# missing fastpass



## levatino (Jan 26, 2014)

Here at WDW Tragic Kingdom.   All the fastpass machines are gone, fastpass + kiosks  in their place.  Waits of confused people, mad they can no longer maximize the system and are limited to three fast passes a day.  Uggh.  Another 'upgrade.'


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## Myxdvz (Jan 26, 2014)

levatino said:


> Here at WDW Tragic Kingdom.   All the fastpass machines are gone, fastpass + kiosks  in their place.  Waits of confused people, mad they can no longer maximize the system and are limited to three fast passes a day.  Uggh.  Another 'upgrade.'



It's been announced a while.  Both AK and MK are strictly FP+ parks.  DHS and EP will follow soon.



levatino said:


> All parks are off Legacy Fastpass as of January 24.



Wow.  They moved even faster than I anticipated.

FWIW, we loved the FP+.


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## levatino (Jan 26, 2014)

All parks are off Legacy Fastpass as of January 24.


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## Dennyha (Jan 28, 2014)

I can't wait to hear what has happened to FP utilization rate with the switch to FP+.
Under the old system, Disney reported that approx. 85% of FPs were used.  I'd bet that less than 40% are used under FP+.  It's just too difficult to know where you are going to be, and at what time, to plan FPs days or weeks or months in advance.


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## tomandrobin (Jan 29, 2014)

Yup....Gone! 

Soon, all the parks will be free of the paper fastpass machines. I do think that Disney will add more fastpasses to the Magicplus after the system is fully integrated.

One peeve not mentioned above is the fastpass tiers, that limited you from only choosing one top tier selection at a park. Example at Epcot, you can get either Soaring or Test Track....Not both.


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## Myxdvz (Jan 29, 2014)

Dennyha said:


> Under the old system, Disney reported that approx. 85% of FPs were used.  I'd bet that less than 40% are used under FP+.  It's just too difficult to know where you are going to be, and at what time, to plan FPs days or weeks or months in advance.


I will be surprised to hear  if this was true.  Based on our experience, we tend to end up having lots of unused FPs at the end of our trip.

And not sure why it's difficult to know where you're going?  I have my phone in my pocket.  I take a screenshot of my FP+ (fits in 1 screen) and I can check it way easier than going thru my FPs and flipping thru all of them one by one.  This may be true for those with no smart phone/iPod/tablet, but industry trends show that number is going down.  I would think that if one could afford a Disney trip, they'd have at least one of the above.


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## LMD (Jan 29, 2014)

*Fast pass*

We just returned from Magic Kingdom and I like the new way they do it. I was able to choose the times I wanted for each fast pass all at once so it helped us to plan our day better.  I also found that some of the lines for things we didn't get FP for were pretty short ...Small World was only a 5 minute wait!


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## scootr5 (Jan 31, 2014)

I'm curious to see how this is going to work for us this summer. We'll be staying at AKV for a few nights before moving to a Marriott for a week. I'm wondering how the tickets and fast passes will work once we move off site.


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## Rob562 (Jan 31, 2014)

scootr5 said:


> I'm curious to see how this is going to work for us this summer. We'll be staying at AKV for a few nights before moving to a Marriott for a week. I'm wondering how the tickets and fast passes will work once we move off site.



As long as you have your tickets linked to your My Disney Experience profiles, you *should* be able to pre-reserve your FP+ selections for your entire vacation, including for the days after you check out. You'll be limited to the number of days your tickets are good for, though.

-Rob


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## levatino (Feb 1, 2014)

I used the old fastpass system to get over 10 fast passes in a day.  Three is certainly a downgrade.  No park hopping use is another downgrade.  Does it make it an easier system for people, yes.  Does it make it a better system for people.who can learn a system, and how to maximize it to his/her advantage,  certainly not.

Not being able to reserve my favorite attraction more than once a day is another, substantial downgrade.

I was there a week back and wait times were minimal.  But late January is always Value season and minimal wait times have always been the norm.  I would not attribute that to the new fastpass.


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## stoler527 (Feb 1, 2014)

We are going in May and are very worried about the new system. 

