1) FastPass leads to overcrowding
One of Disney’s main motivating factors for installing FastPass was to get guests out of queues and into revenue-generating parts of the park like gift shops and restaurants. In fact, early on, it was supposed that eventually, once guests got the hang of it, Disney Parks would feature only FastPass queues with the Stand-By truly being as its name suggested – a secondary option for guests who didn’t mind waiting for an opening, somewhat like a Single Rider line.
FastPass does work in that regard. It gets guests out of queues and into the park.
The problem is that queues at theme parks aren’t supposed to be dead spaces. They’re supposed to be sponges, absorbing and holding crowds. Logistically and operationally, parks are designed with full queues in mind; the park’s daily capacity is supposed to reflect many or even most of the guests being “held” in queues for Splash Mountain, Space Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain, Indiana Jones Adventure, Star Tours, and other massively popular E-Tickets with many others spread among smaller attractions' queues.
Especially in Disney’s Californian parks (where locals dominate and most guests have been visiting since birth), FastPass essentially transformed the park’s E-Ticket queues into wastelands. “Why wait for Space Mountain? I’ll get a FastPass once I use my Splash Mountain FastPass. After that, I’ll get a Big Thunder Mountain FastPass.”
Image: David M. French, Flickr (license)
That means that E-Ticket ride queues are practically empty as guests simply meander, clogging paths, cramming into shops, waiting for their return time, and trying to instead smash into queues for rides that don’t offer FastPass, like Peter Pan’s Flight or Dumbo the Flying Elephant, whose tiny queues and low-capacity ride systems aren’t meant to hold such massive crowds.
The end result is that, even on days when waits are manageable, Disneyland is stopped in a giant, continuous, constant traffic jam (sure to be made even worse with the debut of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge). The photos in this section aren't post-fireworks anomolies – they're the everyday conditions of the theme parks.
That's very, very, very bad news for theme parks that are already cemented in gridlock, and now expected to blow the roof off of attendance records with the debut of Star Wars and Marvel-themed lands. Which is why, throughout 2018, Disney Parks have been carefully contouring paths to alleviate the congestion FastPass causes.
Image: Disney
And if queues won't be the "sponges" to hold guests, Disney's newest initiative is to hope that Instagrammable, fan-service, hastag-ready "Dole Whip and chill" areas like Pixar Pier and Adventureland's Tropical Hideaway will, essentially turning dead spaces and former pass-throughs into "fun" areas people want to sit back, relax, and have a snack. To Disney's thinking, Tropical Hideaway is the new "virtual queue" hangout for Indiana Jones Adventure... Grab your FastPass, then go chill with a Dole Whip by the shores of the Jungle Cruise while you wait for your return time! Areas like this – big and small – are on the docket to appear across Disney Parks in an effort to reduce overcrowding.
Image: R. Mariner, Flickr (license)
While Walt Disney World’s parks were – by design – engineered to handle crowds with wide paths, open plazas, and master-planned flow, Disneyland and Disney California Adventure are just literally too small to have all guests forced out into paths. Next time you find yourself floating in a seas of crowded people meandering aimlessly with no apparent destination, know that FastPass may be to blame.
2) FastPass made theatrical queues obsolete and robbed storytelling
It was in the 1960s that designers at Disney began to theme queues (beginning with the Lost Legend: Adventure Thru Inner Space). As Disney’s rides became more elaborate and immersive, so too did their respective queues. By Eisner’s era in the ‘80s and ‘90s, it was clear that the queue for an attraction wouldn’t just be a corral of metal handrails; it would be part of the attraction.
Image: Disney
Remember Indiana Jones Adventure, with its ¾-mile queue? Imagineers knew that guests would descend into the Temple of the Forbidden Eye, and thus used that queue to tell a story…
Image: Disney
Through ancient murals, faded frescoes, and crumbling sculptures, guests learn the tale of the ancient lost god Mara, said to grant either timeless youth, earthly riches, or visions of the future to any who ventured to his temple… But of course, any who dare look into the god’s dark and corroded eyes is instead cursed to the Gates of Doom!
Passing through ancient ruins, collapsed caverns, bat caves, a grand rotunda, and a towering sacrificial altar in the queue alone, guests were even handed special decoder cards to unravel the mysteries of Mara told in “Maraglyphs” carved into the walls of the meandering queue. Narrowly avoiding tripped booby traps and exploring the sights and sounds of the ancient catacombs, guests would be truly dropped into the world of Indiana Jones and left to savor and soak up the world.
