Misled by fastpass plussers

[Nancyg56]

I have a difficult time understanding why you felt misled? WHilI agree that FP+ will not work for everyone, and I see that it did not work for you, It is a godsend for others. Folks who are not rope droppers now can get on ToT or Rocking Rollercoaster, Soarin', and Peter Pan. It is not a magic pill that is a front of the line pass to all atractions, but it has made a difference in the quality of tips for many families.

It is a problem for folks who were used to making legacy FP work wonders for their trip, and who were used to walking onto POTC and Haunted Mansion, and I understand that their touring strategy will change.

But how is posting positive experiences misleading? Right now we all are trying to get used to a new system and many of us have acknowledged that there is plenty of room for improvement, but no one has even suggested that this is the best thing since sliced white bread.

 

[Karin1984]

There are not enough kiosks. There weren't enough kiosks the first week in Sept when the parks were pretty empty. I can't imagine what it is like in high crowd times. On the other hand, there probably aren't any FP to get after 2pm, so I guess it doesn't matter.

Do you remember which kiosks / parks / day in the first week of September? I was there in the first week as well and I never had more than 1 person in front of me, but usually walk on to the machine.
We mainly used the ones next to Philharmagic in MK and the one near the information board in the Studios.

 

[Crystal824]

I like FP plus. I can see why others wouldn't, but with little kids, it is helpful. I did notice a bit increased lines during our last trip for lesser attractions. However, I also noticed especially in the MK, I could use our three FPs, and then go get another that would often get me right on that lesser attraction. For instance, we scheduled or three FPs in the morning. After using our FPs, the line for the Magic Carpets of Aladdin was 40 min, but my 4 year old wanted to ride it. I went and got a FP to ride in 10 min. after I obtained the FP. We got right on. We did this for several attractions. Of course, you aren't likely to get 7DMT or SM that way, but it works for smaller attractions.

 

[Lucius Best]

I haven't used it yet, but I've read a lot of threads about it. What I've noticed is two very different main perspectives-

Group 1: Pre-FP+ Had to wait in long lines and little or no FP availability. Post-FP+ Never wait in any lines over 20 minutes and 3 FP+ is plenty.

Group 2: Pre-FP+ Never waited in long lines over 20 minutes and plenty of FP availability. Post-FP+ Have to wait in longer lines now and 3 FP+ is not enough.

Very well said. This is the point that often gets missed in the endless FP+ debates. There's positives and negatives to FP+ and legacy FP-. Whether FP+ is better for you depends highly on your touring style, as well as time of year/crowds/goals/expectations/weather/etc. If you're planning a trip, you need to figure out what "group" you're in, identify posters in the same group, and read about how they utilized FP+ on their trips.

There was one very helpful thread a few months ago, asking posters to describe how their touring strategy changed with FP+. It was high on information, and low of senseless arguing. Many posts of the style "this is what we like to do at WDW, this is how we did that with paper FP-, and these are the changes we made for our trip with FP+". OP obviously didn't see any thread like that, sounds like they focused on the positive reviews from Group 1 and dismissed/ignored/missed the negative feedback from Group 2.

 

[Lucius Best]

There are not enough kiosks. There weren't enough kiosks the first week in Sept when the parks were pretty empty. I can't imagine what it is like in high crowd times. On the other hand, there probably aren't any FP to get after 2pm, so I guess it doesn't matter.

Amount/location of kiosks is constantly changing. We also saw some huge differences in lines, some are more popular than others, at the same time one location is jam packed, another less-known area might be virtually empty. I'm guessing that if you were there during a low-crowd first week of September, they probably had a lot of kiosks closed/covered. We saw that on our trip in April, on days when crowds were low, certain locations we had used midday were closed later in the afternoon, causing longer lines at remaining locations.

I wish they would have a separate kiosk line for people who don't know what they are doing.

The most efficient kiosk locations had one main line, with a CM directing people to the next open kiosk. With individual lines for each kiosk, you could easily get stuck behind someone completely clueless trying to use the system for the first time.

I don't understand how the intergration of FP and stand by lines work...it was very frustrating to stand in the FP line and watch a bunch of stand by people go in while we waited. I couldn't figure out why I didn't have to wait AT ALL in the stand by line at meet Ariel in the grotto and yet the FP line was being held for me to walk by.

I think this is result of increased FP+ utilization, increased FP+ distribution, and CMs who might not know what they're doing. With more people in the FP return line, CMs can't hold the standby line indefinitely while they let all FP holders through, because there are constantly more FP people getting in line. I'm assuming the goal is to keep both lines moving, but the CMs don't always do a good job. On our trip there were many instances where we waited 10-15 minutes in FP return line, definitely longer than we were used to.

