Not to reopen that can of worms but...

[MakiraMarlena]

It's OK. I don't hate it but I don't love it. Works well for some things.


In my experience it has been a very long time since the CMs even paid attention to whatever name showed when the band was scanned, much less calling someone out for having what they thought might be the wrong name.

 

[Lucius Best]

After they did this, she lost all of her fast passes for the remainder of our trip. Since we had made them months in advance, there was no way to get her back into our planned fast passes. She had to sit out when ever we had fast passes. We did try to let her use my band to use one of my fast passes, but the cast member caught her when my name appeared on the approval screen (my name is clearly not a common female name).

It is not surprising to me at all that Disney's technology screwed up. I made many calls to Disney's Internet Helpdesk when I was planning my trip, to fix issues with tickets not being linked properly, as well as issues with family members not being linked, etc. Having a Magicband not work at a FP entry would have been our worst nightmare.

But I am shocked that you spent your whole vacation with your wife sitting out every FP ride. After all the planning to make ride reservations months in advance, I would not have left Guest Relations until they either restored/replaced her FPs in MDE, or gave her a bunch of "ride anytime" paper FPs that she could use instead to ride with the rest of us. Also, once her tickets were re-linked, you could have used the app to re-book FPs for subsequent days of your trip. This is also the first time I've ever heard of someone being turned away in FP line because of the name.

 

[crazylady]

We were there last week. I think crowds were at an 8. We were not really able to move our FP easily. We were never able to get a "good" forth FP. Part of this was the FP strategy I child choose to use so we probrably could have done some things better. But overall, we did not like FP+. We felt it limited how much we got to do in a day and didn't give us enough flexibility. We still had fun, but we won't go back in the foreseeable future mainly due to FP+.

 

[SJSloan]

I just returned from my trip trip using FP+. I had to book at 30 days out and that was the worst part of the whole process. I had a hard time getting 7DMT for anytime other than 10pm. However, I did eventually secure them for all of us. After we were there we absolutely LOVED it. We got more done this trip than we ever had. In the previous system we would occassionally have a runner (which would be me) to go get FP for everyone, but I don't remember getting that many or think it was inconvenient that I had to run to the ride to get a FP.

One experience that I cannon explain but maybe Mesaboy2 can... At Epcot we used all 3 FP+. I went to the kiosk to get a new one and of course only a few options were available (Living with the Land, Journey into the Imagination, etc.). I choose Living with the Land. We eventually missed that FP+ so I logged on to reschedule it. I tried to select a new ride for all 5 of us but there was nothing available. I choose just 3 of us to see if I could get overlapping times. A FP+ for Illuminations popped up and I grabbed it (because we weren't going to get anything else). I then quickly went back and selected the other 2 in our party Illuminations was again an option.

Why the system didn't show a FP+ for 5 for Illuminations the first time I searched I am not sure. Unless a party of 2 or more cancelled in that 10 seconds it took search for a party of 5, and change to just a party of 3, I won't understand. Not complaining though.

 

[ELSA711]

two

It is not surprising to me at all that Disney's technology screwed up. I made many calls to Disney's Internet Helpdesk when I was planning my trip, to fix issues with tickets not being linked properly, as well as issues with family members not being linked, etc. Having a Magicband not work at a FP entry would have been our worst nightmare.

But I am shocked that you spent your whole vacation with your wife sitting out every FP ride. After all the planning to make ride reservations months in advance, I would not have left Guest Relations until they either restored/replaced her FPs in MDE, or gave her a bunch of "ride anytime" paper FPs that she could use instead to ride with the rest of us. Also, once her tickets were re-linked, you could have used the app to re-book FPs for subsequent days of your trip. This is also the first time I've ever heard of someone being turned away in FP line because of the name.

My daughter had all her FP+ wiped out completely for our entire stay. She received '3 golden ticket' FP+ linked to her MB for the trip each day. It took about an hour of time with CM and IT which was a nightmare but she was able to use it how she wanted, which really was just to align with us.

 

[maxiesmom]

Everyone in our regular Disney trip group absolutely hated this on our last trip.

I want to ask, did you wife have any trouble getting a card instead of a Magic Band? I'm wondering if they screwed something up when they tried to put her info on a card, or if she just stuck with the band.

 

[ScienceDad]

It worked great for us. Especially when you use it in conjunction with the app. Had no problems getting what we wanted even on spring break.

 

[poohfriend77]

We actually had a pretty great experience with FP+ on our trip (just got back yesterday). Mesaboy's thread had a lot of great info! We chose to make most of our FPs for late afternoon/early evening after taking a midday break (except AK, where we stayed until 3 p.m. and spent the evening at the resort) We still hit rope drop most days, and rode many things standby with very little wait. I was worried because I had been reading about how FP was negating the RD benefit, but we did NOT find that to be the case at all. And it was nice to return to a crowded park after a break and know we could do 3 rides with minimal waits.

