Disney's FastPass: A Complicated History

How much do you know about lines? A line, or a queue, is an organized group of people or, in this case dots, waiting their turn for some... thing. The amount of time it takes to get from the start of the queue to the end of the queue is the wait time. In its simplest form, the wait time is affected by two factors, the service rate, and the arrival rate. The service rate is the rate at which people get pulled from the queue to do the thing. The arrival rate is the rate at which people arrive

to the queue. Speed up the service, and the wait time decreases. Increase the arrival rate, and the wait time increases. At its core, this is all a line is. How fast do people get in line, and how fast do they get out, but in any real-world scenario, queues become anything but simple. And there’s no better showcase of this complexity than the Disney Parks. Disney is world-famous not only for their wait times, but for the bold strategies that they have implemented to cut them down. To truly understand this topic, it is not enough to simply learn

the history. We must deep dive into the technicalities and psychology of queuing and fully examine the many ways that Disney has tried to tackle the issue of lines, and unfortunately, there is no FastPass for this explanation. So without further wait, let’s take an excruciatingly deep dive into everybody’s least favorite aspect of theme parks. On October 1, 1971, Walt Disney World opened to the public with two resort hotels, and one theme park, the Magic Kingdom. Within the first year of opening, Walt Disney World began to experience the problem that had long plagued Disneyland Park in Anaheim.

Long waits for attractions. Two of the most dreaded waits were for the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea ride and the Country Bear Jamboree show. The wait for 20,000 Leagues consistently sat at one hour, and the wait for the Country Bear Jamboree could go over an hour on busier days. This might be surprising to you if you’ve visited the parks recently. Today, the Country Bear Jamboree almost never fills its theater, and 20,000 Leagues no longer exists. However, when Magic Kingdom opened, these two attractions had some of the longest waits in the park. This can be explained

by looking at the arrival rate and service rate of these attractions. The service rate for theme park attractions is generally measured in hourly capacity, or how many guests can board an attraction within one hour. 20,000 Leagues was a low-capacity attraction, only able to accommodate around 1200 guests per hour. Compare this to the Haunted Mansion, which can accommodate around 2800 guests per hour. This difference was due to their ride systems. The Haunted Mansion is a continuously operating omnimover system, while 20,000 Leagues could only seat 40 guests in each submarine, and could only operate up to 9

submarines at a time. So in a 12 hour day at the park, over 33,000 guests could ride the Haunted Mansion, while only around 14,000 guests could ride 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Looking at this difference another way, if 1000 guests were in line for both attractions, the wait time for the Haunted Mansion would be 35 minutes while the wait time for 20,000 Leagues would be 1 hr and 20 minutes. The Country Bear Jamboree had an even lower capacity than 20k leagues, but its issue was less in its service rate, but more its arrival rate. While

the capacity of a ride is determined by design and operation, the arrival rate is mainly determined by guest demand. This demand can be influenced by such factors as the quality of the ride and the marketing done for the attraction. The demand and capacity relationship is somewhat similar to the relationship between the supply and demand of a product, except rather than determining price and quantity, demand and capacity determine the wait times and number of riders. Today, once a guest has entered a Disney theme park, they are able to ride any attraction they choose, but there are

only so many operating hours each day, so time becomes a currency that they must spend. For instance, a guest might want to ride the Jungle Cruise if the wait were 30 minutes but that same guest might not want to ride the attraction if the wait was one hour. In queuing, this is called balking, when someone decides not to wait in a queue due to its length. This can reduce wait times by turning people away that were not determined to experience the attraction. The situation becomes even more complicated when guests are spending both their time and

money to ride rides. When it opened, Walt Disney World utilized a ticket book system in which guests needed to purchase tickets both to enter the park and to ride the majority of the park’s attractions, with each attraction distinguished with a letter A through E, with E being the most thrilling and popular attractions. This was the same system used at Disneyland, and it became so well-known that the term E-ticket became a common phrase to refer to something as premium or exciting. By charging guests more to ride the popular attractions, Disneyland was able to curb demand for

these rides. However, at Walt Disney World, this system often had the opposite effect. When the resort opened, guests knew little about the park’s unique attractions, but they already understood the A through E ticket system. So when visitors made their decisions, they often looked at how Disney ranked and priced their own attractions. The Country Bear Jamboree, a musical show with animatronic characters unknown to guests, was listed as an E-ticket, while the Mickey Mouse Revue, a musical show with animatronic characters well known to guests, was listed as a D-ticket. This led many guests to assume that The

Country Bear Jamboree was the better show, resulting in a false demand, leading to longer lines. This false demand was recognized by a Disney employee named Bruce Laval. Laval graduated from the University of Florida with an MBA, specializing in operations research, and he joined Walt Disney World right as the resort opened in 1971 as an industrial engineer. Industrial engineers are specialized in studying and optimizing complex systems and processes, finding ways to make systems more efficient, a field that Disney was increasingly relying on as their theme parks became more complex and brought in more people. Laval was

among the first industrial engineers to utilize computer simulations to optimize systems, impressive considering at the time computers looked like this. Within the first few years he worked for the company, Laval noticed the false demand being created by the A through E ticket system and argued for its removal. The idea made it almost to the testing phase for Magic Kingdom when top Disney executives, resistant to change, learned of the plan and shut it down. However, it was soon decided that Disney’s third theme park, EPCOT Center, would not use the A through E ticket system, so the

decision was made to discontinue the system at both Disneyland and Walt Disney World as well. After the switch, Laval’s theory was proven. Wait times at E-tickets went down, and more guests visited the underutilized attractions. Long lines were by no means eliminated from the guest experience after the A through E ticket system was discontinued. In fact, lines were the number one guest complaint at all three Disney parks. This is why when Disney opened its first international park Tokyo Disneyland in 1983, many within the company were surprised at the patience and endurance of Japanese tourists to withstand

long lines, especially when compared to Americans. This is because different cultures have different reactions to queuing, with Americans tending to be some of the most impatient, right up there with the French, which Disney would learn soon enough. Also, people’s reactions to queues change significantly over time, and the Disney Parks have played a major role in this evolution. The most common type of queue at Disney is called the switchback queue, in which guests snake back and forth in a zigzag motion. This was pioneered by Disney’s Imagineers at the 1964 New York World’s Fair. The lines for

