Got in the FastPass line for Test Track at 11:05 this morning......

[Planogirl]

Busy times and fp+ is not helping

It really isn't in its present state is it? Plus the crowds will probably only get worse and worse this month and then what?

 

[Magpie]

It took us about 35 min yesterday at TT with FP+. The line for FP started outside!!!

What time was this? We got in the FP line right before noon with our FP+ and it was 10 minutes to the design station, and 10 minutes to the ride, for a total wait of 20 minutes.

I'd be curious to know what time you were riding!

Too bad someone can't do a survey of FP wait times throughout the day. (Maybe noon's a really good time to go!)

 

[yensid58]

We are at WDW now and the FP issue is on everything! We have waited for everything, even 2 get into FP line. It appears that there are way to many FP available and the cast embers are saying the parks are not crowded. Have had some Disney magic this trip, but this is our worst trip here ever! Will think long and hard before planning another trip to WDW as it is basically like a trip to any park this trip. My wife has commented about even how dirty the parks are and told this to a survey taker as we exited a ride. He seemed very diss appointed that there were no "excellent" choices to his questions. Please understand that this is what we are seeing and experiencing!

 

[wtrmlnlabs]

We are at WDW now and the FP issue is on everything! We have waited for everything, even 2 get into FP line. It appears that there are way to many FP available and the cast embers are saying the parks are not crowded. Have had some Disney magic this trip, but this is our worst trip here ever! Will think long and hard before planning another trip to WDW as it is basically like a trip to any park this trip. My wife has commented about even how dirty the parks are and told this to a survey taker as we exited a ride. He seemed very diss appointed that there were no "excellent" choices to his questions. Please understand that this is what we are seeing and experiencing!

I agree with you!! We've been here 3 times now right after Thanksgiving and the crowds are just awful this time. Worse than any of the other times. I feel bad for those coming down for the holiday!! Maybe it is due to the shorter time between the holidays, but it's awful. We were at HS and the one CM said how when Fantasmic starts the park is empty. Well, DH too DS's to Fantasmic. I had to leave because it was so crowded. I was starting to panic Fantasmic was full to capacity and the rest of the park was quite crowded. I didn't even go down Osborn Lights street because it was totally packed. I went and hid out at the One Man's Dream since no one was there. I guess if we do return again (we're planning other things in the future) it will no longer be December time. Maybe that full week before Thanksgiving will be better and still have the holiday stuff up. Or we'll wait till Jan or do right after school starts though I can't handle the heat. Blah! I've hit two survey takers in Universal this trip but none at WDW yet. Hope I do though!!

 

[Katelly]

I agree with you!! We've been here 3 times now right after Thanksgiving and the crowds are just awful this time. Worse than any of the other times. I feel bad for those coming down for the holiday!! Maybe it is due to the shorter time between the holidays, but it's awful. We were at HS and the one CM said how when Fantasmic starts the park is empty. Well, DH too DS's to Fantasmic. I had to leave because it was so crowded. I was starting to panic Fantasmic was full to capacity and the rest of the park was quite crowded. I didn't even go down Osborn Lights street because it was totally packed. I went and hid out at the One Man's Dream since no one was there. I guess if we do return again (we're planning other things in the future) it will no longer be December time. Maybe that full week before Thanksgiving will be better and still have the holiday stuff up. Or we'll wait till Jan or do right after school starts though I can't handle the heat. Blah! I've hit two survey takers in Universal this trip but none at WDW yet. Hope I do though!!

I agree with you. I have never seen Disney as crowded as I did this past week and this was our fifth trip to Disney at this time of year. We saw One Mans Dream as well, just to escape the crowds for a bit!

I have to rethink our dates for our next Disney trip. If these crowds are the way it's going to be in early December, I'm going to look for a different month to visit.

