No standby for Toy Story Mania this week?

[Tekneek]

If I lived close enough, I'd go over and test the 1 day experience. Roll up in the morning at rope drop and only use the in-park kiosks for FP+. That would be the real test of what their experience is like. Maybe it is better than I imagine or have been led to believe from others.

A 30 minute FP+ wait for PotC is incredible. I don't know if I ever waited that long in standby for that ride, even right in the middle of the summer.

[TiggeRia]

We were there on Monday and it was FP+only. I was not able to get our tickets until we got here as they were the Military Salute tickets. I added FP for TSM on Saturday evening for out Monday visit and was able to snag an evening opening. We arrived at five in the park and all the handout FP were long gone. We literally walked right onto the ride at 7 pm. It was kind of eerie walking through with the building completely empty. The sad part is, the ride shooter thingy (what's it called) did not even work correctly on our car. It only worked about half the time.

I do not like the FP+ system after having used it the past few trips. I hate being forced to plan every little detail. It's a tough system for someone technologically challenged like my mom. I miss some of the spontaneity.

[Fangorn]

About to head out to Studios. A few minutes ago, I checked to see if i could change the time of my fp for TSMM. Indeed, I could. I had a choice of any time today that I could possibly have wanted.

Steve

[Terra]

I wouldn't bet on anyone at a call center having any better information about this mess than we do.

You never know. Though it's not really a mess to me. I do agree with Brergnat that they do need more things in DS though. It is our least favorite park [other than the awesome Christmas lights!!]

[Terra]

If I lived close enough, I'd go over and test the 1 day experience. Roll up in the morning at rope drop and only use the in-park kiosks for FP+. That would be the real test of what their experience is like. Maybe it is better than I imagine or have been led to believe from others.

A 30 minute FP+ wait for PotC is incredible. I don't know if I ever waited that long in standby for that ride, even right in the middle of the summer.

As a FL Resident I do that quite often and generally don't have issues. Of course it will depend on what you like to do personally as well. If I'm by myself I just roll with it and many times don't even do the FP, I just wait and fly by the seat of my pants.

I do agree a 30 minute wait for FP is kind of defeating the purpose though.
However, I have seen 45-50 minute waits for PoTC in the summer myself.

[Fangorn]

FP only for TSMM today. Currently in the not so fast pass line. Meaning they've used the entire standby line for the fp line. And it's full. Essentially you get a fp to stand in the standby line. Incidentally, tthey're still using the old fp line - for tour groups. And it's packed as well.

This does not bode well...

Steve

[Basket Mommy]

Knowing they may begin locking out entire attractions like this seals the deal. As a person who used to enjoy planning out details for a Disney trip, the *required* planning has made it a chore.

Ditto. I have always planned our trips, but not in as much detail as I have had to do for our upcoming November trip. I'm exhausted, and we're not even there yet. I tried my best to plan FPs around ADRs, and I know that they'll have to be tweaked again once we get there just because nothing ever works according to plan. I've tried to leave as much time as possible between FPs, but I know that something will happen that will require the changing of an FP time. I'm not looking forward to the arguments about FPs; my husband is already very skeptical about them, because he was a big fan of the "grab a paper FP and ride something else while you wait" way of touring the parks. He has not liked the idea of all of this preplanning at ALL, but it's a necessary evil.

This will be our first trip with the whole family since FP+ was rolled out. I took my oldest child down to WDW in March, and while FP+ worked okay for us, I've been dreading taking the whole family of 6 back. First of all, while I did book about 5 months in advance and started making ADRs right away, I still had very few options to choose from. It really makes me mad that my kids, who were BEGGING to eat at BOG, will not get to. Absolutely no availability left either with FP or ADRs. AND I REFUSE TO WASTE MY TIME STANDING IN A 1.5 HOUR LINE FOR LUNCH (which now seems impossible, since they've taken away the standby option for BOG lunch, too!) So we're eating at Tony's Town Square for dinner, which was the only available restaurant left for the day we're scheduled to be at Magic Kingdom. I'm really, truly dreading this trip. We're DVC members who don't plan trips more than a few months out. With more and more restrictions put on how I can enjoy Disney World, I don't see us keeping our points for much longer, and that makes me very sad.

We still are on hold waiting for this mess to play out. I have a reservation offsite scheduled for before Christmas but after reading this I have pretty much decided to cancel and wait some more.

