I’m very skeptical about my upcoming trip too bc I also gamed the heck out of fpp and hate wasting time in lines. I’m totally team @Randall1028 on this. I’m also not a morning person so the thought of having to rope drop and/or close out each park each day just to have low waits is kinda offputting to me.
However, after this last year of suck I’m just ready to be there. Maybe it will be less ride heavy than usual, but that gives me more time to explore all the things I normally just whiz past on my way from ride to ride. I definitely agree to go in with a good attitude and a plan and hope for the best.
Sure, a lot of them are worth seeing, but spending an hour in each one? I can’t get on board with that short of Star Tours (love that little droid).
Even FOP, which is interesting once you reach the lab, you’re spending so much time moving in there that the details become a blur. ROTR is another one. Interesting queue, but not one I want to sit there for an hour looking at (thankfully, that hasn’t been the case as ROTR has been almost walk on once your BG is called).
Yes, this was a challenge for us for sure. We rope dropped every day because the rides we wanted to RD could be easily accomplished first thing. With a 4 year old, waiting in long lines is not something that we wanted to do often. I missed our usual late morning fastpass bookings.
I think when you’re traveling with a larger party, or with kids, the FP system makes it feel more difficult because you have to be somewhere at a specific time in order to not wait in line. And then you have to plan everything else around that. It might also mean a lot more back-and-forth walking. Right now, you can do things with “less of a plan” using a solid touring plan because standby times have reduced so much.
I agree that a 30 minute wait is unacceptable for me. My sisters waited that long, because they didn’t use a plan… My family never waited more than 15 minutes on our recent trip.
I don’t necessarily disagree with you, but my situation is admittedly different from yours. A few clarifications / rebuttal points:
In my more detailed remarks after my trip report, I said that I would prefer FPP to return only for headliners (I used a 30-minute cutoff, but 20-25 would work too). I loved Fastpass / MaxPass at Disneyland (where it was only active for headliners). I hated FPP. I mean, it’s great to have a FPP for Test Track and Soarin’! But then you have to get one for Spaceship Earth thanks to the bundling / tiering? We walked onto Spaceship Earth last week. Having FPP available for those kinds of high-capacity, fast-loading rides, as well as less popular rides or shows, just inflates the standby waits and makes the line feel longer because it doesn’t move as fast.
FPP makes it harder to plan ahead because, for example, on your HS day you had to worry about the tiering system. Sure, you might be able to snag a same-day fastpasses for some attractions, but the only way to guarantee riding all the headliners with no wait was to have multiple days at HS.
On average, you can probably use one FPP per hour. Your advance FPP of course were coded to be at least an hour apart, and you had to use leading reservations and/or be lucky to get good return times. Same day can be gamed a little, but only after you’ve used your first three, and on busy days you may not be able to get a favorable return time. In other words, you’re going to have to wait in some standby lines or wait around doing something outside the queues. So it helps to have some rides that don’t have FPP (and therefore, no inflated standby wait) so you can hop in line while waiting for your next FPP return time.
I don’t mind waiting 10-20 minutes for a ride. It helps build anticipation and also many of the queues are designed to introduce the theming. What I didn’t like was waiting in the heat or rain. That’s why my other recommendation was to build more shaded and/or air conditioned queues, especially if they add more theming elements.
Even with a Fastpass, you often end up waiting 15 minutes or more. The worst offender is Soarin’ - last week we had a Rider Swap return wait that was longer than the initial wait in the standby line (~30 minutes), just due to the way the queuing and loading procedure works there. If having fastpass doesn’t eliminate the wait, or at least get it down to 5-10 minutes, it’s not really helping as much as it appears. (I’ll add that waiting for Soarin’ was one of the most tolerable waits due to it being entirely within an air conditioned building.)
All this said, while I didn’t love waiting in 30-50 minute lines for headliners, it was an acceptable trade-off to not being able to go to WDW, and there are enough cons to the FPP system that for me, with a family who can’t dash from one side of the park to the other or predict exactly where we will be at any given time 60+10 days in advance, the current system was preferable to FPP.
I grew up going to WDW even before paper fastpassess were a thing. I have distinct memories of being 8 years old and waiting 2 hours for Splash in the middle of July. 2 hours for Space - easy.
