I will admit to paying for Fastpass in Shanghai and staying in a club level room in Hong Kong for the fastpass per person per night so we ended up with 16 I think that we could use where ever. I was going to pay for them in DLP as well and I always stay in deluxe at Universal or buy them in hollywood Universal. I cannot stand waiting in line. I am admittedly a spoiled brat and life is hard enough. However, the Maxpass system worked really well for us in DLR last year and it’s cheaper than all those other options so I think it’s more equitable for more people. But I will admit bias at DLR over WDW in all its ways. I hate busses, I love short walks back to hotels and downtown disney. Pirates, Indiana Jones, Space Mtn, Big Thunder, Incredicoaster, Grizzly River Run, Radiator Springs Racers, the Animation building, Tarzan’s Treehouse, the hyperion theater shows, Fantasmic, Finding Nemo, Autopia, the Railroad, the castle has a walkthru, more dark rides including a favorite in Alice in Wonderland and I love Roger Rabbit and Monsters, Inc. and Toontown and New Orleans Square all better than WDW similar versions. The food and weather are better and you can make a last minute trip and still get FPs all day long. So I am a bit biased! LOL
I too am partial to DL, for all the reasons you mentioned. I do love WDW as well, but DL is just so much easier in many ways.
I was last in 2018 with crowd levels 6-8. While there were a lot of people, I had no waits over 25 minutes and did everything I wanted to, all the headliners. So I can adapt to any type of system and utilize it to the max. Since liners usually have an advantage, any type of ride reservation system is better than nothing!
Anyone here figure out how their new planning system would fit with these VQ? I wonder if they’re going to go to a virtual reservation system that integrates with a touring plan? Why else were they coming out with something that was essentially a competitor to our TPs?
I dislike the VQs. The idea of being free to roam instead of waiting in line is nice but as in the case of RoTR, I hate the fact that there is nothing you can do, no amount of getting up early or being willing to wait however long if you truly want to ride that will get you on. You are at the whim of the speed of your data or WiFi and if you fail, children can be horribly disappointed. Someone who walked in the park at 10 and someone who has waited 2 hours before RD b/c their kid just wants to ride RoTR and they have never done it b4 have the same chance of getting a BG. Not everyone can pay over and above a WDW ticket but if they want it enough, everyone can get up earlier or wait longer, but the VQ takes that away. You can study techniques, but that’s about it.
Yep
I feel like for rides as popular with as limited capacity as RotR need a pay option. People plan their whole vacations around going on that one ride, spending maybe thousands of dollars, and then can’t ride. With a positive attitude, you can still have fun even without that one ride. But many would gladly shell out $50 just to guarantee they’d ride. (I did a poll on this once and most people said they would refuse to pay on principle, but not me! lol)
While I see your point, they might as well go back to the ticket booklet option. Pay extra for some rides is essentially that.
And if you paid, does that mean you have to make a reservation? Like for a dessert show or something? What if the ride is down when your time comes up? Can you move it? Do you get your money back?
All kinds of problems with that idea besides the people who won’t pay on principle.
The thing is that RotR is the only attraction right now that literally does not have enough capacity for everyone who wants to ride it. If you want to ride FoP, 7DMT, or SDD, you can, as long as you’re willing to wait.
So they need some way to weed out the people who would like to ride it from those for whom it is their top priority. You could do that by doing standby only, which I’d be fine with. But that has some of the same problems you mentioned. (Also I think they’re worried the line would be longer than the 10-hour operating day, but hopefully that phase of the ride’s life cycle is over. They should try it just once to see what happens.)
Having a pay option isn’t too problematic. They have paid experiences in parks all over the world - like those bungee swings or ziplines or VR or VIP tours, etc. If the attraction is down, simple - they just give you a refund or reschedule. They could leave capacity for people who need to reschedule due to downtime. And they could open up whatever isn’t sold to people willing to join the lottery (or standby). Win-win-win.
They need to figure out a way to let folks who’ve never ridden get precedence over the vlogger that’s on his 10th go.
I do think that’s true, I think peoples only trip they would be happy to wait in line if it meant they got to ride.
Yes, this… and the family there for there once in a lifetime trip or only goes once every few years.
MaxPass.
MaxPass
I think that would be my choice. But only if it was the same price as DL.
