There isn't any Disney Magic in this process!!

[JoshuaShaw]

How many times have you seen people here post, "I booked A&E for every day of my trip!" just because they could.

I seem to recall a poster who would book FastPasses with no plan of using them just to monkey with the system as some sort of anarchist attempt to stick it to The Man.

 

[Toad_Passenger]

A&E is the one most likely to be gone around 8 or 9 am 60 days out and I've never wanted them so I haven't tried. Personally I have had no difficulty getting the others without doing any midnight surfing.

Current charts are showing this to still be true. At 30-days out there are still 7DMT available but A&E are gone.

60-days out, however, there are both available.

 

[Laketravis]

The old Odyssey building in Epcot seems like such a waste of space.



.

 

[richmo]

I get the midnight thing if you're looking to book A&E, but I had no problems this morning (9:00) booking 7DMT and other MK attractions for just about any time I wanted. And I'm at 30 days out, not 60. This was for March 20, which is right in the middle of spring break crowd levels. I don't get the need for doing this at midnight 60 days out (again, with the possible exception of A&E).

 

[BugsDaddy]

THIS. No excuse for not adding more A&E's. It's not like they are paying them all that much.

It seems that anytime they add more Frozen to the parks, there is a growing and vocal list of people that throw up their arms in frustration that Disney is over saturating the parks with certain popular characters. I don't disagree that this is probably a good solution but there will be unhappy people either way.

 

[MakiraMarlena]

There's been some angst regarding the fact that you can see them in a show at DHS but you can't meet them. I'm assuming the Epcot construction will take care of that since it will be solely for Frozen characters.

 

[BugsDaddy]

Could be. I think some people just find it difficult drawing a parallel between a popular Broadway/Vegas show or a room at a high end resort to spending a couple of minutes meeting a costumed character or riding a theme park ride and finding that such a thing isn't available two months in advance.




.

The type of activity is irrelevant. The only thing that really matters is supply/demand.

 

[IrishNYC]

There's been some angst regarding the fact that you can see them in a show at DHS but you can't meet them. I'm assuming the Epcot construction will take care of that since it will be solely for Frozen characters.

The shows at DHS are almost constant, so how could you meet them if they're performing at the same time?

 

[mom2rtk]

No they can't. They are too popular for the pavilion to deal with until their new building is constructed. They would have needed to move them somewhere else with a higher capacity for traffic, maybe in Future World. As it is, if you don't have an FP for the MK meet you are probably looking at a standby wait of no more than 2 hours. At Epcot it got up to 7 hours, no option for FPs, and people were still doing it. Moving them was the correct thing to do.

You don't think that part of the reason that area was so overwhelmed was because they were the only pair meeting in WDW at that time? Not to mention the fact that it was only a single pair available at a given time? They could have them appear daily in the IG at Epcot, and somewhere at DHS, and if they were in addition to the multiple pairs with FP at the MK, I have to think those areas would not be quite as overwhelmed.

 

[MakiraMarlena]

Not buying it. Right now you put Anna and Elsa anywhere, and they will be flocked to. They need a strategy, you can't just plunk them down at IG. Unless they fix it so you can't turn around without running into them, they will have lines.

 

[JennaDeeDooDah]

