please help my understand the evil of MyMagic+ & Fastpass+

[poohgirl6]

I admit that I have not been excited about this change. I remember when you could walk up to any restaurant and get a same day ressie and I hate having to decide where to be months in advance.

We are currently at WDW, staying at the CR, and testing MBs and FP+
We had some issues with my MB (it would not work on our room door) when we checked in. That took about an hour to fix upon arrival. But since then, all has gone flawlessly. If you had repeated MB issues, it could prove to be a magic time sucker.

Using MBs in the park and to access our FP + has been wonderful. But I only plan one day in advance (that decision I can handle) and have been able to get any picks at any time without trouble. It is so nice to know that we'll have easy access to Toy Story Mania and RnR when we visit DHS tomorrow.

If the system continues like this, then I am a superfan. However, I think that as more guests utilize it, it will become more and more difficult to reserve attractions and desirable times and will necessitate planning many weeks/months in advance?????

If you are scheduled to test MBs and FP+ in coming weeks, you'll probably love the convenience. However, the verdict is still out on how the finished product will affect touring plans.

 

[theparsons]

This exactly, except we are going in a few weeks. Since FP+ is still in the testing phase and it does not seem that it will impact our touring this trip, we are going. But, won't book a bounce back for next year as usual since we want to see what happens with the full FP+ rollout first.

Just a thought....unless you decide that your family is done with Disney, I'd suggest booking the bounceback. You have plenty of time to see what changes they make and if they aren't to your family's satisfaction, you'll be able to cancel your bounceback.

But if you don't book it, and Disney makes changes that make you want to go back....you may find yourself kicking yourself for passing up the bounceback.

And....maybe, if enough people who were obviously loyal start cancelling bouncebacks, Disney can see who they're making mad......if you simply never return, they'll hardly notice, because that next family will be making their once in a lifetime reservation and fill your space in Disney's roll call.

 

[2girlsmom]

Disney released terms and conditions months ago for when this goes live, that is my basis on which I am judging, and it did say all guests with active tickets in MDE will have advance booking available.

For us, we are local-ish (1-1/2 hrs away) and are currently annual passholders, with renewal coming up in October. At this point I am planning to renew my pass for another year next month, especially as the FP+ system is still not fully operational. However, we know in advance that we are going usually 4 or so times a year, and usually know by 60 days which parks we are targeting (as we go for birthday weekends and the birthday person decides which parks, etc). However, there are usually at least 5 or 6 weekends a year that we don't plan anything, we decide on Friday that we are going to drive up on Saturday morning. So IF FP+ turns out to limit rides and on those spur of the moment trips we find that none of the headliner rides are available the night before, for example, I expect that we will end up not renewing next year again, since the value of our passes will have been reduced by the inability to use it with the current frequency. That isn't to say we won't go to Disney ever again, I am sure we will, but it will likely significantly reduce our Disney time and likely increase our time at other parks, ie Universal/SeaWorld as well as at Busch Gardens which is in our town anyway so already has us going to it more often than the rest now.

 

[ArwenMarie]

Does anyone have a link for the terms and conditions where it says that anyone with a valid ticket can link it and book FPs in advance? I've been trying to find them and I can't. Thanks!

 

[CandleontheWater]

We are testing FP+ in a few weeks, and depending on how that test goes for our family, we may stop going to Disney for a few years.

Our issue with FP+ is that I have two unpredictable children, who are not the easiest to deal with in a theme park setting. Some kids are very easy going, deal with changes in environment well, and have predictable behavior patterns. My boys, unfortunately do not. All of our Disney vacations have had their challenges, but we have still been able to enjoy ourselves because of we can maintain flexibility.

All of this started to change with the ADR cancellation fees and the enforcement of FP return times, which both have negatively effected our vacations, but not to the point where we are ready to throw in the towel.

Right now if we have to miss a FP time due to any myriad of issues that may arise, we can usually (with the exception of TSMM, and sometime Soarin'), just grab a FP for a later time in the day and try again. This "internal reset" of our day allows us to maintain some flexibility, and allows us not to wait in long lines.

With FP+ once you miss a FP, you are out of luck, there is no way to get another, and there will likely be little ability to switch things around on the day of.

With my two boys, standing in long lines is not "fun" its not a vacation, its torture, and if standing in long lines are our only option, I'll have to put Disney on the vacation back burner for a few years, until they get a little older and more mature.

