State of Fast Pass Return (or replacement)

[Roxyfire]

I'm not sure how they could separate out the white cards reservations from the blue card reservations or even reservations which were made with a mixture of points from both. Nor could they ascertain who is a "renter" or who is a "guest" of the DVC member given that DVC itself does not request any kind of documentation when a member makes a reservation for someone other than themselves.

My feeling is that any free FP-type benefit will be a function of where you rest your head at night and not what color the card is that you carry in your wallet, or whether you even possess one at all.

There are methods of setting permissions and badging in many other situations, and they do have precedent for it. It does not need to be to complex down to the reservation, just a simple yes or no check. Then your party has X number allocated.

 

[Marionnette]

Technically there is still extra time in the park offered as a benefit (starting Oct 1st). All resort guests can access ANY park 30 mins early every day. Deluxe & DVC can access select parks on select nights for 1 hour after closing. That is a benefit to staying onsite. Is it the same as the previous Extra Magic Hours? No. But it hasn't been completely done away with.

Are we sure that it’s one hour? Did I miss an announcement?

 

[TinkerBelle_325]

Interesting to see the different approaches. When you search "FastPass+" on the WDW site here is the message:
As a result of the COVID-19 impact on operations, the FastPass+ service is suspended for the time being. FastPass+ service is not offered with the purchase of tickets or annual passes. We will share future updates at a later date.

And when you search "Extra Magic Hours" here is the message:
Please note: The Extra Magic Hours benefit was suspended when Walt Disney World Resort reopened last summer, and as we continue to manage attendance with health and safety top of mind, Extra Magic Hours will not return.

The are definitive with EMH as it "will not return". But they are more vague with FastPass+ as it is "suspended for the time being"

 

[Friendlyadvice2]

Are we sure that it’s one hour? Did I miss an announcement?

I have NOT seen an official announcement on the timeframe yet.

 

[monstermash23]

Its more that people don't always understand the loopholes that allow some to get 12+ per day, while others struggle to get 5-6. The 1st 3 are easy. Its the rest of them that they are referring to. You know what's interesting to me here? The way that those who know how to exploit the loopholes and the strategies talk down to those who bring up the issues with the system like those who didn't just know about those things automatically or those who struggle with them are idiots or somehow undeserving of those same fastpasses. Not everyone spends a great deal of time on these boards and knows the tricks to pounding the app or the times for drops or that you can even get more than 3. I think the point of the post you were responding to is that it should not take that much research or time spent of these boards to know these things exist or are possible. It shouldn't be a thing you have to research and practice. It should just be something Disney was up front about. And the whole "well I knew about it and got all these so easily and never had to make a spreadsheet or do anything ahead of time" responses does not make that true for everyone else and its kind of condescending

What you are describing has to do with stategizing, but not the system itself. These are not loopholes, these are features that allow you to enhance your FP+ and Disney experience, if you want to! But you don’t need to. And adding rides ontop of the original 3, just isn’t complicated in comparison to the large picture that is Disney. And here’s my general point regarding that, hopefully this is a little more clear.

You get 3 rides, that’s easy. When you go to Six Flags, Cedar Point, Disney, Universal, etc there are many people going to the park to see and experience these attractions. With that, comes crowd patterns, lines, etc. You could easily go into the park and ride every ride you want and wait in line for every ride, time permitting of course. And you can do that without any strategy and without any line cutting system in place.

Now let’s talk about the scenario of wanting to experience particular rides or attractions. If you are new, then it’s safe to say you have done some preliminary research to learn about said attractions (whether it’s talking to friends or reading about it online, etc). This means, you now have priorities in your head regarding your touring experience. And this means, if you want to experience your priorities then you have to strategize. Executing a good strategy requires a bit of insight into crowd levels, crowd touring patterns and some other logistics. Think, I want to ride X, crowds are lower at night so I will ride Z and Y during the day first and wait in those lines, knowing X will be shorter at night. This isn’t about Disney expertise or being on these boards with a lot of experience. It’s research into strategizing how to optimize your experience. That goes for everything in life, all the way down to planning what route you will take if you drive to work one traffic ridden morning. But those complexities that force you to strategize to create an optimal experience, is due to Disney’s park, the layout, the attractions, advertisements of those attractions, park hours, time of year you are going, is this tied to any events, crowd pattersn, etc etc. Disney World is massive. Is Disney World more complicated then any other parks around the world? Absolutely. There are 4 gates to huge theme parks, each unique with its own offering.

