Guests of Disney Parks were unhappy and wanted to spend less time waiting.

To spend less time waiting, Disney designed a “virtual queue” for popular attractions.

Access to a “virtual queue” gave guests time to spend money and made them happy.

To make guests happier, they democratized it with FastPass+.

To democratize it, they needed to distribute it equally (3 per person), raise its capacity, and limit access to the most popular attractions to ensure an optimized system.

And just like that, we’ve arrived at the parks we know them today.

The Failure of FastPass

Remember how we said in 1999, you could grab a FastPass for Space Mountain, then hop on board a high-capacity attraction like Haunted Mansion, Pirates, or Jungle Cruise to wait for your return time? And that is FastPass at its best; a true “virtual queue” for a high-popularity-medium-capacity attraction. And with just one or two FastPass-equipped attractions in a park, it works beautifully as a fun and exciting way to get to “wait less; ride more.”

Jump to today. In 2020, 25 attractions at Magic Kingdom offer FastPass. And remember that troubling truth we saw on the last page: the unintended byproduct of equipping an attraction with FastPass is that its regular line is, by design, replaced with a slow-moving Stand-by line. So today, let’s say you get a FastPass for Space Mountain, Peter Pan’s Flight, and to Meet Mickey. Sure, it’ll feel swell to zip through the FastPass lanes at those three attractions, bypassing guests in a standstill Stand-by line…

But, flashback:

[Guest] Stan Bonny, 61: "I think it's a great idea. It should be on all the rides."

 

[Vice President of Operations, Planning and Development at Walt Disney World] Dale Stafford: "If you did it everywhere, you wouldn't have enough space in the park. Where would everyone go?"

Where would everyone go? We’re living it. While you wait for your Space Mountain return time, try the Haunted Mansion. Nope. By nature of also being a FastPass attraction, its once continuously-moving, highly-efficient, “people-eating” line has turned into a swampy, stagnant Stand-by line with an hour-long wait. Maybe a piratical jaunt will pass the time? Nope. Though it’s an immensely high-capacity ride, it, too, got FastPass, meaning if you didn’t snag one, you’re relegated to a backed up Stand-by line that moves about 30% as fast as it used to. 

There's a reason the high-capacity Omnimover-based Little Mermaid dark ride at Magic Kingdom can earn 45 minute waits while its identical twin at Disney California Adventure is routinely a walk-on. Yep... FastPass. (You'd see it again comparing the two resorts' Winnie the Pooh rides or Midway Mania.) 

But forget those headlining, anchor attractions… What about the smaller “asides;” the kinds of hidden gems and mid-level attractions that make Disney different from Universal? Sure, maybe every E-Ticket has a dreadful Stand-by line thanks to FastPass, but hey, that’s what “supporting” attractions are for! The idea in 1999 was literally that those attractions were meant to play that very role, "filling in" the day between FastPass virtual queues.

But take a look today. Magic Carpets of Aladdin? FastPass. Tomorrowland Speedway? FastPass. Enchanted Tales with Belle? FastPass. Mickey’s Philharmagic?!? FastPass! Even the Mad Tea Party was outfitted with FastPass, again ensuring that a majority of the ride’s capacity would go toward pre-booked FastPass reservations, leaving lines for even these smaller, time-filling attractions as… Stand-by.

The operational hourly capacity of Goofy's Barnstormer, for example, maxes out at just over 300 people per hour, or 3,600 in a day. With 70% of its pitiful capacity set aside for FastPass reservations, barely 1,000 people per day (remember, out of Magic Kingdom's 60,000) will even have the chance to ride without a FastPass the entire day.

The end result is that – if you’re lucky – you’ll get one, two, or even three FastPass reservations for popular attractions. But as a result of FastPass itself, every other wait you encounter will move more slowly and even take longer. And since rigid tiering of available experiences is a necessary evil of spreading out access to popular attractions, if you want to ride all three "tier 1" attractions at Disney's Hollywood Studios, you will have to wait in the swampy, barely-moving Stand-by line for two of them. Period. One FastPass, but two Stand-bys. 

Now certainly, Disney’s industrial-organizational psychologists have done the evaluation signalling that frankly, people don’t care. Clearly, guests are charmed enough by their three guaranteed FastPass attractions and the joyous feeling of “skipping the line” three times that they don’t mind waiting the other six or seven times. So maybe all’s well that ends well. But it doesn’t have to be this way… Just imagine…

Fixing FastPass

Let’s get this straight: many people love FastPass. Again, how can you not adore the idea of “skipping the line,” for free? And though guests often criticize MyMagic+ for its overreliance on pre-planning, and though we lambasted FastPass for the many ways unknowing guests can do it “wrong,” the fact remains that it’s just plain cool to have a few rides “guaranteed” before you even step into the parks.

But technically, the mere existence of FastPass makes all the waits in the park longer than they would be otherwise, turning “Stand-by” lines into crawling, awful waits for attractions that can and should be able to process people quickly and efficiently while simultaneously gunking up smaller, less efficient attractions and limiting their availability and attractiveness to walk-up guests. And again, there’s no doubt that Disney’s internal surveying suggests: it’s worth it! People don’t mind! To most, those three FastPass “skips” are saving them from agonizing waits, nevermind that the waits altogether, across the park would be less if FastPass disappeared, more than making up for their saved time.

So how could FastPass be “fixed” without people feeling they’ve lost a service they hold dear? The answer is surprisingly simple: that FastPass should really only be offered on a small selection of each park’s biggest anchor attractions - say, Magic Kingdom’s “mountains” - and even then, only once waits crest 30 minutes should the feature become available. 

That’s it. That would be a massive step toward fixing it. It would leave the queues for high capacity attractions like Pirates and Haunted Mansion moving smoothly and continuously as they’re designed to do; it would allow people to spend their wait for the return window on the Speedway, Dumbo, and Mad Tea Party - the role those attractions are well-suited to play.

Why isn’t it that easy? Because if everyone is promised three FastPasses, the park needs to offer enough FastPass “slots” to match, which is why so many attractions that don’t need FastPass, have it. Even though there’s no line to skip at Muppet*Vision or Philharmagic, the feeling that you’ve saved time is sometimes more important than actually saving it.

Waiting on the (Disney) World to change

Since 1999, FastPass has been an industry-charger.

Though Universal attempted to match the virtual queue system for a short time, its parts eventually went the way so many others have: complex, device-based, paid-for virtual queue programs, or straight-up, paid-for line-jumping. Disney invented, mastered, and (arguably) overexpanded FastPass in the course of two decades, but all the while, it remained deeply ingrained in guest’s ideas about and satisfaction with their Disney Parks vacation.

What does the future hold? For now, it seems like we’ve gotten about as close to full, broad adaptation of FastPass as is possible. And as many guests will tell you, it’s not working. Though the solutions are mathematically simple (scaling back on the number of attractions offering the service, or on the percentage of “slots” reserved for it), the problem itself isn’t. 

Though technically FastPass makes your average time waiting in a day longer, it gives you three “high moments” that, psychologically, override that fact. Meanwhile, as the previous 4,000 words have shown, understanding why FastPass isn’t working requires (gulp) math. Which means that getting rid of or even reducing access to FastPass would be perceived as a reduction in guest value, likely translating into Facebook rage and “never coming back” threats. 

So as FastPass expands and wait times inflate, Disney’s one-time solution for keeping guests out of lines has - ironically - become the system that forces them into lines… What does the future hold? Boarding Groups? Paid-for FastPass? Something else? We’ll be the first to let you know...