How do you manage that? I could never find a Lyft or Uber when I wanted to leave.
You said this so well, this is exactly me. I give plenty of myself in the real world (I’m a nurse if that tells you anything)…but on vacation I don’t really care about anyone’s trip except my own. I will buy/spend whatever it takes to make our trips better. That means we have bought every fastpass option that exists…paid CL FPP, express pass, fastlane, maxpass, whatever gives us a leg up. I don’t think there is anything wrong with that, I don’t think it makes us selfish at all. Why wouldn’t anyone who could afford to do so not make their vacation easier? I’m not saying paid options should be the only option, but they should always exist alongside the free options.
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For FPP, Disney makes everyone THINK they are getting a benefit, but mostly it just shifts wait times around so that the time you save in one line is lost by having longer waits in other lines. On average it is a wash.
But with most paid systems, such as Express pass or FastLane, every time someone pays for the service, they are riding on the backs of every person who paid to be in the parks. It makes waits LONGER, and there is no shift of wait times. So, a person is literally paying money to take cuts.
Then, to make things worse, as those standby times are made worse due to this paid system, it causes more people to become dissatisfied with the standby lines and want to pay for the Express pass. This, in turn, drives more people into a system that makes lines longer, which causes more people to want to pay to skip the lines. So, the amusement park is raking in money to cause lines to become longer so that can get more people to pay. They are causing the very problem they set out to fix with the system…and all the while those people who paid big bucks to get into the parks to begin with, but can’t afford to buy the Express pass have had their ticket devalued more and more as others pay to take cuts.
Then, of course as more people pay to take cuts, their own time savings is lost as more people pay for the service because they still end up having to wait behind all the others who have paid for the service.
Furthermore, it is all a gamble where the consumer pays for something that may not benefit them much. On days where lines are naturally shorter, you might pay an exhorbinant amount of money when most rides have relatively low waits. Who benefits? Only the amusement park.
I see so many injustices with such a system, it legitimately angers me.
If it were possible to pay for a system to skip lines that didn’t make the wait times longer for others, I wouldn’t be as bothered by it. But that is impossible.
The only wait to stop the cycle of injustice is if people stop paying for the service. But I don’t see that happening.
As a result, the only way I see this working is to have the system severely limited…where only enough people are allowed to use the system to have minimal impact on others. This means for a place like Disney, changing such a high price that it really isn’t affordable for most people. Yet, those willing to pay get the benefit while Disney increase revenue.
But what company (including Disney) will voluntarily limit their money generation? They won’t. And so the wait times that I experience will continue to worsen as more people use the paid options.
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We usually hop on the app and schedule one while we are walking out of the park. Never had to wait more than 15-20 minutes for one, that I recall. I believe once we walked to the contemporary from mk to grab one because it was quicker that way.
This is not math, but Disney logic. My husband encouraged me to stay an extra night on a solo trip because previous times I was too tired when I got home. 
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Theme parks have always been about profit and the more you paid the more you rode. As an 8th grader at Six Flags I waited two hours each to ride four roller coasters. There was no such thing as Flashpass and this was our only option. I did this multiple times as I visited a lot, often in the summer on weekends with my dad who lived in Dallas, so the most crowded days. Even with Six Flags selling Flashpass, if you go without one on a busy day you are still going to wait two hours per major ride. But with a Flashpass I can ride everything I want in one day. So I’m basically paying the price of a season pass to do it all at once. In the past, I would have to visit multiple days to do that and Six Flags would have made more money off me coming more days to ride the same number of rides (plus the extras I would buy for going more days like food and beverages and souvenirs and we always played the pay to play games).
Disneyland used to charge people tickets per ride like carnivals and pier amusement parks. Before my time, but the more you paid the more your rode.
Point is it’s always been the more you pay the more you experience in some fashion.
In regards to if you’ve paid for it and you show up and the lines aren’t bad, I view it as insurance. I pay for insurance in case something bad happens. I insure my vacation in case we get sick and can’t go. And I pay for whatever the skip the line pass is in case it’s crowded. I’m okay with that aspect too. It’s all in how you view what you’re paying for.
In addition, we’re not talking about me living my life one way is truly hurting someone’s health. We’re talking about their lines increasing at an amusement park.
I would argue for example, that toll roads are worse because here we are talking about someone who can’t afford the toll road having a longer commute with more traffic and therefore a higher probability of getting into an accident consequently. This is harming their daily lives in stress and potential health by increasing their risk of a car accident on something they have to do, drive to work, school, the store versus the person who can afford to pay the use tax. I also have a problem with private companies making a profit long after the road is paid for on something like a road that should be provided for all of society not just the ones with means.
However, theme parks do not fall into societal “needs” and someone getting a different experience based on what they can pay is pretty in line with entertainment (such as better seats at a concert) and does no real harm to a person’s health unless that person is not ambulatory or has autism, etc. but there are systems put in place for people that cannot wait in line.
