WillJenDisney
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- Joined
- Feb 18, 2006
- Messages
- 166
First, I apologize if this is the wrong place for this and will understand if the mods move it.
So, after having read a lot on here about the bands and MyMagic+, I tried to keep an open mind about it. We had a family of 6 adults plus 1 toddler for our trip. This gets a little long, but I think I was fair with it. Here was out experience, and I'll start with the bad.
The Bad:
(1) We had a 2 bedroom at BWV that obviously includes 2 rooms. In order to make the bands work, there is 1 door that is the "master" that you have to use all of the bands on to unlock it first, and only then can you use them on the other door. If you don't use them all to unlock the "master" first, then those that you didn't do that with will be unable to unlock either door. So, the first time up to our room, I take the 3 bands of those of us who had arrived. I scan mine first, it works. I scan the next one. Fails. The third one. Fails. So I head back to the front desk, and the other 2 from the group sharing the 2BR are arrive. I say the bands didn't work to unlock the door. She resets things and says go ahead. So no I got up and don't rescan mine because it worked the first time, I just do the other 4, and then use my own on the other door. Fail. Now I'm locked out. Admittedly, this is my fault. I just assumed that because I had already successfully used my band, I didn't need to use it on the "master" again first. Turns out I did. So I again had to head back down, get it all reset, and then use all 5 on the "master" room first. After this they all worked fine. But that was obviously an annoying start. The first time I did nothing wrong but it didn't work. The second time I screwed it up. Third time was the charm. It just seems like for $1 billion you should be able to make it so it doesn't matter what order you open the doors.
(2) We had 2 guests with the same first name. 1 of them was a toddler, the other an adult. I used Dan and Daniel to keep them separate. I made sure I linked the park ticket to the adult. Somehow this got screwed up. So the first time my father went to enter a park, his band didn't register a ticket. For some reason, it was linked to the toddler's band. I know I didn't just do it wrong, because while he was waiting to get it resolved, I went onto the mymagic website, logged in, and checked to see that the adult "Dan" band was the one that said a ticket was attached. And since "Dan" was engraved on his band, and "Daniel" on the toddlers, I know which band was which. So now my father had to wait while they got this corrected at the EPCOT gate (30 mins), and was late for the dinner reservation on night 1. Again, annoying when we didn't screw it up, they did. They 'fixed' it, but the problem I expected then arose. None of the Fastpass reservations I made were working on my father's band after that. So we ended up just having to give him the toddler's band for the rest of the trip. Not a big deal, just didn't get the color he chose... Annoying.
(3) Sometimes the line for the fast pass got a little long. Once, at Kilimanjaro Safari, they just started saying to have one person from the group scan their band and the rest walk through to get it moving. This worked to clear the line up, but that's not a sustainable solution, else the system would get abused hard. Not sure why it got backed up with people scanning individually, but it needs to be sped up, because once we were past that, we headed right up to the truck loading area (a positive), so that was the only bottleneck in the process.
(4) Tiering. Having tier 3 rides that don't require a FP at all is just dumb.
The Good:
(1) We aren't Rope Drop folk. We're more like 11 AM folk. So being able to reserve our FPs in advance for the times we wanted was awesome. I don't want to have to be there at 8 or 9 AM and run to a ride to grab tickets. And even if I do that, it might be for earlier than I wanted. But if I try to wait, I might miss the time I wanted. So it's a HUGE plus to us to be able to choose in advance what time we want, and plan it exactly how we'd like.
(2) We thought it made park-hopping better. I thought I'd read on here it made it worse. For us, we could schedule our FPs for Magic Kingdom in the afternoon. Then go over to EPCOT in the AM and ride things before the lines were huge, and head to MK and ride e-ticket rides on our FPs. Worked great for us. In the past, if we did EPCOT in the AM, by the time we got to MK in the afternoon, there was no way to get e-ticket FPs anymore at reasonable times if at all.
(3) Fastpass lines were really short. They were even shorter than I remember in the past. Sometimes there was a longer line to actually scan in, but once you got past that, you were pretty much walking straight onto the rides. We waited about 3 mins for Splash Mountain when it was a 70 minute stand-by wait.
Conclusion:
I really think it's great. For us, our negatives were things that are simply bugs to work out. On the other hand, the positives were really substantive changes for us that improved our experience.
That said, I understand why the Rope Drop folk are upset by it. I mean that genuinely. You worked hard for the FPs you got and it allowed you to do a ton by landing 6+ e-ticket FPs per day, and now that's been taken from you. What I think a lot of people fail to understand though is that Disney's goal is to satisfy the most possible people. I'm just going to use some fake numbers here to make my point. Let's say there's 600 FPs for e-tickets available daily. What satisfies the greatest number of customers? If 100 customers get 6 e-ticket FPs each, or if 200 customers get 3 e-ticket FPs each? It's clearly the latter, and I believe that is the obvious goal here. I think it's undeniable that the new system allows more customers to get e-ticket FPs. Of course, the types of folks that would typically be negatively affected by this system are the types of folks like us that are on sites like this. Which explains a lot of the complaints we see here. I think that makes this a vocal-minority issue. I believe that the new system is likely satisfying a much greater number of customers, even if it's upsetting a smaller percentage. I know that idea will be very unpopular here, but Disney is trying to satisfy millions of annual visitors, and allowing a significantly larger number of guests to get the FPs they want is great for them.
Despite the annoyances, after the early issues were resolved, it made the rest of our trip much more relaxing. We loved having our FPs already booked and not having to worry about it. And we liked not having to fish out a ticket card every time entering the park or our room or paying for things. It was really convenient for us.
So, while I understand while some are upset, I think Disney is very likely going to end up satisfying many more customers than they upset. I think a system that allows 3 advance FPs plus another 3 the day of will be a great way of satisfying both groups.
