I like this attitude. A2!
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I just got back from my trip, and of all the things that were different during Covid, the lack of FPP was probably my favorite. It made planning and executing a touring plan much easier, especially at HS where I was really dreading having to work out FPPs with the horrible tiering system there! I think people often forget about that. FPP was easiest to maximize at MK since there were no tiers, but with careful planning we were able to accomplish everything we wanted to in our allotted time.
Now, there are plenty of other reasons not to go. It’s hot and humid, it will probably rain every day, and after all, it’s just a bunch of mildly thrilling rides. So take a look at all that and consider if it’s something you really want to do. Personally I’m glad we went.
Thank you for the kind words! In some ways I agree with you but also this makes me laugh! I try to accentuate the positive, both while living through it and while writing up my report. It’s the only way to survive.
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Link your thread!
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You? Seriously? Never would have guessed…
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Baby steps…don’t want to overwhelm the OP today! 
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I totally agree with you! My family, with now DD22 and DS21, love Epcot. But, if you are like my DH where Disney is all about the rides, Epcot can be a bit of a downer. He has come around and enjoys the creativity, food, shows, and ambiance of Epcot! And my kids wouldn’t complain. Everything is not all about them. We are family and we do things for one another. I had to type all that when a heart could have done the same!
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I’m not sure when liners suddenly became OK with waiting in lines, but I’m not one of them. With FPP, I never waited more than 10-15 minutes for ANYTHING short of the occasional outlier (Like MFSR, since it had no FPP). Since FPP has been taken out, I have ridden things far less (and I never put much into rides to begin with) because I don’t feel like waiting 30 minutes to an hour, especially as crowds have returned. No ride is worth more than 20 minutes of my time wasted in a line(and even that is pushing it). The only exceptions are possibly people mover , MMRR, and splash mountain cause those rides are longer than the time it takes to sneeze, but even they have a limit (25, 35, and 35 respectively).
For headliners, the only timeframe where things become tolerable (for me) for waits is rope drop or end of the night, both of which require me to actually hard charge doing rides instead of enjoying my time in the park. Screw that. There will be times when waits drop, but it’s definitely not guaranteed. And most queues are still a little different because of covid, so they’re not operating the same way (like haunted mansion, which just constantly loads people. Or FOP which is skipping the “show”. Once those are back to normal, those waits are going to jump too.)
And this “struggle to plan around an FPP” some are saying is making my scratch my head. How does an FPP muck up planning at all? If anything, there’s absolutely no planning needed cause you don’t have to assign any effort to it. What am I missing?
Regarding your trip, you can still have a good time (and really, it will be a good time, just probably not the best trip of your life), especially if you put your emphasis on things other than rides. But if your thing is rides, I would expect to wait and actually rely more on your plan than ever before.
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I agree with you. I guess I probably sound like a brat but I don’t want to wait 55 minutes for SDMT even if that’s a “low” standby wait time (compared to pre-covid, sure, but it’s still way too long to wait in line for anything IMO). I’d much rather either try to modify and refresh for a FP or skip it all together.
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Nope, you sound like someone who values their time and for the amount of money you are putting out for a vacation, an hour in a line seems… counterproductive. 
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Probably when things changed because of the pandemic. Probably not really “okay” with it, but better than the alternative which - right now anyway - is just staying home (in which case your wait time increases mega-exponentially 
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Agree here, wholeheartedly. I did find that on my trip I had to be much more focused and deliberate and it made it feel hectic and rushed (not overlooking the fact that it was short trip)
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And, see, I remember the days when there wasn’t Fastpass and one of the good basic strategies was to start at the back of the park and work your way forward. Another one, which is out right now, was to hit stuff during parades.
I’m actually fine with not having Fastpass both because I remember the pre-Fastpass days but also because a single line will actually MOVE (and some of the queues are actually - dare I say it - worth seeing).
Having said that, I’m traveling solo in August and have a 7 day parkhopper so I don’t plan on waiting in huge lines. If something has a long line I’ll just get to it later or on a different day. Obviously that isn’t an option for everybody.
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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.
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This is hard too, agree. A little worried about that for my upcoming trip. With teens, rope drop is going to be… challenging.
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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).
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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.
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I agree with every part of this I miss FPP with every fiber of my being.
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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.
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Would love to see DL MaxPass at WDW.
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I don’t necessarily disagree with you, but my situation is admittedly different from yours. A few clarifications / rebuttal points:
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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