Disney brings back free theme park line-skipping, in Japan

Dear lord please let this be a test run for bringing back fastpasses everywhere. The system worked fantastic, far shorter lines for everyone back then, and didn't breed the class resentment that festers every time some Lord Fauntleroy saunters his fat butt past the plebes in the ILL lane.

I know, people say Disney's not willing to give up the profits they earn from Genie+ and ILL, but if you played it out over 20 years, the badwill that the pay-to-skip program will engender costs far more than whatever profits they make.

Charge me $20 more a ticket, I don't care, I'm already paying my life's savings to come to Disney. But don't extort me once I'm there.

I'll be there in October ... hopeful that this will still be going on then.

Disney should have just copied Universal's Express / Unlimited Express. Simple and easy to use. No apps, no planning, just get in a line and scan your pass / hotel key. 5-10 minute waits for everything because there are a set limit of passes available per day.

This is in response to thecolonel: I cannot stress how right you are about the resentment, comments, and dirty looks from the regular lines when you are gliding past in the Express lines at Universal.

The worst is when peak temps hit around 2PM, and when the regular lines are outside the building. Everybody seems to be getting hangry and exhausted about that time of day, the irritability was off the charts.

My daughters were constantly saying "Did you hear that guy?". I was just like... (sigh) "yeah"...

How were lines shorter back when FastPass was free? One would think putting that behind a paywall would result in less usage of skip-the-line.

"How were lines shorter back when FastPass was free? One would think putting that behind a paywall would result in less usage of skip-the-line."

The paper FastPass system had so many exploits and Disney moms prided themselves on spending the entire day collecting those things. We were never able to get a single one when we visited (all three times). So, even more time wasted.

I was about to allow myself to play "what if", but then I realized Disney did no such thing. The headline should read "Oriental Land Co brings back free theme park line-skipping, in Japan".

To go off on this previous comment I wonder if Disney is ever like "Yo Oriental Land Co, chill a bit, you're making us look bad!"

Now there is still paid line-skipping in Tokyo which can add up (about 55 dollars for four attractions at Disney Sea for example) but to have a free option is pretty awesome.

@Manny - Eisner got a call from someone in entertainment saying that guests had complained that the bulbs for MSEP were brighter in Tokyo than stateside. Eisner was not pleased. So Eisner dispatched the worldwide head of live entertainment at the time to go all the way to Tokyo to investigate this issue. He watched the show and informed Eisner that yes it was brighter... Because Tokyo was changing the bulbs frequently than the domestic parks. Despite the extra work that this involved. Disney was not happy, although I don't know if they told off OLC for that. The implication is that they felt like they should have.

Still waiting for the FastPass a la carte stock market where each ride/return time price dynamically changes throughout the day depending on demand. Attractions like Muppet Vision or Turtle Talk with Crush would have near-worthless or very low prices, whereas a Rise of the Resistance or Flight of Passage could go up beyond current ILL prices.

@NB the free version of Fastpass had a limited number of passes distributed per hour in order to keep the stand by line from getting backed up, and fastpasses would regularly run out by midday for the more popular rides. With the paid service, they can't throttle the number of passes given during an hour because people are paying for it. If you paid, you wouldn't be pleased to find out the passes had run out by the middle of the day. Thus with unlimited passes distributed throughout the day, the standby lines are now a crawl. (I don't know if they're actually unlimitted but they give out significantly more than they did under the previous plan).

I wish they would go down the Universal route. Let people buy ‘skip the line’ passes but charge about $300 per pass per day.
This will not stop all “the Lord Fauntleroy” but it will greatly reduce the amount of them.
Disney still makes more money but the majority of the guest will be back in the regular line and that line will now move faster. Because there is less in the skip the line queue.

I'd endorse that, or even revert to Old School Disney, where you have to pay for a Disney Tour Guide for your group if you want to be a fancy pants and skip lines.

Colonel, The FP and FP+ systems were zero-sum games, meaning the lines were shorter for those who knew how to play the system (particularly AP holders and other frequent visitors or those who researched the best touring plans), but longer for almost everyone else. Think of it as a game of poker where there are winners, losers, and break even players.