FP tiering is difficult to manage if you don't go on the big rides. For example, I don't ride rock and roller coaster. I had to take the FP though in order to be eligible for a 4th FP with the rest of my family. However, in order to make the FP show up as used, I had to walk through the whole damn line -- of course, it didn't wreck our trip, but it was a PITA. I thought I could just click it off at the entrance.

I had the same questions before my FP+ trip with 70yo parents, who weren't going to be riding the thrill rides with the rest of us. You had a few different options while planning, before getting to HS. You could have changed your RNRC FP+ to a different ride at the same time and ridden that instead. You could have made RNRC your 2nd FP, not your 3rd, so that it had expired when you were booking the 4th. You could have changed your RNRC FP+ to something like Muppets where there's only one MagicBand scanner at the entrance so you wouldn't have to go through the entire line. You could have also given your MagicBand to someone in your party so they could get another FP ride on RNRC.

 

[Dis703]

I'm sorry that it didn't work for you, but the fact that it does work for us and we love FP+ doesn't mean I'm misleading anyone. We've gone several times now with FP+ and have found it has always enhanced our time spent in the park. We get to ride some rides we used to always miss out on and we love that we can adjust our plans on the go. We were there just this past May and didn't experience any long waits. We rode everything we wanted to ride and never entered a line with more than a 20 minute wait. If it was longer we were usually able to add another FP for it or we came back at another time of day when it was shorter.

 

[Dis703]

I remember being at the park when HM and PotC were both walk-ons or nearly so.

But I also remember being at the park when one, the other, or both had 30 minute+ lines - pre FP+. I remember being in line at PotC where it eventually got crowded enough for them to open the second loading line. I had to force myself to get on that line because I really wanted to ride it, even though the line was longer than I thought it deserved to be. And I remember being at HM with the line backed all the way to the gate where it meets the path to Fantasyland (or as close to the gate as it could get); I skipped those.

So what's the difference? Maybe I wasn't paying attention to the day-of-week guidelines back then. Or maybe the busy time was during our one New Year's trip (the only time we've gone during a busy season). I don't honestly remember.

Or maybe some of the people who say the HM and PotC should be walk-ons are only remembering the times they rode it because it was a walk-on, and not the times they skipped it. I don't know. I just think I need better data to draw conclusions (though I'm unlikely to ever get that data).

This is always my thought when I see people blame FP+ every time a line is long. On all my prior trips I can recall times when rides like POTC, IASM, or HM had no line or had longer lines. I'm never one to get in a long line though so I don't take much notice other than to pass it and come back when it's shorter. That hasn't changed since FP+, except that now I can hop to a kiosk and try and get a FP for it instead of checking back later for a shorter line.

From my own trips I just haven't experienced these longer waits and wonder if it's still roughly the same, but people are taking note of it now because of FP+. And even if the waits are longer the number of guests have continually gone up, so how do we know it isn't just bigger crowds?

Regardless, I'll just count myself lucky that we haven't experienced this phenomenon. Maybe we just pick the perfect time of year for our trips.

 

[123SA]

Do you remember which kiosks / parks / day in the first week of September? I was there in the first week as well and I never had more than 1 person in front of me, but usually walk on to the machine.
We mainly used the ones next to Philharmagic in MK and the one near the information board in the Studios.

Epcot in the tunnels East and West, Buzz Lightyear. HS at the center of park and by ToT. Adventureland breezeway on Saturday Sept 5th in the evening was awful.

 

[Dis703]

Negative:
There are not enough kiosks. There weren't enough kiosks the first week in Sept when the parks were pretty empty. I can't imagine what it is like in high crowd times. On the other hand, there probably aren't any FP to get after 2pm, so I guess it doesn't matter.

FWIW, we added a lot of FP after 2pm and well into the evening. That was average crowd levels in May.

 

[reverie1729]

That would be like me saying I felt mislead by all the negative posts about fp+ that I read while planning our first trip. Or that I was mislead by everyone saying BTMR was a great ride when I absolutely hated it. Opinions are just that - opinions. Everyone has different likes and dislikes, it doesn't make anyone wrong or misleading.
That being said, we were only there for 1 day at MK in June. We were there from rope drop to close. Our 3 initial fastpasses were for HM, ETWB, and SDMT. We were not staying on site either so those were selected at 30 days. After those were used we were able to get additional fastpasses for jungle cruise, Buzz Lightyear, and BTMR. (We were not interested in SM or splash). We did not wait more than 20 minutes for anything else. We even went through the line for A&E twice, once at 20 minutes and once at 15 minutes. We only had 1 day and accomplished most of what we wanted to do. We only missed a few characters that we had wanted to see, but we also ended up doing a few things we didn't initially plan on.
So coming from some one with no basis of comparison to the old fastpasses, I enjoyed FP+ and found it to be great for our family.

