The views and opinions expressed in this editorial are mine alone, and are not necessarily representative of those of Theme Park Tourist or its entire writing team.
There’s almost nothing that can compare with the endorphine-drenched sensation of sailing past a full queue for your favorite E-Ticket with a FastPass in hand (or in-app). Since 1999, Disney’s FastPass service has truly redefined a day at the parks for a generation of Disney fans. The problem is that the ways it’s changed your favorite park aren’t always for the better.
FastPass has become so deeply engrained in Disney Parks operations, it’s hard to imagine visiting a park without it. And yet, there’s an argument to be made that if FastPass flashed out of existence, a visit to the happiest place on Earth may be happier. I know what you’re thinking, but hear me out… Let’s start at the beginning to see why Disney created FastPass, then dissect the seven ways that FastPass might be making your day at Disney Parks worse…
Waiting Game
Imagine Disney Parks in, say, 1995.
Disney is more popular than ever. Michael Eisner has been the CEO of Disney for a decade now, and his plan to completely revitalize Disney has worked. His “Disney Renaissance” of animation has yielded Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, and The Lion King, revitalizing Disney’s image in pop culture. Likewise, his idea to infuse movie-related thrills into the theme parks to make them hip-and-happening places for all has worked out well, too.
Image: Disney
At Walt Disney World, the star has to be the brand new Twilight Zone Tower of Terror that debuted at the Disney-MGM Studios just last summer, and the equally horrifying Lost Legend: Alien Encounter is delighting (or maybe traumatizing) a generation of Magic Kingdom visitors. At Disneyland, a brand new Adventureland attraction has already cemented itself as a Modern Marvel: Indiana Jones Adventure.
And if you’re eager to experience any of the new, larger-than-life, cinematic thrills that Disney has cooked up in their ongoing transformation of Disney Parks, there’s only one way to do it: wait.
Image: Disney
Now, the good news is, the growing popularity of Disney Parks and the “necessary evil” of queuing guests did inspire innovation. It’s precisely because guests were flocking to the new E-Ticket attractions that Imagineers began to master plan their attractions with queues that are part of the story – the haunted halls of the Hollywood Tower Hotel; the Animatronic pre-shows of X-S Tech; the ¾ mile walk through the crumbling Temple of the Forbidden Eye… After all, Disney Parks attractions are more than mere “rides…” they’re experiences, and queues could be used to introduce new mythology, stories, and exposition.
The bad news for executives was the way that these multi-hour queues (even well-dressed ones) began to affect the bottom line. While guests were off spending an hour or more happily decoding the cuneiform writing in the Temple of the Forbidden Eye, that was a full hour that they would not step into a gift shop, restaurant, or retail space… Put another way, the more time guests spend waiting in line, the less opportunity they have to spend money.
Image: Disney
The bad news for guests is that the descending crowds of the ‘90s also moved in spectacular numbers toward older rides like Peter Pan’s Flight, Spaceship Earth, and “it’s a small world” – rides that were neither built to handle the massive groups of waiting guests, nor to entertain them. So as waits skyrocketed across Disney Parks, dissatisfied guests began to bail. Attendance fell sharply in 1997 and 1998 at all of Disney’s U.S. parks.
Something needed to change. Disney needed to engineer a way to alleviate queues, and their newest park would be the perfect test bed. FastPass debuted in July 1999 at Disney’s Animal Kingdom. By nature of reading this article, I suspect you already know about return times, FastPass rules, return windows, and the like. But how does FastPass really work from an Imagineer’s point of view?
How FastPass Works
To understand how FastPass works, we really just need to take a step back.
Image: Disney
Take a very high-capacity attraction like the Haunted Mansion. The Haunted Mansion has a theoretical hourly capacity of about 3200 people per hour – one of the highest hourly capacities of any Disney Parks attraction thanks to the wondrous Omnimover ride system. However, this number is “theoretical” in that it would require every Cast Member and operational/logistical variable operating like a fine-tuned, “friction free” machine. That theoretical number is an engineered value, “possible” practically only in simulations.
In reality, guests sluggishly move into the pre-show; they shamble into the Stretching Room; they bottleneck in the Portrait Gallery; the Omnimovers slow for accessibility; Cast Members open and close doors a few seconds later than technically “correct.” The ride’s operational hourly capacity (about 2800 riders per hour) accounts for the realities of operating the ride.