In the past we would get only 1 to 2 fast passes a day, but would ride a lot of short line rides. When we were there last August, there were no short line rides that we could find. It significantly lessened our enjoyment of the parks.

We are waiting to see how the May trip goes before we react. Many people like the new system, but many also hate it.


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## stoler527 (Feb 1, 2014)

Rob562 said:


> As long as you have your tickets linked to your My Disney Experience profiles, you *should* be able to pre-reserve your FP+ selections for your entire vacation, including for the days after you check out. You'll be limited to the number of days your tickets are good for, though.
> 
> -Rob



My understanding is that advance fast passes can only be gotten when staying on site. When you move to the marriott, I would be surprised if you could get them.

Some people with annual passes have reported that they can get fast passes after moving off site. So if you have an AP you should be OK. APs are limited to 7 rolling days per 60 day period, though, so you can get them for 7 days and then get a day when you use a day.

They are currently testing fast passes for AP holders who don't start by staying on site. 

We always do a split stay with a few days at Disney before moving to the Marriott.


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## levatino (Feb 1, 2014)

Crafty527 said:


> We are going in May and are very worried about the new system.
> 
> In the past we would get only 1 to 2 fast passes a day, but would ride a lot of short line rides. When we were there last August, there were no short line rides that we could find. It significantly lessened our enjoyment of the parks.
> 
> We are waiting to see how the May trip goes before we react. Many people like the new system, but many also hate it.



I suspect that if you only got one or 2 passes (and are not a big park hopper) under the old system, you will enjoy the increase to 3 passes up front.

Wait time has very less to do with fastpass, rather park occupancy levels (predicted at sites such as easywdw.com and others).  fastpass plus didn't increase the capacity of the rides and attractions, rather it dishes out three passes to everyone.  As a matter of fact you forced into HAVING to make three reservations.

So, if you used the old system for less than 3 passes  (and you have a large time window to stay in the park and use all three passes) you now get your three up front and your day is predictable.  If you are going to arrive at the park after opening, fewer passes are going to remain, so you are more likely to have to stay longer to use all three passes as fewer early passes are going to be left.

If you understood the old system, and how to.be spontaneous and maximize it, you are simply SOL with the new fp+

the best way to get on the most attractions at Disney is to go when fewer guests are in the park.

i rode the Harry Potter ride at universal three times in a row last week at Universal studios because of the day i was in the park, and the time of day when fewer people are in the park.  And that was without using any reservation system.


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## stoler527 (Feb 1, 2014)

Disney has added fast pass lines to almost all the rides. In my opinion this will lengthen the waits in the standby lines because Fastpass people will go to the head of the line. 

This is our biggest concern. Yes, we used to use one or two fast passes because most rides didn't have them. Most rides had very short regular lines because there was no Fastpass line. Now, people will have fast passes and slow down the standby lines.

In August the lines were too long on spaceship Earth and small world. We didn't wait because we had been on those rides so many times in the past. On other trips both these rides had minimal waits. Maybe the long waits were because so many people were in the parks and not because of the new Fastpass lines. Maybe it WAS the Fastpass lines. I don't know. It just seems that people constantly going to the front is going to slow down the standby lines.

For our May trip we will reserve three fastpasses for each of our first seven days.
We will then see if anything is still available for day eight etc. We are staying at BCV on points for 5 days and then moving to marriott Royal Palms. While staying at the marriott! we will make our first ever trip to Universal. I hope the new Harry potter train ride is open.

This will be our first experience of reserving Disney rides in advance. We already have our ADRs, including BOG and Ohana. That should be a lot of fun. So the trip will not be ruined if the ride thing doesn't work out.


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## JimMIA (Feb 2, 2014)

Rob562 said:


> As long as you have your tickets linked to your My Disney Experience profiles, you *should* be able to pre-reserve your FP+ selections for your entire vacation, including for the days after you check out. You'll be limited to the number of days your tickets are good for, though.
> 
> -Rob


From info I've seen on the DIS, I think Rob is correct.

What I've seen is people saying they went for a week, 10 days...whatever -- and stayed one night at a Disney Value, with the balance of the trip offsite.  They had tickets that were linked to their My Disney Experience account.  They were able to get FP+ scheduled fast passes for up to 14 days from their checkin at the value resort -- and they DID, in fact, schedule FP+s for the period when they were staying offsite.  And used the FP+s successfully.