Disney’s attractions at the fair were long and out of control, so Disney developed the switchback concept which organized and condensed the line. Reportedly, Walt Disney himself also felt the concept had a psychological benefit. Because guests were moving back and forth, they were face to face with other guests, allowing them to interact with strangers back when people were into that sort of thing. Switchback queues were soon implemented throughout Disneyland, then at Walt Disney World, EPCOT Center, and eventually everywhere, but since queueing is always evolving, by the mid 1980s, distaste for the switchback queue had grown. People

were no longer tricked by its condensed nature, and the endless zig zagging soon became grating. To combat this, Disney went back to the drawing board, coming up with a simple three-tiered strategy to improve guests' time in line. Number 1: Keep waits to a maximum of 15 minutes. Number 2: If a guest must wait more than 15 minutes, give them entertainment, such as immersive queues and pre-show videos. Number 3: Hide the queue from view, sectioning off different parts of the queue so that guests can’t see how long the line really is until they’ve already waited in

it. This strategy really came down to one basic principle. If you remove the guests’ ability to visualize the wait, the wait itself will feel shorter. In 1987, Bruce Laval was named director of the Studio Tour for the soon-to-open Disney MGM-Studios. The new theme park was designed to focus primarily on the tour of the new film and television production facilities being constructed alongside the park, so when Disney-MGM opened in 1989, it had few attractions, and worse, few productions. What it did have was an excess of people. Crowds flocked to Disney-MGM to find long lines and little

to do. The issue was widely reported on, and when asked about the crowds, Laval said “You could have the greatest show in the world, but if you have a three-hour wait out there people are going to leave the park dissatisfied.” Immediately after this article was published, the Orlando Sentinel received a call from a man, named Michael Eisner, who was the CEO of Disney at the time. Eisner assured the public, as well as the Disney employees quoted in Sunday’s paper, that the park would be expanded with more attractions, stating “We do not want the lines to

be that long. We are trying to rectify that as soon as we can.” In 1995, Laval was promoted to Executive Vice President of Operations, now assuming responsibility for all park and resort operations at the Disney Parks. Laval had held many different positions at the company, but his industrial engineering background had stayed with him, and the mounting issues with wait times led Laval and his team to develop something big. In the mid 1990s, Laval and his team began experimenting with the idea of transitioning certain attractions at the Disney Parks to a reservation-only system. The idea was

to give guests a reservation time for an attraction so that they would not have to wait in line. Similar to a restaurant, guests would simply arrive at the attraction for their reservation and would be seated immediately. While the idea would eliminate waits for guests at the park's most popular attractions, there were obvious issues with the concept. First, it was nearly impossible to ensure that park guests arrived for their reservations on time. Often they would be doing something else around the park. When a guest would miss their reservation time, this would leave empty seats on the

ride, therefore reducing the total capacity of the attraction. Second, if the attraction experienced downtime for any reason, then the guests holding reservations during this downtime would no longer be able to ride, as reservations for the rest of the day would already be filled, or if they were allowed on, the ride would now have a line of people for the rest of the day, defeating the point of the system. The idea was abandoned for these reasons, and it seemed that reservation-based attractions was a dead concept. This was until Laval had an epiphany, not while at work,

but while on vacation. In 1997, Laval went on a skiing vacation in Colorado. While on the slopes, he observed the queue to get on the ski lift. Each lift chair held four people, and the queue was split into two lines, a regular line and a single rider line. Laval viewed how the single riders were squeezed in the empty seats on the ski lift when a party did not fill an entire chair. He realized that this was the compromise to the reservation-based system. Rather than a regular line and a single rider line, Laval could have a

reservation-based system and a standby line. Whenever a guest would be late for their reservation, operators could take someone from the standby line so that the attraction would never lose capacity because of the ebbs and flows in guest behavior. Plus, if the attraction did experience downtime, then the ratio of reservation based guests to standby riders could simply be adjusted to favor those that had reservations during the downtime. Despite the idea coming from the initial reservation-based concept, what Laval was proposing was closer to a virtual queue. A virtual queue functions similarly to a normal queue just without

the physical line. A common example of a virtual queue can be found in many quick service restaurants, in which guests take a number and wait for their number to be called. Unlike reservations, this still retains the first come first serve nature of a physical line but it removes the ability to visualize the wait, therefore, increasing the quality of it. After returning from vacation, Laval pitched the concept to other executives, but he was met with skepticism. Believing in the idea, Laval proposed that he test the idea to prove that it could work. Using the newly opened

Animal Kingdom due to its limited amount of attractions, testing began with a select group of guests who were given paper diaries to keep track of their day, including how long they waited in line. The test subjects were split into two groups, a control group and a group that would use the virtual queue system. The control group simply logged their day at the park, while the other group were told to approach cast members at attractions entrances, who would hand them a ticket with a return time on it. This return time was equal to the time that

it would have taken guests to wait in the line for the ride. The test subjects were then encouraged to explore the park, and return at the time listed on the ticket, where they would then be allowed to skip the line. The test was a huge success. The virtual queue subjects were able to experience 25% more rides than the control group, and their wait times were reduced by 50%. The virtual queue subjects left the park much more satisfied and far more likely to return than the control group. If this was not convincing enough for executives, the

tests also showed that those using the virtual queue system spent more of their time at gift shops and dining locations, resulting in more spending when compared to the control group. Executives approved the concept for further testing, which continued throughout early 1999, both at Disneyland and Walt Disney World. That summer, testing focused on Space Mountain at the Magic Kingdom, which often had the park’s longest wait. In these early tests, Cast Members were physically writing return times on cards and giving them to guests, while using handheld clicker counters to keep track of how many were handed out

and how many guests returned. The tests were often haphazard and chaotic, but they were successful enough to prove that not only the system could work, but it would make guests happier and more likely to spend money. Many within the company, including Laval, felt that the system should be free and available to all visitors so as not to create different classes of park guests, citing Walt Disney himself, who was known to wait in the park’s lines with his guests. With the tests labeled a success, executives approved the permanent installation of the new virtual queue system, officially

titled... “Hey, did you know that you don’t have to wait in line to ride some of your favorite attractions? Just look for the signs at selected attractions and insert your park ticket. You’ll get a complimentary Fastpass with a return ride time stamped right on it.” Guests who entered a Walt Disney World park in late 1999 were met with a brand new system, FastPass. On the surface, the system was simple. Guests would approach an attraction where they would be able to view the posted standby wait time. If this was manageable, they could join the standby queue

right away. However, if the wait was long, they could instead choose to receive a FastPass at the kiosks placed outside of the attractions. Guests inserted their park admission ticket into the kiosk to receive their FastPass with a one-hour return window listed on it. They could then enjoy the rest of the park, and once their return window arrived, they would hand their ticket to an attendant and enter the FastPass queue, boarding the attraction with a minimal wait. Each guest could only hold one FastPass at a time, and they could not receive another until their return window

arrived. Behind the scenes, the system was far more complex. Each attraction’s FastPass data would be stored on a local computer housed in each attraction, controlling the standby wait time display, keeping track of how many Fastpasses have been handed out, and determining the return times being printed on each FastPass. The computer was connected to a server so all wait times could be monitored throughout the park, and so that the system would know when a guest had already been given a FastPass to prevent them from obtaining another. The system also allowed ride operators to tell the computer

when an attraction was experiencing downtime, and in response, the kiosks would slow down or cease disbursing FastPasses until the attraction was operating again. Some Cast Members reported this feature not working properly or not implemented on some rides, resulting in ride operators having to go to the FastPass kiosk, manually disburse a stack of paper Fastpasses so that return times were pushedd back, and then immediately throwing those FastPasses in the trash. When news broke on FastPass in the summer of 1999, Laval said quote, “We are going to use it on the three, four or five attractions that