Image: Disney
(Assuming a 14-hour operating day, that would give the Haunted Mansion a daily throughput of just over 40,000 guests. Of course, in an average day, Magic Kingdom hosts about 60,000 guests, meaning that – put simply – it would be impossible for every Magic Kingdom visitor to ride Haunted Mansion in one typical day. Period.)
What FastPass does is to take a ride’s operational hourly capacity and do some simple math. If the Haunted Mansion can realistically accommodate 2,800 riders each hour, then it essentially has 2,800 slots to fill with riders between 10:00 and 11:00; another 2,800 from 11:00 – 12:00, another from 12:00 – 1:00. The FastPass system “sets aside” a percentage of those slots (for some rides, reportedly up to 70%) to be reserved.
Image: Disney
Let’s make it simpler. If a ride can accommodate 100 people per hour, 70 of those slots may be filled by guests not actually physically waiting in line. So if I were to join a queue, I may only have 29 people physically standing in front of me, but the wait time displayed will reflect having 99 people in front of me, as it assumes that 70 people will return during my wait and be given access ahead of me.
FastPass, as advertised, allows guests the ability to “skip the regular queue” and gain “priority boarding” by holding a slot in line (though that slot may be hours and hours away) – a freeing, fun, and fittingly fast way to get onto your favorite ride. Except…
How FastPass DOES NOT Work
Image: Disney
Disney set out to create a system that would allow guests to spend less time waiting and more time spending money. In the years since, it’s become “common sense” to use FastPass, and (in the form of Walt Disney World’s FastPass+) practically baked into vacation planning.
And look, all of us are happy to skip that hour-long line for Soarin’; we’re happy to not have to wait forever for Space Mountain; it’s a relief to be able to jump to the front of Incredicoaster. No one would deny that FastPass is a valuable, beloved, and enjoyable system that does what it was supposed to do.
But on the next page, we’ll dissect the ways that FastPass makes a Disney Parks visit worse. Would Disney Parks be better off if FastPass disappeared? Read on…
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…
5) FastPass is not fair
No, I’m not going to ramble on about the moral failings of Disney-sponsored, normalized line-cutting. When I say FastPass is not fair, I’m talking about something else entirely.
Because it’s true – Disney’s FastPass system (predating competitors) remains revolutionary not only because of how deeply embedded it is (with complex computer systems calculating return times, ratios, rates of return, and waits for Stand-By guests) but because of how accessible it’s meant to be. Rather than a neon paper wristband permitting front-of-line privileges that looks and feels like flat-out paid-for line-jumping (Cedar Fair and Universal) or a complicated virtual queue system holding your place as long as the current wait (Six Flags and Dollywood), Disney’s FastPass is not a costly, exclusive up-charge available only to some guests; it is available to all and included in park admission. But that doesn’t mean it’s fair.
Image: Disney
Think of it this way: a ride only has so many “slots” per hour and per day, and as we calculated before, none of the parks’ rides can realistically accomodate every guest who visits in a single day. That means that those “slots” available are precious commodities – something FastPass was supposed to help with. After all, if 100% of guests used FastPass optimally, then each and every guest would be guarunteed an evenly-spread minimum number of attractions with little wait. But if you’re reading this editorial, it probably means you’re more like me: able to wring 5, 6, 7, 8+ FastPass experiences out of a single day, running from distribution kiosk to distribution kiosk, balancing multiple FastPass tickets, and counting down for that precious “Your next FastPass will be available at…” time frame.
Does it make either of us bad people? Of course not. Is that breaking the rules? No.
Insiders simply figured out how to take full advantage of the FastPass system (in a good way)! But technically, doing so disrupts the utopian ideal of FastPass and is – in a sense – “taking” limited, finite ride slots from others. Perhaps it’s “victimless” because some families opt of FastPass for any number of reasons (not knowing how to use it, not knowing it’s included with admission) or don’t know how to use it the “right” way and only get one or two FastPass rides a day, so it all averages out the same. But is it fair? No. Meant to level the playing field, FastPass instead only gave frequent visitors and those who know how to use the system well (often via a “FastPass runner”) more than their “fair share” of the day’s capacity.
