Just back with thoughts (mostly on G+)

[Jonfw2]

Well, I never considered when I planned this trip months ago it would be THIS busy. Busy? Sure. Holiday long weekend.

But the busiest run since the reopening- including Christmas? That did not occur to me.

So here are a few thoughts in no specific order from a crazy long weekend:

- Genie+ and ILL were 100% critical with these crowds. Without them, every ride and attraction would have been 45 minutes or more- including typical walk ons like Nemo, Figment, and People Mover. Every more popular ride in all four parks was between 100 and 140 minutes every day.

- All the tutorials and articles you can read about Genie+ can’t prepare you for it in reality. It’s not intuitive at all. Tip board, My Day? And I still had to log into the website through Safari to figure some stuff out.

- With crowds like this, the most popular rides were just as difficult to book as when Rise was on virtual queue. Remy, Rise, Flight- all gone by 7:02am. Only difference now is, of course, if you’re lucky enough to get one, you have to pay.

- When you’re booking an ILL be VERY careful about the time you get! You might see 10am, then when you click on it, it will say noon, then when you confirm your party, it will say 2, and then AFTER YOU PAY, it will say 5:30. Yes- it can change your time right up to when you’ve already confirmed. And you CANNOT cancel once you’ve paid.

- Rope drop- even if you get to the gates 30-45 minutes before the resort early entry- still works for the above. But you still might wait an hour. But that’ll still be less than later in the day. We waited about 40 minutes for Tower at rope drop after walking on twice at RD a few months ago.

- Finally, with crowds like this you have to constantly refresh Genie+ to find LL’s that work for you. They’ll show none available and then a few seconds later, one will pop up

With all that said, please understand, I am NOT complaining. Busy is what it is and we still had an amazing time. But there’s most definitely a learning curve to navigating crowds like this in a post FP world.

 

[g-dad66]

Ack, and look at the wait times in the triple digits right now:
Peter Pan, 100 minutes
Slinky Dog, 100 minutes
Splash Mountain, 105 minutes
Jungle Cruise, 120 minutes
Test Track, 120 minutes
Mickey & Minnie's Runaway Railway, 130 minutes
Tower of Terror, 130 minutes
Remy's Ratatouille Adventure, 135 minutes
Star Wars Rise of the Resistance, 135 minutes

And these probably aren't helping things:
Frozen Ever After, temporarily closed
It's Tough to Be a Bug, temporarily closed
Journey into Imagination, temporarily closed
Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, temporarily closed
Pirates of the Caribbean, temporarily closed
Toy Story Mania, temporarily closed

 

[Jonfw2]

Ack, and look at the wait times in the triple digits right now:
Peter Pan, 100 minutes
Slinky Dog, 100 minutes
Splash Mountain, 105 minutes
Jungle Cruise, 120 minutes
Test Track, 120 minutes
Mickey & Minnie's Runaway Railway, 130 minutes
Tower of Terror, 130 minutes
Remy's Ratatouille Adventure, 135 minutes
Star Wars Rise of the Resistance, 135 minutes

And these probably aren't helping things:
Frozen Ever After, temporarily closed
It's Tough to Be a Bug, temporarily closed
Journey into Imagination, temporarily closed
Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, temporarily closed
Pirates of the Caribbean, temporarily closed
Toy Story Mania, temporarily closed

I feel sorry for people there right now. Then again, I’m back in Cleveland, so I don’t feel THAT sorry.

 

[MainMom]

The one thing I wish they would fix before my trip in June is to hold your selected ride time for 1 minute while you click through everything & confirm.

I’m glad you still had a great time.

 

[Jonfw2]

The one thing I wish they would fix before my trip in June is to hold your selected ride time for 1 minute while you click through everything & confirm.

I’m glad you still had a great time.

Thanks! A bad day at Disney beats a good day anywhere else!

 

[ucf_knight]

Well, I never considered when I planned this trip months ago it would be THIS busy. Busy? Sure. Holiday long weekend.

But the busiest run since the reopening- including Christmas? That did not occur to me.

