Saw this in Orlando Weekly;
Disney may use Coronavirus crisis to overhaul FP+
I'm a little torn. FP+ is (was) imperfect at best. Why on earth was Fastpass on EVERYTHING? It just seems like it created a situation by which those in the know could game the system. The FP tiers too. I also think it gave an unfair advantage to smaller groups, said couples rather than families of 4 or 5. Certainly singles had the leg up as DFB proved - you could get DOZENS of FP's on even the busiest days if you were flexible with your plans and didn't need to find 4 or 5 FP's at a time.
BUT...
As a family, FP+ is great, in that my wife will not ride things like Space Mountain, and it is a GREAT way for me and my kids to get a quick ride without having her wait an hour plus while I do it. That in and of itself is priceless when it comes to vacation time.
OK, so what should Disney do?
While I like, and have heard great things about DL's
MaxPass, I DETEST any system that allows someone to pay for cuts - i.e. paid Fastpassses. I think MaxPass falls just a hair short of that definition, but why would anybody pay for it if you weren't getting more fastpasses (and you are by not having to run across the park to get them - a grey area IMHO)?
So I guess in my perfect world;
- Use park reservations (coming soon thanks to Covid). Why do I want this? Because;
- Have BG's for uber-popular rides like FoP and ROTR that you get when you make your park reservation. This is tricky because I also think you still have to give preference to on-site guests, you also want to have a system by which off-site guests and local AP's an opportunity to ride each day too. IOW - You can't give out all of the BP's at 60 days. Maybe give out 1/2, then distribute the rest with...
- MaxPass, and only Maxpass. Include it in the cost of admission. for everyone. Don't re-introduce paper FP's and do away with reserve-in-advance FP+...except the BG's. Put Maxpass only on rides and attractions (are there any ?) that need it. Not Muppets 3-D, not the Peoplemover, etc.
See any flaws with this? Well, here's one - maybe. What about park-hoppers? I think this still works - at least better than the system we have now. If you are starting in MK, you would have no FP's in any other park anyway and ZERO expectation of getting a BG or ROTR. That wouldn't change. There would be a little lag in that now, you could get your first, second park FP+ while en route on a bus, while MaxPass would require you to actually get to the second park. That seems like a fair trade for the better system IMHO.
I also see a problem in that you are not giving enough of an incentive to the on site guests. Here's a thought; why not give EMH to on-site guests only, every morning at every park? I always thought rotating the EMH around was dumb and confusing and resulted in the EMH park being so crowded that the incentive to go to that park was nill. This would solve that problem and would spread out the on-site guests so there would still be plenty of MaxPasses for the off-site guests when they got there. That would eliminate "rope drop", but sadly I think this is going away too thanks to COVID. I REALLY like rope-drop - genuine tears on that one. If I got EMH every day though I think I'd get over it pretty quick.
Thoughts?