TSM standby-less test Oct. 6-9

[joelkfla]

I love to see all the work going on within Animal Kingdom (my favorite park), but I'm also afraid they will cheap out on that. Thought ultimately it won't be open until after Iger leaves.

Iger's contract has been extended thru June, 2018. The DAK expansion's expected completion is 2017.

 

[FlipHipster]

I think this is why threads like this have such a life. We all are invested emotionally in Disney, and we want them to be the best, to be successful. We take it so personally when Disney doesn't seem to care anymore about anything except money.

They are messing horribly with OUR Disney World, a place we eagerly anticipate taking our children and grandchildren to someday.

Hear, Hear! I'll drink to that!

The whole appointment thing didn't work out well for us last fall. It was a lot more fun to wake up and say, "Hey guys what do you want to do?" vs. "Crap, what time is it? Where are we supposed to be next?"

I'm guessing this FP counts as 1 of your 3? So what if you booked MK for the afternoon and plan to ride SB at DHS in the morning and hop? Even if there were FP+ available you couldn't book them unless you cancel MK right? They should at least let guests book it as a 4th if you already had your day setup.

Edited to add: Maybe that's why there were so many empty cars.

 

[mom2rtk]

I'm guessing this FP counts as 1 of your 3? So what if you booked MK for the afternoon and plan to ride SB at DHS in the morning and hop? Even if there were FP+ available you couldn't book them unless you cancel MK right? They should at least let guests book it as a 4th if you already had your day setup.

Edited to add: Maybe that's why there were so many empty cars.

Nobody has confirmed this. I'm thinking with A/E in the last round it was added as a 4th if you got it at a kiosk in the park. But I'd like to hear if that's the case here.

 

[FlipHipster]

Nobody has confirmed this. I'm thinking with A/E in the last round it was added as a 4th if you got it at a kiosk in the park. But I'd like to hear if that's the case here.

K. Seems like that would seriously skew whatever results they are after. I am pretty sure if I spent all that time setting up FP+ for the day for 7 people, I am not going to throw it all away and play the FP lottery for a ride on TSMM. Especially not knowing what time you might get.

 

[glamdring269]

Nobody has confirmed this. I'm thinking with A/E in the last round it was added as a 4th if you got it at a kiosk in the park. But I'd like to hear if that's the case here.

I was not able to add it as a 4th. But may be a bad sample since we already had a FP+ for TSMM. Granted that shouldn't matter since it's tiered and I chose TSMM in lieu of RnR.

Glad I just referred to myself as a 'sample'.

 

[mom2rtk]

I was not able to add it as a 4th. But may be a bad sample since we already had a FP+ for TSMM. Granted that shouldn't matter since it's tiered and I chose TSMM in lieu of RnR.

Glad I just referred to myself as a 'sample'.

That was at a kiosk? If that's the case, that's a bit of interesting info. They took away your right to do standby but wouldn't let you duplicate it as a 4th? If so, that in itself is pretty rotten, as standby comes with no limitations.

 

[FlipHipster]

I was not able to add it as a 4th. But may be a bad sample since we already had a FP+ for TSMM. Granted that shouldn't matter since it's tiered and I chose TSMM in lieu of RnR.

Glad I just referred to myself as a 'sample'.

Thanks for reporting from the field btw.

 

[Friendlyadvice2]

Some of this may have already been mentioned, but I haven't read through the whole thread and am only sharing my experience.

On what should have been a low crowd day due to short hours the park was surprisingly busy. My initial plan was to ride TSM at rope drop then use my early FP which I scheduled at 60 days out....obviously that didn't happen today.

I will say that my party of 6 was able to ride 4 times, 3 of which were with the additional FP. However, because we can't use the app yet, it was a major pain.

There were at least 25-35 employees working the area. The employees consisted of greeters advising of the debacle, mobile FP+ CMs, ride operators, survey administrators, front line management, and a couple management supervisors, one of which offered to help me cancel my unneeded Tier 2 FPs so that I could get an additional TSM FP.

The CMs we're counting traffic not only on the ride, but also in the alley. Almost seemed as if they were trying to keep people from even going through the area if they didn't have a FP. Of interest to me was the data gathering inside the ride. On all 4 rides I viewed at least one front line manager observing and a non-uniformed CM marking a clipboard. She appeared to be marking as each car was loaded and my only assumption was that she was tracking the demographic of the riders.

The queue was empty all day and the first three rides had about a 3 minute wait. They added more FP in the last hour and the queue was actually out to Mr. Potato head and the wait was about 12 minutes.

Front line manager stated they were adding a third track and the test would assist them with that.

Survey was a joke. Of the 5 I listened in on, 4 were foreigners who stated they were not familiar with the paper FP system but just loved the new FP+ system. They all stated that a 20 minute wait was too much and they waited much less than anticipated because of the test. All stated they were happy with the test procedure.

My answer was much different, but ended in "when I rent space in your park I want to ride what I want to ride, not what Disney wants me to ride when they want me to ride it"!

That's all for now as I just wanted to get this data point out there as I had time since the park closed at 6 because some private company bought out the park for its 2000 employees to have exclusive access to for the evening. I'll have to look into his company Monday morning when I get back to work, but that's a whole other issue.....

