Question about Soarin' fastpasses and little kids

[HappyMommy2]

Thanks for your responses! After reading this, I'm guessing that the WDW-wide policy is that each rider is supposed to hold their own fastpass but that maybe only the Soarin' CMs are really asked to enforce this, since the lines are so incredibly long and traffic flow needs to be as smooth as possible. Out of the 6 Soarin' fastpass CMs we met during our trip, only 4 told us our DS3 needed to hold his own fastpass so I guess maybe some do use their own discretion and figure that requiring 3-year-olds to hold their own fastpasses will probably slow the line down in the long run, LOL!

Thanks again for the replies. Boy do I wish we were Soarin' today, and not back here at home getting ready to go out and mow the lawn!

 

[Melora]

We were just at WDW in Sept and went on Soarin' 3 times using Fastpasses and not once did they ask us to hand our 4 and 6 year old thier fast passes. They simply took them from my husband who was holding them for everyone in out group.

 

[LlamaKuzco]

Most likely the CMs that told you to let your kids hand in their own fastpasses were conned by people using the flash and flood technique of having one person hand in a stack of 5 ( just picked a random number) fastpasses and then have their group of 8 people run past before the CM can count and verify that each person has a pass. Another possibility is that the CMs in question were just sticklers for following the rules and don't make exceptions.

 

[Cinderella2004]

I don't blame you one bit for not letting your little one hold the tickets.....I don't even give my DH his fastpass until right as they ask for them!!!

 

[Ronda93]

I can sympathize with the CMs on Soarin'. Their guest throughput is awful. I timed the experience. From the time Patrick starts giving the instructions to touchdown and exit is nearly nine minutes... let's see about 75 to a session, two theatres. That's a paltry 1,000 guests an hour. Compare that to Space or Splash which can run at least 1,400 per hour.

The bulk loading makes it a different kind of wait for the guest, too. You spend a long time in one place. Forty minutes waiting for RnRC seems to go much quicker than forty minutes for Soarin'. Unless, of course, it's really, really hot - then RnRC wins, uh, loses.

Just hand it to the kids with a few step left. What is the height limit on Soarin' anyway?