Angryduck, The current system does not have an unlimited supply of skip-the-line passes at each attraction. Many of those passes run out for the most popular Genie+ attractions early in the day.

Iger said last month that there are changes coming to Genie+. He said that one of the things that people want is the ability to plan their line skips earlier than day of visit. To me, that sounds like the old Fastpass system, but I suspect it won’t be free this time.

Giving up Genie+ is too much revenue so I understand why its there but I very much hate the way its setup. We don't go to Disney parks anymore because of that. Too much advance booking and planning is required its not fun for us. We much prefer Universal because of their express pass system. I wish Disney would just cave already and do the same. Just create 1 pass valid all day for all rides and charge a ridiculous amount for it. With the extra revenue from charging more you could limit it more so it sells out and this way the standby line would probably get faster. Everyone wins!

Giving up Genie+ is too much revenue so I understand why its there but I very much hate the way its setup. We don't go to Disney parks anymore because of that. Too much advance booking and planning is required its not fun for us. We much prefer Universal because of their express pass system. I wish Disney would just cave already and do the same. Just create 1 pass valid all day for all rides and charge a ridiculous amount for it. With the extra revenue from charging more you could limit it more so it sells out and this way the standby line would probably get faster. Everyone wins!

Francis, Disney already has that in place in their VIP tours. For only $450 to $900 per hour (not including the admission price), you and up to 9 other guests can skip the lines all day with a private guide leading you every step of the way.

I liked the old system. Telling someone "Hey you can guarantee you'll get these three experiences if you come" is a major value proposition in my books.

People are telling me the lines were longer during Fastpass? Strongly disagree. The fastpast AND the standby lines moved faster than they do now.

Why? Watch the Defunctland Disney Fastpass: A Complicated History, it explains in detail why the free fastpass system worked the best for the most people.

As for adopting a system where's ot wildly expensive for Genie+, hundreds of dollars, I'd say at Disneyland it wouldn't make a huge different. When you're already paying thousands a day to visit, you'll pay whatever additional charge is required to fully enjoy yourself. Plus the resentment by those who aren't willing to pay it only goes through the roof.

"As for adopting a system where's ot wildly expensive for Genie+, hundreds of dollars, I'd say at Disneyland it wouldn't make a huge different. When you're already paying thousands a day to visit, you'll pay whatever additional charge is required to fully enjoy yourself."

except ... you won't, right? the plaid tours have been available for those willing to spend the big bucks for decades. there is a price point where only those with the means or desperate desire will shell out. universal's system isn't any more equitable than what disney is doing, but it does at least limit the number of people playing the game.

with that said, the idea of resenting someone who paid $20 a ticket to use fastpass is truly some missing the forest for the trees stuff.

Having been thru all phases of FP, FP+, Genie+, ILL .... etc etc

I can say without doubt the best times were those months/year?? when all we had were standby lines, and I think a VQ here and there.

With the inflated wait times Disney flaunts, they have created a monster, where there are now more people in ILL lines than standby .... I kid you not. But standby lines take 2x, 3x or even longer because the CM's are instructed to let 100's in the ILL lines thru, compared to 5, maybe 10 in the standby line.

But does Disney care, of course not. It's all $$$$ to them.

It's a festering freaking boil on the Disney brand. Here in Orlando, never in a million years will we see a free FP system again.

I agree with Mako that the best situation occurred just after the pandemic-induced closures and capacity restrictions where the parks operated without FP+/MaxPass and Genie+ had yet to be let out of the bottle. All attractions operated with standby-only lines with a handful of uber-popular rides swapping those standby lines with virtual queues because if social distancing were enforced on standby lines for those rides, the queues would have spilled out into walkways.

I think the biggest issue with Genie+ is that there's no way to exploit the system. Disney has effectively closed all of the loopholes that existed in FP+/MaxPass, and the restriction that prevents guests from getting multiple LL reservations for the same attraction has eliminated any potential value of the service for me.

