Wait time science

I don't think everyone will agree on how much of a price increase with worth how much of a decrease in crowds. Parks at looking at a balance in terms of options they offer.

I also don't think your average bear is as in tuned to line dynamics as most people here. How many times have you been in line with people who were unaware the ride hasn't been running for 10 minutes? Or they are running empty trains?

I have visited parks with premium access and with steerage class tickets. In terms of premium access at non-parks, I pay for some (and some times) but not for others (or at other times). I don't begrudge those who do.

If you view the system as a significant problem, isn't the solution to stop going to the parks? Patronize businesses that better align with your world views. Seems to me that continuing to patronize the business (and paying for the premium access) but complaining about it online, isn't likely to change anything. Expect that if Disney heard from a number of long time passholders that they were no longer buying passes/going to the parks because of a disagreement with how premium access works, the park would take some notice of that. May well be the case the negative impact on goodwill will be worse in the long run than short term profits the policies generate.

Their view on passholders has been intermittently hostile, especially in Anaheim. Depending on what they believe the margins are on passholders, they may or may not care what they think. Even here in Orlando it has varied. Some years there are a ton of VIP assholder events, festival gifts, etc. Other years, not so much. So I don't think that they would necessarily be receptive to the feedback.

Shades:

Lots of thinks suck and you have no choice but to accept it.

Contextually, that isn't true for what we're talking about here. Going to theme parks is something we do on discretionary income. No one needs to go and accept anything.

Touchdown:
Free Fastpass is never coming back and not just for the throwing away money thing. The system was horribly broken and the only reason we here have find memories of it was because abuse we all collectively abused the heck out of it.

Are you talking about the electronic, NGE, product? The rollout wasn't great (the system scaled poorly at first), but generally speaking, it worked, it was easy to understand, and you couldn't really abuse it. Those three rides, plus the bonus if you had time after, made life so much better, whether you were there all day or just a few hours. Immediately after (well, during) the pandemic, when everything was standby, it was pretty clear to me that FP made every day better.

Jeff:

VIP assholder events

I've heard "passhole" before but "assholder" is a new one for me.

That video goes into it, but the only reason Fastpass worked for us was because too many people didn’t know what they were doing and missed out on that chance. We were benefiting from the system we knew how to work to our advantage. If everyone knew it wouldn’t work at all.

Jeff:

No one needs to go and accept anything.

On the one hand, this is true; on the other hand, even for other forms of discretionary income, you typically have another option besides going without. If Movie Theater A has sticky floors and lousy sound, you can go to Movie Theater B. If you hate action movies, there's a rom-com showing somewhere. The restaurant with terrible service isn't usually the only restaurant in town.

In the case of amusement parks, there's usually only one in the area. And even if there are two - I happen to be in central Ohio right now, for example - they might be owned by the same company with the same policies. It's a more frustrating type of suck when the only other option is not riding roller coasters, or traveling an unreasonable distance.

Jeff:

Those three rides, plus the bonus if you had time after, made life so much better, whether you were there all day or just a few hours. Immediately after (well, during) the pandemic, when everything was standby, it was pretty clear to me that FP made every day better.

It's funny because my memories of the 2020 pandemic visits without any queue skipping option were that Fastpass+ was making the park experience far more frustrating. As a local I hated having to book and find ride reservation times days or weeks in advance and having to play the refresh game on my phone the entire time I was at the park. Sure, it was fine if your goal was to hit the headliners and walk around. But it destroyed the near constant throughput of rides like Pirates, Haunted Mansion and Spaceship Earth that did not have Fastpass during the legacy paper ticket era. Those 2020 visits reminded me how Disney builds stuff to create lines that never stop moving.

Legacy Paper Fastpass > 2020 Visits > Genie+/Lightning Lane after DAS restrictions > Genie+/Lightning Lane before DAS restrictions > Fastpass+ > Rip Ride Rockit > BGT Operations

I guess I just had a different experience. The only ride I had to really plan ahead for was... I dunno, maybe the Pandora ride? I never had an issue with booking a day before for most stuff.

Touchdown:

That video goes into it, but the only reason Fastpass worked for us was because too many people didn’t know what they were doing and missed out on that chance.

A good friend in a position to know has said this is definitely not the case. There's no video that I would give more weight than that person.

robotfactory:
I've heard "passhole" before but "assholder" is a new one for me.

It's right there in print. I didn't make it up. 🙂

Touchdown:

That video goes into it, but the only reason Fastpass worked for us was because too many people didn’t know what they were doing and missed out on that chance. We were benefiting from the system we knew how to work to our advantage. If everyone knew it wouldn’t work at all.

I’m still shocked Disney waited so long to monetized it. It’s like they overlooked its value for years. I was shocked it was free when I first used it in the mid 2000s.

Legacy Paper Fastpass > 2020 Visits > Genie+/Lightning Lane after DAS restrictions > Genie+/Lightning Lane before DAS restrictions > Fastpass+ > Rip Ride Rockit > BGT Operations

This is exactly how I feel as well (except my covid visit was 2021 and I've never been on RRR). The all standby in 2021 was the best visit I had had in years, but I realize attendance wasn't all the way back to normal. Lines flew. It doesn't seem like raising the gate dents demand, but I'd pay more if it did.

On our most recent trip, we only used Genie+ in MK and HS plus an individual LL for Flight of Passage. I thought it worked really well.....and now it's different. I'm not sold on reserving rides days ahead of time. I mean I'll do it, but I might grumble. At least it's not 60 days and it looks like you can see what you get before paying, which is a nice feature.

Fastpass+ was absolutely bottom of the barrel. One headliner and two or three attractions that shouldn't need line skipping in the first place didn't do it for me at all. I also felt like it clogged up everything else I tried to do beyond my selections.

I used a different FP+ than apparently everyone else at CoasterBuzz. Were it not for that system, I don't think I would have seen nearly as much of Thunder Mountain, Space Mountain, Soarin', preferred Illuminations viewing, Toy Story, Tower of Terror, heck, even Kilimanjaro Safaris. And most days I was booking day-of, sometimes the day before. And it cost nothing extra.

If free FP+ worked well and everyone could use it, then why is it that LLMP is t working today? It is essentially identical to what FP+ was. Less people use it, and yet the choices are worse, why is that?

Only thing that makes sense is that LLMP has a 100% use rate (which makes sense since you paid for it) and FP+ didn’t.

What does "is t working" mean? I don't understand how the choices are worse other than you have to pay for it and feel like for the money it should be all-you-can-eat. It's not essentially identical because the demand and sales are dynamic, whereas FP+ was tuned relative to attendance. It being a new thing to sell, I doubt they have the data to predict how to balance it the way they did FP+, because they're really good at predicting attendance. Regardless, your position requires you to trust that a) the video has any real standing of what actually went on (I'm relatively certain it does not), and b) people think FP+ and Multipass both suck (according to whom?). I'm not convinced. All I have is my anecdote of regularly using FP+ and finding it beneficial.

Biggest problem is that at least one ride per park is not on LLMP, but LLSP (a la carte). I also think in general the parks are more crowded than they were in the FP+ days.