 

[tinkrbell1437]

We are just leaving this morning from WDW after 7 days and we found the crowds and lines to be very manageable. FP+ worked great and the MagicBands were awesome to use. We never waited in a line for more than 15 minutes for either FP or Stand-by . Edited to add: Most FP lines were less than 10 minutes from when we got to the line to check-in until we were on the ride. Exceptions were Soarin', Test Track and TSMM. Usually the walk through the lines was more time consuming than anything.

Sorry that others didn't have as great of a time, but we were really happy with our vacation. Edited to add - I'll post some info about what our experiences were with crowds, FPs and magic Bands when we land

 

[kellyg403]

Just got back yesterday and FP+ just didn't work for us. We had no issues with our magic bands for anything BUT FP+. For some reason, one person per day had an issue with their FP not reading. On Mon we went to Epcot with our FP+ done before we left home. 120 minute wait on Soarin' standby at noon. My dd and her family went to use their fp and dd's didn't work. She showed the CM the app (as we learned at AK the day before to have it ready when my grandson was the o ne whose FP didn't work) and the CM denied her entrance and told her that she needed to see someone at Guest Services to fix. It just wasn't worth it to have done the fp before leaving home to have a bit more of schedule and then not be able to use them.

On Wed at 9am my dd and her family went to TOT while we went to see if we could get paper fp for TSM. 75 minute wait already and fp for return time of 7:35=8:35 and a line to get to the machines out of the que. We didn't even attempt to stand in the line and try to get one.

My dh and I discussed extensively how we felt about the whole thing. It just isn't our cup of tea. The app was hard to download and then having to use the app to 'prove' there was a fp supposed to be attached to everyone was a PITA honestly. Then guest services at the resort was nice enough to give us a fp to Soarin' for Thursday and even commented the CM at the ride should not have turned my dd away as they know there are issues. The word ridiculous and a lot of head shaking. In the defense of the CM at the Soarin' area, it was an absolute MADHOUSE.

Also, we found that FP lines were typically a wait of 20-30 minutes.

Kelly

 

[Magpie]

Just got back yesterday and FP+ just didn't work for us. We had no issues with our magic bands for anything BUT FP+. For some reason, one person per day had an issue with their FP not reading. On Mon we went to Epcot with our FP+ done before we left home. 120 minute wait on Soarin' standby at noon. My dd and her family went to use their fp and dd's didn't work. She showed the CM the app (as we learned at AK the day before to have it ready when my grandson was the o ne whose FP didn't work) and the CM denied her entrance and told her that she needed to see someone at Guest Services to fix. It just wasn't worth it to have done the fp before leaving home to have a bit more of schedule and then not be able to use them.

On Wed at 9am my dd and her family went to TOT while we went to see if we could get paper fp for TSM. 75 minute wait already and fp for return time of 7:35=8:35 and a line to get to the machines out of the que. We didn't even attempt to stand in the line and try to get one.

My dh and I discussed extensively how we felt about the whole thing. It just isn't our cup of tea. The app was hard to download and then having to use the app to 'prove' there was a fp supposed to be attached to everyone was a PITA honestly. Then guest services at the resort was nice enough to give us a fp to Soarin' for Thursday and even commented the CM at the ride should not have turned my dd away as they know there are issues. The word ridiculous and a lot of head shaking. In the defense of the CM at the Soarin' area, it was an absolute MADHOUSE.

Also, we found that FP lines were typically a wait of 20-30 minutes.

Kelly

I'm sorry you had that experience!

Ours was similar, but much, much less frustrating. We had problems with our very first FP+ and the castmember sent us down to the kiosk where we found a very helpful guest services CM who fixed our FPs for all of our tiered parks. She also advised us (since we couldn't download the app due to only having a Blackberry) to take a photo of the day's itinerary before leaving.

So, every day before leaving our room, we quickly took a snapshot of our itinerary on our computer. All of our FP+ worked in the tiered parks (the ones she'd fixed), NONE of them worked in the other parks. But it wasn't a problem! We just walked up with the Blackberry out, said, "This will turn blue, but here's the picture!" And the cast member waved us right in, every time. A few of them even thanked us for being prepared and making it easy for them.