Which is why, when Disney had the chance to reinvent the FastPass system in Florida, they set out to re-level the playing field by switching to a more socialistic distribution… And that brings us to number 6.
6) FastPass+ made average vacation planning harder to get “right”
When Walt Disney World unveiled its smart phone app-based MyMagic+ initiative, a cornerstone of the billion-dollar project was FastPass+, eliminating paper tickets and distribution kiosks in favor of an app-based system of reservation and check-in. Part of the FastPass+ initiative was to turn ride reservations from an “extra” used by in-the-know guests into a standardized part of vacation planning – you book a flight, you book a hotel, you book meals, and you book FastPasses!
To do so, FastPass+ is all about pre-booking. Guests wait, breathlessly reloading the My Disney Experience app at midnight 30 days prior to their trip to try to snag FastPass reservations (only to find, in many cases, that popular attractions are already “sold out” of FastPass return options thanks to Disney Resort hotel guests, who get to book 60 days in advance).
Image: Disney
For better or worse, FastPass+ further reduced the spontaneity of a Disney Parks visit. Now, you not only have to know what park you’re going to on Monday of your trip in two months, but which hour you’ll be riding which ride.
But the problems with FastPass plus run deeper than simply requiring guests to go “all-in” with vacation planning. Now, the FastPass system would be flooded with guests, approaching 100% buy-in. And if all 60,000 visitors to Magic Kingdom on any given day are promised FastPasses, it meant that Disney needed to regulate the system in two key ways:
- Restricting all guests to 3 FastPass reservations per day, with just one for popular “tier 1” attractions. That was a particular sticking point for fans used to squeezing a half-dozen or more FastPass attractions out of a single day. But of course, that limit was necessary in order to ensure that the system – now flooded with near 100% participation – would offer more-or-less “equal” opportunities to all. Take Magic Kingdom’s daily attendance of 60,000 and split it by the total FastPass capacity for the park and you end up with everyone getting 3 ride reservations.
Image: Disney
- Adding capacity to the FastPass system by adding FastPass to attractions that don’t need it. And that’s where the real trouble lies. To ensure that all guests could have three FastPass bookings, FastPass was added to attractions that simply don’t need it, like The Seas with Nemo and Friends, Spaceship Earth, Finding Nemo: The Musical, and Haunted Mansion. Imagine how the wait for Enchanted Tales with Belle exploded when the attraction (with a 300 person-per-hour capacity) suddenly had 70% of its “slots” handed to FastPass, with only 100 people per hour allowed in from the Stand-By line. Across the resort, meet-and-greets became FastPass+ picks, turning typical queues for the low-capacity character encounters into stagnant “Stand-by” queues with FastPass guests whizzing past all day.
Now granted, some of this is good by way of encouraging people to visit less popular attractions. But on the same token, it makes it even easier for guests – especially first-timers, families, and rare visitors – to “mess up” by failing to secure the best set of attractions for not knowing whether Soarin’, Frozen Ever After, or Test Track is their best tier 1 pick for a day at Epcot. And thanks to FastPass being applied to attractions that don’t need it in order to add system capacity, that unknowing first-timer might select (from tier 1) Illuminations and (from tier 2) Journey into Imagination and Turtle Talk!
In other words, though FastPass+ technically helped level the playing field by incorporating FastPass into trip-planning rather than leaving it to in-the-know parks fans, it’s easier than ever to get FastPass “wrong” and spend a whole lot of time waiting as a consequence.
7) FastPass makes the rest of your waits worse
Image: Disney
In the early 2000s, Disneyland tried to add FastPass capacity, too, by adding the service to Pirates of the Caribbean. The ride’s queue regularly spilled into New Orleans Square, cutting off the park’s vital circulation paths. Why? Because Pirates doesn’t need FastPass; it doesn’t work with FastPass. It’s a high-capacity, fast-loading attraction, and by rationing 70% of its enormous capacity to FastPass users, the Stand-By queue stalled. Wait times for the attraction skyrocketed.
Since one of the attraction’s two side-by-side queues became dedicated to the thousands of FastPass users returning each hour, the Stand-By line (now moving 30% as quickly as it used to, at best) regularly grew so long, stanchions had to be added throughout New Orleans Square, cutting off circulation in the park’s cramped quarters and driving wait times up.