FP lines looked long a few times, but they always moved very quickly. We did Splash right after the parade, and tons people were getting in the FP line. It stretched all the way up past the gift shop, to the main walkway toward BTMRR. But we were still in line only about 10-15 minutes total, when standby was 150 minutes!

I made a few changes on the fly with no problem, and we added 4th, 5th, and even 6th FPs at MK a couple days. My only "problem" was the day BTMRR went down, so we got the email that we could use the FP on other rides. We waited a bit to see if it would reopen, but finally decided to use it on Buzz. Immediately after exiting Buzz, we saw BTMRR had reopened. So we went to the kiosk to get another FP at about 5:30 p.m. I saw it as an option with a 6:05 time as the lady in front of me scrolled through her options. She was taking forever, asking a CM questions about what and where the rides were. It was maddening, lol. It was the only moment of the trip that I came close to losing my mind and screaming "HURRY UP!!!" But I didn't. ;-) DH had jumped in another line, and he made it to the kiosk before I did, so I joined him. By that time, the earliest BTMRR time was 8:50. That was a little frustrating, because it felt like we were losing 3 hours of FP capabilities. We wanted to get to the Wishes Dessert Party by 9, so I kept checking for an earlier time on my phone app. I was able to switch it to 8:35, which helped, so we were happy.

 

[PSUGuy]

We were part of the testing of this before it was completely rolled out and we've been there 3 times since. It works great for our touring style which is a bit odd. Every day we hit a non-EMH park, tour until standby lines exceed 25 mins or so then we hop to WS. Before, when we got to Epcot the FP- availability was non existent or too late for our taste. Now, we can have rides waiting at Epcot for us when we hop, we can get a lot in at our early park without fast passes.

BillFromPA

 

[theSurlyMermaid]

A CM "caught" you trying to use a different magic band? What? We swapped magic bands too many times to count and no one said a thing to us and if they had, I would have given them a piece of my mind. Those are OUR fast passes, we booked them and if someone decides they don't want to do the ride after all (in our case, the kids) then we should just let the fast pass expire?

Sorry, I can't really imagine what a CM would say to that.

 

[Vaughn4380]

I want to ask, did you wife have any trouble getting a card instead of a Magic Band? I'm wondering if they screwed something up when they tried to put her info on a card, or if she just stuck with the band.

Well, after much whining and complaining from my wife about the band, and my thread on the Dis trying to finding a way for my wife to avoid the band by getting a card (thanks to those on the Dis who helped), my wife decided not to obtain a card and use her magic band anyways. (insert stereotypical indecisive wife joke here)

So to answer your question, we never tried to link to a card so that should not have effected anything.

 

[Vaughn4380]

A CM "caught" you trying to use a different magic band? What? We swapped magic bands too many times to count and no one said a thing to us and if they had, I would have given them a piece of my mind. Those are OUR fast passes, we booked them and if someone decides they don't want to do the ride after all (in our case, the kids) then we should just let the fast pass expire?

Sorry, I can't really imagine what a CM would say to that.

CM was polite, but said that my wife had the wrong magic band and that they were not interchangeable. We did not argue, already being frustrated by that point and not wanting to make a scene in front of the rest of our group.

 

[sharonped]

For *us* FP+ took an amazing vacation to a "meh" vacation. Except for arrival day - which was wonderful; we spent too much time waiting around bored. So we're going to Hawaii this year. Can't wait.

 

[Vaughn4380]

My daughter had all her FP+ wiped out completely for our entire stay. She received '3 golden ticket' FP+ linked to her MB for the trip each day. It took about an hour of time with CM and IT which was a nightmare but she was able to use it how she wanted, which really was just to align with us.

We spent a considerable amount of our MK time at guest relations trying to get the ticket thing sorted out. Once we figured out the FP+ selections were lost, we didn't want to go back to the front of the park and deal with GR again trying to get fast passes back. We had others in our group and had already made them wait long enough. Plus my wife was "done" dealing with things by that point, so I bought her a funnel cake and she sat and chilled out for while.

 

[Kenny1113]

I agree with others about the lack of spontaneity, we too would not have specfic park in mind for a specfic day. My biggest frustration with FP+ (aside from booking in advanced and locking in park) is how difficult it is to book FP+ as a group with different reservations, especially when some will do some rides and some will do another.

 

[maxiesmom]

Ugh. It sounds like you had one of those trips where a lot of things went wrong or were not fun. That stinks.