At the end of day, do I feel some guilt? Yes. However, it’s also just a theme park so my guilt doesn’t travel far. I have spent tens of thousands of dollars on homeless dogs that have destroyed my house and caused me immense emotional pain and stress as I’ve held dying dogs and puppies, woken up every three hours to tube feed weak newborn puppies, watched my house get destroyed and paid to repair it. I give monthly to children in need both in America and in Africa and I volunteer at my local dog shelter. I have let a random stranger stay in my room at Holiday World once because she was too tired to drive home (I could lock my bedroom door and she and her daughter slept on the sleeper sofa). When I think someone truly needs me I’m there. Therefore, I’m going to keep spending money to alleviate my wait in lines at amusement parks and I’m gonna sleep soundly because these aren’t equivalent issues of morality. 
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Let me put it another way. Doing FastLane or Express Pass doesn’t cost the amusement park anything at all. No additional employees, etc. It is pure profit for them. When you pay, you pay the amusement park, but they steal the time from other guests. I didn’t agree to let you cut in front of me. I don’t get any benefit, any discount, any cut of the profit. I get longer lines from it, and all the money goes to the amusement park. So, the more the amusement park shifts people to paying for the passes, the more they are stealing from the guests who paid to be at the parks. The more those lines are longer, the more you feel the need to pay for it.
I used to be able to ride all the rides, for example, at Cedar Point in a day. Now with FastLane, it becomes almost impossible.
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I think paid fastpasses would be ok if they truly limited the amount of fastpasses available for each ride they have it for each day. Make it a truly premium experience so it doesn’t hugely affect the standby line. Only 1000 paid fastpasses per park per day or you can pay for fastpasses for individual rides but only a set amount (500 or whatever) are sold for each ride per day that does fastpass.
I don’t know that Disney could limit their opportunity to make money like that, though. The temptation to sell more and more would be calling, I’m sure. 
The one problem I see with paid fastpass is the people using it want to see that there’s some benefit to it. That means seeing people standing in long standby lines.
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I’ll admit I’m still on the fence about it, but this is your most compelling argument yet.
I got Express Pass with my HRH stay at UOR and it was great. I don’t really want Disney to do the same thing, but I’m not sure what I want them to do instead. All systems have downsides.
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I enjoy having Ex Pass at UOR but if we stay offsite I’d never even consider paying for it, and I always say you don’t have to pay for it at Disney, they’re better than that. But I guess not. I don’t think we’d ever pay for it at Disney either. I’d like to see the exact same FPP system back. But even if there is a paid option, I think people staying onsite should get the 3 free ones we could get before.
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MaxPass is honestly the best. It involves more work but is more fair. It’s relatively cheap and it works extremely well. We went to Disneyland on Columbus Day in 2019 with park hours of 8am-12am so you know it was a 10 crowd level. I was able to get a FP for literally every single major ride by starting early and staying on top of it. (We did ride HM in the Halloween Tour instead so I guess every ride but that but it was available for half the day so I could have worked it) and late at night ST & BTMR (I kept having to check back because I wanted this one post fireworks so we could ride at night and they were available all day for just a bit in the future) still had them available. However, I do like the flexibility of EP at Universal or FlashP at Six Flags because I can ride whatever I want whenever I want but I’m also okay with putting in the work on MaxPass and backtracking across the park as long as I can ride everything I want to (minus breakdowns of course…I got a MaxPass FP for BTMR post fireworks and it broke down so we didn’t get to actually ride). I would honestly rather do a little work and save some money so I personally prefer MaxPass; I’m just willing to spend the money if there are no good alternatives. MaxPass helps solves Ryan’s issues too but I think he prefers nothing? I honestly just don’t. I have never waited in lines as long as we’ve waited these last three trips. 15-20 min tops (maybe 30-60 min for a show or parade but that’s different). I solved that problem in June trip versus Oct trip by staying for 12 nights so we could go multiple days and not have as many long lines per day breaking it up like you did such as the 55 min we waited for RnR in Oct that I’ve never done before. However, that’s still giving Disney more money just like a paid FastPass would.
Edit: Also, I found for that the last two visits to Universal the EP wasn’t saving as much time as it once did. It was taking us 45 min to get from locker to locker on most rides starting around 11am. I think they are overselling them at Universal.
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In the Before Times, when I traveled a lot for work, my husband encouraged me to stay an extra night and not take a late or early flight home so I was well rested when I got home. It makes a big difference.
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Speaking only to the free fast passes, I would question this math as it makes a pretty big assumption that I’m thinking is actually not that common.
It’s only a wash for guests that go to every single fast pass attraction. If, instead, guests substitute any other things (less popular attractions, shopping, more time eating or at the pool, etc) for even just one fast pass attraction, it’s not a wash.