So yes, Disney requires more research to strategize. And this is what you and the poster I was originally responding to is talking about, in my opniob. Because fastpass is a system that sits ON TOP of that and allows you to enhance those strategies. But to say that fastpass is complicated or requires intricate knowledge of the system itself to utilize it isn’t because Fastpass is complicated. It isn’t. As I said, you pick three in one park and then pick more once you rode the original three. That isn’t complicated. Sure there are extra strategies on top of that to help you maximize your fastpass usage that maybe the average person doesn’t realize or Disney doesn’t advertise well on. Those aren’t loopholes though. But that also doesn’t mean the fastpass system is complicated and tilted towards those with huge amounts of experience. It means that the parks themselves are complicated and if you want an efficient touring strategy then you need to understand the parks, how complicated they can be and THEN how to use fastpass to try and make those complications easier (or harder depending on your Disney expertize level).

But to say that fastpass is complicated (or that it compared to the tax system in this country in that people can take advantage of it because it is so complicated) is still ridiculous and completely misses the point that Disney itself is the complication, and now the fastpass+ system that was created to try and MAKE those complications easier for the average guest.

I understand where you are coming from but I believe you and the original poster I responsed to are infusing Disney’s inherent complications with being so massive and offering so much (precovid at least) with fastpass+ which is in no way shape or form as complicated in concept or in practice. If you want to maximize it, then it requires you to research a bit more and figure out how others have maximized it. It’s a learning curve but it assumes the bigger learning curve that is Disney World itself, has already been figured out.

Once again, my overall point, fastpass+ isn’t complicated but Disney World itself is. And that’s the real problem that is being missed here but cannot be fixed. So people blame fastpass, I get that. But if you don’t like complicated, then why are people even bothering with Disney in the first place? But the concept of fastpass+ and the setup of it was not complicated at all in my opinion. It doesn’t require deep level Disney experience that MANY other aspects of Disney actually require in order to cross off those experiences on a list.

 

[TinkerBelle_325]

Are we sure that it’s one hour? Did I miss an announcement?

Apologies - I must have misread somewhere. They exact amount of extra evening time has yet to be announced.

 

[TinkerBelle_325]

I have NOT seen an official announcement on the timeframe yet.

Yup that was my mistake. Not sure where I picked up 1 hour in my head. The exact amount of extra evening time has yet to be determined.

 

[Kbrb]

Those resorts arent open because of staffing issues. Disney wants every resort filled to capacity all the time.

They arent going to let those resorts sit empty for another year.

Coming soon all star deluxe, want your own pool? Pay an extra 3000 dollars per night and we will bar anyone else from using it after 3pm. On-site guess still have an option of standby pool times at select times..

Just a heads up the Uk free meal credit deal excluded all of all stars. And the mermaid rooms at aoe. That would suggest they don’t think it will be an issue to fill them

 

[Friendlyadvice2]

Yup that was my mistake. Not sure where I picked up 1 hour in my head. The exact amount of extra evening time has yet to be determined.

No worries, there's so much info constantly going back and forth that things can fall through the cracks. Also, there was initial speculation that it would only be 1 hour, so that may be why it was on your mind.

 

[TinkerBelle_325]

No worries, there's so much info constantly going back and forth that things can fall through the cracks. Also, there was initial speculation that it would only be 1 hour, so that may be why it was on your mind.

Ah ok thanks! Yeah there is definitely info overload lol. Personally, I’m desperately waiting for Food & Wine Festival Menus….even more than FastPass info

 

[mom2rtk]

And this is why I facetiously called it "Plan Z", lol. It's not their choice, but they can't/won't put a new system out that can't function and they need to manage the increasing capacity, particularly for year end. I think many people would gladly accept FP+ at this point so they can at least have an idea of what to expect and how to plan; even if it's with the caveat that a new system is coming, IMO.