Image: Disney
In other words, Imagineers made a great effort to ensure that queues were designed to entertain, exposit, and involve guests, providing necessary backstory, and serving as the attraction’s “Act I.” An hour-long queue (reasonably expected given the ride’s hourly capacity and the park’s attendance) wouldn’t be a problem with so much to explore as the line continuously advanced deeper and deeper into the temple.
Image: Disney
Today, things are a bit different. That immersive, elaborate, and unbelievable queue through the temple is typically empty. It’s not that Indiana Jones Adventure isn’t popular… it is! Even 25 years after its opening, the off-roading E-Ticket commands hour-long wait times. But now, those queuing guests are kept in a typical back-and-forth queue pen in a crumbling stone plaza in front of the temple. After a group of FastPass guests are sent into the temple, a group of Stand-By guests follow behind, walking quickly through the queue to the loading area. All of the waiting (for both FastPass and Stand-By guests) is outdoors, with the elaborate queue as nothing more than a speed-walking tour to the ride's loading area.
Disney’s attractions – at least, prior to 1999 – weren’t built with FastPass in mind. That unfortunately interfered with what had been carefully constructed designed storytelling environments and led to awkward double-queues (often separated by barriers so as not to allow Stand-By guests to simply sneak under handrails to gain priority FastPass access).
3) FastPass changes the dynamics of a Disney day
The introduction of FastPass back in 1999 was the real start of making a Disney trip an exercise in advanced vacation planning. It was the first time that, suddenly, rather than encountering experiences organically, guests began to have to jump throughout the park to collect tickets, plan for return times, and more.
Gone are the days of encountering a new attraction at Disney Parks and simply stepping inside. With the introduction of FastPass, entire businesses sprang up around helping guests plan which FastPass distribution kiosk to run to first, leaping across the park from side to side to chase return tickets, all in an effort to wait less.
4) FastPass doesn’t increase ride capacity
One common misconception is that FastPass allows Disney attractions to serve more guests in a day. Upon inspection, though, this simple misunderstanding doesn’t hold up.
Image: Disney
The operating capacity of Na’vi River Journey is reportedly about 1,000 guests per hour. Let’s assume that Disney’s FastPass system pre-reserves 700 of those available slots each hour, with guests of Disney Resorts getting priority, and vigilant FastPass+ users staying up until midnight to snatch any leftovers.
30 days early, 70% of the ride’s capacity has been accounted for via FastPass. The other 30% of its capacity will be available to walk-up guests (the “Stand-By” line), but that leaves only 300 slots per hour for those guests; let’s say, 4,200 stand-by guests in a 14-hour day. The number of guests who can experience a ride is a constant. All FastPass does is hold back a hefty proportion of those slots to be reserved ahead of time rather than stepped into in real time.
And look, that would be fine… if FastPass was fair. Which brings us to our final points on the next page…
Comments
What an interesting article on how Fastpass has changed the dynamics of the parks, as well as the whole concept of a Disney vacation. It makes me sad to think of a family for whom a Disney trip will be a one-in-a-lifetime experience, and without all this knowledge of how to best use the Fastpass system, they may end up having a very frustrating time, unable to experience many of the best rides. Your article made me miss the days before Fastpass.
If there's more demand than supply per resource, people WILL have to wait, no matter how it's distributed, or if it is regulated at all.
Either there's a free system like FastPass, but this will incur more overall waiting, if you're not an "insider". Or it is monetized, then those with more cash will wait less.
The former is socialism, which is beautiful, but doesn't work. The latter is market economy, which is ugly, but works. In any way: If there's not enough for everyone wanting, then some will be privileged, and others will be not. It's not a moral thing, but just math and physics.
(I once lived in socialism, and I know for sure that it doesn't work. -- But with a decent education, market economy works quite well.)
I actually don't see any just solution for that, besides building more Disney parks; but as this is at the hand of the Disney company, it's not up to me to tell them how to do it.
(By the way ... I hate theme parks, because I don't like crowds, and as a weathered QA engineer, I'm hard to fool with mechanical and electronic contraptions. I reject the concept of "magic" altogether. -- But I actually enjoy reading here, as those essays display a hell of logical and rational argument, which I love.)
I think you’re off the mark a bit here. Fast passes can’t simultaneously stop the queues from being “sponges” and cause the queues to be too long. Maybe for a few rides that’s true (like Indian Jones), but I think what’s happening more is that they change the distribution of your personal wait times. So you have 3 fast lines and then however many long lines you choose to endure. Is that better or worse than endless more reasonable lines? Hard to say. The other thing that’s happening is the parks just have more guests. There isn’t enough physical space to accommodate them anymore. The only real way to fix that is to enlarge the parks, build more of them, or raise prices.