Then I remember when the paper fastpasses started and we would use two tickets to get 2 fastpassess for splash, 2 tickets to get fastpasses for thunder, and my sister and I would ride both while my parents took a break in the shade.
Then came the FP+ system and all the planning that goes along with it.
Then came COVID. And I think all expectations went out the window.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that 30 mins may seem long if you used to be able to wait 10 with FPP, but in perspective, wait times have always varied, and they’ve always been something you’re going to have to deal with in some way or the other.
I choose to decide that waiting 30 mins for SDD during COVID times is an acceptable wait considering we could get on on 3-4 rides pre-rope drop with zero wait.
I’m not saying I don’t understand what you’re saying, but I guess this entire past 15 months have just completely changed my expectations.
It’s funny because on the one hand I did feel like not having the FPP schedule to stick to I felt more free to do what I wanted. BUT I felt I had to be more deliberate at the same time which made it feel less relaxing.
I get exactly what you mean. I was free of the FPP planning stress, but I still had to worry about the standby-wait minimizing stress. The plain fact of the matter is that WDW is huge and experiencing it takes a lot of physical and emotional energy. There’s always going to be trade-offs no matter what system they go with.
(I do wish they’d think more about what it’s like being a guest in their parks, though. There are so many little things, like shade and seating, that would make it so much smoother.)
Keep in mind that Disney EXPECTS you (well, people in general) to wait in lines. It is why they invested so much into making the queues interactive…so you have something to do while you wait. And that only came about after they introduced Fastpasses, because Fastpasses made the wait times shoot up. Prior to Fastpasses, the standby queues were considerably faster for the average person.
I do have a bit of a philosophical (?) reason also not to like FP…and that is that it is very “me” oriented and unfair, in general. Anytime someone takes advantage of a FP, it is at the expense of others. Each time you use a FP, it increases the wait times for everyone else. FPs are limited, so not everyone can get them. In the past, when we would book our FPPs, we could rarely get the ones we cared about, so had to take what we could get. When they were out, they were out. And if a ride has same-day FPPs, then they waits were already so low that the need for the same-day FP was pretty moot.
I also didn’t like that we had to plan our day 30 or 60 days in advance based on what we managed to secure, not based on how we actually wanted our day to go. If we wanted our MK day 1 to be Adventureland and Frontierland, but the only FPPs we could get were for Peter Pan and Space Mountain, well, our day now had to shift focus. Plus our waits for the rides we actually wanted to do are much longer because others are using FPPs there. Eliminating FPPs means we can plan our day far more spontaneously and make decisions based on what we want. Very few rides end up with astronomical waits, and overall, our average wait time is fine. With a good Touring Plan, it is even “finer”.
100% agree. Disneyland’s FastPass/MaxPass system is far preferable over WDW’s FP+. No preplanning involved, if you want to pay for control over your FastPasses on your phone it is available (a bit pricey for larger groups but not crazy), and if not you can hoof it around the park and grab paper passes.
I liked being able to snag my next pass while in line for the attraction I just redeemed one for. Even during one of the busiest weeks (the three days immediately following Christmas) two of us were able to ride and do everything we wanted to…both big and small attractions.
Agreed. I wish you had the option of setting your maximum wait tolerance when constructing your TP.
As for the idea that FPP will make every line longer… ok, kind of overlooks that not every ride is a headliner that will attract the same number of people.
Or the ride’s capacity.
But sure, we can pretend that’ll happen… guess we’ll make use of that early entry to rope drop or hit them at the end of the day.
And if there’s a 60 minute wait for HOP or Tomorrowland Speedway… I’ll just have to live with skipping those.
I have generally been in favor of FP because I have never had to wait more than 20 minutes in line. This discussion got me curious, so I crunched the numbers on my planned trip. We have 41 rides/attractions on our plans (not counting walking around the countries or Tom Sawyer Island, things like that). Looking at estimated wait times, 37% are longer than 20 minutes. The max is 63. Coincidentally, the average is about 19.5. So, with no FP system, I am waiting in line much longer in some cases, and a little longer on average.
I am leaning towards I like FP better, but I do like not having to criss-cross MK. Maybe a system for headliners like @Jeff_AZ suggested would be a compromise.
Btw I reviewed my trip report, and my longest wait was 47 minutes for Space Mountain. So not quite 50 minutes. Anything over 30 minutes felt long though. The vast majority of our waits were 20 minutes or less.