So here are a few thoughts in no specific order from a crazy long weekend:

- Genie+ and ILL were 100% critical with these crowds. Without them, every ride and attraction would have been 45 minutes or more- including typical walk ons like Nemo, Figment, and People Mover. Every more popular ride in all four parks was between 100 and 140 minutes every day.

- All the tutorials and articles you can read about Genie+ can’t prepare you for it in reality. It’s not intuitive at all. Tip board, My Day? And I still had to log into the website through Safari to figure some stuff out.

- With crowds like this, the most popular rides were just as difficult to book as when Rise was on virtual queue. Remy, Rise, Flight- all gone by 7:02am. Only difference now is, of course, if you’re lucky enough to get one, you have to pay.

- When you’re booking an ILL be VERY careful about the time you get! You might see 10am, then when you click on it, it will say noon, then when you confirm your party, it will say 2, and then AFTER YOU PAY, it will say 5:30. Yes- it can change your time right up to when you’ve already confirmed. And you CANNOT cancel once you’ve paid.

- Rope drop- even if you get to the gates 30-45 minutes before the resort early entry- still works for the above. But you still might wait an hour. But that’ll still be less than later in the day. We waited about 40 minutes for Tower at rope drop after walking on twice at RD a few months ago.

- Finally, with crowds like this you have to constantly refresh Genie+ to find LL’s that work for you. They’ll show none available and then a few seconds later, one will pop up

With all that said, please understand, I am NOT complaining. Busy is what it is and we still had an amazing time. But there’s most definitely a learning curve to navigating crowds like this in a post FP world.

This was certainly the busiest I’ve seen disney in a very long time and we do 4-6 trips a year every year (AP holders). We typically stay on-site but this time we stayed at Gaylord Palms and I was blown away with the value of staying there compared to a disney moderate/value. Their water park they have on-site was fantastic and the kids had a blast. The drive to the parks (which we always drive unless a boat/monorail/or short walk to the parks is available) is the same as staying pretty much anywhere else on property. We should’ve just stayed at the resort the whole time and avoided the parks all together.

 

[PrincessDJC]

This was certainly the busiest I’ve seen disney in a very long time and we do 4-6 trips a year every year (AP holders). We typically stay on-site but this time we stayed at Gaylord Palms and I was blown away with the value of staying there compared to a disney moderate/value. Their water park they have on-site was fantastic and the kids had a blast. The drive to the parks (which we always drive unless a boat/monorail/or short walk to the parks is available) is the same as staying pretty much anywhere else on property. We should’ve just stayed at the resort the whole time and avoided the parks all together.

The Gaylord hotels are amazing. I used to work for their corporate org before they became part of Marriott. You should check out theNashville one. Especially during Christmas.

 

[Haagen Dawgs]

This was certainly the busiest I’ve seen disney in a very long time and we do 4-6 trips a year every year (AP holders). We typically stay on-site but this time we stayed at Gaylord Palms and I was blown away with the value of staying there compared to a disney moderate/value. Their water park they have on-site was fantastic and the kids had a blast. The drive to the parks (which we always drive unless a boat/monorail/or short walk to the parks is available) is the same as staying pretty much anywhere else on property. We should’ve just stayed at the resort the whole time and avoided the parks all together.

So glad to hear this. We are staying offsite for the first time as well and the property appears to blow Disney away. Wish more people would do this so lodging at Disney would become competitive. Insane how many rooms they have to rent out and seem to fill their quota easily.

 

[sponica]

This is the part I find baffling:

When you’re booking an ILL be VERY careful about the time you get! You might see 10am, then when you click on it, it will say noon, then when you confirm your party, it will say 2, and then AFTER YOU PAY, it will say 5:30. Yes- it can change your time right up to when you’ve already confirmed. And you CANNOT cancel once you’ve paid.

I mean Ticketmaster and the movie theater both hold my seats in a queue for up to x minutes while I finish the transaction....is it really that hard to use the same system here?

 

[wisblue]

This is the part I find baffling:

I mean Ticketmaster and the movie theater both hold my seats in a queue for up to x minutes while I finish the transaction....is it really that hard to use the same system here?