I just feel like a big piece of making this system palatable with guests was giving them a period of time without FP before implementation. The pandemic gave them that perfect opportunity. They won't have that again any time soon. So it does leave them in an interesting position if they had a catastrophic test that slows down their rollout of the replacement.

I worry that they will try to slap something together.

 

[mom2rtk]

I've often joked that you need a college level class on disney planning to plan some of these vacations...

Perhaps a Masters level class once paid FP rolls out?

 

[anomamatt]

Interesting to see the different approaches. When you search "FastPass+" on the WDW site here is the message:
As a result of the COVID-19 impact on operations, the FastPass+ service is suspended for the time being. FastPass+ service is not offered with the purchase of tickets or annual passes. We will share future updates at a later date.

And when you search "Extra Magic Hours" here is the message:
Please note: The Extra Magic Hours benefit was suspended when Walt Disney World Resort reopened last summer, and as we continue to manage attendance with health and safety top of mind, Extra Magic Hours will not return.

The are definitive with EMH as it "will not return". But they are more vague with FastPass+ as it is "suspended for the time being"

There is nothing consistent about messaging from WDW. I would not trust remnants of what is on the website to mean anything definitive. Some examples are the constantly incorrect webpages about holiday parties (pre-covid) and the horrible messaging (and incorrect webpages) about the end of express transportation.

 

[dez1978]

I've often joked that you need a college level class on disney planning to plan some of these vacations...

You def do need to plan more for Disney than you do say, Gulf Shores or Dollywood or something like that. I tend to hyperfocus on things like researching and vacation planning tho lol. So I knew about most of the FP+ stuff before our 1st trip. Id read about it, knew the drop times etc. But that doesn't mean it came easy for me or that I was successful because I knew that I could do those things. My in laws on the other hand are the kind of people who would not know anything other than what disney puts on their own website. They wouldn't know strategies for getting the hard FP or ADRs. I on the other hand, from the second we decided to go was looking and reading boards like these. But even though I knew the strategies, had obsessed over the things I wanted, had read a million different things regarding it, it doesn't mean it was easy or that I got what I wanted. It wasn't lack of knowledge or lack of research.

I don't hate FP+ or wish that it never comes back. I just get frustrated that people here act like everyone has the same knowledge as they do, or that everyone can get 12 fp per day just because they can, and if you don't get them, it's not anything wrong with the system or disney, it's just on you. You should have known better or "if I can do it, well then everyone can". Like maybe you know all the strategies, but your phone signal sucks and you can't get anything to load. Maybe you have an old phone that isn't as fast. It just seems so condescending and hateful when people act like since they can do things without spreadsheets or spending lots of time on it, that those who can't either are too stupid or didn't try hard enough or do enough research.

 

[Marionnette]

There are methods of setting permissions and badging in many other situations, and they do have precedent for it. It does not need to be to complex down to the reservation, just a simple yes or no check. Then your party has X number allocated.

But, is it worth allocating resources in order to make this check? Resale owners represent only a small subset of all DVC owners (it’s estimated at 10% by some) and there’s no way to distinguish “renters“ from “guests of DVC blue card owners” because DVC does request that info.. It’s possible to write the code, it’s another thing to incorporate it using Disney’s crappy system.

And I’m not even sure that they can legally carve out an exclusion of white card owners and renters but give the perk to cash guests who are technically DVC‘s renters (either staying on breakage points or developer points which were used to reserve their room and paying cash for the privilege).

 

[TinkerBelle_325]

There is nothing consistent about messaging from WDW. I would not trust remnants of what is on the website to mean anything definitive. Some examples are the constantly incorrect webpages about holiday parties (pre-covid) and the horrible messaging (and incorrect webpages) about the end of express transportation.

Definitely not taking it as anything definitive lol. But I do find it interesting. I strongly feel that if FastPass+ was truly dead it that the messaging would reflect that. On the other hand, I fully expect a “paid” version to exist in the near future. I just believe it will be a hybrid with some free and some paid “extra” passes like they offered to CL guests throughout 2019.

 

[anomamatt]

I strongly feel that if FastPass+ was truly dead it that the messaging would reflect that.