This is not hysteria or a knee-jerk reaction, and we are going to give FP+ a fair test in a few weeks, but if it causes us more grief than joy, we are going to change our vacationing habits accordingly.

 

[angierae]

Personally, I am not going to make any assumptions on what "might" happen down the road. No one has said that we will be limited to three FP+ once full roll-out occurs, but lots of people keep saying "Three isn't enough, I can't go if I only get three." Well, there's no proof that you WILL only get three.

When it rolls out and we know what it will be for sure, then I'll decide if it's a detriment or a plus to my vacation. But making assumptions during testing is useless, in my opinion. We don't KNOW. Heck, I'm not convinced DISNEY knows.

 

[Mr. Pig]

OP, your Disney history sounds a lot like mine. I lived throgh the days before FP and survived.

I think the biggest worry for people is the 3 FP limit. I have read that the average guest uses 2.5 FPs per day. Now that means for everyone getting 6-8 there has to be people using less than 2.5. Does that mean with FP+ those people will become more savvy and plan their trip better? Who knows how this will affect queues.

I do think people may be overreacting change a bit. Maybe it will just be a wait and see for people rather than abandon Disney forever. Like the OP, I have gone through many changes at Disney and I will learn to use them to better my experience.

 

[Eric in TX]

If you had repeated MB issues, it could prove to be a magic time sucker.
-----------------------------------
If you are scheduled to test MBs and FP+ in coming weeks, you'll probably love the convenience. However, the verdict is still out on how the finished product will affect touring plans.

These are two fantastic points. My take on this so far:

(1) Right now, during the 'limited test phase' the issues that have been reported here on DIS seem to say that if the MB works fine during your trip, it's a nice convenience. If you have hiccups with it, you're typically looking at chunks of time measured in hours to get those issues resolved. I could maybe handle one of those issues, but if you stacked two or more into a week-long vacation, that would annoy the nonsense out of me!

(2) Additionally - during the testing - it's a relatively small group of users that are drawing from the FP+ pool, so there are good options to change FP+'s on the run and shift times around. After go-live, if you miss a TSSM FP+ at 10 am during a busy time, are you really going to be able to easily find a 1 or 2 pm opening that same day while everyone else is reserving 60 days out? And keep in mind the current testers are still able to use KTTW cards to grab FP's from the legacy system. What a great perk!!

My big concern is that Disney's test environment is not an accurate representation of the future state. Disney higher-ups report that the bulk of their current testers love the new system (and I would love it too based upon #2 above). Knowing how big corporations work, I am concerned that Disney execs look at their Power Point presentation and see the bulleted item that reports a high percentage of guest satisfaction with the current test -- without ever understanding that their current tests do not mirror the reality that they'll be facing the first July/Spring Break/Christmas Week they are running with 100% use of FP+ and no legacy FP system in place.

Is that going to make me cancel my next vacation for November 2013? No.

Is that going to make me pause for a couple of years before planning my next WDW trip until I see how this all looks once the dust settles and we have a year of real-time use to look at? Most likely.

An on-site Disney trip is just too expensive for me to justify if I'm not reaonably certain that I'll get the type of vacation that I want.

 

[Planogirl]

My biggest concern is how this affect offsite guests. We stay offsite as much as onsite and I would prefer to know what to expect before I make a judgment.

I also dislike only getting three fastpasses per day and also that they all have to be for different rides. I'm not a big pre-planner but I do know that I love certain rides and would rather do them more than once.

 

[wdwlovin'family]

I am one of those that doesn't really have a big problem with the new system. I don't like the only 3 FP limit on one hand, but on another, it does ensure that you will at least be able to ride 3 rides of your choosing.

We last were at wdw Jan 5-13th of this year. We did a disney cruise that was sandwiched between two days at wdw. I was not expecting the crowds to be what they were. Silly me was thinking everyone else had gone back to school and we were arriving right after the Christmas crowd. WRONG. big time. On our Epcot day (which, btw was easy wdw's reccomended park) we arrived at opening and ran to get fp's to test track. We were then waiting at the soarin fp stations at the minute that our window opened up and as soon as that minute changed over, all of the fp's were gone for the day. My boys were sooo disappointed. We didn't even end up riding soarin that day because it was a 120 minute wait.