historically have the longest lines at each park.” By the end of the year, thirteen attractions at Walt Disney World utilized FastPass. Five at Magic Kingdom, two at Epcot, five at Disney-MGM, and 3 at Animal Kingdom. In early 2000, FastPass was implemented in Disneyland on three attractions, Space Mountain, Splash Mountain and Roger Rabbit's Car Toon Spin with plans to expand the program. “One way to keep it moving is called Disney’s FastPass. Mi un favorito. Check this out. We roll up to the FastPass kiosk. Boom. Boom! Kicks back a ride time. Then you just come back to

the ride at that time and giddyup. Pretty sweet little invention. Let’s hit it.” FastPass was a huge learning curve for guests. Despite heavy marketing, many guests did not know about the program and even fewer understood it. In the early days, it was referred to as Disney’s best kept secret, and many guests waiting in standby lines were visibly and vocally frustrated to see priority being given to those that had FastPasses. Believing that they were being skipped or cut in line, which in a way, they were. Some people believed that FastPass was simply holding their place in

the attracion’s line, which is not the case. The FastPass kiosk and ticket system was a virtual queue, so there was a first come first serve system built into the program, but that just determined guests return windows. Once guests redeemed their pass, that queue was over, and they were admitted to a new preferred queue that shared the service rate of the attraction with the standby line. The arrival of FastPass guests did affect the rate at which guests moved through the standby queue. There were a few exceptions to this, such as with Space Mountain at the Magic

Kingdom, which has two separate tracks. So if operated as such, one track could be standby only, and the other could be FastPass only. If this is the case, then FastPass guests are not skipping or cutting the standby line, they essentially just have their own attraction, as there are two separate service rates, and the arrival of FastPass guests have no impact on the standby line. The main issues with implementing FastPass beyond the learning curve for guests was perfecting the technology for the kiosks and finding space in each attraction for two lines. Luckily, many attractions already had

two lines, and guests were given the choice of either the left line or the right line when they entered. A common advice from vacation planners was to always go left, because the majority of people are right handed and thus tended to go right, a phenomenon found outside of Disney’s parks and studied by queuing experts for some time. Some attractions already had a split point, but not until later on in their queue. For instance, Space Mountain at Walt Disney World had a wide single line hallway up to the ramp leading to the main show building. Here,

a railing was added and all guests had to go to the right side, so that Cast Members could walk on the left. This made installing FastPass fairly simple because Disney only needed to extend the railing to the beginning of the queue and build a staircase to the entrance so the left side and the right side remained split the entire time. Reviews from those guests that used FastPass were overwhelmingly positive. On average, guests that utilized the system waited 75% less throughout the day. A few skeptics believed that the system would increase standby waits significantly throughout the

park. Laval responded to this concern saying quote, “It’s only a problem if they don’t self-select. The only challenge has been getting people to understand FastPass.” He added that quote, “People go on to what you might consider the secondary attractions in that area of the ride they have the Fastpass for. We found that these were typically attractions that they didn’t go on before because they were spending too much time in line. This does increase rides per capita by backfilling less-attended attractions.” FastPass also had the potential in certain situations to reduce standby wait times because it altered

the arrival rate of popular attractions. By giving guests return windows, it spread out arrivals more evenly throughout the day, flattening the mid-day rush and reducing standby waits during this peak period. Those that loved FastPass argued that the system should be added to all of the rides in the park. Dale Stafford, VP of Operations Planning and Development for Walt Disney World believed that this was not practical, saying quote, “If you did it everywhere, you wouldn't have enough space in the park. Where would everyone go?” One year after FastPass was introduced, both guests and Disney officials were

confident in labeling the program a massive success. Eisner said quote, “They now have more time to spend money and to do other things. They’re also a lot happier not having to wait in line.” In August of 2000, FastPass was recognized by the Florida Engineering Society and was awarded a 2000 Governor’s New Product Award. Laval said quote, “FastPass continues to exceed our guest expectations. It’s a free service and it’s making their time in the parks more fun and productive.” Laval retired in 2000 after 30 years with the company, with FastPass being his last major project. Perhaps

the greatest success of FastPass was the name. It was catchy and concise, so much so that it immediately became a household name and a colloquialism for any sort of expedited line. It also pushed other parks to develop their own expedited queue systems and it even inspired a hit song. “‘cause if you like it then you shoulda got a Fastpass. If you like it then you shoulda gotta Fastpass. Don’t you hate on me because you came in last. If you like it then you shoulda gotta Fastpass. Oh oh oh. Oh oh oh oh oh. Oh oh

oh oh.” It was not long until touring experts started to learn best practices for the FastPass system. For instance, guests still needed to arrive earlier in the day to receive FastPasses with optimal return times. If a guest arrived at the park’s opening they could receive a FastPass with a return window only an hour away. However, by mid-day, many FastPasses return times could be four to five hours in the future, and on busier days, FastPasses for popular attractions would run out by 1 or 2 o’clock in the afternoon. While the system itself worked well, there were

a few issues. One was the decision to not allow guests to receive another FastPass until their return window arrived. This left many guests upset when they went to get a FastPass for an attraction only to realize that the return window was hours away and they could not get another FastPass until then. The solution to this was allowing guests to receive an additional FastPass 2 hours after receiving their initial one. Some less than honest guests found that they could simply keep their FastPasses from previous days or trips and reuse them over and over again. To combat

this, Disney changed the design of FastPass tickets to more clearly show the date, although this did not entirely curb the practice. Others found ways to best the system to get as many FastPasses as possible. Guests found that some attractions did not communicate with the rest of the park’s computers, so if they were to get a FastPass from one of these rogue attractions, they would not communicate that the guest already held a FastPass and they could therefore obtain another. FastPass kiosks were also used in creative ways. For instance, guests obtaining a FastPass for Who Wants to

be a Millionaire Play It! might have received a special ticket inviting them to sit in one of the special contestant seats at the attraction. Sometimes the kiosks were used to direct people to other attractions by giving them a bonus FastPass, such as The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh which sometimes dispensed bonus FastPasses for Mickey’s Philharmagic. On February 17th, 2003, the 100th Million FastPass was distributed to the Dillon family of Atlanta, who were given a special Golden FastPass that allowed them FastPass access to all attractions at the resort. Mike Dillon said quote, “Things like this

don’t happen to the Dillons.” On a particularly stormy night in the year 1871, Jebediah Dillon stowed away on a cargo ship named the Queen Marge, which would soon navigate the tumultuous waters of the Atlantic Ocean, bound for the… whoa, think I lost my thread there. Sorry about that. Where was I? By 2003, FastPass had grown significantly to 263 attractions at Walt Disney World. Five at Animal Kingdom, Six at Disney-MGM, Five at Epcot, and Ten at Magic Kingdom. Disneyland Resort now had a total of 16 FastPass attractions, 9 at Disneyland and 7 at California Adventure. The