The history of WDW's woefully incorrect webpages would suggest otherwise.

I doubt they had any idea what the plan was when they put the note up about FP+ suspension. From the inside "sources" being posted here (which mostly disagree with one another), I'm not sure WDW currently has a concrete plan on what is going to happen with FP+.

 

[SuzErwin]

Great question. It's different at all companies. Some CEOs absolutely greenlight decisions like this at this level. Others fully trust their individual leaders to handle their own areas. But the bottom line is, Chapek has the final word on the overall budget. He may not tell Parks how to make or save money, but he's definitely telling them to do both at this point.

What we DO know is that (if you saw the awesome series on Disney+) past CEO's have absolutely personally greenlighted and cancelled projects.

Re: making and saving money:

One thing I haven’t seen discussed is the pandemic resulted in The Walt Disney Company losing over $7 billion. Parks, Resorts & Experiences took a major hit, with theme parks and cruises shut down around the world, but the studios division also lost $$$ as few people went to the cinema. TV production, except for animation which could be done from home, was mostly shut down. Disney+ is in start up mode and losing money as Disney tinkers with its value proposition.

Ramping up again after the pandemic requires a fresh outlay of money while some revenue sources are still coming back online (for example, Disney needs to pay for film and TV productions now but won’t see much income from them for another year or so. And for the films made in the last year or two and ready to be released now, movie theater attendance is still depressed - and theatrical release, while not necessarily the main source of revenue for movies, is still the publicity engine that drives consumer interest in later windows such as streaming. And if people aren’t watching the films, they probably aren’t buying the merchandise. The theme parks that were shut down for a year still needed to be maintained. Work continued on things like Avengers Campus at DCA without admissions coming in. Etc),

I’m not going to cry for a company that still compensated its Executive Chairman $21M+ and its CEO $14M+ last year (granted, most of it in stock awards) and TWDC is far from declaring bankruptcy. But I’m also not surprised the company is cutting “nice to haves” like Magical Express and is looking at new ways to monetize the guest experience. They know there is pent up demand right now, they’re measuring its elasticity (hence the waves of availability for formerly sold out items such as Boo Bash tickets, hence the high room rack rates and disappearance of easily available discounts), and they’ll recoup the most money possible while they can.

And entertainment isn’t the only industry affected. Have you seen the price of lumber lately? Tried to order a major kitchen appliance? Looked at buying a new car? Yikes!

But pent up demand will fall, the fall out from the pandemic will sort itself out, and we’ll see what the “new normal” will look like. I do think it’s too soon to say perks of a Disney vacation are gone for good. I’m fairly certainly we’ll see new enticements and deeper discounting once the period of readjustment is over.

(Also, I found an article published by the LA Times in 1985 that quoted a Disney exec VP who said Disneyland was looking at returning A-E ticket books by 1987, so guests would have different ride price points to choose from. Take that as you will).

 

[CSLucas]

But, is it worth allocating resources in order to make this check? Resale owners represent only a small subset of all DVC owners (it’s estimated at 10% by some) and there’s no way to distinguish “renters“ from “guests of DVC blue card owners” because DVC does request that info.. It’s possible to write the code, it’s another thing to incorporate it using Disney’s crappy system.

And I’m not even sure that they can legally carve out an exclusion of white card owners and renters but give the perk to cash guests who are technically DVC‘s renters (either staying on breakage points or developer points which were used to reserve their room and paying cash for the privilege).

I think you're right that it's a perk of the resort, not a perk of the ticket. The resort is owned by the DVC members and there is no distinction ownership-wise between blue card and white card (real estate is real estate). I think the only way they could restrict it to blue card would be to have the perk come with the ticket purchase, not with the resort stay, and that will quickly get messy for all the reasons you pointed out.

 

[dez1978]

What you are describing has to do with stategizing, but not the system itself. These are not loopholes, these are features that allow you to enhance your FP+ and Disney experience, if you want to! But you don’t need to. And adding rides ontop of the original 3, just isn’t complicated in comparison to the large picture that is Disney. And here’s my general point regarding that, hopefully this is a little more clear.