I'm still in the process. We make our reservations at midnight Sunday. Actually, we are in the central timezone so it will be 11:00 on Sunday. Anyway, along with not looking forward to being up then (because I am an old lady who is usually in bed around 9:30 and up at 5:30), I'm hating that I have to decide what rides I am going to want to FP that far in advance. If it was just my husband and me, it would be a nuisance, but it would be much easier. But, we have our four-year-old with us. In the past, she has really enjoyed Thunder Mountain, Dumbo, Barnstormer, Peter Pan's Flight, Haunted Mansion, Little Mermaid, and Small World enough to mention them multiple times. She has been begging to do Splash Mountain, but it has been closed for refurbs when we have gone in the past. This year, we are going in April and she will finally get to ride! She is pumped. She is also finally tall enough to ride Space Mountain and is very excited about that. And, as she is a huge Snow White fan, she is really excited about 7DMT. We are planning for 3 days at Magic Kingdom and I need to figure out which of these rides to use FP+ for, which ones to ride standby, how many times to do each of them, and how to find a way to make all of this work 60 days in advance. In the past, we would use fast pass for 7DMT, Space Mountain, Splash Mountain, and Thunder Mountain, hit up Fantasyland first thing, and then have a great idea of what all we would want to do the rest of the trip. Depending on how those went, the next day, we might decide to hit up Frontierland first thing to get in a multiple rides on Splash Mountain and Thunder Mountain before using a fast pass for Peter Pan and other Fantasyland rides. Or, if she decided that Splash wasn't all that much fun, we might go do Tomorrowland first thing. No matter what, though, we had those options with FP. We knew we could change up the order we were going to ride things. We knew we had the ability to ride our favorites multiple times. We knew we could decide what our favorites that we wished to ride multiple times are that day rather than 60 days out.

Now, we have 3 FP a day and I have to decide which rides are going to be important enough to do more than once pretty far out. Is she going to like 7DMT as much as she loved Thunder Mountain? Is she going to want to do Space Mountain every day? What about Splash Mountain? Will she decide that she actually likes Astro Orbiter the most out of all of them? Guess I'm going to book the hardest to get rides 60 days out and hope she likes them. If not, guess I'm going to hope I can get new fast passes for rides we actually want 2 days before and that they will be at times that work with our other fp+ reservations as well as our dining reservations.

We aren't even telling our daughter that meeting Anna and Elsa is a possibility. What she doesn't know won't hurt her and we will have fewer issues deciding what to book.

 

[Laketravis]

The type of activity is irrelevant. The only thing that really matters is supply/demand.

Good point. And when a company sees demand for it's product or service outstripping supply, the smart move is to increase the supply to meet demand. Hopefully Disney monitors FP availability from the opening bell and sees the current situation as one of simply too little supply for such a large demand, and takes the steps necessary to meet that demand and thereby increase satisfaction levels as well.



.

 

[flicx]

No they can't. They are too popular for the pavilion to deal with until their new building is constructed. They would have needed to move them somewhere else with a higher capacity for traffic, maybe in Future World. As it is, if you don't have an FP for the MK meet you are probably looking at a standby wait of no more than 2 hours. At Epcot it got up to 7 hours, no option for FPs, and people were still doing it. Moving them was the correct thing to do.

How about the wonders of life building that sits empty, or the restaurant no longer in use between world showcase and future world? Sounds like two viable options.

 

[mesaboy2]

I'm still in the process. We make our reservations at midnight Sunday. Actually, we are in the central timezone so it will be 11:00 on Sunday. Anyway, along with not looking forward to being up then (because I am an old lady who is usually in bed around 9:30 and up at 5:30), I'm hating that I have to decide what rides I am going to want to FP that far in advance. If it was just my husband and me, it would be a nuisance, but it would be much easier. But, we have our four-year-old with us. In the past, she has really enjoyed Thunder Mountain, Dumbo, Barnstormer, Peter Pan's Flight, Haunted Mansion, Little Mermaid, and Small World enough to mention them multiple times. She has been begging to do Splash Mountain, but it has been closed for refurbs when we have gone in the past. This year, we are going in April and she will finally get to ride! She is pumped. She is also finally tall enough to ride Space Mountain and is very excited about that. And, as she is a huge Snow White fan, she is really excited about 7DMT. We are planning for 3 days at Magic Kingdom and I need to figure out which of these rides to use FP+ for, which ones to ride standby, how many times to do each of them, and how to find a way to make all of this work 60 days in advance. In the past, we would use fast pass for 7DMT, Space Mountain, Splash Mountain, and Thunder Mountain, hit up Fantasyland first thing, and then have a great idea of what all we would want to do the rest of the trip. Depending on how those went, the next day, we might decide to hit up Frontierland first thing to get in a multiple rides on Splash Mountain and Thunder Mountain before using a fast pass for Peter Pan and other Fantasyland rides. Or, if she decided that Splash wasn't all that much fun, we might go do Tomorrowland first thing. No matter what, though, we had those options with FP. We knew we could change up the order we were going to ride things. We knew we had the ability to ride our favorites multiple times. We knew we could decide what our favorites that we wished to ride multiple times are that day rather than 60 days out.