significant increase in FastPass attractions was due less to logistics and more to the monetary benefits of the system. During the late 90s and early 2000s, Paul Pressler, the chairman of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, had instituted drastic cost cutting measures, slashing budgets across the board to increase profits. At the same time, Pressler, whose background was in retail, dramatically increased the amount of shopping and merchandise carts throughout the parks. FastPass was a quick fix in many ways. Not only did the system promise to get guests out of line and into gift shops, but FastPass itself could

be marketed far and wide as if it were a new attraction, during a time when Disney didn’t have anything else to promote. For a period of time in the mid-2000s, FastPass was used as a perk for vacation packages, namely once booked through Triple A, which allowed guests access to what was referred to as Enhanced FastPass, which removed the 2 hour limit on guests tickets, allowing them to obtain as many FastPasses as available, with the only restriction being that they could not receive multiple passes for the same attraction until the first pass for that attraction had

expired. With this, guests could enter Disneyland Park in the morning, obtain a FastPass for every FastPass attraction in the park, exit Disneyland Park, walk over to California Adventure, obtain a FastPass for every FastPast attraction at that park, and now holding, 16 FastPasses, have the best day ever, with the only downside being that they now have to experience seven attractions at a mid-2000s California Adventure. The over-implementation of FastPass did exactly what Stafford had predicted, and walkways at the park were more congested than ever. This was especially noticeable at Disneyland which is a much smaller park in

comparison to the Magic Kingdom. The park was designed to have people waiting in line, but now, with most attractions using FastPass, guests found themselves wading through a sea of people, all waiting for their return time to arrive. Also, standby waits for high-capacity attractions, such as Pirates of the Caribbean and Haunted Mansion, were noticeably increased with FastPass, In 2002, Paul Pressler resigned to model for the Gap, where he would also serve as CEO. He was replaced by the Chairman of Disneyland Paris, Jay Rasulo. When Rasulo and other management took over, they reevaluated Disneyland’s FastPass system, determining

that the best solution was to begin removing FastPasses from certain attractions. At Disneyland, Pirates of the Caribbean, Winnie the Pooh, and Star Tours had its FastPass kiosks removed, and Haunted Mansion’s FastPass would only be utilized for Haunted Mansion Holiday. In California Adventure, It’s Tough to be a Bug and MuppetVision had their FastPasses removed as well. Eventually, the Haunted Mansion at the Magic Kingdom would have its FastPass removed as well. While FastPass worked well on some rides and did increase customer satisfaction significantly, the over implementation within the first few years of its debut seemed to be

clear proof that it was a bad idea to put FastPass everywhere. It is now September of 2007. It has been two years since Bob Iger became the CEO of Disney after an embattled Michael Eisner resigned, FastPass has just turned eight years old, and Jay Rasulo is still heading the parks division. It has also been recently announced that Disney was patenting a technology that would utilize a centralized computer system to manage FastPass tickets throughout Walt Disney World and Disneyland, allowing guests to obtain FastPasses from their mobile devices, which at the time looked like this, so most

of the plans relied on sending text messages to guests. The patent application also stated that the new system could allow quote “spending per guest at hotels” to determine hierarchies of access to Fastpass. Disney stated publicly they had no plans to change FastPass at the moment, merely that they were monitoring how to take advantage of technological developments. However, within the company, executives were formulating plans for a massive project in complete secrecy. In 2007, Jay Rasulo and four other senior Disney Parks officials formed an exploratory committee to determine how the ongoing technological revolution could reinvent the guest

experience. Like Walt Disney and Imagineers in the 1960s and like Bruce Laval in the 1990s, discussions once again centered on how to improve crowd control and wait times. The group was exploring multiple concepts when one member had an epiphany. While on a flight, VP of Business Development John Padgett was browsing through the in-flight magazine, SkyMall, when he came across a magnetic wristband that promised to improve balance and reduce joint pain. This was of course a scam, but it gave Padgett an idea. What if Disney Parks guests had their own wristband that contained technology that they

could use around the park. It would be like a magic wristband, so naturally, they called it the experience Band, or xBand for short. The team opened a testing space for the xBand in the abandoned Body Wars attraction in the Wonders of Life Pavilion at Epcot. After an ideation phase, Disney CEO Bob Iger was given a tour where the team explained their idea for the xBand. The proposal was to house an RFID tag inside the band that would allow guests to interact with touch points throughout the park. The xBand could act as guest’s park tickets or

their hotel room keys. They could even use it as a credit card. When Iger was shown the technology, he was impressed enough to give the project a proper budget. In 2008, development officially began on Disney NextGen Experience, an initiative that promised to bring the guest experience into the modern age. This encompassed multiple strategies, ranging from reinventing the way guests order food at the parks to experimenting with different queue-types to increase guest enjoyment while in line. Perhaps the most ambitious part of NextGen was MyMagic Plus, a complete overhaul of Walt Disney World’s technological infrastructure and the

introduction of a new website and mobile application. “Ever wish you could have the magic of the parks right at your fingertips” Wait, what is this? “Thanks to Disney Parks... This is not MyMagic Plus I don’t know what this is. “Introducing Mobile Magic. A magical app that will turn your Verizon mobile phone ” Ugh. Exclusive to Verizon? “...super easy to use. Just touch characters. Look, Mickey… Ahh. Oh gosh, I forgot about this. Ok, so real quick, in 2009, Disney and Verizon partnered on a new mobile app named Mobile Magic, that allowed guests to see a map

of the park, view showtimes, and play trivia for $9.99 every 180 days, geez. And you had to send a text message to download the app? Ugh. Most impressive, the app allowed users to view wait times and FastPass return times from their phone, with real time information from the park’s computer system. They could not book or view their FastPasses from the app, but this was still a powerful tool for the time, and it had a valuable feature. Guests could now balk at an attraction’s wait time from the other side of the park. Understanding the power the

app had over guest decisions, Disney began to inflate posted wait times to point guests in certain directions. For instance, if there were too many people in Tomorrowland, Space Mountain’s posted wait time might be adjusted to 90 minutes despite the actual wait only being 60, in order to dissuade guests from visiting the crowded area of the park. This also served the additional function of improving guest satisfaction, as actual waits were almost always shorter than posted waits, and giving ride operators a buffer in the event of delays or downtime. It is unclear when this strategy began, but

it would become an integral part of MyMagic+’s crowd control features when the new app launched. In November of 2009, two years into the development of Next Gen Experience, it was announced that Jay Rasulo would become the CFO of the Walt Disney Company, switching places with then CFO Tom Staggs, who would be taking Rasulo’s position as the head of the Disney Parks. The switch was Iger’s decision, and it was done to see which executive adjusted better to their new role. This was a way to help Iger determine his successor, as he planned to retire from the