You get 3 rides, that’s easy. When you go to Six Flags, Cedar Point, Disney, Universal, etc there are many people going to the park to see and experience these attractions. With that, comes crowd patterns, lines, etc. You could easily go into the park and ride every ride you want and wait in line for every ride, time permitting of course. And you can do that without any strategy and without any line cutting system in place.

Now let’s talk about the scenario of wanting to experience particular rides or attractions. If you are new, then it’s safe to say you have done some preliminary research to learn about said attractions (whether it’s talking to friends or reading about it online, etc). This means, you now have priorities in your head regarding your touring experience. And this means, if you want to experience your priorities then you have to strategize. Executing a good strategy requires a bit of insight into crowd levels, crowd touring patterns and some other logistics. Think, I want to ride X, crowds are lower at night so I will ride Z and Y during the day first and wait in those lines, knowing X will be shorter at night. This isn’t about Disney expertise or being on these boards with a lot of experience. It’s research into strategizing how to optimize your experience. That goes for everything in life, all the way down to planning what route you will take if you drive to work one traffic ridden morning. But those complexities that force you to strategize to create an optimal experience, is due to Disney’s park, the layout, the attractions, advertisements of those attractions, park hours, time of year you are going, is this tied to any events, crowd pattersn, etc etc. Disney World is massive. Is Disney World more complicated then any other parks around the world? Absolutely. There are 4 gates to huge theme parks, each unique with its own offering.

So yes, Disney requires more research to strategize. And this is what you and the poster I was originally responding to is talking about, in my opniob. Because fastpass is a system that sits ON TOP of that and allows you to enhance those strategies. But to say that fastpass is complicated or requires intricate knowledge of the system itself to utilize it isn’t because Fastpass is complicated. It isn’t. As I said, you pick three in one park and then pick more once you rode the original three. That isn’t complicated. Sure there are extra strategies on top of that to help you maximize your fastpass usage that maybe the average person doesn’t realize or Disney doesn’t advertise well on. Those aren’t loopholes though. But that also doesn’t mean the fastpass system is complicated and tilted towards those with huge amounts of experience. It means that the parks themselves are complicated and if you want an efficient touring strategy then you need to understand the parks, how complicated they can be and THEN how to use fastpass to try and make those complications easier (or harder depending on your Disney expertize level).

But to say that fastpass is complicated (or that it compared to the tax system in this country in that people can take advantage of it because it is so complicated) is still ridiculous and completely misses the point that Disney itself is the complication, and now the fastpass+ system that was created to try and MAKE those complications easier for the average guest.

I understand where you are coming from but I believe you and the original poster I responsed to are infusing Disney’s inherent complications with being so massive and offering so much (precovid at least) with fastpass+ which is in no way shape or form as complicated in concept or in practice. If you want to maximize it, then it requires you to research a bit more and figure out how others have maximized it. It’s a learning curve but it assumes the bigger learning curve that is Disney World itself, has already been figured out.

Once again, my overall point, fastpass+ isn’t complicated but Disney World itself is. And that’s the real problem that is being missed here but cannot be fixed. So people blame fastpass, I get that. But if you don’t like complicated, then why are people even bothering with Disney in the first place? But the concept of fastpass+ and the setup of it was not complicated at all in my opinion. It doesn’t require deep level Disney experience that MANY other aspects of Disney actually require in order to cross off those experiences on a list.

Worded this way, I agree with what you are saying. Overall planning a Disney trip is pretty complicated. FP+ is though more difficult than say, Universal express pass. I mean, yeah it simple to click a button and hit the tines and done. But the things others have mentioned about trying for a party of 4 and it says no room, but you can book 2 parties of 2 at the same time. A lot of people wouldn't think to try that unless they'd read about it . They'd just assume that if theres no room for a single party of 4 they won't have room for 2 parties of 2. Yeah, for those of us who've done it it seems common sense. But for a lot of people, they aren't going to think about that. And honestly no other theme park that I've ever been to even requires you to do that. You just buy an overall express pass and go when you want to ride that ride. There's no learning curve required at Universal or Six flags to use those. You just show up. I think the fact that there IS a learning curve required is most peoples complaint about FP.