As I said above, I took one child to WDW with me in March since her spring break was a different week than my other 3 kids. I wanted to use that time to test out the FP+ system. On one hand, I liked it because it was March and crowded (we prefer value season to avoid huge crowds) but we were still able to ride a lot because of having the FP+. On the other hand, I hated it, because I *had* to reserve everything so dadgum early and while I like having a basic plan (which park we're doing and what ADRs we have is about it), I don't like to micromanage my park days. And if we had to end up changing a FP+ reservation, the possible return times for the rides we had to cancel were so many hours later than we wanted to be in the parks (for example, if we wanted to cancel an 11:30 am for Test Track, the soonest return time for that same ride was like 7 pm. I'm not hanging around for 7 hours for Test Track, and the standby lines were over an hour.)

They are basically handing Universal and the other parks the short notice and day trip customers.

My 8th grader is going on a class trip to Orlando. The kids were allowed to vote between Disney World and Universal. My son was crossing his fingers and campaigning for everyone to choose Universal. He got his wish. Personally, we've never been there because we love Disney so much. But if he loves it, we might go, which I hate to say. I'm just so over this FP+ mess.

[Fangorn]

So... 25 minutes in the "not-so-fast pass" line. Suits, quest relations and other CMs out in legion. Spoke to a guest relations CM. Expressed our displeasure. He assured us this is only a test. And it will end tomorrow. Asked about whether they had standby at all yesterday and his reply was "not to my knowledge".

I have pictures of the queue line.

Steve

[Basket Mommy]

A 30 minute FP+ wait for PotC is incredible. I don't know if I ever waited that long in standby for that ride, even right in the middle of the summer.

Last time we rode Jungle Cruise (Feb 2013), the standby line was EMPTY. The FP line was 35 minutes long. I am still shaking my head over that, and the people with FPs who were STILL getting into the FP line with an empty standby queue!

[Tekneek]

Suits, quest relations and other CMs out in legion. Spoke to a guest relations CM. Expressed our displeasure. He assured us this is only a test. And it will end tomorrow. Asked about whether they had standby at all yesterday and his reply was "not to my knowledge".

Presumably, these are people who would have otherwise had something else to do. So bizarre.

The bands are a great innovation that came out of this. Those are keepers. The rest of this FP+ stuff has been troubled from the start.

[Dulcee]

A 30 minute FP+ wait for PotC is incredible. I don't know if I ever waited that long in standby for that ride, even right in the middle of the summer.

I've seen 50+ minute waits for PotC many times in the middle of the summer, both before and after Fastpass/+

[Dopey's Girl]

I can't WAIT for my trip to Disneyland in a few weeks. Ahhhh, relaxing. What am I riding on October 23? I have no idea, nor know what park we'll be in. And I'm loving it!

This exactly. I have a friend traveling to WDW around the same time as I'll be in Disneyland. They are stressed worried about making sure they have everything reserved, and I'm just happy to be able to go, get in the park with my paper ticket, and ride whatever I think sounds fun at the time. Maybe I'll become a Disneyland regular now...

[AgentC]

If I lived close enough, I'd go over and test the 1 day experience. Roll up in the morning at rope drop and only use the in-park kiosks for FP+. That would be the real test of what their experience is like. Maybe it is better than I imagine or have been led to believe from others.

A 30 minute FP+ wait for PotC is incredible. I don't know if I ever waited that long in standby for that ride, even right in the middle of the summer.

As a FL Resident I do that quite often and generally don't have issues. Of course it will depend on what you like to do personally as well. If I'm by myself I just roll with it and many times don't even do the FP, I just wait and fly by the seat of my pants.

I do agree a 30 minute wait for FP is kind of defeating the purpose though.
However, I have seen 45-50 minute waits for PoTC in the summer myself.

I've had a similar experience to Terra but it really comes down to what you enjoy to do and when you go. As it has been mentioned in several other threads, there is very little "down time" now and that affects all the waits.

I used to be a big planner. I even used spreadsheets one trip. I'm really not much of a planner anymore. I only tend to book FP+ in advance for must dos that I know will be gone quickly. So for example we went Sept 26-28. I checked for the Mine Train at my 30 days and of course it was gone. I didn't book anything until the day before we got there and then we didn't go to that park so I cancelled them all.

