Quote Originally Posted by Speedy1998 View Post
After reading all these post and thinking about, you know what I hate the most about FP+ and the DDP? It's that I am always looking at my watch, trying to figure out if I have time to do something else before whatever it is I planned to do months in advance. Prior to the original FP system I almost never looked at my watch while I was in one of the parks.

Quote Originally Posted by Ian View Post
Agree with this, as well. Even more so, I hate what it does to our kids. The opportunity to be spontaneous if there's an opportunity that presents itself for them to do something magical (like a character meet and greet or one of the little side shows or events they do around the parks) half the time you have to disappoint them and say, "No sorry we have a Fastpass for such-and-such in 10 minutes or no we have a dining reservation we can't be late for so you can't see Mickey Mouse."

I hate that as a parent.
This sums up my feelings about it as well. We visited WDW last month for the first time since 2012, the days of the old FP paper system. We did not have the dining plan because we didn't want to wind up with more time constraints, in addition to the pre-scheduled FP. I was disappointed in how little spontaneity we were able to have. Many times I felt like we were rushed for time and could not linger and enjoy the little side shows and things like that for more than a minute or two.

When we visited in 2012 we were able to be more spontaneous and because the lines were shorter, we were able to ride more, see more, do more. We met many characters with a 5-10 minute wait. In the summertime when crowds are high.

The kids know they want to ride the things you have FP for but they also get caught in the magic and want to stop and see this or do that and we have to keep on walking to get to where we need to be. I would say "we'll come back" but in most cases we never made it back there.