Select Walt Disney World Guests Can Purchase Additional FastPass+ Reservations

27 thoughts on “Select Walt Disney World Guests Can Purchase Additional FastPass+ Reservations”

• People commenting on these boards leave out something I dont think people think about. Although they certainly complain about it:

  There are ways to CHEAT.

  The more they tighten their grip, the more slips through their fingers… (expect cheating / cutting to go up!!)

  It would be nice if Disney slowed the pace of this sort of BS.

  Ultimately wait time is about supply and demand of attraction “spots”… And FP+ is just legitimized line cutting with a “reservation” time attached. It’s awful. It makes some rides completely inaccessible without a FP+ or CHEATING.

  The REAL Answer is MORE HOURS of OPEN park time. And MORE RIDES!! (And less ride shutdowns.) FP+ is a SCAM! Disney spent a TON of $$ on letting people cut the line. That $$ didn’t go to less ride shutdowns, more rides, or more open park time. Unfortunately Disney probably really doesn’t like paying for electricity to operate the little mermaid ride for hours in the evening when it is a WALK ON attraction. (Same for a bunch of other attractions I would think).

  • Nice Star Wars reference!

• I will be curious to see how this effects custom plans. Honestly, I think it will have minimal effect, and the largest effect will be on nighttime shows as it will no longer be a waste to use your last FastPass on a prime fireworks viewing spot since that last one won’t be just a third one.
  I think the biggest bummer of all of this will be the family that decides not to use afternoon FPs they had reserved. Those spots will be wasted and could have gone to someone who needs them.

• I suppose this was inevitable. With the billion dollars spent on FP+/MM+, you knew DisneyParks would eventually directly monetize it.
  The thing that bus me is that it undermines the basic idea that you got the same experience whether you stayed at the Poly or Pop Century. EMH, FastPass reservations, were equally accessible to everyone. Now they’re directly selling a “pay for a better park experience” proposition.
  I can’t imagine this will be so limited that there will be no effect on FP availability for everyone else. They wouldn’t risk fan ire they’re already getting for a handful of sales. I won’t be surprised if we reach a time when you need to buy additional passes if you want to actually ride more than 3 attractions.

• Can’t say I’m a big fan of this. But then again, if I could afford to stay in a Poly bungalow, $50 is chump change. (I stay in Pop Century because I’m a park commando. Who needs more than a bed and a shower?) Also, there just aren’t that many Club Level guests to radically affect FP/wait times…amirite, Fred Hazelton? I agree with others: give me a Touring Plan any day and I’ll save time AND money.
  Seriously, what with all the DVC & immersive lands being built, we should see this and much more like it coming: more expensive and more exclusive.

• This is wrong wrong,its hard enough trying to get a ride now. They need grandparents prices and passes, if i had of known this i would not have bought my annual pass just yesterday.

• What bothers me about this is that annual passholders who don’t normally stay on property (I only live an hour away)

• Multiple thoughts about this:

  1: When can we expect the article, “7th FP+ Strategy”? 🙂

  2: I don’t fault Disney for this. They are in the business of making money. And for a person like me, Disney charging for FP+ advantages is already happening because…

  3: …I stay offsite. So in my opinion everyone who stays onsite and pays twice as much for a tiny room in the All-Star resort (or ten times at a deluxe resort) than I do for a 3 bedroom, 2 bath condo are already ponying up extra cash for a FP+ advantage to get the 60-day FP+ window as opposed to my 30-day window.

  4: Let’s do the math: $50 per person per day for extra FP+, or $14.95 per year for a much more valuable touring plans subscription? I’ll take the latter as we already have the biggest advantage over the fat cats with money to burn! 🙂

• My question is why don’t they expand the window for making fastpasses to 90 days for all onsite guests? That would make me feel a little better about this change especially since the Disney Springs hotels now have most of the same benefits as everyone else staying onsite with cheaper rooms.

  • Why offer a 90 day window for free if they can sell it instead?

    As the post notes, this is in the test phase, so they’re trying to determine if it’s something people will pay for. If people don’t buy the upgrade, it won’t last long (think Tomorrowland cabanas, express transportation, etc).

• People who regularly stay Club Level will love this, and everybody else will likely hate it because it will reduce the universe of FPs available to us Great Unwashed.

  But don’t worry, I have no doubt that they will expand this until eventually everyone will have the “opportunity” to pay for extra FP.

  This era of shrinking quality and value, raising costs and upselling everything that doesn’t upsell you first sucks.

• People take business decisions made by a public company way too personally. If someone buying extra FPPs negatively impacts your experience in the parks, then don’t go back to Disney. If enough people do this, then it will outweigh the benefit they get from selling extra FPPs.

  But all of the price increases and expensive extras have not hurt Disney’s attendance numbers thus far. So they keep rolling them out. That doesn’t make them greedy or immoral- it makes them smart marketers who are segmenting the market.