We never waited more than 10 minutes in a FP line (and that 10 minutes was only at Test Track, where we just missed getting into the design room). Every other FP+ line was a walk-on, and we quite enjoyed skipping the lines.

Following EasyWDW's recommended parks, we haven't found it crowded here at all. Everything is quite manageable.

We're really sad to be flying home tomorrow!

 

[kellyg403]

I'm sorry you had that experience!

Ours was similar, but much, much less frustrating. We had problems with our very first FP+ and the castmember sent us down to the kiosk where we found a very helpful guest services CM who fixed our FPs for all of our tiered parks. She also advised us (since we couldn't download the app due to only having a Blackberry) to take a photo of the day's itinerary before leaving.

So, every day before leaving our room, we quickly took a snapshot of our itinerary on our computer. All of our FP+ worked in the tiered parks (the ones she'd fixed), NONE of them worked in the other parks. But it wasn't a problem! We just walked up with the Blackberry out, said, "This will turn blue, but here's the picture!" And the cast member waved us right in, every time. A few of them even thanked us for being prepared and making it easy for them.

We never waited more than 10 minutes in a FP line (and that 10 minutes was only at Test Track, where we just missed getting into the design room). Every other FP+ line was a walk-on, and we quite enjoyed skipping the lines.

Following EasyWDW's recommended parks, we haven't found it crowded here at all. Everything is quite manageable.

We're really sad to be flying home tomorrow!

Yes, we used easyWDW as a guideline for our park days. Crowds were not 'terrible' but not what I expected. It seemed the timing of the day became more critical as the days went by. We are not rope drop people, however, I could see the advantage of being one on a trip with a bit of hot and muggy combined with 20,000 of my closest friends. So crowds is subjective at this stage of the game!

We had a great trip, don't get me wrong. No issues with our Magic Bands at all other than the fp issues. We didn't mind them at all. However, it seems that more and more of the kinks are being worked out on the overall rollout of the magic bands, yet the fp kinks are taking forever to fix. And honestly, in a park where there is one ride geared towards a family like dhs (yes, I know GMR and Backlot, but really lets be honest) Disney will have to figure something out IMHO. My daughter and I figured that it had something to do with the tiered system, as when we made the fp choices, there were no tiers yet in the parks. The first day, it was my grandson, the second my dd, who coincidently the whole trip had issues but none at dining/ticket, it became a running joke on who wasn't riding today! On Sunday at AK, we just rode standby at 3 in the afternoon for EE and rode 2 times in a row so, it was doable. But, each day it became clear that our regular touring style was not compatible with the fp+

And really, the app is slow to download, sometimes we would start at CBR trying to get into the darn thing so it would be up and ready at our first fp location. Not to mention, people all over the parks were on their phones, and it made things feel more crowded as everyone was bumping in to each other, stopping in the middle etc etc. Just felt chaotic in some ways.

Our trip was perfect. A little hot, a little frustrating, but as always, many precious memories made.

ETA: I did want to mention that on all rides we encountered issues with one member's fp+ not working, the only ride to turn us away was Soarin. Every other ride overrode the issue and let the person on. I can only think that at Soarin' the standby was so long and the fp+ was so long and it was a chaotic they were just turning people away.

Kelly

 

[kathy884]

That's horrible to have such a long wait in a FP line. Yuck. Breakdowns during your wait??

FPs were gone when we wanted to ride it during F&W and arrived in the evening. What we ended up doing was skipping Illuminations which let us ride it twice in a 30 minute period. We did the single rider line once and the regular line once. The regular line was moving faster than single rider when we were there?? // Rope drop and hitting lines during night time shows seem to be the main non FP options when you are there at busy times.