 

[glamdring269]

I will say that my party of 6 was able to ride 4 times, 3 of which were with the additional FP. However, because we can't use the app yet, it was a major pain.

That's all for now as I just wanted to get this data point out there as I had time since the park closed at 6 because some private company bought out the park for its 2000 employees to have exclusive access to for the evening. I'll have to look into his company Monday morning when I get back to work, but that's a whole other issue.....

The fact that you were able to ride 4 times is pretty awesome. We got there late due to finishing up our Universal stay in the morning. By the time we were able to choose the 4th FP+ all that was left were the rides you don't even need an FP for.

FYI, looks as if it was likely rented out for use by attendees of the Gartner Symposium. At least that's my guess. We've seen them all over BWV and I just found a line in their agenda about 'Tuesday night's special event at Disney theme park'.

 

[Friendlyadvice2]

Just wanted to add, the "extra" FP from the absent SB line were added in on the hour. I confirmed this at three different hours as I was able to change times with the app once I already had the "additional" scheduled via the kiosk. CM advised of this also, but I only like to use my own data points for obvious reasons.

 

[Ellwood970]

Some of this may have already been mentioned, but I haven't read through the whole thread and am only sharing my experience. On what should have been a low crowd day due to short hours the park was surprisingly busy. My initial plan was to ride TSM at rope drop then use my early FP which I scheduled at 60 days out....obviously that didn't happen today. I will say that my party of 6 was able to ride 4 times, 3 of which were with the additional FP. However, because we can't use the app yet, it was a major pain.



How were you able to ride 4 times.

 

[Friendlyadvice2]

Once you use your initial three (mine we're AM loaded) you can get one additional at a time. We rode, went to the kiosk and scheduled the next one. We had enough time in between to go and do another attraction and then come back to TSM. That's the good (or bad) thing about studios....there really isn't anything else you need a FP for. My third TSM was initially scheduled for 4ish, but by using the app, I could move the time up (around the top of the hour) as I previously posted.

 

[cakebaker]

Just wanted to add, the "extra" FP from the absent SB line were added in on the hour. I confirmed this at three different hours as I was able to change times with the app once I already had the "additional" scheduled via the kiosk. CM advised of this also, but I only like to use my own data points for obvious reasons.

Not sure I understand this, but are you saying they added fp's throughout the day at the top of the hour?

If so, would seem anyone who really wanted to ride would've been able to schedule a fp. While not an ideal situation, at least no one was really denied the ability to ride at some point.

 

[Friendlyadvice2]

They added FP to account for the people that would typically be riding in the SB line. I'm not aware of them denying anyone the opportunity to ride as long as you had a magic band and either cancelled all three if your initial FP to schedule the additional or used all three or let them expire and then scheduled your additional. That's why they had the FP+ mobile "task force" out there to help everyone get their "additional" if they needed it.

 

[cakebaker]

They added FP to account for the people that would typically be riding in the SB line. I'm not aware of them denying anyone the opportunity to ride as long as you had a magic band and either cancelled all three if your initial FP to schedule the additional or used all three or let them expire and then scheduled your additional. That's why they had the FP+ mobile "task force" out there to help everyone get their "additional" if they needed it.

That's great news to hear. A lot of the grumblings on this thread concerned people going into the park unaware, planning to ride and being denied. Glad to know that wasn't the case as far as you saw.

 

[Friendlyadvice2]

If I was able to ride with 3 "additional" FP+ then anybody who really wanted to ride should have been able to. They had the same opportunity to do so as I did. Keep in mind though, my initial 3 we're AM loaded and used up as soon as I could so I could begin scheduling "additionals".

 

[mesaboy2]

If I was able to ride with 3 "additional" FP+ then anybody who really wanted to ride should have been able to. They had the same opportunity to do so as I did. Keep in mind though, my initial 3 we're AM loaded and used up as soon as I could so I could begin scheduling "additionals".

That's somewhat encouraging. But I am still firmly and completely in the no-standby-is-completely-cray-cray camp, and I always will be.

Thank you for reporting your experience!

 

[Friendlyadvice2]

That's somewhat encouraging. But I am still firmly and completely in the no-standby-is-completely-cray-cray camp, and I always will be.

Thank you for reporting your experience!

I couldn't agree more! I just tried to play the game the best I could.

 

[cakebaker]

That's somewhat encouraging. But I am still firmly and completely in the no-standby-is-completely-cray-cray camp, and I always will be.

Thank you for reporting your experience!

It doesn't seem like this little experiment they're doing is for that purpose though, does it? Sounds like they're toying with the idea of 2 stand by lines vs 1 fp or vice versa.

While I'm not real sure how I feel about no standby lines- I waver- I can't envision them ever doing it at WDW. But then, I've been surprised before.

 

[glamdring269]

Keep in mind though, my initial 3 we're AM loaded and used up as soon as I could so I could begin scheduling "additionals".

This part is important. I was not able to get a 4th FP+ for TSMM at 3PM, even though I had been on the ride ~an hour before and know it wasn't being used to capacity. It also requires some level of knowledge of the system. Perhaps a FB Tip/Trick WDW is sharing today?