company in 2015. Staggs was inheriting the NextGen program and MyMagic+, and the pressure was immediately on for him to deliver on the team’s plans, which had only become more ambitious. Not only did the NextGen team want to reinvent park tickets and hotel keys, they wanted to completely overhaul FastPass as well. The new system would be titled XPass, and it was the key feature of NextGen’s Guaranteed Experience initiative. The philosophy behind Guaranteed Experiences was to increase customer satisfaction and guest retention at the resort by removing unwanted variability in vacations. The program sought to ensure that guests

would be able to eat at their favorite restaurant and ride their favorite rides during their vacation. This is where XPass came in. Guests would now be able to book multiple FastPasses before they arrived at the park, and rather than using paper tickets, they would use their xBands to enter the expedited queue. In late 2011, news broke on XPass, mainly focusing on a rumor that FastPass would cost money. People took that great, but despite the uproar, the rumor turned out to not be true, at least not entirely. FastPass would still be available to everyone, but priority

access would be given to those staying at a Walt Disney World resort hotel. The plan was for guests to be able to book between 2 and 4 FastPasses before they arrived. The specific number would be different for each park and would vary based on attendance. On the busiest days at Magic Kingdom, guests would only be allowed to book 3 Fastpasses, but on most days, they would be able to book 4. However, at Epcot, which had significantly less attractions, guests would only get to book 2 FastPasses on busy days, while most days they would get to

book 3. The times for the reservations would be determined by guest preferences. Guests would input which attractions they wanted to ride, and an itinerary would be created with FastPasses to optimize guest flow throughout the park. When paired with the rest of the NextGen technology, this had the potential to radically redesign crowd control. There was just one problem. Actually there were a thousand problems, but this was one of them. XPass sought to offer multiple FastPasses to the majority of guests before their arrival. The problem was there were not enough FastPasses available at the resort’s FastPass attractions

to do this. In the original FastPass system, popular attractions would run out of FastPasses for the day by noon or even before, and that was when people could only obtain one FastPass every two hours. Since FastPass already took up the majority of a ride’s capacity, and most rides at Walt Disney World were already operating at maximum capacity, it was not feasible to simply give out more FastPasses for these rides. When the industrial engineers ran models for XPass, it became apparent that there was not enough FastPass availability at the parks to make the system work. The

engineers quickly realized that in order to offer multiple FastPasses to guests before they arrived, they would need to add FastPass to nearly every attraction at the resort. The total number of FastPass attractions at Walt Disney World would increase from 28 to 50. When the industrial engineers put the increased FastPass availability into the model, it still didn’t work. Even with an additional 22 attractions, there were still numerous days throughout the year where FastPass availability would be gone before a significant amount of guests could book all of their passes. To solve this, it was suggested that FastPass

be added not just to every attraction, but also to things that were not typically considered attractions, such as meet and greets with characters. Apparently, this still wasn’t enough, so it was suggested that guests could obtain FastPasses to things that don’t even have lines, such as firework shows or parades. Rather than skipping the line, special viewing areas would be created for these experiences and guests could book a FastPass to gain access to them. Finally, this increased, or more accurately inflated, the amount of FastPasses that could be offered, which helped support the idea to offer multiple FastPasses

to guests before they arrived. With the basic framework figured out, plans moved forward on XPass as NextGen and MyMagic+ continued to develop. In February of 2011, the Walt Disney Company’s Board of Directors approved MyMagic+ with a budget of around $1 billion. Iger reportedly sternly told Staggs, “This better work.” Which became a mantra for the entire team. Staggs was under enormous pressure to deliver on a project that didn’t really make the parks or Disney money. “Now when I put this in, does money immediately begin flowing out of my checking account?” “If it’s working correctly, yes. Yes.”

“Yeah.” In a shocking twist, most of the rhetoric surrounding NextGen and MyMagic+ internally was not about the potential profit from the system. Those developing the new technology and even much of the executive team, believed in the more altruistic benefits of the program. The ability to guarantee experiences for vacationers, to simplify the experience of visiting the resort, to improve traffic flow and crowd control at the parks, to create an IT infrastructure that could be built on over the coming decades, even to make Cast Members jobs easier so they could focus more on providing great interactions with

guests. These were the key components of the pitch. This is not to say that there were not some ulterior motives. Disney definitely wanted to impress with the program to establish themselves as a major player in the tech space, but this did not create a clear path to generate income. Apart from the new digital PhotoPass system, which had direct monetary benefits, the revenue that the billion dollar MyMagic+ overhaul would generate was almost entirely theoretical. Maybe guests would think less about their purchases when using their xBands which would then lead to more spending. Maybe the novelty of

the xBand would encourage more people to stay at Walt Disney World resorts which would increase revenue. Maybe the data collected from everyone’s xBands and account profiles could be leveraged in ways to increase spending. Maybe a few Cast Member positions could be automated with the system which would save money. Maybe the traffic flow improvements would be so great that more guests could fit into the park? And the biggest maybe that the entire project was predicated on, maybe MyMagic+ would create such a wonderful experience for our guests that they would be more likely to return and more

likely to recommend that others visit. Sure, the end goal was to increase revenue, but Disney’s focus was on improving the guest experience, and hoping that the money would come as a result. This optimistic and almost quaint approach seemed to be at odds with the $1 billion dollar price tag, but Iger, Staggs, Rasulo and other executives believed in the program enough to keep it going. Others throughout Disney had a much different opinion, which quickly led to infighting. Disney hired multiple tech contractors to manufacture and deliver much of the MyMagic+ technology, and it was an open secret

in the tech industry that they hired subpar firms that saw the project as a cash cow, over charging and under delivering. These firms also did not get along with the park’s IT team, especially when major issues were found with implementation. Walt Disney Imagineering was not all in on the MyMagic+ technology either. The parks hoped that the Imagineers would take advantage of the Magic Band technology to deliver unique experiences in attractions, but Imagineering viewed the xBand’s as a gimmick, and a risky one at that. Plus, placing xBand readers throughout the park’s lands so that guests could

redeem FastPasses clashed with the theming. Imagineer Joe Rohde said, “If I’m supposed to be living with fairies, fairies don’t have iPhones or MagicBands.” The Imagineers ended up barely integrating the xBands into new attractions, with EPCOT’s Test Track being one of the only real benefactors. “What’s FastPass+ you ask? Come on, I’ll Show you. It makes your stay a treat. Reserve that meet and greet. Come on, get it now. Make your trip go wow. It’s sweet.” That is technically my second favorite FastPass parody song, but it’s really not even a competition. In January of 2013, Disney officially

announced the creation of MyMagic+, along with the introduction of new high tech wristbands, now renamed to Magic Bands. XPass was also announced, renamed to FastPass Plus. The system had been altered slightly, and it would allow guests to book three FastPasses in advance. This static number applied to all four parks rather than XPass’s proposed dynamic system. As rumored, guests staying at Walt Disney World resort hotels would get early access to FastPasses. Hotel guests would be able to book their Fastpasses 60 days in advance while everyone else could book 30 days in advance. When guests went to