Maybe on slower days the fp limit might be a pain, but I like knowing that I have insurance that one of the popular rides that I paid $100 to get into the park to ride will be available for my family before I even walk in the park.

 

[dawnhaze]

I'm just curious to see how it all works during the final roll-out. I've beta tested a lot of tech products, software, etc. Most of the time, testing phases are hardly indicative of how a final product will perform, and I hope that's the case here.

In the end, if there is a provision for same-day FP in the new system beyond the current maximum of three pre-reserved FP+ in one park, I think I'll be fine with it (as long as they get all the tech working by then). If not, well, I'll have to wait and see what actually happens.

Even after the system is 100% in place, rolled out, and working, I think we can still expect to see changes made to the way it all works over time, as they get more data and feedback. I'm giving Disney's IT people more credit than they might deserve, I admit, but with the amount of money sunk into this, I have to assume they want it to be a positive in the end.

Personally, I'll stay away from WDW for about a year after my trip next month, to give them time to iron it all out. But I'll probably go back eventually unless it's truly awful and they never fix it.

 

[MikeandReneePlus5]

It's not borderline hysterical to say that if FP+ disappoints, you may take WDW off your vacation list. It's reasonable. If I have been getting Experience A and now am being changed to Experience B, and B is not a good fit for our family, it is only logical to look elsewhere for a vacation that might better meet our desires.

Our family likes to do as many attractions as possible. but we especially like to do certain headliners MANY times in a day. We often do RNR, TOT and EE 4-8 times in a day. But we won't wait in a line over 20 minutes long. Long lines are not my idea of a vacation. Our first trip to WDW was when DD was too short to ride anything but the kiddie rides, so we didn't even need FP. By the next trip she had grown taller and could ride more, so we made full use of FP and have ever since. Pulling 6-8 FP per day is our norm.

If WDW truly limits you to 3 FP once FP+ is completely rolled out, that will be a greatly diminished experience for OUR family. And planning ADRs months in advance is bad enough. I don't want to plan attractions months in advance as well. I don't trust Disney's IT and wifi enough to believe I will actually be able to presto chango while I'm walking around the parks once this goes wide.

Once FP+ is totally in place with no bonus of pulling regular FP, we won't go to WDW for quite some time. I will wait to see what reality holds. I don't want to pay thousands of dollars to be a guinea pig when this thing goes wide. I'll sit back and let someone else do that. If they change things and I can get 6 FP+ in one day, that might work. But 3? No way.

It's too easy to instead visit Universal, stay onsite and get FOTL privileges. Or go to Europe. Or the beach. I don't need FP at the beach.

For OUR family and OUR traveling style, the new system appears to hold more negatives than positives. If it holds more positives than negatives for another family, they will be fans. So I am saying, not hysterically at all, that there have been indications FP+ may not be a good fit for our family and will in fact, diminish what we are used to experiencing at WDW. Again, no hysteria present, if that comes to pass we will probably go elsewhere with our vacation dollars.

Disney will only give a rat's hiney about my changed plans if I am joined by vast numbers of fellow vacationers. And I won't be. So I am not "threatening" to cancel a vacation. I am saying that if FP+ turns out to be a poor fit for our family, we have enough sense to recognize that and look for an alternative vacation that is a better fit.

We are planning a November visit. If FP+ should have a full roll out by then and we are limited to 3 FP only, then I might cancel the vacation as I am in no mood to essentially gamble that we will be satisfied with the changes. If FP+ is still in the testing stages and we can continue to pull regular FP, then we're still going.

well, yeah, if your WDW vacation enjoyment hinges on getting 6-8 FPs per day and that number gets reduced, then sure, it's logical that you would probably move on to other vacation destinations.

 

[4myBenandEllie]

My family and I are contemplating an October 2014 return to Disney. Due to the overall rise in prices, it just isn't economical for us to stay on site anymore. We could squish our family of six into AoA, or rent a house with a pool for less money.

I prefer to have a little bit of structure in my Disney day, but not so much that my entire day is scheduled. If I get squeezed out of rides because of fastpass+ users that are staying on site, I will be very disappointed. My hope is that either fastpass+ or fastpass will still be available to offsite guests

 

[minnie mum]

It's not borderline hysterical to say that if FP+ disappoints, you may take WDW off your vacation list. It's reasonable. If I have been getting Experience A and now am being changed to Experience B, and B is not a good fit for our family, it is only logical to look elsewhere for a vacation that might better meet our desires. ...