However, I think WDW fans in particular are so trained from years of FP+, Touring Plans, and other visiting tips, and assume that the only way to have an enjoyable visit to WDW is to buy Genie+. Also, I think people who visit every 5-10 years and recall FP+ think that Genie+ is virtually the same system just with an added price. However, the drawbacks of the new system are starting to infiltrate the massage boards and Disney planning sites, and as Disney continues to raise the price of the service, I think they're getting close to an inflection point where enough people are not buying the service where it actually holds some value based on the percentage of Genie+ users versus regular park guests (instead of everyone automatically buying Genie+, which is what was happening when it first launched).

Ultimately though, the cat has been let out of the bag, and I don't think there's any way Disney can squeeze this Genie back in the bottle and go back to a free system. I do think people that pay for the service feel a sense of entitlement, and it's an effective way for Disney to make guests who could never afford a VIP Tour or other exclusive tours/events to feel special. The price of Genie+ adds @10-15% to the price of your average admission ticket, which in the end is a pretty minimal price to pay to get on a few more rides or reduce your total daily waiting time by an hour or more (why Disney doesn't advertise the costs this way is beyond me). There's just no way Disney is going to get rid of this pay system, and any changes will be minimal and around the margins.

@TwoBits - The VIP tours offered at Disney are a disgrace when compared to Universal's VIP tours. Having done both I would never pay again to do a Disney tour because they are NOT front of line tours. They only bring you to the express lane line and you still have to wait in line. There's also nothing included with it unlike Universal which includes valet parking, breakfast, lunch, and real front of line access.

The freedom you get with Universal's express pass is unmatched. Being able to ride everything in one day at your own pace is simply amazing. The tours are nice but they are structure and you can't just browse at your pace unless you pay for the private tours.

I realize though that Disney if far more popular so making a Universal express passes would need to be way more expensive then Universal's. It's still doable but they would probably need to charge what the tours cost now. If I were Disney I would charge $450-$500 for real express passes and $700-$900 for real VIP tours. With the higher prices you wouldn't need to sell as many and it would be win win. People who can afford it or want to spend the money get express passes and those that don't benefit from having faster queues since there's less people in express lines.

@Francis 24 - You do realize that right now, Disney VIP tours cost $450-900/hour with a minimum 7-hour length? Guests are already paying a minimum of $4,100 for 7 hours of VIP, and while you can have up to 10 guests in single tour, you're still looking at over $400/person, plus the cost of admission. Universal charges less than half of what WDW charges for their cheapest VIP Tours.

@Russell - Yes I know but what I met was if your selling hundreds of passes or thousands I have no idea what that number would be for the the day at $450-500 that's going to be more revenue then a few tours of $4,000. I'm guessing here but I'm assuming that would also be more revenue then what genie+ is doing.

This setup would allow people the freedom of doing what they want when they want using an express pass like Universal and Disney would probably make more money. They could then double the price of the VIP tours but make them real VIP tours like Universal and everyone wins!

My sister decided to do the VIP for our Disneyland trip and we very much enjoyed jumping to LL Lanes but admit we expected a bit more in side stuff. Still, it also got us unlimited LL for the other two days of our visit, which we got a lot of use out of so she still considered it money well spent for her son's first visit there.

Colonel, I did watch the Defunctland video of the history of Fastpass. If I recall, I think he said the best way was all standby lines. However, that is never going to happen at any park anywhere.

I have yet to pay extra for an express pass, Genie+ or any other skip the line pass at a regional park. It is possible to have an enjoyable day without doing so with a little research. However, all these parks want you to throw money at the problem of long queues. Yes, even Universal with their “free” express passes that you can get by paying a premium price to stay at a deluxe resort.

Both Genie+ and Fastpass mostly used 80% of the ride’s capacity. The stand by lines were horribly slow under FP.

Having been thru both FP+ and Genie+, as a local I can definitely say the standby lines now, take longer than they did with FP+.

There's most probably more people now?, but I think it's all down to FP+ being free, and now you have to pay. And CM's are reminded of that fact routinely.

Just a guess, but it is worse now. They let far more LL's thru compared to standbys. I see it all the time.

@Makorider - What's more likely is that they were limiting it more when it was free to make sure the regular line wasn't super slow. Now that its a paid service they are selling way too many to make the most money possible. That's why I hate pay per ride systems and much prefer paying for a pass valid for the entire day.