On the spur of the moment we decided to go to MK at 7 pm when it had an 11 pm close. On the bus there I reserved The Jungle Cruise, and POTC but there were still other rides available. I was with my 6 year old and she wanted to do the carousel, IASW, the magic carpets, the teacups and the speedway. They were all walk ons and she rode some multiple times. Rides like Pooh had a 30 minute wait and the Mine Train had a 60 minute wait. Not horrible wait times for the only late night MK had in three days (day before and after were parties).

If we only wanted to do headliners we would have had a very different experience..

For me, the unrelenting crowds have been so much more of an issue than the FP+ system. I really miss my "quiet" park days.

[Tekneek]

I've had a similar experience to Terra but it really comes down to what you enjoy to do and when you go. As it has been mentioned in several other threads, there is very little "down time" now and that affects all the waits.

I could enjoy myself under those circumstances, but I couldn't justify $500-$600 for 1 day as an entire family under those circumstances. It seems a bit predatory to even sell those tickets to somebody for same day use.

[Terra]

For me, the unrelenting crowds have been so much more of an issue than the FP+ system. I really miss my "quiet" park days.

Yes to this! That gets me more than anything [not that I'd ever give up Disney over it! lol]
But yeah, I miss those slow slow slow times in February. Deeper room discounts because of it.
I know I hear people complain all the time about Disney and not going anymore, but honestly, it's not affecting crowds [if it does I know and have confidence Disney will try something else].
In the end, some of this stuff [in my own opinion] just isn't something to get that bent out of shape over. I'm just happy to be going.

I could enjoy myself under those circumstances, but I couldn't justify $500-$600 for 1 day as an entire family under those circumstances. It seems a bit predatory to even sell those tickets to somebody for same day use.

Predatory? Nah, Disney Parks aren't really meant to be one day parks anyway [well aside from DS ]
Seriously though, MK can easily take a couple if not more, days to go through.
I'd be willing to bet that statistically one day tickets are not the highest selling.

If people want a one day park and not pay as much, then they can go elsewhere. Legoland, Universal, IoA. Disney is so much more than a FP+ attraction and I feel like people are losing sight of that.

However, I do "get" the amount of money. I feel that same away about their "Deluxe" resorts. Sorry, but spending more than $150 a night on a room to sleep is just insane and wasteful [in my opinion]. But if people want to do it, then go for it. I may not like it, doesn't mean it's predatory, just means I don't like it.

[AgentC]

I could enjoy myself under those circumstances, but I couldn't justify $500-$600 for 1 day as an entire family under those circumstances. It seems a bit predatory to even sell those tickets to somebody for same day use.

I agree. I think there is very little value in a one day ticket that is bought for same day use. It is just too expensive for what you get.

[1DisneyNut]

I agree. I think there is very little value in a one day ticket that is bought for same day use. It is just too expensive for what you get.

It depends on the situation. As far as a vacation value, it is not a good deal. However, Orlando is huge for business meetings/conventions. WDW sells a lot of 1 day tickets to people there for meetings/conventions that only have one free day. I was there for a business convention several years ago and the day after the convention, Magic Kingdom was packed with the attendees. I myself only visited for that one day with a one day ticket which I normally would not do.

[RunDMV]

They are being used as guinea pigs.

us.

This line cracks me up. As far as FP+ is concerned, the guinea pig aspect of it started about 15 years ago.

Remember those little blue pins with the red LED lights? Depending where you were in the parks, the lights blinked in a different pattern. That was the bridge to PAL Mickey. PAL Mickey bridged to FP+.

And the early guinea pigs paid extra for the opportunity to be guinea pigs!

[RunDMV]

So... 25 minutes in the "not-so-fast pass" line. Suits, quest relations and other CMs out in legion. Spoke to a guest relations CM. Expressed our displeasure. He assured us this is only a test. And it will end tomorrow. Asked about whether they had standby at all yesterday and his reply was "not to my knowledge".

I have pictures of the queue line.

Steve

These "geniuses" at WDW couldnt create computer models to test this craziness?

[Fangorn]

These "geniuses" at WDW couldnt create computer models to test this craziness?

I don't get this either. Disney has been collecting data on everything in their theme parks for just over 59 years now. They know how to collect relavant data and more importantly, they know how to analyze it and apply it. Since the '80s they have been recognized as experts in operations research. They have a year's worth of pretty exact data on fp+ and significantly more with the old fp system (although that's less precise). Perhaps TDO has gotten rid of all the statisticians and analysts that should be able to create those models (cost cutting measures)?

Steve

Steve