Now, we have 3 FP a day and I have to decide which rides are going to be important enough to do more than once pretty far out. Is she going to like 7DMT as much as she loved Thunder Mountain? Is she going to want to do Space Mountain every day? What about Splash Mountain? Will she decide that she actually likes Astro Orbiter the most out of all of them? Guess I'm going to book the hardest to get rides 60 days out and hope she likes them. If not, guess I'm going to hope I can get new fast passes for rides we actually want 2 days before and that they will be at times that work with our other fp+ reservations as well as our dining reservations.

Actually, I think it might be midnight your time. See the purple link in my signature for more info.

 

[Cormoran]

I still don't understand why Disney can't:
1. Notify guests of the date and time their FP booking window will open when guests register in MDE.
2. Have the FP booking window open at the same time daily. Maybe 9pm EST?
3. Have ADR's and FP's open on the same day so that guest can book everything at once.

IMO if Disney implemented these changes, it would really improve the guest experience.

 

[JanaDee]

Wow, who knew that the OP would be attacked for not liking a system that Disney has implemented. How rude of her.

Personally, I've had the pleasure of scheduling one day at a time since we are staying offsite. I know, my fault.

Par for the course and not the least bit surprising.

 

[maccagerl]

Just curious, did you get FP for A&E, SDMT or parades and fireworks? Those seem to be the ones that go really fast.

I don't really work myself up into a frenzy. But there are definitely things that will be gone right away. I started looking at ADRs for BoG at the 180 day mark before I booked my resort and the only ones left were already for 9:20pm.

This past trip we booked SDMT, BTMR, Buzz Lightyear, Peter Pan and others for our 2 days in MK. Also prebooked a ressie at BOG - all within less than a week before going.
And all FP and BOG btwn 11 am - 4pm.
No interest in A&E so didn't book them.

We've never had a problem finding good spots for the parades and fireworks so wouldn't waste a FP on those.

 

[mort1331]

I posted about 42 days ago about me a grown man doing the happy dance by snagging A&E FP for our upcoming trip. This was the magic for me. I have been to the parks when they were in Epcot and since they have moved to MK. If anyone remembers there were no FP at Epcot, that was crazy. People even booking breakfast just to be in line early (their form of paying for front of the line). If I wasn't able to get the FP this time, we would do the same as we have in the past, RD go right there and see what the line was like, too long my girls said lets go elsewhere. We would have done the same this time, but I did get the FP so the excitement begins.
Good luck to all that try, but don't let it ruin the Magic.

 

[Planogirl]

You realize when you buy a ticket to WDW you're buying the hotel stay and admission to the parks right? I know you know you are not buying a guaranteed access to any attraction. So no, missing out on A&E, you have not spent any money in the process. You've still only spent the same money you'd spend on your vacation, and you got exactly what you knew you were buying.

You stay up... because you want something more. And you feel that by being on at midnight, you'll beat the average guest in getting to it.

I think that you made an error here. I bought tickets and certainly don't have a hotel stay.

Fuzzy, haven't you said that legacy fastpass was too complicated for people and it was too hard for people to get what they wanted? Do you actually see this system as any less complicated and it isn't it still difficult at time to get what you want (particularly if that happens to be Anna and Elsa)? Maybe you didn't feel this way but I know that some have used that argument.

 

[flicx]

IMO if Disney implemented these changes, it would really improve the guest experience.

In my opinion guest experience has taken a seat way way back in the bus at Disneyworld!