I grabbed a fresh napkin, and these are example scenarios using the existence of 6 fast pass attractions with a 45 min average wait. For the scenarios with fast passes, I’m assuming 3 fast passes per guest, using arbitrary variables that fast passes account for 50% of capacity and decreases wait time to 10 min, which increased the wait time for those without to 80 min. (Those variables can be changed, but the premise regarding time savings still holds.)
No fast pass scenarios:
You can go to all 6 attractions and wait 270 total minutes (6 x 45 min).
-or-
You can go to 4 of the attractions for 180 total wait minutes (4 x 45 min) and then do other things with the 90 extra minutes
With fast passes scenarios:
You can go to all 6 attractions and wait 270 total minutes (3 attractions with a 10 min wait each and 3 with an 80 min wait each) - for these people, the wait time is a wash
-or-
You can go to 4 of the attractions for 110 total wait minutes (3 attractions with a 10 min wait and 1 with an 80 min wait) and then have 160 minutes to do other things instead of just the 90 without fast passes
So, if there are any fast past attractions that don’t interest your group, fast passes do give you more time to do other things. (Maybe your group doesn’t care that much about character meets or kiddie rides or extreme rides or whatever.)
(Plus, the longer stand by waits at the most popular attractions help drive people to the less popular attractions, from an overall crowd flow.)
Note that the fast pass scenarios do not increase the total wait time for any of these example guests but decreases it for most. (The one exception I can think of is if someone is set on multiple visits to a single fast pass attraction that is very popular.)
As for on-site guests having earlier access to the best fast passes, the tier system is meant to counteract that and does to some degree. And combining whatever fast passes are available with timing the popular attractions for lower wait time periods at the beginning of end of the day will counteract it as well.
So I’m not sure I’m seeing a solid case for opposing a free fast pass system. There may be a case for opposing letting hotel guests have earlier access, but not fast passes in and of themselves. (Paid passes are a whole different discussion.)
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You are missing a lot, but I will state as I always do, that I have said and continue to say on average it is a wash, not necessarily for any single individual. But for every individual who benefits, others pay the price. Those two groups balance each other.
And it isn’t just the FP rides involved. When people save time with a FP, even if they don’t do another FP ride, they are quite likely now doing something that makes others wait longer, or doing something where others have made it longer for them.
In the end, if I manage to take advantage of my time us benefitting from FP, someone else is the loser as a result.
I wanted to share this article. It’s 4 pages long but goes through the history of Fastpass and how it has changed. Read this and you will be convinced that we DO NOT want this system to come back exactly the same as it was pre-covid!
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See, this I don’t see a problem. It is a benefit that doesn’t harm others. In fact, it potentially benefits others by allowing on site guests to get things out of the way so that when off site guests arrive, there are now fewer people in line. (Potentially.). Regardless, it doesn’t add to wait times for off site guests. It offers a benefit to onsite guests without riding on the backs of others.
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Thanks for sharing the link to this dissection of FP. The one comment below the piece was us a few years ago. We had it w/ Disney and the l-o-n-g lines. Covid, lower crowds, and NO FP has been lovely. Wait, covid isn’t lovely but it’s effect on Disney has been a boon to the guest.
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@ryan1 Sorry, I wasn’t clear there. I was referring to the earlier booking of fast passes as referred to in the previous paragraph, not early park access.
I think that’s where we aren’t on the same page. There are lots and lots of activities to be done at WDW that don’t add to queues for others. So if that’s where people use any amount of the time they save by fast passes, it is to their benefit with ZERO detriment to anyone else. That’s what my included math shows. Shopping (often no lines), pool (in normal times without Covid capacities), picture taking, attractions like TSI, animal trails at AK, playing with the datapad at SWGE… Those are the activities I’m always trying to find more time for that fast passes allow.
So basically, free fast passes are zero net damage to anyone (at worst) and potentially a benefit if people use the time savings anywhere but another queue.
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“What is going on? While it’s true that, year-over-year, attendance consistently climbs faster than parks’ capacity can keep up with (despite ever-rising prices and diminishing entertainment offerings) while ticket pricing now incentivizes “off-season” visits to spread crowds, there’s a fundamental flaw fans know all too well: FastPass .”
I agree with the first part, but I skimmed the whole article twice but not seeing the relevant logic. How do fast passes contribute to increased overall total wait times?
As my math showed, worst case scenario it’s a wash in total wait times, and that’s only for those that choose to use the time saved with fast passes to wait in something else with a queue.
Yes, standby waiting times may increase, but they are offset by less wait times for the fast passes used.
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Because, for a high percentage of off site guests, they can’t get FPs for any rides that really save them time. As such, their overall wait times are higher.
As off site guests, we experience this a lot. Obtaining the Fastpasses that we really want is often not possible. All we have left are scraps…and that is at 30 days out. Anyone who books a trip in less than 30 days has ALL wait times now longer than without FP.