I agree. I don’t see the point in the hour-deadline if people can only hold one at a time anyway.
If you think about Disney’s perspective - to enhance guest experience they want shorter wait times in lines, Disney knows that for ride A a steady flow of 500 people per hour in the FP line equals a 15 minute wait, so they give out 480 FP which assumes there will be 20 ‘wildcard’ FPs used during that hour too (RS returns, GS freebies for disgruntled guests, ride breakdown FPs, etc.) Everything goes along smoothly until, say 5 pm, when suddenly a whole bunch of ‘wildcard’ FP holders decide to ride and the FP line swells because suddenly there are 1000 FP holders entering the line, so the line is 30 minutes rather than Disney’s goal of 15 minutes.
By limiting the return time you eliminate the unpredictability of when the RS FP holders will return. Whether this RS switch will be enough to get a handle on the FP wait times (which really have gotten too long on some rides, IMO) remains to be seen. There are other sources of wildcard FPs.
I've seen a lot people talking/complaining about families "hoarding" or having a stack of swaps. What I don't understand is why is this an issue? I can certainly see how this is an issue for Disney in that they can't control the lines as well, but why is it an issue for someone else? I think people just see the passes and automatically think, "That's not fair that they get that many." But my family many times would go ride headliners once in the morning with short lines, then go back later for the other parent to ride. So we would sometimes have 5 - 10 passes at a time. That in no way gives my family an advantage over another family. The passes were used for the parent who hadn't ridden yet. That's what the rider swap is. Not as extra passes.
If my family can only hold one pass at a time and only have a short time window to use it, we are put at a distinct disadvantage during those golden morning hours. Instead of being able to ride Splash Mountain with low wait and then going to Big Thunder with low wait (as families with no small children can do), we instead have to ride Splash twice in a row, which means Big Thunder lines will go up by the time we get there. Going to Disney with kids is already difficult enough, and now it will be even more difficult.
Of course this is not a huge issue, and we will adjust. I just find it disappointing that Disney is changing their system for the worse (in my opinion of course).
Because every person who enters the FP line makes the wait longer. Disney scheduled a set number of FPs and when 10 times that many show up w/ ‘off the grid’ FPs then the FP line slows way down. If I enter the FP line in my scheduled afternoon hour and just before me 500 RS people who grabbed FPs that a.m., or yesterday or a week ago, or from eBay, enter the line too, I’m going to be stuck waiting longer.
Disney can’t increase ride capacity so they have to limit FP access at high demand times unless they are ok w/ FP waits of an hour, which they aren’t, so therefore they can’t allow too many unscheduled entries into the FP line during peak demand. They want to even out demand, RS returning and increasing demand during peak demand frustrates the goal of controlling demand through restricting access.
I've only done the FP double up once, though I have used the "extra" to bring an extra kid back on with me (Dad + 3 kids, get rider swap, give one of the kids my band and the 2 others with me using the swap). I am most frustrated with the 1 hour. Why can't it be for the length of stay, or length of ticket, or at the very least, 3 days? That's one thing we often do - get a swap, then everyone's crank,y or hungry, or it's raining, etc, so it gets pocketed and used the next time we're in the park that trip.
No one likes the rain, everyone gets cranky and hungry I’m not sure a family with a toddler should be treated better than a family with a 9 year old having a bad day or a family with a much loved elderly grandparent who may be taking their last trip but needs breaks due to health or any number of other worthy groups who’d also like to ‘save’ those unused FPs for later because life happened and they didn’t make their window. It was a nice perk, and in fact it’s too bad more couldn’t benefit from that type of flexibility, but Disney these days seems to be less and less about flexibility and more about scheduling.
The irony of this discussion is that most of those eligible for RS now and thus upset about the change won’t be eligible in a year or five and would inevitably have rejoined the ranks of RSless Park visitors.