..... I don't trust Disney's IT and wifi enough to believe I will actually be able to presto chango while I'm walking around the parks once this goes wide.

.... I will wait to see what reality holds. I don't want to pay thousands of dollars to be a guinea pig when this thing goes wide. I'll sit back and let someone else do that. .

EMom, I hope you won't mind that I cut up your post, but just wanted to highlight the parts that are really important as far as DH and I are concerned.

I don't think we are being hysterical in our approach. I am not threatening to cancel anything. I'm not threatening to never return. However I'm also not willing to pay thousands of dollars to be somebody's guinea pig.

We go during quieter times of the year, so we usually don't bother pulling a lot of FP's each day. My major concern is the reliability of MDE. I'm still seeing multiple posts per day of people who have problems with their reservations. They appear, disappear, have incorrect information. They can't access some features some days and other features other days. Park wifi is spotty at best and seems to seize up at the drop of a hat. It's a mess. Somebody explain to me why I would want to be a part of that right now?

So I will wait. I'll watch the reviews. And I'll wait some more as they smooth out the bumps and get this thing to the point where it runs smoothly and reliably. There are lots of vacations that we can take in the mean time. If that makes me a bad Diser, so be it.

 

[mjallemand]

How does the magic band system worth with the dining plan?

At table restaurants they would typically take your card, deduct a credit, and return it to you at your table.

With no card, do they have to take your wristband, or is it just a simple matter of them having some sort of handheld scanner?

 

[Robo]

How does the magic band system worth with the dining plan?

At table restaurants they would typically take your card, deduct a credit, and return it to you at your table.

With no card, do they have to take your wristband, or is it just a simple matter of them having some sort of handheld scanner?

Yes, handheld scanner.

 

[mesaboy2]

How does the magic band system worth with the dining plan?

At table restaurants they would typically take your card, deduct a credit, and return it to you at your table.

With no card, do they have to take your wristband, or is it just a simple matter of them having some sort of handheld scanner?

There are handheld scanners. They scan your MB (or your RFID KTTW card) and you enter a PIN.

 

[disneydentist]

Seems to me a lot of people also thought the world was going to end when WDW started enforcing Fastpass return times. It didn't.

Multiple rides in a day really aren't that hard. Get up early, go to the ride you want ride. Ride it. Rinse and repeat. Later in the day you can use FP+ to ride again.

I'lll admit, we always accumulated FP's and used them late. Then the rules were enforced. It didn't ruin over vacation. Even three FP a day are better than none.

Let's not forget that there are literally thousands of people a day at the parks who don't get any FP. We've all heard comments by people in the parks who don't understand/use the current FP system.

Now, reliability is another issue. I won't argue that Disney often leaps without looking when it comes to IT.

 

[TiggerBouncy]

I look at it this way. Disney is not in business because they are in general stupid. they have spent a lot of money doing modeling, market research, scenarios, studies, forcasts, etc.

The people who are complaining about it have spent no money modeling or doing market research or anything.

if I were a betting man, I would put my money on disney.

that said, I would expect there will be short term pain as they work out the kinks; and thats to be expected in any sufficiently complex system.

I would even expect that Disney knows what many of those kinks will be and has a timeline for how long in general it will take before the system is operating "smoothly".

 

[mjallemand]

Seems to me a lot of people also thought the world was going to end when WDW started enforcing Fastpass return times. It didn't.

Multiple rides in a day really aren't that hard. Get up early, go to the ride you want ride. Ride it. Rinse and repeat. Later in the day you can use FP+ to ride again.

I'lll admit, we always accumulated FP's and used them late. Then the rules were enforced. It didn't ruin over vacation. Even three FP a day are better than none.

Let's not forget that there are literally thousands of people a day at the parks who don't get any FP. We've all heard comments by people in the parks who don't understand/use the current FP system.

Now, reliability is another issue. I won't argue that Disney often leaps without looking when it comes to IT.

Well the more I think about it, you're lucky to pull off more than 3 fastpasses in a day anyway, considering that you're not allowed to pull a new one a few hours after the first one anyway.