Everyone pays the same. Truthfully, they shouldn’t be making rides that they know won’t be able to service the amount of throughput they have in their parks. They need to build them to handle the capacity. Look, they added another theatre for Soarin’ and another ride track for Toy Story, both out of high demand. Then they went and built then next two rides (RotR and SDD) knowing their capacity wasn’t nearly enough for the demand.
And you’re right, everyone should have a chance to get on those rides, if they want. They shouldn’t be hogged by repeat riders with fast fingers or who are friends with CMs (don’t know if that happens for real, just saying.)
The only way to do that would be when you buy your tickets, you can book a time slot on that ride. But then what do you do with AP holders and people who buy their tickets closer to their date? It might end up being a dash to the computer, just like FPs were, so you’re back to square one.
Of course, part of this is demand. Take Peter Pan’s Flight. It can handle about 800 riders per hour, which means there is absolutely NO WAY everyone can ride that ride each day. HM, on the other hand, can handle about 3000 riders per hour. But even 10 hours a day only means 30000 riders. That’s not even close to enough to handle park capacity during normal hours, let alone COVID reduced capacity.
The idea that anyone can expect to ride any given ride (or all rides) on a given single day just isn’t realistic, and almost never is except, perhaps, during the slowest periods.
This is why going to Disney World is a multi-day event!
What makes things tricky is a case of demand, versus capacity. People won’t necessarily be upset if they don’t get on Winnie the Pooh in the same way as if they can’t get on RotR because people aren’t generally planning their trips around being able to get into Winnie the Pooh. They are for RotR.
The ride shouldn’t have been rushed to open. Disney knew it wasn’t ready, but they’d already announced an opening date & were unwilling to change it. So, this is what we’re stuck with until they’ve managed to get it operating reliably.
The attraction is 4 independent ride systems that have to work in unison. Any error in one of them shuts the attraction down. Sadly, this first year of it being open has turned paying guests into beta testers.
I haven’t been to Disney since SW:GE opened. I desperately want to experience RotR, but BGs are on my list of reasons to wait to return. I’d prefer there be a standby or FastPass option.
A good friend of mine went for four days and did not get a BG even once. She’s not a Liner / WDW “pro”. She wasn’t prepared for how crazy it is to get a BG. However, SW:GE / RotR was her entire motivation for going on that trip. She came home so upset.
I think what Disney should be focusing on is figuring out a way to guarantee resort guests an opportunity to ride RotR. Maybe allowing resort guests to pre book their boarding passes but only for one day of their trip or something like that.
Put me in the “gladly pay” category.
We’ve gone once in 8 years. Life got in the way and between cross-country moves, multiple job shenanigan’s and losing my mother…we just couldn’t justify the extra time away. If RotR was up when we went and we lost out on the reservation for whatever reason, my entire family would have been devastated to say the least. We would have made the best of it, but it’d be an Eeyore sized cloud overhead for sure for the rest of the stay.
If there was an option to pay to ride, under the “rich person” choice of VIP tours, I would find a way to budget it in to my my kid happy, even if I had to sacrifice somewhere else to do it.
This last trip was just before TSL opened and the crowds were more than we expected for Dec. We ended up taking 6 or 7 days out of a 15 day trip and spent them at USO purely for the Express Pass option. We ended up Ubering back and forth because we had anticipated not leaving the bubble once we got to WDW so we didn’t bother with getting a car… I would have been much happier using that money for some paid version of immediate, unlimited FP at Disney.
There is a massively overlooked multi-tier, pay solution to Disney, just as there is to everything else. People should be able to wait in a stupid line if they don’t win the “BG lottery”. Other people should be able to get front of the line access by paying a premium, crowd level based fee (much like the 91 toll way in CA, pay based on traffic), and regular FP for everyone else with options opening up based on if they are staying on property or not.
Disney…HURRY UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!
This is a slippery slope. Who determines who’s fit to ride? I sure as hell don’t want anyone else determining if my family is “more worthy” to ride over someone who say has been on 20 times already, but has severe autism (depression/cancer/divorce/dealing with the loss of a job/dealing with the loss of a loved one/just having a REALLY crappy day and needs it so they don’t turn into a homicidal maniac later on). Even Vloggers…you don’t know what could happen to their mental state if you take their one constant and suddenly deem them unworthy.
If Disney starts dictating based on anything close to amount of previous ridden attractions and worthiness of guests, I don’t even want to think about how quickly that would deteriorate. Unintended consequences in the absolute way.
I would absolutely stand in line for 4 hours if I didn’t have the means for the pay system (VIP TOURS right now).