This article makes many claims that appear to make sense, but then become suspect after looking at them more closely. For example, FP/FPP did not cause the park common areas to be more crowded - increased park attendance did that. People are not wandering around waiting for their FP/FPP time, they are standing in another queue (or ‘sponge’ as the author likes to refer to them as). And as @mikejs78 pointed out, TP already debunked the ‘FPP makes SB waits longer’ argument through careful analysis.
And as to ‘fairness’? Sorry, if you don’t plan, then that’s your fault. This is true of any vacation and has nothing to do with FP/FPP - my family gets far more things done because we research and plan anywhere we go.
But then there are fewer people in the SB line, because they have FPPs for the attraction at a later time. So that decreases the SB wait time. Swings and roundabouts.
Speaking of people who don’t do any basic research - I knew of someone who was taking their family to Disney for the first time. A few weeks before their trip, another friend of mine (who himself is very knowledgeable of Disney) asked him what he had gotten for FPs. The response? “The blue one, I think”. After some facepalming, my friend educated him on FPP and helped him get set up.
That’s my point. Ultimately, FPP is just making us feel like we are saving time. In the end, you end up breaking even. Three lines you save time, but all other lines (with FPPs) you add a little time. It is death by a thousand cuts. 2 extra minutes in all other lines adds up to the savings on three rides, etc.
You don’t add little time to the other lines. They basically have the same wait time they did before. So if SM standby is 90 minutes, it would also be 90 minutes without FP. It’s just FP lets you avoid it for that time.
This is the analysis TP did. As you can see, standby time at SM actually went down an average of 11 minutes with the introduction of FP. And Dinosaur went up by about the same. I don’t know how you can say that if I FP 7DMT (and skip the 100 min wait) and then go on SM standby for an 11 min less wait time I am not saving time, even if I have to wait an extra 10 minutes for Pirates.
Sure. But that is the wrong data point. The question is total wait time for each person in the park, not average SB time. The two aren’t the same thing
Sorry, but I experienced wait time at DW before FP, during paper FP and then digital FP. I waited ALOT longer pre FP than I have during digital. As I said earlier, wait times were an hour or longer for rides such as Pirates of the Caribbean and Space Mountain. I don’t think getting rid of FP is going to make overall wait times lower. If you are using rope drop and even just 3 FPs your overall wait time while in the park is going to be a lot lower than the old school no FP system.
I’m not sure how they aren’t correlated. If when I get into a standby line, the wait is the same whether FP exists or not, and then I have three attractions that I can skip the line in via FP, I don’t see any logical way that it doesn’t save me time. It’s applied queing theory…
Being the designates FP runner was fun! Zipping through the crowds with the theme song from Mission Impossible playing in my head, trying to spot gaps like an All-Pro running back - exciting times!
What was not fun was returning to the next attraction only to find that the rest of the party wasn’t there. What do you mean you “couldn’t find Spaceship Earth”??? The freaking huge sphere you can see from anywhere in the park???
Me too, but I don’t expect it to happen. What I DO expect is that at some point in the not too distant future Disney will follow Universal’s example and make FP+ an entirely up-sell perk. No more freebies. They’ve already taken steps in that direction with the fee-based extras for club level guests.
I don’t think they’ll do this. I read an article once that the genius of FP+ for Disney is twofold:. 1) increases guest spending on merch and food, and b) allows them to know in advance roughly how many people will be in a given park on a given day, thus allowing them to optimize staffing. The combination of revenue and cost savings there are far more than anything they could ever get from an upsell. So I think free FP will remain as is for the most part.
What I do think will happen is more bonus FP upcharges like the club level upcharge. Maybe a “no tiers” upcharge, or a 90 day window upcharge, or get more FPs in advance upcharge. Or maybe a deluxe all you can enjoy FP upsell.
You don’t have to drop free FP to add upsell opportunities.
I’m not entirely sure I’m in your camp. We’re not talking a little bit of time saved with FPP. If I am a non-planner, Disney newbie, I will wait on the line for SDMT, Peter Pan and Tomorrowland Speedway and those lines alone will take up most of my day. Throw in the parade, fireworks, a couple of quick serve meals and that’s all I will have time to do. If I, on the other hand, am a well-versed Liner, I will FPP all three, freeing up more than 4 hours of park time that I can spend on stand by lines for rides that don’t have anywhere near that long of a wait. Thereby increasing my satisfaction. I think FPP absolutely works.
We were at Magic Kingdom the day after Easter last year… A level 10 day. We were there from rope drop until fireworks. We used our 3 fast passes, then throughout the entire day I was able to add 9 more fast passes. So we never waited in line more than 15-20 minutes for anything. So knowing the system, refreshing and modifying, adding more fast passes etc. it’s possibe to go the whole day without waiting much in line. You just have plan, know how the system works, and be willing to take any fast pass that you can get!
That’s only true if you do the same things you were going to do before. I bet a LOT of people now do their three FP rides and then the “effectively infinite” capacity rides and WON’T wait in the now increased standby lines for rides they didn’t FP. Or they leave a little early feeling like they did what they wanted to.
That’s what we did. I think we waitied in one standby line that was over 30 minutes on our 7 day by doing headliners on FP and low demand/high cap rides later in the day on standby, and of course that’s through a lot of planning, but I suspect that the non-planners will also skip the long standby lines.
You and a lot of others, no doubt. But so far pissing people off doesn’t seem to have negatively affected the the bottom line. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Your point is valid. Ultimately, overall wait times will be dictated by ride capacity. The more rides that don’t have hit Max capacity, the more opportunities that a FPP for something else could benefit you. In such a way, the busier the parks the less help they become.
Yeah but you have to look at the $. They will make a lot less if they exclusively charge for FPs. Whereas with parking, that only added to their bottom line, and also discouraged guests from renting cars and keeping them onsite.