book their FastPasses, they were given a list of attractions that had FastPass available. They then selected three of them, no more, no less. If the guests didn’t select three, the system picked two at random. After the selections were made, the computer would intelligently create multiple itineraries that guests could choose from. After this, guests could still edit the selections, either by changing the time of the FastPass reservation or by selecting another attraction within the initial attraction’s time frame. FastPasses were now redeemed with MagicBands or guests park tickets, but during the initial rollout, paper FastPass kiosks would

still be available. MyMagic+ was introduced in phases throughout 2013 and early 2014 and issues with the system were immediate, apparent, and overwhelming. Reportedly, those on the rollout team and IT pleaded to executives to pull the plug, as the tech was making operations much worse, to which executives essentially responded, “We know, but we’re in too deep.” Spotty Wifi, malfunctioning MagicBand readers, website crashes, an at times unusable mobile app, and many more issues plagued the system and thus the resort. There are too many issues with MyMagic+ to discuss, but if you’re curious here are a few. The

biggest disappointment with the system was that the tech was so broken that it was never able to take the guest experience to the next level. At best, it worked, but it never impressed in the ways that the team had hoped, and many of the more ambitious plans for the technology, such as leveraging data to give guests recommendations or even being able to communicate to Cast Members via MagicBands that it was a guests birthday, could never be implemented, because IT was too busy keeping the entire system afloat to ever have time to take it to the

next step. Most damning, by and large, Cast Members hated it, and it made many positions much more frustrating to work at. It automated few if any jobs, and because of the issues, Disney had to triple the size of its customer support department. Despite all of the issues, Disney publicly labeled MyMagic+ a success, and Staggs even said that thanks to the system’s ability to distribute guests more evenly throughout the parks, Magic Kingdom’s maximum capacity was increased by 5000 people, although it is unclear whether this has anything to do with the New Fantasyland expansion that also debuted

around this time. Staggs was determined to be the winner of Iger’s competition, and Rasulo stepped down from CFO in 2015 while Staggs was promoted to Chief Operating Officer, with Bob Chapek, the president of Disney’s consumer products division, was promoted to head the parks. Stags would leave the company the following year, with no confirmed reason for his departure. Overall, My Magic+ and MagicBands streamlined the guest experience as much as it stalled it. Some guests loved it, some guests hated it, and others simply didn’t care. In many ways, the introduction of the technology was a wash. A

$1 billion wash. But what about the new program’s headlining feature, FastPass Plus? By the end of its life in 2014, the original paper FastPass system was still operating off of a Windows software from the late 90s, so the update in technology, as buggy as it could be, was definitely a welcome one, but FastPass Plus was much more than its touch points. It was an entirely new system, and like the original FastPass, it was a huge learning curve for guests. The new system could only be accessed on the website, on the My Disney Experience app, or

with a Cast Member at one of the FastPass kiosks set up throughout the park. During the initial roll out, this led to huge lines for the FastPass+ kiosks, or to put it another way, there was a line to get the pass to skip the lines. While guests adjusted to the new system, the system itself was undergoing constant adjustment. In November of 2013, Epcot and Hollywood Studios transitioned to a tiered FastPass+ system, in which the park’s most popular attractions were separated from the rest and only one popular attraction could be held at a time. In February

of 2014, the transition to FastPass+ was complete and all paper FastPass kiosks were removed from the park. Rumoredly, the speed of the transition was part of an effort to force guest adoption of the new technology to prove its efficacy. Two months later, the system was altered once again to allow guests to receive additional FastPasses after they redeemed their first three. Once guests redeemed their third FastPass for the day, they could go to a FastPass Plus kiosk and choose one additional pass. After they redeemed this additional one, they could select another, and repeat the process until

the end of the day. The next major change would not come until mid-2016, when the itinerary system was dropped, and now guests had to choose each of their FastPass times themselves. This also removed the three initial FastPass rule, allowing guests to select only one or two FastPasses without forcing them to start with three. Finally, guests could now choose their additional FastPasses from the My Disney Experience app rather than only at the kiosks. It would not be until 2017 that Disneyland would update their FastPass system. Rumordely, Disneyland was set to receive MyMagic+, MagicBands, FastPass Plus, and

all, but the major issues with the system resulted in the expansion being cancelled. Instead, Disneyland would receive an entirely different system called MaxPass. For $10 a day, visitors could book FastPasses from their phone, except they could only do so when inside the park. Like paper FastPass, users could only receive one FastPass at a time, unable to receive additional passes until the first return window had arrived or 90 minutes after the initial pass was booked. The system received mixed reviews upon announcement, but after installation, many warmed up to it, believing that MaxPass was superior to FastPass

Plus, which by this point, was the subject of a heated debate. FastPass Plus was a divisive program, and many had strong opinions on it. There are pros and cons to the system, so I’d like to take this moment to examine the biggest ones. Before we get into this, I want to mention that we will not be discussing or factoring in other ways guests are able to cut the line, such as with tour guides or the Guest Assistance Program. These systems have their own complex histories during this period that, while interesting and important, are not factored

into this list or this discussion on FastPass in general. That said, here are some of the pros and cons to FastPass Plus. Pro #1 You get to skip the line more. Obviously. Pro #2 Improved traffic flow throughout the park. One of the biggest downsides to the original FastPass was that guests had to travel to an attraction’s entrance to obtain a paper FastPass just to return to the same location when it was time to ride. This backtracking was causing major traffic flow issues, so allowing guests to make reservations from their phone eliminated this unnecessary foot traffic.

Plus, it was more convenient for guests. Pro #3 Reduction in length of stay. As park attendance climbed through the early 2000s, FastPasses for major attractions ran out earlier in the day, so in turn, guests arrived earlier in the day, resulting in more people arriving in the morning and staying for longer, which increased the amount of people in each park. With FastPass Plus, guests would know three of their FastPass reservations before arriving, which would encourage guests that had FastPasses for later in the day, not to arrive until later, thus relieving morning and mid-day crowds. Plus, guests

no longer had to wake up early to rope drop FastPasses, allowing for a more relaxing vacation. Con #1 Irrelevant FastPasses. In the mad dash to add as many attractions to the FastPass system, the implementation of certain attractions were less thought out than others. For instance, FastPasses for Monsters Inc Laugh Floor and MuppetVision 3D rarely saved guests any time, as these attractions were theater shows that held guests in large waiting areas before the next showing. Guests who had FastPasses for these types of attractions soon learned that all their FastPass did was give them a different entrance

to the same giant room where they had to wait with other guests. Con #2 Long FastPass Lines. Many using FastPass Plus reported waiting longer after redeeming their FastPass than they did with the original FastPass system. The original intention of FastPass was for guests to wait no more than fifteen minutes before boarding, but with FastPass+, guests were now having to wait over half an hour at certain points. This was in part due to the fact that FastPass plus was basically guaranteeing that an attraction would be operating sixty days in advance. As previously explained, paper FastPass had

