Having just completed our 30th year of visiting WDW we have seen a lot of changes over time that we have adapted to easily. We found the requirement of having park reservations to be simple as we usually plan in advance and know what parks we want to go to on what days anyway.
However, there is one problem with the current policy. If you don't check in at your reserved park you can't park hop to a different park after 2 PM. In our situation, one of our party arrived the second day we were at WDW. We made park reservations on that day for Animal Kingdom and then dinner reservations in the evening at an EPCOT restaurant. The new addition to our group had a flight that precluded her from making it to Animal Kingdom but she was not allowed to enter EPCOT with us for dinner. We resolved it in Guest Relations but it was thirty minutes of our day spent in line getting help. This needs to change as there are many reasons someone might not want to go to their park in the morning but would want to park hop in the afternoon, none of which would significantly impact crowd control since they would have been allowed to park hop anyway.
Having been to WDW so many times, we did not find the Genie suggestions to be helpful but a new visitor might feel differently. One of our party purchased Genie+ for the whole trip as she did not have an annual pass. The rest of us with annual passes purchased Genie+ on two days. We did not like it for many reasons - none of which have to do with losing the free Fastpass system. First, you need to be on the app at 7 AM sharp to have any chance of getting a lightning lane via Genie+ for one of the major attractions. Then, you are usually faced with the option of a lightning lane for a major attraction late in the day or a lightning lane earlier in the day for a lesser attraction. Since you can't get a second lightning lane until you use the first one, your second Genie+ lightning lane option is to get a lighting lane for a minor attraction that usually has a short wait or a medium level attraction late in the day or into the night. Nobody ever used the second lightning lane because we were gone from the park by the time slot. And we never even booked a third. So, overall the Genie+ was a bust. It was successful in causing us to think - which ride is worth some incremental money to possibly (but not certainly) ride. For someone new to WDW there is probably a different answer than for someone who has been multiple times.
We paid for Lightning Lane for one ride and it was a good choice.
We got a virtual queue spot for one ride but the time slot fell right on top of dining reservations. So, while the rest of the group rode the ride, I stood in line at Guest Relations for twenty-five minutes (Disney dining phone line was overburdened and unavailable at that time) trying to cancel the dining reservations without getting charged the $70 fee ($10 per person for 7 people). They did cancel the reservation but not without telling me never to do this again. They said if the virtual queue falls on dining you should go to dining and then ask guest relations to fix the virtual queue time. I understand they want their dining revenue (in this case it was $60+ per person for seven people they lost at Space 220). However, I have three problems with this. First, it is your system that created the issue so I should have some say in the the resolution to the problem your system created. Second, I still end up standing in line at guest relations trying to get help and wasting my time. Third, there is no guarantee Guest Relations would actually fix the virtual queue issue leaving you at risk.
Kevin Perjurer's Defunctland YouTube channel has a good video on Disney's FastPass: A Complicated History. The bottom line, he says, is that FastPass benefited the savvy traveler at the expense of the less savvy traveler. This is likely true (although I would say it benefited those who put in the time to learn and plan) and I don't begrudge WDW changing their policies to benefit others. However, given these changes and the pause (cancellation?) of annual passes, everyone in our party agreed that we will dramatically reduce the number of times we go to WDW from multiple times per year to once every five years or so (or maybe never - who knows?). If that is the goal of WDW policy, then I would say it is a successful policy.
However, there is one problem with the current policy. If you don't check in at your reserved park you can't park hop to a different park after 2 PM. In our situation, one of our party arrived the second day we were at WDW. We made park reservations on that day for Animal Kingdom and then dinner reservations in the evening at an EPCOT restaurant. The new addition to our group had a flight that precluded her from making it to Animal Kingdom but she was not allowed to enter EPCOT with us for dinner. We resolved it in Guest Relations but it was thirty minutes of our day spent in line getting help. This needs to change as there are many reasons someone might not want to go to their park in the morning but would want to park hop in the afternoon, none of which would significantly impact crowd control since they would have been allowed to park hop anyway.
Having been to WDW so many times, we did not find the Genie suggestions to be helpful but a new visitor might feel differently. One of our party purchased Genie+ for the whole trip as she did not have an annual pass. The rest of us with annual passes purchased Genie+ on two days. We did not like it for many reasons - none of which have to do with losing the free Fastpass system. First, you need to be on the app at 7 AM sharp to have any chance of getting a lightning lane via Genie+ for one of the major attractions. Then, you are usually faced with the option of a lightning lane for a major attraction late in the day or a lightning lane earlier in the day for a lesser attraction. Since you can't get a second lightning lane until you use the first one, your second Genie+ lightning lane option is to get a lighting lane for a minor attraction that usually has a short wait or a medium level attraction late in the day or into the night. Nobody ever used the second lightning lane because we were gone from the park by the time slot. And we never even booked a third. So, overall the Genie+ was a bust. It was successful in causing us to think - which ride is worth some incremental money to possibly (but not certainly) ride. For someone new to WDW there is probably a different answer than for someone who has been multiple times.
We paid for Lightning Lane for one ride and it was a good choice.
We got a virtual queue spot for one ride but the time slot fell right on top of dining reservations. So, while the rest of the group rode the ride, I stood in line at Guest Relations for twenty-five minutes (Disney dining phone line was overburdened and unavailable at that time) trying to cancel the dining reservations without getting charged the $70 fee ($10 per person for 7 people). They did cancel the reservation but not without telling me never to do this again. They said if the virtual queue falls on dining you should go to dining and then ask guest relations to fix the virtual queue time. I understand they want their dining revenue (in this case it was $60+ per person for seven people they lost at Space 220). However, I have three problems with this. First, it is your system that created the issue so I should have some say in the the resolution to the problem your system created. Second, I still end up standing in line at guest relations trying to get help and wasting my time. Third, there is no guarantee Guest Relations would actually fix the virtual queue issue leaving you at risk.
Kevin Perjurer's Defunctland YouTube channel has a good video on Disney's FastPass: A Complicated History. The bottom line, he says, is that FastPass benefited the savvy traveler at the expense of the less savvy traveler. This is likely true (although I would say it benefited those who put in the time to learn and plan) and I don't begrudge WDW changing their policies to benefit others. However, given these changes and the pause (cancellation?) of annual passes, everyone in our party agreed that we will dramatically reduce the number of times we go to WDW from multiple times per year to once every five years or so (or maybe never - who knows?). If that is the goal of WDW policy, then I would say it is a successful policy.
