4. Disabled impacts

Disability Assistance Service CardHow can disabled visitors get a return time if the Standby queue is closed?

As frustrating and unfair as it is for everyone, Standby Plus impacts the disabled community the most. In October 2013, Walt Disney World replaced the long-running Guest Assistance Pass program with the Disability Access Service (DAS) program. Now, guests with disabilities must approach each attraction and receive a return time equal to the length of the Standby line minus 10 minutes, at which point they will use the FastPass Plus line.

Without an actual Standby line, how can guests with disabilities be accommodated with their DAS cards? Many people with disabilities are physically unable to remain in the parks for more than a few hours. Receiving a Return Time card for many hours in the future could well mean that the disabled person would be unable to experience the attraction. Likewise, early reports indicate that when all the Return Time cards are distributed for the day, DAS times are no longer issued. For those who are unable to arrive early in the morning due to medical issues, this could easily shut them out of the attraction altogether.

5. Wait times

MagicBandsThe FastPass Plus system puts you in a virtual queue for 60 days straight!

Like FastPass Plus and legacy FastPass, Standby Plus creates ridiculously long virtual queues. With FastPass Plus, you are technically in line for 60 days straight. Both legacy FastPass and Standby Plus place you in a virtual queue that can easily extend for many more hours than the Standby line that was replaced.

The Soarin’ Standby queue regularly hits 2 hours, and can surpass 3 hours on very busy days. But it is never 7 hours long, unlike the wait for the new Gringott’s attraction at Universal’s Diagon Alley. At that attraction, issuing Return Times is reasonably comparable to allowing people to wait in line all day. At Soarin’ and other WDW headliners, however, the artificial demand created by the issuance of Return Time cards nearly guarantees that the effective queue length far exceeds what the actual wait time would be. The perceived wait then increases the perceived value of a Return Time card, increasing demand and further lengthening the virtual queue.

Standby Plus is in the very early stages of testing, but all indications are that it is already an epic fail. Time will tell whether Disney can massage it into something that actually works, but if history is any indication, it doesn’t seem likely. The question then becomes, has Disney gone too far this time?