Disney says 60 million hours saved because of Fastpass

With 100 million fastpasses, you'd think that the, as they put it, "reallocated time" would be more that 60 million hours...

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--George H
---Superman the ride...coming to a SF park near you soon...
Currency tracking experiment... http://www.wheresgeorge.com (Referring to The "George" on the $1 bill - Not Me)

Let the debate begin!

It is amazing how so many people can have such drastically different opinions of the Fastpass system. The Disney boards treat this topic like it was the abortion debate.

As a frequent guest at WDW I find the Fastpass to be very easy to use and convenient. There are times I go to WDW that I only intend to go on a few attractions through the course of a day. Fastpass works for me in those cases.

I like this system because it is Fair (meaning everyone has the option of using it), it is Free (as opposed to some parks that charge for this "perk"), and it is easy to use. Pop your ticket in, out pops a return time.

Having been on the inside, though, I know that this system was designed for WDW, not for the guest. The whole goal in this system was to keep you out of line which, presumably, means you would be buying food, merchandise, etc.

That's the bottom line for any system like this. Disney says that 60 million hours were saved. That also means that guests spent 60 million more hours on the midways.

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Scott W. Short, "A-Lister"
scott@midwestcoastercentral.com
http://www.midwestcoastercentral.com

The only downside to FastPass - and let me clarify that I love the system - is that it makes enjoying attractions in the order you encounter them impossible. Those 60 million hours were more than likely spent walking back and forth across the park to get to the next attraction you have a FastPass for.

Moosh

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Humor Ingredients: all natural flavors, some artificial additives. Sold by weight, not volume. 100% satisfaction not guaranteed. Void in Texas and Puerto Rico.

Mamoosh,

An excellent point that I haven't really thought about until now. Particularly in the case of the Magic Kingdom, the theme of the land is a significant part of the overall experience. As a frequent visitor, I think that is somehow lost on me in this whole thing.

When I go to MK these days, I don't say, "let's head over to Frontierland"...I say, "lets go over to Splash." Then I might pop over to Space Mountain and then across to Pirates. The theme has lost some of its importance which was of significant importance to Walt.

The 60 million hours were spent waiting in line! When you don't have a fastpass for a ride, the wait is longer while the other folks go ahead. Call me dense, I just don't see how I'd spend any more time on the midway. Then again, my goal is to ride as many rides as possible in a day.

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"Know thyself!"

jan, you can acheive your goal with the help of Fastpass.

Let's say I want to go on Buzz Lightyear. The wait time is 1 1/2 hours. It is 2:00. I can get a Fastpass that tells me I can come back at 3:30-4:30. I grab it.

Now, I go ride the peoplemover, Carousel of Progress and maybe grab a bite to eat at a food location. Maybe that all takes an hour. I now have about a half hour or so to kill before I can ride.

Instead of riding one ride in 1 1/2 hours I have now ridden 3 rides and grabbed a bite to eat. How can this be bad for me?

If you don't use the system and 'schedule' a ride, you're in for an extra long wait. There is something not very fun about scheduling appointments for rides. So you find yourself totally planning out what you want to ride when you get in. I'd prefer higher capacity rides to keep me on the midway. In other words, why not be able to ride 4 rides and grab a bite in 1 ½ hours? I just don't see how this gets everybody on more rides.

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"Know thyself!"

I think the fastpass system is okay, but some ride queueing areas should be redesigned to accomodate it. Indianna Jones and Cartoon Spin at Disneyland are two such rides. In order to let fastpass riders ahead in line, they moved the bulk of the waiting area outside the themed building. The original waiting areas for these rides are filled with extensive detail and artistry and were designed to keep people from being bored while waiting. A way to improve it would be to make a separated entrance for fastpass riders that doesn't interfere with the old system (like Space and Splash Mountain).

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Purple cows eat silver moon pies, among fiesty, glowing fireflies.

No WDW rides were designed with FASTPASS in mind until Mission: Space, which has not opened yet. Every attraction that uses FASTPASS was retrofitted to work the best it could given operating and loading capibilities.

Mission: Space however was the first attraction designed with FASTPASS in mind and I can promise you that the Standby and FASTPASS queues will not butt heads.

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- John
Dag, yo
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The problem is packing the park like canned sardines at or above capacity. When that happens the parks become madness, and the stand by lines for the most popular attractions become two and three hours if not more! The sad future is either you pack a park and have the time you go on a ride programmed like seeing a show at Sea World and having your whole day programmed for crowd control (the next step of Fast Pass), or limit the amount of people in the park like Busch Gardens Williamsburg does, so that it's not wall to wall people and shorter lines for EVERYTHING, but with much higher admission costs. The future hopefully will have great new attractions, but a lot more people wanting to ride them.

I was just at Disneyland this past-crowded President's Day weekend and Fastpass was the saving grace. It was awesome. True, you do have to curtail your trip around the fastpass alotted time, but so what?

After entering the park at 8 am I managed to go on a bunch of rides in Tomorrowland and Fantasyland without the fastpass. By time I was in Adventureland the wait for Indiana Jones was 55 minutes, so I grabbed a fastpass and had to come back in an hour and half. So, in that time I rode Pirates of the Caribbean, Haunted Mansion and Tarzan's Treehouse all with minimal to no wait times, I then literally walked on Indiana Jones during my fastpass time. To me, it doens't get better than that.

I think Disney would be able to accomodate guests better if they followed the Universal Studios system of Express Passes. Universal uses much the same idea as Disney where guests can come back at a later time and wait in a shorter line, but they only have a limited number of passes for each attraction. This way the regular queues don't get longer than about an hour, unlike at Disney where the lines can get up to 2 or 3 hours during peak days. The only draw back to this is that some guests don't understand why they use this system and get upset that there are no more passes, but it is simply so that every guest goes home happy not just those guests who use the Express Passes.