 

[DisneyWishes14]

I don't see what is misleading about the "fastpass plussers". If you have read through the NUMEROUS threads on this subject, many people like FP+ and many people don't. How is that misleading? It works for our family. It may not work for yours. Isn't that sort of the nature of just about anything?

 

[boufa]

Ok... my view.. if it matters.

I love FP+

Here is why...

1) I HATED!!!!! the Sprint for FastPasses. Whenever we got into a park, instead of enjoying the park as it unfolded, I left my family and headed straight to get the FP for the ride I wanted. Thats it, I got 1 ride. Hiked over to Soarin, didn't look at anything, get the passes, likely for many hours later. Then hiked back to the family, still putting on sunscreen near the lockers up front.
... you then started to tour the park, until your FP time came close. Then no matter where you were, you had to drop and go back to future world and go do your ride. Then hike back to where you were. It was more than once when we would look at each other and say.. "I don't care what we do, but I feel like we have been in this same area for hours"
2) Dinner/Lunch conflicts with FP. Doesn't need to be a reservation for TS, we get a 100p FP for Test Track, and we decide we don't want to eat lunch before (stomach issues) so we wait until after the ride. We really wanted to eat in World showcase, so we leave WS to hike up front again, to go to Test Track (which we already ran to earlier in the day to get the FP) and then ride and hike back to WS for lunch, much later than we planned. Now we have a 530p TS reservation, which is screwed because we ate lunch at 2pm, and are not hungry.
3) You get blocked out of even a second fastpass because by the time you rode the first one (or the 3 hour wait) you couldn't get back to the ride for the second fast pass until it was already gone.

New system...
1) YOU pick the times. We plan them around meals, YOU decide which FP is important to you each day, and YOU pick your 3. Sure they can run out, but at least you gave it a shot from your chair, rather than run to TSMM and find out their gone, then double back to Tower of Terror to get those instead. I would rather wait in line for a ride a little longer, than run around a disney park in florida heat trying to get unknown timed fastpasses.

2) The ability to edit and change... I was in line on my last trip for standby at Splash mountain. We had been together with the kids for 5 days already and were out of things to talk to each other about. So I spent the time (about 20 minutes) trying to change a later fastpass (pirates! I think) to SDMT. I just kept working the buttons on the app, and then trying again. It took about 10 minutes, but I manager to get SDMT Fastpasses while standing in line for another ride. Totaly awesome... same day, and only about 90 minutes after the ride I was in line for. I'd like to see you try that with a paper fast pass. Once those covers go on, its over. If I throw away a paper fastpass, then no one gets to ride during my window, with my seats. But if I change a fastpass in the new system, the old FP becomes availilbe to others to use.

3) Broken down rides, and rain....Several times we went to rides that were down for some reason. Pirates opened late one day, and I got to change my fastpass to another of a group of rides that I could get on EVEN IF THEIR WERE NO FAST PASSES LEFT. I managed to ride Soarin because Test Track was down. That didn't happen on the old system. Oce we tried to get on Test track with our old FP and it was down when we returned, later in the day. We wasted all of that running around time with nothing to show for it. Rain.. that one is great, got a FP+ for Test Track in the rain, last hour park was open. When the ride didn't open the rest of the night we got a FP for any ride in any park the next day! Even rides that had no FP availability left... we could have done Anna and Elsa on Tuesday any time via FP just because it rained the night before. (We ended up doing SDMT AGAIN!)

4) Stress... less stress with the new system. For me I prefer to know what I am getting into. Having my FP's done and ready to go, is just simpler for me. I would much rather know what my plan and schedule are for a given day, then to show up at the park and see what happens. For example, I tend to do EPCOT left side one day and right side another. I can plan my meals around it, and my FP's around it. No hope and pray that it all works out ok.

Of course Disney is a lot of things to a lot of people, and we are all very different, but that is my experience and my opinion on it.

... now time to go cash that kick back check from Disney..lol

 

[123SA]

I had the same questions before my FP+ trip with 70yo parents, who weren't going to be riding the thrill rides with the rest of us. You had a few different options while planning, before getting to HS. You could have changed your RNRC FP+ to a different ride at the same time and ridden that instead. You could have made RNRC your 2nd FP, not your 3rd, so that it had expired when you were booking the 4th. You could have changed your RNRC FP+ to something like Muppets where there's only one MagicBand scanner at the entrance so you wouldn't have to go through the entire line. You could have also given your MagicBand to someone in your party so they could get another FP ride on RNRC.