This was in the early stages of FP+, and the people had no intention of working the system.  They were staying at a Disney resort their first day for some unrelated reason, but benefited from FP+.

It might be a loophole in the system which Disney will plug, but I've seen several reports like this.


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## Rob562 (Feb 3, 2014)

Crafty527 said:


> Disney has added fast pass lines to almost all the rides. In my opinion this will lengthen the waits in the standby lines because Fastpass people will go to the head of the line.
> 
> This is our biggest concern. Yes, we used to use one or two fast passes because most rides didn't have them. Most rides had very short regular lines because there was no Fastpass line. Now, people will have fast passes and slow down the standby lines.
> 
> In August the lines were too long on spaceship Earth and small world. We didn't wait because we had been on those rides so many times in the past. On other trips both these rides had minimal waits. Maybe the long waits were because so many people were in the parks and not because of the new Fastpass lines. Maybe it WAS the Fastpass lines. I don't know. It just seems that people constantly going to the front is going to slow down the standby lines.



While adding FP+ lines to rides might seem like it would mean all Standby lines would get longer, in my opinion I think it will actually make Standby shorter (with a few exceptions). The key is because everyone will be limited to three FP+ reservations. And each person can only choose a given attraction once.

Let's look back to the days before any form of FastPass was introduced. People waited in line for the rides they wanted to go on. Now let's say you hand everyone walking in the park a front-of-the-line pass good for any one ride. Will that have a major affect on the lines? Not really, because people will use them on many different rides. 
Now make it two front-of-the-line passes per person. Will it have much more of an effect? Now make it three...

Now that you're at three, and with the introduction of things like FP+ for shows, parade and firework viewing areas and character M&G's, many people will use their three FP+ in various different ways.

So I think the net effect will that it will make many of the E-ticket Standby lines shorter (the Mountains, Soarin, Test Track, etc) while a few that didn't have FP before at all but are high-capacity might see a slight increase in Standby times (Pirates, Mansion, etc) but not to the point that it's devastating to the entire wait.

Throw that all together, and while the power-users may lose out on being able to use FastPass as often as they did, they gain some of that back by shorter Standby lines in some places, not having to criss-cross the park or send people ahead to get FP's, etc.

And since more people will be standing in Standby lines, the walkways might even get a little less crowded, more like the pre-FP days.

At least that's how I look at things.

-Rob


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## FL Guy (Feb 3, 2014)

Rob562 said:


> While adding FP+ lines to rides might seem like it would mean all Standby lines would get longer, in my opinion I think it will actually make Standby shorter (with a few exceptions). The key is because everyone will be limited to three FP+ reservations. And each person can only choose a given attraction once.
> 
> Let's look back to the days before any form of FastPass was introduced. People waited in line for the rides they wanted to go on. Now let's say you hand everyone walking in the park a front-of-the-line pass good for any one ride. Will that have a major affect on the lines? Not really, because people will use them on many different rides.
> Now make it two front-of-the-line passes per person. Will it have much more of an effect? Now make it three...
> ...



+1
Both more people standing in Standby Lines AND less people criss-crossing the park to get and/or use FP's, in my opinion, will definitely have the benefit of lessening the congested walkways.  The limit of 3 (1 top tier) and advance reservations helps level the playing field considerably for those can't or don't wish to arrive at the parks at "rope drop".  I typically don't arrive at the parks until 10:00 - 11:00 and it has been ages since I have gotten to DHS before all FPs were distributed for TSMM.  My fear is that some point Disney will start up-charging for additional FP+'s or tier them for guests staying at deluxe resorts.  My perspective is that everyone going through the gates of the parks should have a level playing field to enjoy the parks.  

Pre-FP was a "kinder-gentler" theme park experience IMHO.  Guests could start in one area of the park and stroll from one ride/attraction to another without having to backtrack and criss-cross the park multiple times and worry about missing your FP window.  If the standby wait was longer than you cared to wait, you could opt to come back later in hopes of a shorter wait, or just pass on that ride entirely.


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