So, after having read a lot on here about the bands and MyMagic+, I tried to keep an open mind about it. We had a family of 6 adults plus 1 toddler for our trip. This gets a little long, but I think I was fair with it. Here was out experience, and I'll start with the bad.
The Bad:
(1) We had a 2 bedroom at BWV that obviously includes 2 rooms. In order to make the bands work, there is 1 door that is the "master" that you have to use all of the bands on to unlock it first, and only then can you use them on the other door. If you don't use them all to unlock the "master" first, then those that you didn't do that with will be unable to unlock either door. So, the first time up to our room, I take the 3 bands of those of us who had arrived. I scan mine first, it works. I scan the next one. Fails. The third one. Fails. So I head back to the front desk, and the other 2 from the group sharing the 2BR are arrive. I say the bands didn't work to unlock the door. She resets things and says go ahead. So no I got up and don't rescan mine because it worked the first time, I just do the other 4, and then use my own on the other door. Fail. Now I'm locked out. Admittedly, this is my fault. I just assumed that because I had already successfully used my band, I didn't need to use it on the "master" again first. Turns out I did. So I again had to head back down, get it all reset, and then use all 5 on the "master" room first. After this they all worked fine. But that was obviously an annoying start. The first time I did nothing wrong but it didn't work. The second time I screwed it up. Third time was the charm. It just seems like for $1 billion you should be able to make it so it doesn't matter what order you open the doors.
(2) We had 2 guests with the same first name. 1 of them was a toddler, the other an adult. I used Dan and Daniel to keep them separate. I made sure I linked the park ticket to the adult. Somehow this got screwed up. So the first time my father went to enter a park, his band didn't register a ticket. For some reason, it was linked to the toddler's band. I know I didn't just do it wrong, because while he was waiting to get it resolved, I went onto the mymagic website, logged in, and checked to see that the adult "Dan" band was the one that said a ticket was attached. And since "Dan" was engraved on his band, and "Daniel" on the toddlers, I know which band was which. So now my father had to wait while they got this corrected at the EPCOT gate (30 mins), and was late for the dinner reservation on night 1. Again, annoying when we didn't screw it up, they did. They 'fixed' it, but the problem I expected then arose. None of the Fastpass reservations I made were working on my father's band after that. So we ended up just having to give him the toddler's band for the rest of the trip. Not a big deal, just didn't get the color he chose... Annoying.
(3) Sometimes the line for the fast pass got a little long. Once, at Kilimanjaro Safari, they just started saying to have one person from the group scan their band and the rest walk through to get it moving. This worked to clear the line up, but that's not a sustainable solution, else the system would get abused hard. Not sure why it got backed up with people scanning individually, but it needs to be sped up, because once we were past that, we headed right up to the truck loading area (a positive), so that was the only bottleneck in the process.
(4) Tiering. Having tier 3 rides that don't require a FP at all is just dumb.
The Good:
(1) We aren't Rope Drop folk. We're more like 11 AM folk. So being able to reserve our FPs in advance for the times we wanted was awesome. I don't want to have to be there at 8 or 9 AM and run to a ride to grab tickets. And even if I do that, it might be for earlier than I wanted. But if I try to wait, I might miss the time I wanted. So it's a HUGE plus to us to be able to choose in advance what time we want, and plan it exactly how we'd like.
(2) We thought it made park-hopping better. I thought I'd read on here it made it worse. For us, we could schedule our FPs for Magic Kingdom in the afternoon. Then go over to EPCOT in the AM and ride things before the lines were huge, and head to MK and ride e-ticket rides on our FPs. Worked great for us. In the past, if we did EPCOT in the AM, by the time we got to MK in the afternoon, there was no way to get e-ticket FPs anymore at reasonable times if at all.
(3) Fastpass lines were really short. They were even shorter than I remember in the past. Sometimes there was a longer line to actually scan in, but once you got past that, you were pretty much walking straight onto the rides. We waited about 3 mins for Splash Mountain when it was a 70 minute stand-by wait.
Conclusion:
I really think it's great. For us, our negatives were things that are simply bugs to work out. On the other hand, the positives were really substantive changes for us that improved our experience.
That said, I understand why the Rope Drop folk are upset by it. I mean that genuinely. You worked hard for the FPs you got and it allowed you to do a ton by landing 6+ e-ticket FPs per day, and now that's been taken from you. What I think a lot of people fail to understand though is that Disney's goal is to satisfy the most possible people. I'm just going to use some fake numbers here to make my point. Let's say there's 600 FPs for e-tickets available daily. What satisfies the greatest number of customers? If 100 customers get 6 e-ticket FPs each, or if 200 customers get 3 e-ticket FPs each? It's clearly the latter, and I believe that is the obvious goal here. I think it's undeniable that the new system allows more customers to get e-ticket FPs. Of course, the types of folks that would typically be negatively affected by this system are the types of folks like us that are on sites like this. Which explains a lot of the complaints we see here. I think that makes this a vocal-minority issue. I believe that the new system is likely satisfying a much greater number of customers, even if it's upsetting a smaller percentage. I know that idea will be very unpopular here, but Disney is trying to satisfy millions of annual visitors, and allowing a significantly larger number of guests to get the FPs they want is great for them.
Despite the annoyances, after the early issues were resolved, it made the rest of our trip much more relaxing. We loved having our FPs already booked and not having to worry about it. And we liked not having to fish out a ticket card every time entering the park or our room or paying for things. It was really convenient for us.
So, while I understand while some are upset, I think Disney is very likely going to end up satisfying many more customers than they upset. I think a system that allows 3 advance FPs plus another 3 the day of will be a great way of satisfying both groups.