 

[Laketravis]

For those who posted that they are here now and had no wait at all when using their FP+, I'm very happy for you. I think there were a couple of times over the last two weeks where that happened for us as well out of the 90 FP+ reservations we made.

But it was not the norm for the headliners.

Now, for Captain EO or Figment or IASM or Nemo, I'm sure those FP+ riders experienced little to no wait. But then, neither did the Standby riders. In fact, I couldn't help but wonder how a family felt when they showed up with their carefully planned FP and the standby line was just as quick.

Even arriving at RD has less impact than it used to - the window of short wait times following park opening is much shorter than it used to be. That is because the driving force behind FP+ (yield management) flattens the distribution and usage curve so that periods of extremely short and extremely long waits are reduced. The majority now experiences the median.

Throughout the last two weeks, Soarin was regularly 90-120 minutes standby with all FP's distributed by noon, yet Nemo and Figment and Captain EO never had more than a 5 minute wait all day long - and people are still scheduling FP+ for those.

Which is exactly what Disney wanted to do - distribute that demand to attractions with excess capacity. And until we see Nemo or Captain EO with 45 minute Standby Lines, that strategy isn't working.

The problem has and always will be a shortage of popular attractions within each park. They can't make people want to ride Nemo by only letting them ride TT once with a short wait.

 

[Laketravis]

We had FP+ for TT today at 9:10. We walked in and were assigned a spot for the design room within 1 minute, then stood in line for the design room for about 2 minutes. The design room lasts 4-5 minutes, then the lines merge with standby. We waited for about 5 minutes for our car. So it took about 13 minutes to get into the car. We will probably do single rider from now on because we have no interest in designing the car. Denise

Yet at 10 minutes past park opening, we found Standby to also be pretty fast. I wouldn't have even scheduled an FP for that early, better to save them for the afternoon.

By 9:30 though, the queue inertia starts building rapidly and we found that was when the Standby quickly grew to 60 minutes or more, the legacy FP return times were already up to mid afternoon, and the FP+ line was starting to stretch. The single rider line, though, was pretty reasonable throughout the entire day. Most times it was in the 20 minute range.

 

[bcrook]

Yet at 10 minutes past park opening, we found Standby to also be pretty fast. I wouldn't have even scheduled an FP for that early, better to save them for the afternoon.

By 9:30 though, the queue inertia starts building rapidly and we found that was when the Standby quickly grew to 60 minutes or more, the legacy FP return times were already up to mid afternoon, and the FP+ line was starting to stretch. The single rider line, though, was pretty reasonable throughout the entire day. Most times it was in the 20 minute range.

Did you find any pattern throughout the hour of return to be heavier or lighter? Does everybody flood the queue at 12:05 and the line is empty at 12:45?

In October, I couldn't see a pattern.

 

[bcrook]

For those who posted that they are here now and had no wait at all when using their FP+, I'm very happy for you. I think there were a couple of times over the last two weeks where that happened for us as well out of the 90 FP+ reservations we made.

But it was not the norm for the headliners.

Now, for Captain EO or Figment or IASM or Nemo, I'm sure those FP+ riders experienced little to no wait. But then, neither did the Standby riders. In fact, I couldn't help but wonder how a family felt when they showed up with their carefully planned FP and the standby line was just as quick.

Even arriving at RD has less impact than it used to - the window of short wait times following park opening is much shorter than it used to be. That is because the driving force behind FP+ (yield management) flattens the distribution and usage curve so that periods of extremely short and extremely long waits are reduced. The majority now experiences the median.

Throughout the last two weeks, Soarin was regularly 90-120 minutes standby with all FP's distributed by noon, yet Nemo and Figment and Captain EO never had more than a 5 minute wait all day long - and people are still scheduling FP+ for those.

Which is exactly what Disney wanted to do - distribute that demand to attractions with excess capacity. And until we see Nemo or Captain EO with 45 minute Standby Lines, that strategy isn't working.