The addition went so horrendously, Disney quickly removed the ride’s FastPass signage and returned to two side-by-side, quick-moving queues. Unfortunately, in summer 2018, Disney re-installed FastPass infrastructure to Pirates, though it has yet to activate the ticket distribution…
Image: Disney
You’ll see it again with Toy Story Midway Mania, whose FastPass-enabled Hollywood Studios version often garnered waits three times as long as its FastPass-free identical sister at Disney California Adventure… until summer 2018, when FastPass was added to the Pixar Pier ride, doubling its wait time… Or, at the same two parks, Alien Swirling Saucers and Mater’s Junkyard Jamboree respectively – identical rides operationally, with Florida’s Toy Story version having out-the-gate-and-around-the-land queues. While certainly part of that is the newness of Toy Story Land, another part is that FastPass makes the Stand-By line move too slowly to keep up with the continuously-descending crowds!
So while FastPass may make a few waits short for you in a day, it’s almost certainly making the rest of your waits much, much longer… Are the three short waits worth a day of long ones? Psychologists must argue yes, because the endorphine-releasing act of securing a FastPass and strolling past a full queue keeps guests hooked on the system, even if logically, it’s making a day at the park measurably less pleasant altogether.
A World Without FastPass
Image: Disney
Listen, all of us like being able to take advantage of the FastPass system and use it to our disposal. But just imagine what would happen if FastPass disappeared from Disney Parks.
- Disney’s attraction queues would again become “sponges,” holding guests; the park’s paths would clear out and you’d once again be able to stroll through New Orleans Square or Tomorrowland.
- The theatrical, immersive, storytelling queues Disney Imagineers designed would be used for their intended purpose, becoming part of the attractions once more.
- Disney Parks would again be open for exploration, with paths to explore and significantly less “strategy” needed in order to enjoy.
- Guests would again enjoy a “level playing field,” with the same access to the same attractions. After all, even though Disney doesn’t charge for its FastPass service, the service still prefers those who can best learn how to navigate it (and, at Walt Disney World, those who can afford a Disney Resort hotel.)
- Wait times across the parks would level out as the “free market” of ride capacities returned. “Stand-By” queues would be the only queues, and they’d move quickly and steadily without a secondary queue of guests strolling by and using up ride’s precious and limited capacity “slots.”
Image: wdwuntangled.com
You know, Disney could probably improve FastPass with some simple switches, like refraining from activating a ride’s FastPass system until the Stand-By wait reaches an hour (which, by the way, most never would) or only turning on FastPass at noon, once crowds have settled into the park.
But at this point, guest interest in FastPass shows no signs of slowing. Quite the opposite, the introduction of FastPass+ at Walt Disney World indicated that Disney isn’t just expanding their virtual queuing system, they’re looking to monetize it.
Image: Disney
At Disneyland, if you want to conveniently grab day-of FastPass reservations via smartphone instead of running around to park kiosks, it’ll cost you $10 per day per person.
Recently, Disney began selling higher-priced one-day tickets to Walt Disney World that come pre-packaged with three FastPass selections (all from low-tier attractions) for guests who don’t pre-plan.
Image: Disney / Pixar
Disneyland Paris is testing a pay-per-ride line-jumping system where, for about $17, you can enter one ride’s FastPass queue, one time, any time of the day.
It feels almost certain that before the decade’s end, guests of Disney’s most expensive Deluxe level hotels will recieve preferential treatment in picking FastPasses.
FastPass has become deeply, deeply embedded into the parks and into guests’ minds. Despite evidence to the contrary, guests would likely see its removal or scaling-back as an affront to their day and an apocolypic attack on their “lifestyling” Disney Parks culture. That’s why it’s unrealistic to think that FastPass will ever disappear.
So while we all may enjoy the cloud nine moment of escaping the park’s overcrowded pathways and effortlessly sailing past that two hour wait for Frozen Ever After, keep in mind that it may be because of FastPass that the paths were crowded and the ride’s wait was two hours to begin with…
Image: Disney
And don’t get me wrong – there are plenty of reasons that using FastPass “plusses” a day at Disney Parks. FastPass advertises itself with the question, “Why wait in line?” But when you get right down to it, there may be some compelling reasons to do just that…