Now that I have some experience, I could manage this better, but without experience, it isn't intuitive to do any of these things.

Yes, I knew I could have gone on another ride, but I really didn't have any interest in going on another ride. Plus none of the other first tier attractions are near RnRC.

Yes, I could have re-arranged the order, but that wasn't the plan that worked best for us.

Use the Muppet Ride instead? I'm not sure that makes sense. First, wouldn't I have to replace RnRC with another top tier ride? Is 3 from the 2nd group a choice I could have made? Muppets is in the other group. Second, the Muppet ride is on the other side of the park. Personally, I think it is a poor design to ask people to walk to the other side of the park to click off a FP you didn't want in the first place. It would make more sense for me to just walk through the RnRC line.


Yes, I could have have handed over my band if I had had any reason to believe that it was necessary. If I hand over my band, I can no longer go get a snack with my dining credits while they ride. I would need to remember to take care of this beforehand. I can no longer shop unless I bring some other way of payment. I can't go get the next set of FP.


My point is that although I can get around the situation, it isn't a good set up. All of your suggestions are helpful to deal with the situation as it exists. I just think there should be an easier way to deal with it. One that doesn't inconvenience the non-rider. Maybe something at the entrance to the ride that allows the cast member to mark off the FP as used.

As I am typing this, I now remember that the same thing happened at mission space. The cast member told me I had to take the orange card and walk through the line to the next point. It's just annoying. I wanted to go get a cup of coffee.

 

[ciera321]

I'm not crazy about FP+, but it's what we have currently, so we make it work for us. We arrive before rope drop, reserve our FP for the times we want, then fill in with the rides that aren't busy. We never wait in a line longer than 20 minutes. It can be done if you're willing to plan - This has been our experience with FP+ 4 times now, and all were trips during 7 and 8 level days. We've got our plan and FP+ reservation all set for a trip coming in 13 days. Not that I'm counting.....

 

[MrInfinity]

Sorry, but offering less FP+ (or more FP+) will not allow everyone to ride more rides.

X number of seats on rides per day.
Y number of guests who want to ride per day.

Yeah the ride remains unchanged.

In 2010, the Haunted Mansion could handle around 40,000 riders in a day.
In 2015, the Haunted Mansion still handles around 40,000 riders in a day.

The only thing that would lead to longer lines is if more people are getting in line for it. The ride will still process the same number of riders per hour.

So does one line go faster or slower? Maybe. But combined, the two lines will fill guests the same as before. So just pick the shorter of the two lines, and you will get on faster than before. If the FP+ line is shorter, get an FP+ to it. If the SB line is short, go there. This is the strategy behind line-avoidance.

Of course attendance has increased since 2010, so lines are going to be longer overall for that reason. And you could say... people are riding their headliners faster, and thus are choosing to ride the HM more often... in which case the issue is again, more people having more time to ride it and therefore choosing to ride it, which is hardly a bad thing. Maybe lots of people who used to only have the time to ride it once in a day because they waited standby for Space Mountain now ride space in 15 min w their FP+, and have time to ride the HM twice.

OP... how was your experience w the rides on which you used FP+?

I'm guilty. I'm using my FP+ on rides such as Haunted Mansion, Jungle Cruise, Buzz Lightyear, etc. But this is because I have 2 older kids (12, 10), and 2 younger ones (4, 2).

I use them like this too. Our kids are all under 13, so we'll use our FP+'s on things we can do as a family. I appreciate that I can get a mix of faster and slower rides that suit us.

 

[Lucius Best]

I'm sorry that it didn't work for you, but the fact that it does work for us and we love FP+ doesn't mean I'm misleading anyone. We've gone several times now with FP+ and have found it has always enhanced our time spent in the park. We get to ride some rides we used to always miss out on and we love that we can adjust our plans on the go. We were there just this past May and didn't experience any long waits. We rode everything we wanted to ride and never entered a line with more than a 20 minute wait. If it was longer we were usually able to add another FP for it or we came back at another time of day when it was shorter.

You are absolutely correct, just because you love FP+ doesn't mean you are misleading anyone. It's the OP's responsibility to read both the positive and negative posts. What can be misleading is the lack of context/details in some posts that I see.