The problem has and always will be a shortage of popular attractions within each park. They can't make people want to ride Nemo by only letting them ride TT once with a short wait.

This is one of the posts that needs to be cut and pasted into an analysis of the FP+ System paper. I wish I had the energy to go through and collect the best posts over the last year. It would be a fascinating read.

 

[Laketravis]

Did you find any pattern throughout the hour of return to be heavier or lighter? Does everybody flood the queue at 12:05 and the line is empty at 12:45? In October, I couldn't see a pattern.

I didn't detect a pattern in that regard, but that was where a distinct advantage of paper FP's came thru - CM's would start to segregate the line based on partitioned time blocks ("Fast Pass for 10:20 or earlier only please!"), something they can't do with FP+ without a scan.

This entire endeavor is about maximizing use of current overall capacity. Very similar to airlines - when was the last time anyone was on an empty flight? But as I've stated earlier, Disney can not force guests to want to ride TT and Captain EO once each when they really want to do TT twice.

Speaking of planes, about to board our flight now. This weekend I will post full results when I can get to a full size keyboard.

 

[Scott MC]

For those who posted that they are here now and had no wait at all when using their FP+, I'm very happy for you. I think there were a couple of times over the last two weeks where that happened for us as well out of the 90 FP+ reservations we made. But it was not the norm for the headliners. Now, for Captain EO or Figment or IASM or Nemo, I'm sure those FP+ riders experienced little to no wait. But then, neither did the Standby riders. In fact, I couldn't help but wonder how a family felt when they showed up with their carefully planned FP and the standby line was just as quick. Even arriving at RD has less impact than it used to - the window of short wait times following park opening is much shorter than it used to be. That is because the driving force behind FP+ (yield management) flattens the distribution and usage curve so that periods of extremely short and extremely long waits are reduced. The majority now experiences the median. Throughout the last two weeks, Soarin was regularly 90-120 minutes standby with all FP's distributed by noon, yet Nemo and Figment and Captain EO never had more than a 5 minute wait all day long - and people are still scheduling FP+ for those. Which is exactly what Disney wanted to do - distribute that demand to attractions with excess capacity. And until we see Nemo or Captain EO with 45 minute Standby Lines, that strategy isn't working. The problem has and always will be a shortage of popular attractions within each park. They can't make people want to ride Nemo by only letting them ride TT once with a short wait.

FYI.... Just waited standby for 50 min for Living Seas/Nemo on standby. Ride was fully operational. Wish we'd had a FP+!

Sent from my iPhone using DISBoards

 

[mchelle77]

I haven't read the entire thread, but we were there the day before you and it was down most of the day. Got in standby at 830am and it was shut down just before we got to the vehicles. Went a bit later when MDE said it was finally back up (11am-ish) with the FPs they gave us, down again in the room right after designing the vehicle. Finally got on around dinnertime. Went to go again later, checked wait times and it said it was down again. So much time wasted.

 

[jheltz27]

Something was definitely up with TT this week - I only rode it once and hadn't been since the refurb but the FP+ line in early afternoon was probably a 30-35 min wait. We got past the design part and stopped there for a good 10 min without moving at all in that little room. It wasn't down as far as I could tell.

 

[FlipHipster]

FYI.... Just waited standby for 50 min for Living Seas/Nemo on standby. Ride was fully operational. Wish we'd had a FP+!

Sent from my iPhone using DISBoards

Back up on the EAC?

Holy Cow I couldn't imagine spending almost an hour waiting for that ride. Looks like Epcot is red is it packed?

 

[TLHB70]

We are in Epcot now, actually sitting on a bench in Innoventions trying to escape the crowd for a bit. I wouldn't say it is packed but I do considerate busy. I guess moderate crowds.
We were at RD and went straight to TT. We got in stand by line. When we got off the ride it was about 9:50. I was shocked! By that time the fp- were distributing return time 1:30.