Fastpass Woes

[Main_Street_Merch]

As much as I have groaned about fastpasses while working for Disney, I cannot agree they should remove the system from the parks! On the contrary, I'd like to see the system expanded. At DLP, there are fastpasses avaliable for Space Mountain, Indiana Jones and the temple of peril (Backwards!), Peter Pan's Flight, Big Thunder Mountain and Star Tours. All of them show a significantly higher attendance throughout the day when the fastpass machines are up and running. Instead of extreme standby lines being the only alternative, many guests can now actually ride all the rides they want at least once in a day and leave the park happier than they would otherwise.

I agree! As much of a pain in the ass as Fastpass is for CM's to deal with, it's a great example of Disney Guest Service at it's best! We've come up with a way to allow you to walk right on to Everest on July 4. It maximizes guest time in the parks. And unlike Universal, it's free. Remember, just like everything else, for every annoying pain in the ass guest that gives you a hard time about fastpass, there are hundreds of pleasant guests that you let in that might not have gotten to ride this attraction on their only visit. I think that's much more important. Nobody told you when you hired on that your job was going to be convienient. Think about some of the magical moments we have to do every day. Some of them are a real pain in the butt, but if you look at it from the guest's point of view it really is a Magical Moment.

[lady ulrike]

Okay, I have to chime in here. I agree Fastpass is great for those who use it and understand it. I think the biggest problem with it is that they haven't communicated how it works very well. At least not in Disneyland. I know that at WDW you open up your map and it's a whole page (or two depending on how you look at it) explaining it. Here at Disneyland, it's a tiny little corner of the map that most people probably don't notice.

But Fastpass does make the standby line longer. We used to have Fastpass for Small World holiday. Our line quickly got long and was regualrly 2-3 hours. For the year or two without Fastpass, the line has rarely been over an hour, it really only got towards the 2 hour mark during Christmas break when everything is twice as long as another busy day. Also at Roger Rabbit, when the building is full the line is about an hour and it hardly moves, so guests are constantly upset. Okay mostly they're upset because they didn't see the wait time sign or they didn't believe it and got in line anyway, but still they're upset about the length of the line and how it hardly moves. Now, if Roger Rabbit closes and the building is full, the line can be cleared in 30 minutes.

So, with these two examples, the only attractions I've worked with and then without Fastpass, it's a bad system. It could be the way these two are set up, but I don't think so. I think it just causes more headaches and frustrations for all and I think that more people do not understand the system, or don't understand it well enough than do and it's been around long enough that if it was to be successful more guests would understand it.

Just my very long 2 cents

[EpcotGolfer]

It really depends on the OHRC ("optimal hourly ride capacity" for non-CMs) of the ride and how popular the ride is versus other rides in the park. For example, when I was at Kilimanjaro Safaris, we could do 3000+ guests per hour when we're bookin', so if we only gave out 1000 fastpasses for an hour, that's still putting on about 2000 guests from the standby line every hour, keepin it moving pretty well. In contrast, Soarin's OHRC is less than 1600, so if they gave out 1000 fastpasses for an hour, that's only 600 guests that can ride from standby, a very slow pace. So the big problem, in my eyes, is not neccessarily Fastpass, but rides not having enough capacity to begin with. Adding Fastpass to a slow-loading attraction is only going to hurt the standby line even further, but at least allow for guests who are smart to be able to skip those lines. And it's the smart guests that we want to reward, right?

[gurgi]

as a guest, i dislike the fastpass system. to me, it's a vacation and the last thing i need is more deadlines and more rushing around to get the dang passes before the machines run out. im more of a "hey what do you guys wanna do next?" off the cuff kind of vacationer. I tend to go in more of an off-season, but i have been in the middle of summer, and we still always get everything we want to do, done. even with the longer standby lines that popped up AFTER fastpass was introduced. it's a dang vacation, people seriously need to take some courses on how to relax, and lose that stupid MFMF mentality. the way i was raised, vacation was time to spend with family and friends and a time to relax. you know, when we wait in line, we have conversations, laugh at other people or ourselves. Imagine all the conversations, laughs, and so on i would have missed out on, if we just spent our day hopping from fastpass to fastpass because there was no real line. so yeah, i will be in wdw this october, and no you wont catch me at a fastpass machine. maybe i'm just not "smart" enough to garner a reward for my good behaviour, woof! i mean right? ;)

[kurtisnelson]

Today, at Splash Mountain WDW, the fastpass merge CM was using some really wierd counting. There were huge amounts of fastpass guests, so he would stop our line, and let at least 50 FPs in, empty out the queue, and then let about 10 standby in. Then he would immeadiatley switch back to FP if anyone was in line. The estimated wait time was 50 minutes, but I ended up waiting over an hour. Is this standerd, or was the merger having counting issues?

[kurtisnelson]

... We've come up with a way to allow you to walk right on to Everest on July 4....

Tell me more! I am guessing it has to do with giving everyone a fastpass?

[EpcotGolfer]

Today, at Splash Mountain WDW, the fastpass merge CM was using some really wierd counting. There were huge amounts of fastpass guests, so he would stop our line, and let at least 50 FPs in, empty out the queue, and then let about 10 standby in. Then he would immeadiatley switch back to FP if anyone was in line. The estimated wait time was 50 minutes, but I ended up waiting over an hour. Is this standerd, or was the merger having counting issues?

Most popular attractions operate on the principle that if you can't see the end of your fastpass line, or if you have a lot of fastpass guests coming through, send 4 FP guests for every 1 standby guest. It varies from attraction to attraction and from CM to CM, but that's the general rule, and so what this guy did sounds about right.

[SoarWhoreCoCo]

Splash Mountain WDW Fastpass/Stand-by Ratio is 80/20, if the FP line is out the barn door it's 90/10 (Number of guests in per line). He was doing it right...however FLIK was not working right after the rain and we got slammed in the queue asnd since we can no longer touch the wait time clock the FLIK cards that had gone out hadn't updated the clock...it was posting 50minutes when the line blew up to 110 minutes.

[kurtisnelson]

If they didn't let through as many FPs, the line would be shorter therefore helping to eliminate the need for FP. Am I missing something?

[AlpineDL]

I bet a lot of guests would be fine with fastpass leaving, and a lot would be annoyed... probably more the AP's and returning vacationers making up the latter, since those are the folks who seem to get most annoyed by a C-ticket ride with a 5-minute line *gasp* not having Fastpass! It's just the principle of the thing!