a built-in response to downtimes, or at the very least a ride operator could throw a bunch of FastPasses in the trash to give operations some wiggle room. This was much more difficult with FastPass+, when an attraction went down, it might have already had an entire day's worth of FastPasses distributed. If the downtime was significant, anyone with FastPasses during the downtime were given an any-use FastPass with which they could use on any ride they chose, which backed up FastPass lines at other attractions throughout the park. If the ride was delayed but did not completely shut down,

this caused a backup in the FastPass line for that ride. When there was a backup, the FastPass to Standby ratio had to be altered to get the FastPass line under control. This was the same compensation plan as paper FastPass, but the new system seemed to be disbursing any use FastPasses much more frequently, leading to Disney to eventually put limits on these passes. Con #3. The FastPass to Standby Ratio. We have yet to discuss the FastPass to Standby ratio in detail. It is no secret that of the two lines, the FastPass line was given priority over

the standby line. In fact, that’s the whole point. The question is how much was FastPass favored over standby. There is no definitive answer to this, because it was different for every attraction and ultimately up to the Cast Member stationed at the merge point. Bruce Laval recounted that this was the most difficult position to train, and it was the key position to getting the original FastPass system to work. This Cast Member not only had to keep the attraction’s ratio steady, but they had to manage the expectations and frustrations of two very different lines of people experiencing

two very different waits. The FastPass to standby ratio cited on the original FastPass patent was 80/20, or in other words, for every four FastPass guests, 1 standby guest was let through. This is consistent with Cast Member and guest recollections of the system at the time. The 4 to 1 ratio remained standard after the transition to FastPass Plus, but with backups occurring much more frequently, Cast Members at merge points had to modify the FastPass to Standby disparity more often. There were three phases Cast Members had to go through. Phase 1 was standard operating procedure with a

4:1 ratio. If there was a backup in the FastPass line, Cast Members would go to Phase 2, which was a 20:1 ratio, and if the backup was significant enough, Phase 3 would be initiated, which was for every 1 standby guest, 100 FastPass guests were let through. Once the FastPass line was under control, Cast Members would return to Phase 1, but the disparity of Phase 2 and 3 was infuriating to guests waiting in the standby queue, which during these phases would almost completely stop. There was also a psychological gamble to FastPass. Disney was banking on the

idea that guests would not remember the three or four times they were cut in line, they would just remember the one time they got to cut the line. This seemed to pay off, but they were also working against another issue with the psychology of queueing. Now that FastPass was slowing down the standby line, the pace at which guests moved through the queue was much slower. In most cases, people prefer to spend 20 minutes walking at a steady pace rather than spend 20 minutes standing still, but the latter was now happening frequently on FastPass attractions. In

the pre-FastPass days, lines often stretched out of an attraction’s dedicated queue, but it is important to remember that back then, these lines were moving three, four or five times as fast. With FastPass, guests found that the amount of people waiting in the standby line was less than before, despite the wait being the same or longer. Con #4 FastPass Availability After guests became accustomed to the FastPass+ system, it didn’t take long for them to figure out the best ways to use it. In turn, FastPass availability was running out extremely fast for popular rides. Practically every day

of the year, popular attractions would run out of FastPass availability completely before the day of operation. This was the case for 5 attractions at the Magic Kingdom, 3 at EPCOT, 3 at Hollywood Studios, 2 at Animal Kingdom, and 4 meet and greets throughout the resort. This meant that nearly 17 experiences were out of FastPasses before guests even arrived to the park. This prompted Disney to hold back a small amount of FastPasses until the day-of, where they would then drop these held-back passes at different points throughout the day. This also gave them the option to not

drop these additional passes at all if the attraction was experiencing downtime. Still, unless a guest got lucky and snagged a FastPass during one of these random drops or after another guest modified or cancelled theirs, if they wanted a FastPass for a popular ride, they had to plan in advance. Which leads me to Pro #4 and Con #5, Planning. Many people love planning their Disney trips, and do a lot of research and groundwork beforehand. MyMagic Plus and FastPass Plus significantly increased the amount of planning necessary to have a consistently good experience at Walt Disney World. FastPass

Plus was supposed to give guests the option to plan their trip in advance, but in practice, the system forced guests to plan their trip in advance or risk not getting to experience the most popular attractions without an extreme standby wait time. Hotel guests could book an entire trip's worth of FastPasses 60 days out from their check-in date. This allowed some guests to book as many as 70 days in advance, resulting in certain attractions like Slinky Dog Dash at Hollywood Studios and Flight of Passage at Animal Kingdom running out of FastPasses even before the 60-day mark.

Securing these FastPasses practically became a sport, and everyone had tips and tricks to snag those passes. “Alright, so we’re going to start with prep you need to do beforehand. So you get three FastPass+ reservations per day.” “So once you hit the 60 day mark from your first night at your hotel, you can actually go on and book FastPasses for the whole length of your stay.” “Start with the last day of your vacation first.” “So the further out you can make it, the more likely you are able to get it. Also, if you take a longer

trip, you are more likely to get it too, so if you need an excuse to take a longer trip, there you have it.” “So, on my 60 mark day, I log on to My Disney Experience and I can start making FastPass selections at 7am eastern standard time. Or 6am central standard time, which is where I live.” “Because you want to make sure that you are logged in about 5 minutes before your FastPass window opens.” “If at all possible, book them early in the day, that way you can get different FastPasses for different parks later in

the day.” “You save that first hour of the day to ride some of the smaller rides, but then you try to set up your three FastPasses as soon as possible after that hour as close as possible together.” “I have filled in a vague idea of what I want to do.” ”I make a FastPass+ list with all of the days, times and rides I’m hoping to reserve.” “All it takes is some luck. That is a huge part of it. Please do not be thinking that this is like a super guarantee.” “So I guarantee you, by the

time your 30 day window comes up for off property guests...” “Flight of Passage...” “Flight of Passage…” “Gone.” “Slinky Dog.” “Gone.” “Seven Dwarfs.” “Gone.” “Keep checking the app. Seriously, keep refreshing, refreshing, refreshing. Last minute FastPasses pop up all the time.” “You’ll be able to click hour by hour and if you just keep clicking hour by hour it will reload and reload and reload and reload. That’s called ‘pounding the app’ by seasoned veterans of Walt Disney World.” “And there are also tickets that are available like after 5pm tickets. What you can do is buy these tickets and

essentially, what that gains you is three extra FastPasses. And I would put this under a dummy name and then what you can do is use it again the next day because you never enter the park with it.” Some savvy guests that knew how to use the system loved the new FastPass, and the extra planning was a welcome activity, adding even more anticipation to their upcoming trip while also guaranteeing certain experiences during it. Others knew how to use the system, but did so begrudgingly, disliking the overplanning and longing for the days of flexibility. Many more guests

did not know the tips and tricks of the system, and thus missed out on the most valuable FastPasses, leaving them with only one option if they wanted to experience these popular rides. Con #6 Standby By far the biggest complaint with FastPass Plus is the belief that the new system drastically increased wait times throughout the parks. When the system was first introduced, Haunted Mansion and Pirates of the Caribbean, two attractions that did not previously offer paper Fastpass, reported consistently higher wait times. On the other end of the spectrum, Space Mountain and Expedition Everest saw their standby