 

[wdwjeffc37]

It works great for us. Especially at EPCOT for Soarin' and Test Track so we don't have to make the mad dash at rope drop. The same goes for DHS and Toy Story Midway Mania. We usually rope drop the Magic Kingdom to get everything we want to do done before park hopping to another park where our FP+ let us ride the headliners with a short wait. I will say that we always schedule multiple days at each park which helps. At the MK we were able to get additional FP+ for things like PoC, HM and Buzz. Also, we don't mind waiting in a stand-by line if there is something that we really want to do. Our first trip with FP+ we ended up waiting stand-by for the 7DMT twice (30-45 minutes each) just to get a couple of more rides after using our FP+. I'm sorry that it doesn't work for everybody but it is not going to change any time soon. Disney has too much invested in it to go back.

By the way all of our Magic Bands worked perfectly. I guess we are lucky. Cheers!!

 

[itchin2go]

Just back from a seven night stay, FP+ was a complete failure for us. After the first day my wife's magic band quit working for park entry and fast passes. When we stopped by guest services at the MK they said they had to "reload" or "re-connect" her park ticket to our account. After they did this, she lost all of her fast passes for the remainder of our trip. Since we had made them months in advance, there was no way to get her back into our planned fast passes. She had to sit out when ever we had fast passes. We did try to let her use my band to use one of my fast passes, but the cast member caught her when my name appeared on the approval screen (my name is clearly not a common female name).

This was in addition to the inability to add additional fast passes from our phone app after the first three were used (which we found out at Disney is how the system was designed on purpose). My family also prefers to "wing it" when we go, often choosing which park we are going to the night before. The need to plan out months in advance which park we were going to or forgo the use of fast passes (at least for the popular attractions) was absolutely despised by our family. The whole experience really ticked us off and is a poor replacement for the previous version of the fast pass system.

Future trips will probably be planned without the use of FP+ for us.

You had an over-zealous CM, if they "caught" your wife using your FP. I have lent mine to my nephew many times (and my given name is obviously female) and no one has ever batted an eye.

You can get additional FPs in the parks at the kiosks. I honestly hope you give the system one more try before dumping it and resigning your family to an experience where you are stand by all of the time.

It is not surprising to me at all that Disney's technology screwed up. I made many calls to Disney's Internet Helpdesk when I was planning my trip, to fix issues with tickets not being linked properly, as well as issues with family members not being linked, etc. Having a Magicband not work at a FP entry would have been our worst nightmare.

But I am shocked that you spent your whole vacation with your wife sitting out every FP ride. After all the planning to make ride reservations months in advance, I would not have left Guest Relations until they either restored/replaced her FPs in MDE, or gave her a bunch of "ride anytime" paper FPs that she could use instead to ride with the rest of us. Also, once her tickets were re-linked, you could have used the app to re-book FPs for subsequent days of your trip. This is also the first time I've ever heard of someone being turned away in FP line because of the name.

My daughter had all her FP+ wiped out completely for our entire stay. She received '3 golden ticket' FP+ linked to her MB for the trip each day. It took about an hour of time with CM and IT which was a nightmare but she was able to use it how she wanted, which really was just to align with us.

I do not want this to sound as though I don't believe you Vaughn4380. We all know that CMs don't enforce things uniformly.

However, your experience with swapping people's magicbands was the polar opposite of our experience. We used them interchangably on our trip, the CMs knew what we were doing, and it worked flawlessly.

I also have to believe that there was something Disney guest services could have done about your wife's wiped out FPs, such as what ELSA711 posted above. I understand if your wife was "over it" by that point, but if anyone else has that problem, I would encourage them to uncover every stone in an attempt to salvage some FP availability, or to get some accommodation for Disney's technology failure. I feel like there was something that could have been done.

As a final point, I guess I don't see how just ignoring the FP program is going to enhance anyone's vacation. I'm not particularly a fan of FP+. Learning a new system is probably fun for no one. It has not really enhanced my vacation. It made some things easier, some things harder ... In fact, with some research on my part, my vacation post FP+ was pretty much the same as my vacation pre FP+. But I don't see how not booking any advance FPs will make anything better.

 

[Vaughn4380]

Ugh. It sounds like you had one of those trips where a lot of things went wrong or were not fun. That stinks.

To be fair, aside from the band and FP+ issues, the trip was great. I have a mini-TR thread up about it.

 

[ELSA711]

We spent a considerable amount of our MK time at guest relations trying to get the ticket thing sorted out. Once we figured out the FP+ selections were lost, we didn't want to go back to the front of the park and deal with GR again trying to get fast passes back. We had others in our group and had already made them wait long enough. Plus my wife was "done" dealing with things by that point, so I bought her a funnel cake and she sat and chilled out for while.

Oh I get it, but our situation happened day one when I noticed my DD missing from our MDE account, even before we went to a park. CMs at our resort sorted it out with us and IT on the phone. I was extremely lucky to have caught the error myself.