Not sure if this is off topic (who could tell at this point in this thread?
For all who even generally agree with the idea that you get about 3 good rides and not much else you consider good - please share what you will consider an acceptable wait for a ride? I am not asking you to list every individual attraction, but im guessing you may have a general li,it for your top tier, your mid tier and maybe a "i'll only do this walk-on" group.
It would greatly help me place myself on the spectrum of whether i'd decide there's nothing worth waiting for and leave, or whether i have different threshold for waiting and therefore a different asessment of the negative FP+ impact. Thanks!!
Hi Mikie,
I base my "wait tolerance" on a lot of things. I remember going to WDW when I was a kid, and the Space Mountain ride snaked outside the building and across Tomorrowland. We easily waited an hour. In 2010, we went to WDW, and waited an hour to get on the Haunted Mansion. Now, we took the Graveyard path, unknowing (silly us) that it was the longer. But it was interesting to see. We tried to wait for Test Track, waited a half-hour, got up to the part where you started to go in the building, and it closed. Bummer. If I go to Great America, yes, the line to the Goliath is over an hour. We go to the Dells, the line to every major water slide was a half hour or more.
So today, I'm older, more mature, and pretty knowledgeable about how to get around, and I'm also pretty calculating, in that I can figure out ways to beat most crowds. If we get lunch at a museum, I won't go at noon, cuz that's when everyone else goes. Typical touring strategy. We'll go at 11, and it's dead still.
I use the same things at WDW. How much am I willing to wait? I'd say, typically...
Top ride (SDMT, Space, Splash, Soarin, TT, EE)... 60 min.
Mid ride (HM, Pirates, Astro, Speedway, Small World)... 30 min.
Quick ride (People Mover, LWTL, Stitch)... 10 min.
That's standby. In practice, I find I'm not generally getting stuck in those lines, because of FastPass, Rope Drop, etc. I can get there early, and ride the top rides in 5 min, ramping up to the 60 by a couple hours after opening. And using FastPass in the middle of the day, I avoid what I
used to have to do in the middle of the day which was ride things like Pirates and HM, cuz coasters used to have a long line midday. Now they still do, but you can reserve Fast Passes for them ahead of time! This in turn means that I'm riding the B rides during times I used to do A rides, which means I get on those faster too!
For example, one day I rope dropped the Circus area. Why? Cuz nobody else does that! We rode the Barnstormer and Dumbo lots, walked out toward the Mermaid, rod that, and then by the time our midday Fast Passes to ride Peter Pan and see the princesses hit, we were back to Fantasyland. You plan a reasonable strategy, and the trip can be both
relaxing and
productive.
There's a lot of things factoring in here. Since I can now do A rides (by FastPass) when I used to have to do B rides, I can now pick up the B rides faster by riding them at even better times.
Consider this too... in my 3 modern-day trips, I have ~not once~ waited over 20 min for Space Mountain. How is that? People quote SM lines being 75 min. Yet we ride it many times on a trip, and you know the game thingys kids can play with while you wait? My kids
want to stop and play those because they've never gotten to! The line is always up to past the game things when we ride. So even tho my tolerance
would be 60 min to ride SM, and some quote that to ride SM you have to wait this long, we certainly are never having to do so.
All this plays in to just how effective FastPass
can be if you embrace it, study it, and figure it out. That's all it takes... instead of saying it sucks to everyone who shares ideas on how to use it better, actually try to use some of the ideas. Instead of trying to replicate the way one travelled with FP-, look at how FP+ can save you time, and what that time savings gets applied to. It's not a direct standby line comparison. With FP+, you are saving 10 min here, 10 min there, and you add them up, and apply that time to another ride and you see you're getting on quite a lot in the end. Even tho it's in a very different way than some are used to.