POLL - Recent Changes at Disney

[Mrs.AMC]

I absolutely love the change to Early Entry over Extra Magic Hours. Every park for 30 minutes every day is much more valuable to my family than one park for one hour each day.

I like the elimination of the Dining Plan.

I am neutral on Genie+, TiW, and Annual Passes.

I dislike Park Pass, but I don't feel strongly about it. FP+ already meant that you were pre-selecting which parks you would visit which days.

I hate ILL and the elimination of Magical Express.

See, there's the big difference between park reservations and FP.
With FP you weren't tied to the park just because you had a FP. You could wake up and decide to go anyway. You may be able to change your park reservation but in many cases you can't, the reservations are gone
You could buy a ticket to a park without any FP. Maybe you don't do rides, you just want to dine and go to a show. Or people watch. If there are no reservations, you can't buy a ticket at all.
Reservations have way more limitations than FP did

 

[SaraSpringsIsHome]

None of these .

I miss FP+
DH and I were finally considering getting AP’s but were saving up to buy them at Christmas and we all know how that turned out.
And we didn’t do the dining plan or TiW or need magical express, but it just sucks they took it away or aren’t offering it.
Park Reservations destroy any chance of being spontaneous and not being able to park hop before 2 was frustrating.

 

[MamaBelle4]

Eh, I'm not sure I can say I'm happy it's gone but really don't care it's gone. It's meaningless to me

We never used it but to me, it's a loss of a benefit that was inherently included in the price and the price of the resorts do not reflect the loss of amenities.

 

[CaptainAmerica]

See, there's the big difference between park reservations and FP.
With FP you weren't tied to the park just because you had a FP. You could wake up and decide to go anyway. You may be able to change your park reservation but in many cases you can't, the reservations are gone
You could buy a ticket to a park without any FP. Maybe you don't do rides, you just want to dine and go to a show. Or people watch. If there are no reservations, you can't buy a ticket at all.
Reservations have way more limitations than FP did

My expectation is that, once staffing returns to pre-pandemic levels, there will be very few days when parks actually "sell out" unless you're traveling during Christmas week or some other super high-demand period. Maybe that's overly optimistic.

 

[Jennasis]

None of it.

Also, that exec was giving lip service. They are supposed to make you feel "heard", but it will change nothing.

 

[MamaBelle4]

None of it.

Also, that exec was giving lip service. They are supposed to make you feel "heard", but it will change nothing.

Of course, but if enough people write in and threaten/follow through with taking their business to Universal, they may be forced to make a change.

And emailing and talking to them is better than just venting on a forum and hoping someone sees it .

 

[CarolynFH]

And it won't let me change it! But you can change your vote!

If you can’t edit the title of this thread and/or the poll, maybe the Moderators could? It’s definitely confusing!

 

[kwdw]

I was an out of state AP holder (April 2019 - shutdown). Had 5 Disney vacations that year I think, had to cancel the 6th because WDW shut down. IMHO, every change you listed has made me enjoy Disney less.
You can tell that exec that I'm taking some of my business to Universal.

Me, too! Out of state ex-AP holder for about 7 years between 2010-Feb 2020. I am so glad I let the AP expire in Feb 2020 because so many Disney changes have impacted the ease and cost of making of making all those trips. I just booked Universal for late summer and I’m buying their AP. I do not like Universal nearly as much, but right now, the overall experience I can love there for the cost vs the same experience to cost ratio at WDW, Universal clearly wins right now.

 

[Grasshopper2016]

It depends on the baseline.

Compared to having no line skipping option (which was the case for more than a year in 2020-2021), I like Genie+ and ILL$. Compared to Fastpass+, I do not like Genie+ and ILL$.

Compared to the recent years when you were lucky to get one hour of Extra Magic Hours in each park per week, I like Early Entry. Compared to the good old days when there were two hours of Extra Magic Hours almost every single day--sometimes morning, sometimes night--I do not like Early Entry.

Disney did a great job of lowering our expectations so much over the last several years (even before Covid) that some of the new offerings look pretty good in comparison to the recent past. So long as we have short memories.

 

[CampbellzSoup]

Everything changed sucked, everything. Nothing you can do it about - I knew we were doomed once the Boo Bash and Christmas Party tickets sold out, less for more was the new motto.

 

[kimmar067]

...judging by the poll results, OVERWHELMINGLY none of the changes make the general population happy.

 

[Boopuff]

I really don’t like the park reservatio system. We’re a fly by the seat of our pants family, wake up and say “let’s go to —- today” another thing I’ll throw in in making dining 180 days. The 60 days seems to be problematic

 

[Praying Colonel]

DW and I are going back next month for a week's trip with SIL and BIL. They've asked me to do the planning since we've been doing this for years. None of that really seems to help me at this point!

The last time I was at WDW was April, 2019. Think about all the changes since then. I honestly have no idea where to start. It feels like the WDW equivalent of learning how to walk again. So no, I'm not really happy with any of the changes.