trip. I really wanted to love FP+; I'm a big planner and also a big techie, so I loved the idea of being able to do your selections/changes online. Unfortunately it made for a very stressful and somewhat miserable trip when we had to make last minute changes. We decided to reschedule one of our days due to a downpour, and it was one of our MK days, which means we lost some hard-to find FPs. Also my dad decided to join us last minute, which meant I had to scramble to see if I could reschedule the FPs I had left to fit him in with us. I had to spend the majority of our trip either on my phone scouring for last min FP openings/juggling overlapping times to make it work or waiting in long lines because we couldn't schedule enough FPs for everyone. I felt like I wasn't able to enjoy the experience. In hindsight I wish I just would have forgotten about the darn FPs and just done what I could without them.

I'm sorry your trip was disappointing. On our last trip, we did what your were did. Spending time trying to reschedule our FP+ selections. On our most recent trip, we didn't use the app when we were in the parks, but it didn't improve our experience. The SB lines were 30 minutes or greater, the kiosk lines were long, and our whole trip experience was disappointing.

I tried to change our touring style and adapt to FP+, but for our family it just doesn't work. I'm sad

 

[BugsDaddy]

So, the word merely changes what you said? I'm not on either side of this debate, but now I'm absolutely wondering who got banned over this.

Nobody got banned because they spoke out against FP+. People tend to get banned for repeated personal attacks (posted on the boards or through IM). These people were probably warned many times to cease but decided they did not want to do that. Actions have consequences.

 

[magicbob]

Nobody got banned because they spoke out against FP+. People tend to get banned for repeated personal attacks (posted on the boards or through IM). These people were probably warned many times to cease but decided they did not want to do that. Actions have consequences.

Sometimes. But not consistently.

 

[BugsDaddy]

Note that I didn't say anyone was banned merely because they criticized FP+ (if that was the case, I surely would not be here). But the debate over FP+ was certainly what led to them being banned. I have a pretty good idea how that occurred, but I will keep my thoughts to myself on that subject.

What led them to being banned was their inability to follow simple directions. Nothing else.

 

[BugsDaddy]

Sometimes. But not consistently.

Interesting. So, why continue to beat around the bush and just tell us what you mean by "consistently". Do you think the mods unfairly targeted people who spoke out against FP+? Because I can tell you that is not the case.

 

[wisblue]

I'm not sure what difference it really makes how many people prefer paper fp over fp+. Is it a vocal minority who like it or don't ? I don't know and it doesn't matter. Paper isn't here anymore and I think most people concede it's not coming back. Would seem to me, the energy lamenting it's passing is better spent optimizing the current system.

This is really the most important point.

This particular board is supposed to be about helping people plan their trips, not to discuss how big or small the minority of people who prefer paper FP is.

If people have made obviously hyperbolic statements about how small that minority is, it doesn't have any impact on anyone's planning.

 

[wisblue]

I was noticing that on both lists.

The thing that I found unusual on the lists is that there are 11 posters who voted that they preferred paper FP who just opened their Dis accounts on April 20 or later. It appears that those lists are sorted based on how long the person's account has been open. There are only 2 accounts on the "prefer FP+" side that are that new.

It's easy enough to click on the names of those new users to see their brief posting histories. Doing that provides some interesting information.

 

[BugsDaddy]

The thing that I found unusual on the lists is that there are 11 posters who voted that they preferred paper FP who just opened their Dis accounts on April 20 or later. It appears that those lists are sorted based on how long the person's account has been open. There are only 2 accounts on the "prefer FP+" side that are that new.

It's easy enough to click on the names of those new users to see their brief posting histories. Doing that provides some interesting information.

Bingo.

 

[Nancyg56]

The difference though was everyone was in the same boat. There wasn't one group of people who had an advantage over anyone else. Outside of the two and a half hour wait we had for SM when it first opened I certainly don't recall wait times like we've seen things get to especially for rides that CMs previously mocked people for riding. I know the main argument is attendance has gone up and from the 80s that's absolutely right but it hasn't gone up enough in the past two years to impact wait times the way they've grown.

Oh I know what the difference was, I just did not like it. As much as I am all for fair play, I am willing to pay a price to get that 30 day advantage, and I like to research, so I am happy to be on the boards. I do understand that the even playing field is gone, but if it was not, I would probably be home.