Has Disney Found the Solution to Its Fastpass Problem?
Many Disney fans have been blowing up social media to complain about Disneyland Paris' Fastpass replacements. In case you missed it, the Paris resort has replaced its old Fastpass system with two new products: the free Standby Pass and pay-per-use Disney Premier Access. Go read about them here, if you have not yet already. Despite many fans' objections to the change, these new wait-skipping products offer to solve some of the problems that have hampered Disney's Fastpass from its beginning. Hear me out. To start, I would like to suggest that the most, fair, just, and efficient system for getting people on theme park attractions is the old-fashioned physical queue. It's first-come, first-served, and if you don't think the ride is worth the wait, then you can choose something else to do. That means the people who are waiting in any given line are the ones most willing to invest the time to enjoy that attraction. But the problems with physical queues are these: Even if you're willing to spend the better part of the day waiting in a line for a specific ride, snaking through a queue for that long still feel like a miserable experience. And from the park's perspective, when you are waiting for hours in a queue, you're not spending money. That's what enticed Disney to create its Fastpass system. While Fastpass liberated Disney guests from queues to (in theory) spend money in shops and restaurants while the waited to go on popular rides, the system created a slew of unintended consequences. Here's the inherent problem with all wait-skipping schemes - they effectively clone theme park visitors. They allow you to be two places at once: waiting for an attraction as well as doing something else. That's fine if people use their "something else" time to visit under-utilized and uncrowded attractions, stores, and restaurants. If people stick to those locations, wait-skipping services help distribute the load of guests across a park more evenly, potentially helping to boost food and merchandise sales while doing so. Wins all around. When that happens, the wait-skipping service just helps increase the load on already over-loaded locations. Standby wait times grow longer, and seats inside popular restaurants become harder and harder to get. Then Walt Disney World went and gave guests the ability to reserve up to three Fastpasses at a time, with its Fastpass+ system. So instead of cloning visitors to the world's most-visited theme parks once, Disney effectively ended up cloning its already abundant guests three times. Fastpass+ also allows Disney World visitors to book their Fastpasses in advance of their visit. As a result, the only way to get on many popular attractions at the Walt Disney World Resort before the pandemic was to log on to Disney's website first thing in the morning exactly 30 days before your visit to enter what effectively became the Fastpass+ lottery. (On-site hotel guests got to play that lottery 60 days in advance of their arrival - further squeezing guests who couldn't afford to stay on site in addition to buying Disney theme park tickets.) Oh, and let's throw in Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance now. Disney runs a separate virtual queue for that popular attraction, which did not count against your Fastpass+ allocation. A Disney visitor won the lottery to enter that virtual queue before the pandemic effectively could be in five places at once: waiting for Rise of the Resistance, waiting for each of their three Fastpass+ rides, and then wherever they happened actually be to standing in the parks at the moment. Which probably was waiting in a ridiculously long standby queue for something else. All this contributed to the relief that many Disney fans felt when the company announced that it would suspend its Fastpass services when Walt Disney World, and then Disneyland, reopened. Yes, the Rise of the Resistance virtual queue still frustrates many visitors, but otherwise, Disney has returned to the old days of first-come, first-served physical queues. Disney has not yet announced when Fastpass might return to Orlando and Anaheim, but the company has shown a new path forward with what it announced for Disneyland Paris. At first glance, Standby Pass might look like Fastpass, but it functions in some substantially different ways than Disney's old wait-skipping service. First, Standby Pass does not operate in parallel with a physical standby queue. It replaces that queue. When an attraction's wait time exceeds a certain point (which seems to be about 30 minutes, at least for now), Disneyland Paris implements Standby Pass for that attraction. From that point, everyone wanting to get in line for the attraction must go to the park's official app and claim a Standby Pass. That assigns the guest a 30-minute return window for the attraction, on a first-come, first-served basis. When demand slackens for the attraction toward the end of the day, Standby Pass closes, and people can walk up to join the physical queue again. Guests can claim only one Standby Pass at a time, however. Yes, that still means cloning. But because other popular attractions presumably also would be using Standby Pass at that moment, guests would have no choice but to use their "something else" time visiting some less-popular, underutilized location within the park. There would be no open physical queues for other crowded attractions for them to join. That is how Disneyland Paris' Standby Pass solves the number-one problem that Fastpass created. Standby Pass also runs through the park's app, eliminating the hassle of physically walking to attractions to collect a wasteful slips of paper. And it's free to use, eliminating the money grab that Disneyland made when it charged guests to manage their Fastpasses through its Maxpass product. Speaking of money grabs, that brings us to Disney Premier Access. The Disneyland Paris website is a bit evasive on what exactly the 8-15 you spend on this product gets you beyond what you get using the Standby Pass. In each case, you get a designated time slot to go on the ride, though Disney notes that you get access to a "dedicated fast lane" at the attraction with Disney Premier Access. "Purchasing a Disney Premier Access gives you fast access to the attraction you choose, but does not guarantee immediate access," the website says. For that kind of money and years-old attractions, I would want immediate access, though I understand if Disney's lawyers want to cover their rear ends by not promising that in writing. Nevertheless, Disney Premier Access simply gives Disney the same sort of paid line-skipping product that Universal, Six Flags, SeaWorld, and the Cedar Fair theme parks have been selling to happy fans for years. If you don't like Disney Premier Access, don't buy it. Disney's recent history shows us that the company does not maintain a habit of continuing products that do not sell. Disney has tried paid line-skips at Disneyland Paris in the past, and those products did not last. But I hope that Disney brings Standby Pass to the Walt Disney World and the Disneyland resorts and that it replaces Fastpass. And I hope that Disney folds Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance into the service, too. With Standby Pass, Disney might finally have a service that gives fans the freedom to avoid physically standing in long lines without overcrowding popular locations in the park in return. * * *  We wanted you to read this article before we make our newsletter pitch, unlike so many other websites. If you appreciate that - and our approach to covering theme park news - please sign up for our free, twice-a-week email newsletter. Thank you. Replies (12)