For example, my parents often go the week between Christmas and New Years, and they ride everything they want to ride and never wait longer than 20 minutes. That's the truth, but that statement is also totally misleading because someone unfamiliar with WDW might be under the impression that Christmas isn't super busy. The reason it works for my parents is because they are at MK at 7am every day, and they don't ride anything that travels faster than 10 miles per hour. So they bang out a ton of rides in the morning and spend the rest of the day relaxing, soaking in the atmosphere, and enjoying the decorations with the occasional FP ride thrown in. Anyone who wants to ride the popular thrill rides is not going to have the same experience. Without context and details, trip reports (both negative and positive) aren't very meaningful and are open to misinterpretation.

 

[River Country]

Misled??? No us FP plussers as you called it and DISers used the Jedi mind trick.
I think that you don't have to like or dislike FP+ but for right now and the foreseeable future it is what we are faced with when planning a trip. How you plan that trip for your travel parties needs is up to you. If I like to FP Barnstormer Buzz and Magic Carpets of Aladdin that's the need that I have because my DD loves those rides

 

[jsmla]

It worked really well for me last week, though I have to say that the parks relatively quiet.

My day at MK:

8:00 AM reservation at Be Our Guest

Rode standby with an average wait of less than five minutes:
Mine Train
Peter Pan
Haunted Mansion
Big Thunder
Splash Mt
WDW Railroad
Little Mermaid

I then began using a combo of FP + and standby to ride/see:
Mickey's Philharmagic (SB)
Small World (SB)
Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (FP)
(I originally had a FP for Big Thunder but changed it to WtP when I noticed the minimal wait time at BT.)
PeopleMover (SB)
Buzz Lightyear (FP)
Carousel of Progress (SB)


I chose to skip Jungle Cruise and Enchanted Tales with Belle (Don't enjoy them solo.) and Space Mt (Haven't ridden this one solo since the time my legs cramped up after a long day of walking and a total stranger had to haul my fat rear out of my rocket.).

I don't do characters unless with someone who enjoys it. Ditto Stitch and Laugh Floor.

Pirates was closed.

My longest wait was for Small World, of all things, and I think that was around ten minutes.

I finished up sometime early in the afternoon (as planned) and went back to the condo for a swim. My third FP was for Wishes but I never made it back. The hot weather + poolside cocktails sapped me of my will to return ;-)

 

[Lucius Best]

Now that I have some experience, I could manage this better, but without experience, it isn't intuitive to do any of these things.

I agree. I was just throwing out ideas of how you could have avoided the situation of walking through the entire line (which is definitely silly), because we went through the same thing with my parents. I'll go a step further, and add that when I was trying to plan my first FP+ trip and had specific questions like this about how FP+ worked, the phone CMs were not helpful at all, I received a lot of contradictory information.

I am surprised, however, that your kiosk CMs were not helpful. On my first day, I spent about 15 minutes talking to a group of them, they were very knowledgeable. They had lots of answers and good suggestions, including one I left out: give your Magicband to someone else in the group, and they carry it through the line and swipe it at the scanners to "use" your FP. There was one time we were trying to get a 4th FP+ and it was complicated because some of our FPs hadn't been used and other had FPs for rides that had gone down, but kiosk CM was able to fix it for us. I'm guessing it's hit-or-miss how good your kiosk CM is, but we were lucky that the ones who helped us all seemed to know what they were doing.

 

[MrInfinity]

I haven't used it yet, but I've read a lot of threads about it. What I've noticed is two very different main perspectives-

Group 1: Pre-FP+ Had to wait in long lines and little or no FP availability. Post-FP+ Never wait in any lines over 20 minutes and 3 FP+ is plenty.

Group 2: Pre-FP+ Never waited in long lines over 20 minutes and plenty of FP availability. Post-FP+ Have to wait in longer lines now and 3 FP+ is not enough.

I'm prepared for longer lines and feeling like it won't be enough since we would fall solidly in Group 2 Pre-FP+. I'm trying to figure out how to make it work for us, but not sure that I will be able to since whatever we did right before seems like it will be wrong now.

Still planning to have fun even if we hate it.

Yeah, this is pretty much it. If you were Group 2 (most ppl on the Dis were group 2) then you will get fewer Fast Passes than you used to, and you'll have to deal with a lot of people that never used FastPass before (Group 1) now using FastPass. Problem is that Group 1 was around 80% of the guests, and Group 2 was around 20% of the guests (calculated by the # of fastpasses that used to be given out which is known).

I also consider myself part of Group 2, however I didn't experience the severe problems that some seem to encounter. And I'm not trying to mislead you or anyone, it just really worked out that the time-savings of FP+ which cut out things like running and having to go to rides twice to ride once, or having to return at unplanned times or late in the afternoon... led to us riding as much as before but with less effort overall. It was good, despite getting fewer. So definitely figure out how to make it work for you and you should be fine!