I can think of one big difference between something like concert tickets and LL reservations.

A concert venue with reserved seats will have a number of unique seats, maybe as many as 15-20,000 or even more for stadium venues. With LL in a 12 hour park day there are roughly 132 return time windows with a limited number available for each. Even if almost all of the ride's capacity is devoted to LL that number can't be much more than about 100. If more than 100 people select a time within a split second of each other, (and I suspect there a lot more than that at 7 AM for something like ROTR) the only possibilities are to lock out someone requesting that time, or cascading them down to the next available time, and that cascading continues until the entire day is full.

It is frustrating that you click on a time and it keeps changing until the time is paid for and confirmed. I can't think of any good reason why they should be changing after that.

 

[sponica]

It is frustrating that you click on a time and it keeps changing until the time is paid for and confirmed. I can't think of any good reason why they should be changing after that.

I can understand in theory, but I don't want to choose what I think is 10 AM and have it be 5 PM, conflicting with an ADR in another park.

 

[TiggerBouncy]

Spot on to all your points. I was shocked at how busy the parks were. As a shareholder, I was pleasantly surprised, but as a guest, it was MUCH more crowded then I have ever seen it around this time in Feb and I was not prepared for that.

The ILL time moving is VERY, VERY frustrating. When buying Remy, it told me 9, then 11, then when I completed it was 1pm. I already had a dining reservation at 1pm in San Angel, and there is no way I was going to finish and book it across the park in an hour, so I opened a chat and told them the issue. About 45 seconds later, someone came back and offered to move the ILL to 3pm, which I said would work for me and about 10 seconds later, they had it updated. But I think this is an issue that Disney has to address. I would imagine they are working on a solution - they surely know about the problem.

Also, re-enforcing the refresh bit.... More than once I had a popular ride show no availability, then suddenly there was a spot. Be quick and you can snag it. I got a SDD opening about 20 minutes later (much less than the 90 minute wait) by refreshing. Nothing they can do about that - it's going to happen.

This happens with ILL as well. I forgot to purchase my ILL at HS. I freaked out at 8:30 since Rise was gone. All gone. Then during a refresh, it showed me a 9am and I purchased and got said 9am! So refresh still rules supreme.

 

[Jennasis]

The bait and switch with the times is by itself enough of a reason for me to never use G+ again. Couple that with this pervasive "fastest finger" game Disney has created for every-freaking-thing lately and it's enough to make me question the sycophantic devotion I've had for Disney since 1977.

 

[lockets]

Which part of the tech is the one that holds the reservation for 10 minutes? Is it G+? Not ILL right?

 

[Melora]

We were there last month and I wrote a similar thread to yours... just some overall thoughts.
The crowds were stupid large and Genie + was not worth it because of the number of people we had in our party (8 of them).
The ILLs were gone by 7:05 and the other ride return times were already late in the afternoon.
They are going to have to fix this at some point because it certainly has only made things worse rather than better.

 

[TheBigErn]

Let's face it; many of us think the new system is seriously flawed and a complete money grab.

 

[Davey Jones II]

When stacking LL reservations, you can only book once every two hours, right? And you could have one for 5 p.m., and still book another for 3 p.m. two hours later?

 

[Westerner]

Which part of the tech is the one that holds the reservation for 10 minutes? Is it G+? Not ILL right?

Neither G+ nor $ILL "locks" a time during the booking process from what I can tell. That is a significant complaint.

 

[woodleygrrl]

The bait and switch problem happened to us several times after trying to buy ILL's. Just know they will refund you if you go to the guest services areas they have all over the parks. It takes forever for them to complete a transaction but you can get the money back if you ask.

 

[jo-jo]

Thanks! A bad day at Disney beats a good day anywhere else!

We say that a lot, buuuuuttttt I'm starting to think if I stayed home instead of spending $200 for rotten day , I'd do ok. I mean there are some really rotten days at disney, cold pouring rain, wait 100 min only to have the ride break down on your last day there, get to the parks and 20 mins after using a day's ticket your child throws up. Just some examples when I'd rather be home with a cup of coffee and watching reruns for free.
lol