It begins when you book your ticket online and pick your favorite rides. Disney’s servers crunch your preferences, then neatly package them into an itinerary calculated to keep the route between stops from being a slog—or a frustrating zig-zag back and forth across the park.
What a crock. There is no mention in the article of the fact that guests are limited to three FP+ choices per day, and those must be in the same park, and that two of the parks have tiered choices which restrict guests to only being able to choose one headline attraction. And since when does Disney plan it out for you so you have a smooth route in the parks? How convenient is it to hunt down a FP+ kiosk and wait in line there so you can potentially save a ten minute wait to ride the teacups?
then we have this:
By getting people exploring beyond the park’s top attractions, overall use of the park goes up. People spend less time in line. They’re doing more, which means they’re spending more and remembering more.
Here we have it. This is what the geniuses who cooked up this billion dollar fiasco thought they could deliver. The result is quite the opposite. Guests clearly spend more time in line under the new system than they ever did under the old. These non top level attractions which used to be accessible with no or very short lines now have lines of 30+ minutes. Did anyone ever have to wait 30+ minutes to ride Spaceship Earth before FP+?
There are some enlightening things about Disney's corporate though process revealed in the article. Like this:
In fact, it’s called the paradox of choice: You make people happier not by giving them more options but by stripping away as many as you can. The redesigned Disney World experience constrains choices by dispersing them, beginning long before the trip is under way.
Huh? Are they saying that guests were too stupid to plan their own vacations, so Disney stepped in to do it for them? And we are supposed to be happy about that?
and, finally, we have this:
“It lets people’s vacations unfold naturally,” Staggs says. “The ability to plan and personalize has given way to spontaneity.” And that feeling of ease, and whatever flows from it, just might make you more apt to come back.
That says all I need to know. The head idiot thinks that the new system somehow promotes spontaneity. I guess when he flies in on the corporate jet, he doesn't have to worry about things like scheduling his measly three FP+'s per day 60 days out or his dining reservation 6 months out. I'm sure it's great for him. What a clueless idiot.
