Disney is adding another ride reservation option into its mix. First there was Fastpass, then Fastpass+, Maxpass, and Boarding Groups. Now, at Disneyland Paris and the Tokyo Disney Resort, Disney is offering a Standby Pass, too.
So what is a Standby Pass? Think of it as a Maxpass-style ride reservation system that is activated during certain times of the day when the attraction will operate without a standby queue. (I know, that confused me at first, too.) Like with Maxpass, you use Standby Pass through the park's official app on the day of your visit. And you can hold only one Standby Pass at a time. But unlike Maxpass, it is not a paid upsell.
You put together your party in the app and can reserve a 30-minute return time window for a specific attraction when you are inside the park. Once you have used that, you could book another Standby Pass for another attraction — if they are available.
Tokyo Disney is using Standby Pass for Toy Story Mania! and Soarin: Fantastic Flight, while Disneyland Paris is launching it on Crush's Coaster, starting October 6. Eventually, the Paris resort will expand Standby Pass to Autopia, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, Dumbo the Flying Elephant, Hyperspace Mountain, Peter Pan's Flight, The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, and Ratatouille: L'Aventure Totalement Toquée de Rémy.
Guests will have to wait in a queue once they arrive at the attraction, much like with Fastpass. And Disneyland Paris will make Standby Pass attractions available without a reservation "for some time every morning and evening."
Standby Pass provides Disney with an additional tool to manage the flow of guests through attractions and the parks, especially when capacities are limited due to the need to provide safe physical distancing during the pandemic. But at some point, I suspect that Disney will need to do something to create a unified brand for its various ride reservation and virtual queueing systems. After all, a variety of tools loses its usefulness if people don't know which one to use, and when.
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