  • I don’t see it as people taking it personally. I see people getting fed up with the decline in service and rise in prices. I see this especially in the decline in

    • service for loyalty with DVC members, annual passholders and Florida residents. It’s all about the quick buck lately with Disney. I’m not sure we will see a decline in anything, Disney seems to be about hit them hard and fast. Most people probably save for years and go maybe a handful of times in their lifetime and that is what Disney is banking on. If they cared about loyalty then customer service would not have declined as it has. It’s just about the all mighty dollar. I guess people are sad to see an end to the magic that was once there. It is immoral because greed is immoral.

    • It’s not greed. It’s running the parks like the business they are. Disney has made a business decision that they value the once-in-a-lifers more than loyalty. That’s not immoral. If you don’t like their decisions, don’t go back. If you are a DVCer, then sell.

    • Completely agree. The people complaining are the same ones that want new and exciting things in the parks. These things come at a significant cost to the company that the company needs to justify a return for. While I wouldn’t pay for the benefit now, I certainly could see the value for a family who doesn’t want to run around, but wants to have certain things guaranteed.

    • So the park either needs to stay the exact same as 1971 or charge an insane increase more and more every year? When they were just finishing off the first phase of Epcot and building MGM at the same time, we never had it like this.
      Either way, people vote with their wallets. Should be interesting. I never would have thought at the beginning of the decade with Universal stealing so much of Disney’s spotlight that they’d be in position to do this.

• Weak.

  I had been waffling about renewing my Annual Pass next month. This announcement makes my decision a firm No.

• The greed of this company never ceases to amaze to me. They make billions and billions of dollars. They keep acquiring companies and film franchises and making even more money. They “justify” their ever increasing theme park prices because the parks are crowded. But at the same time, they decrease staff and decrease ride capacities. They have room to actually expand parks, and thus, have more room for more people. Instead, they tear down 4 rides, and replace them with 2 new ones. They keep shouting that park attendance is down, however, profits are higher than ever. They pay their hardest working employees very low wages and require that work incredibly long days, while their execs are swimming in money. We were very loyal Disney fans and park attenders for a good 10 years – we went yearly and often times twice a year. We went once last year and have decided that enough is enough. Last year’s trip was the worst trip we have ever been on and it was the most expensive, by a long shot. I usually start planning our next trip while at Disney, but last year I was ready to go home well before our trip was over. It makes me sad. The atmosphere of Disney has declined dramatically over the years and the Magic is quickly fading. We will be spending our hard earned money elsewhere until things change, for the better.
  First World Problems.

• I doubt I’ll ever take advantage of it, but more power to them. An upsale is easier than a new sale.

• Finally, they’re getting around to the true and direct monetization of FP+. I’m surprised they waited this long (4 years) to do it, honestly.

• This is getting real close to my breaking point. I love Disney World and have been planning my honeymoon for over a year and had I not already rented dvc points I would be reconsidering. I feel like we are becoming sponges that Disney will squeeze every cent out of until we have nothing left. I do have one question, does this mean that all of the hard to get fastpasses will be gone or will they be increases the amount they offer which I highly doubt. I know that Disney is a company that needs to make money for its shareholders and employees but this constant decreasing of their spending and increasing the cost for visitors got really old a long time ago. The day that this gets rolled out to being required for all guests is the day we will no longer go to the parks and I am sure we will not be the only ones.

• If people want to pay extra then that’s their choice. The 90 day window though gives them a huge advantage over everyone else. Guess we will have to wait and see if it limits availability for the rest of us. Annual passholders without a resort reservation already find it impossible to book a FP for Flight of Passage and some others at peak times. This could really make a lot of people unhappy if they can’t even get something 60 days out because of the 90 day advantage.

• This annoys me, in that WDW is once again taking something that used to be free, or to which everyone had equal access (unlimited, one-at-a-time Fastpasses under the old system, and even the 4th-and-subsequent FP+ that you can get now) and giving them to those wealthy (or poor and foolish) people who want to pay more for them. Fastpasses have always “subject to availability,” but allowing the well-off to grab up twice as many will diminish that availability for those who can only afford the 3 FP+ that came with their ticket. If WDW is going no nickel-and-dime people, at least invent a new privilege and charge people for it. Don’t take what used to be free, and then charge people for it (or diminish its value for those who can’t pay more).

  • This is a good point! This will take away from the pool of available fastpasses to those that are not paying. Unless the paid fastpasses are not taken out of that pool. For that matter, if I were to pay for it, I’d be pretty pissed if I couldn’t get the ones I wanted because other people got them first.

    • Yes, it will have to come out of the available FP pool, right? There’s already so much allocated to FPs, I can’t even imagine where they could take more out of standby. But maybe this program will be limited. Anyone know the total capacity of all the club level rooms on property? What % will be taking advantage of this, even?

      And I guess it’s *not* actually monetizing something already free….the 3 FPs we get now are still there. But splitting hairs here. The Mouse keeps on squeezing that turnip!

• Wow. Just another way for them to suck more money out of people. Granted, people don’t HAVE to do this, but wow – $50 per day per person! Thought, I guess if it is restricted to just people staying in expensive resorts in the most expensive club level, then they can probably afford the extra cost anyway. But for me, I’ll stick to using a good Touring Plan to keep my line wait times to a minimum!

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