waits decreased slightly. As the system was fully implemented, standby waits appeared to be longer, and for years, fans have argued back and forth whether or not FastPass increases or decreases standby waits, increases or decreases overall waits, or increases or decreases the amount of attractions a guest can experience in a day. Unfortunately, it is nearly impossible to answer these questions. Statistics like these have not been reported by Disney, and wait times before FastPass were not consistently recorded, and even if they were, it would be unfair for numerous reasons to compare these numbers. Even doing the math

ourselves would be almost impossible. The equations necessary to determine what a virtual queue system such as FastPass does to a theme park is much too complicated for a spreadsheet. In order to answer these questions, we would actually need to create a computer simulation, like one of the one’s Bruce Laval created during his time at the company. Even then, this is no small task. Someone would need to pay an industrial engineer to create a complex computer simulation of a theme park populated with agents, all with unique preferences, riding attractions of varying capacities and run times in

order to compare and contrast wait times, number of rides ridden, and other factors with and without a virtual queue system just to get to the bottom of this ridiculously niche curiosity. Hey everybody I made a theme park in the computer. Welcome to Shapeland, where all the guests are dots, and all the rides are shapes. Here’s how it works. I decide how many people are going to visit the park each day. They then arrive based on an arrival schedule that is similar to that of a real theme park, with most of the guests arriving in the

first few hours of the day, and few guests arriving in the last few hours of the day. From there, each guest independently makes decisions on what they are going to do. To ensure variability, there are seven different archetypes of guests: Ride Enthusiast, Ride Fan, Average Tourist, Activity Fan, Annual Passholder, Entitled Annual Passholder, and Vlogger. Each of these archetypes determines three factors. The first is stay time preference. This dictates how long the guest wants to stay at the park. For instance, the ride enthusiast archetype wants to stay at the park for 9 hours, while the average

tourist archetype only wants to stay around 7 hours. The second factor is balking point. The ride enthusiast has a balking point of four hours, meaning that they refuse to ride a ride that has over a four hour wait. On the other hand, the average tourist refuses to wait more than two hours for a ride. The annual pass holder won’t wait more than thirty minutes, and the vlogger won’t wait more than fifteen. The third factor is attraction preference. This determines whether a guest wants to ride an attraction or do an activity such as eat at a

restaurant or go gift shopping. Obviously, the ride enthusiast much prefers attractions, but the average tourist is more open to doing activities. After a guest enters the park, they will begin flipping coins and rolling dice, weighted based on their own preferences. For instance, this guest’s name is Bernadot. Bernadot is the average tourist. They are open to both attractions and activities, they will only wait around two hours for a ride, and they will stay for seven hours. Once in the park, Bernadot decides whether they want to do an attraction or an activity based on a weighted coin

flip. Let’s say they choose to do an attraction. They then decide which attraction to do. Bernadot’s decision is now based on a weighted die roll. Each attraction in the park has a different popularity ranking, and the more popular the attraction, the more likely it is that Bernadot wants to ride it. Let’s say Bernadot decides to ride Shapeland’s most popular attraction, the Triangle. Since Shapeland is currently operating off of the original FastPass system, Bernadot first looks at the posted standby wait time. If the wait time is under 30 minutes, they join the standby line. If it

is over 30 minutes, Bernadot will check if the attraction has FastPass. If it doesn’t, whether it be because the attraction doesn’t offer it or because there are no more available for the day, Bernadot will make sure that the current standby wait is less than their balking point. If it is, they will join the standby line. If it isn’t, they will go back to the hub and decide to do a different attraction. In the case that the attraction does offer FastPass and still has some available, Bernadot will grab one and be assigned a return time. The

equation that determines Bernadot’s return time is the same one used at the original FastPass kiosks. With their spot in the virtual queue secured, Bernadot can now go back to the hub, and repeat their logic over again, deciding whether to do an attraction or an activity, deciding which attraction or activity to do, but this time, Bernadot ensures that they will still have time to make it back for their FastPass. Bernadot’s stay time preference is 7 hours, so after they have been at the park for seven hours, they will choose to leave and their day at Shapeland

will be finished. This same logical and preference based progression is repeated for every single guest in the park over the course of the operating day. At the end of each run, the simulation gives me a plethora of data to comb through. Almost everything in my simulation is dynamic. I can change the number of attractions, attraction capacity, runtime, popularity, and whether each individual attraction has FastPass or not. I can change the behavior archetypes, the park’s arrival schedule, and even how many guests are able to utilize the FastPass system. The simulation is by no means perfect and

there are many factors that it does not take into account, such as these… I ran the simulation three times. One with no FastPass, one with original paper FastPass, and one with a system that simulates FastPass+ to the best of the simulation’s ability. More info on that here. So after obtaining and organizing the results, some fascinating patterns emerged. First, let’s discuss what results we will be looking at. Whenever discussing the pros and cons of Fastpass, three factors always seem to emerge: Standby Wait Times, Overall Wait Times, and Average Number of Attractions Ridden. Thanks to Shapeland, we

finally have answers as to how virtual queue systems affect these results when all other factors remain constant. Let’s first examine Standby Wait Times. These are the average standby waits for Shapeland’s 10 attractions throughout a 12 hour operating day, when there is no FastPass implemented throughout the park. As you can see, we still get huge waits. The triangle has a wait of over three hours, because everyone wants to ride the triangle. There are two rides, the square and the circle that have one hour waits. While the Hexagon and Octagon have no waits and are typically walk

ons. Let’s see what happens when we add FastPass to the three most popular attractions and operate the park with the original paper FastPass system. Wait times increase for every single attraction. The Triangle’s average standby wait increases by 15 minutes, the Hexagon is no longer a walk-on, but the Octagon still is. Now let’s simulate FastPass+. Again, every wait time increases, except for one. The standby wait for the most popular ride, the Triangle, is 20 minutes less than with the original FastPass system, and 5 minutes less than with no FastPass. The reason for this is clear when

you look at the wait times throughout the rest of the park. The Octagon, which was a walk-on with both no FastPass and the original FastPass system, now has a fifteen minute wait. The oval has jumped from a 5 minute wait with no FastPass to a 35 minute wait under FastPass Plus. Hexagon, which was a walk-on with no FastPass, now has an hour wait with FastPass Plus. This pattern can be seen throughout the park when Fastpass+ is added. It is safe to say that overall that both FastPass and especially FastPass+ increases standby wait times throughout a

park. The average standby wait with no FastPass was 41 minutes. With FastPass+, it is now 67 minutes. If FastPass was completely removed from the Walt Disney World parks, wait times would almost certainly decrease. But this is not the full story, because many guests aren’t waiting in the standby line. They are skipping them. Let’s now examine the average overall wait. This takes into account both the guests waiting in standby and the guests waiting between 5 and 15 minutes in the FastPass line. For our purposes, we’re not considering the time in between guests obtaining their FastPass and

redeeming it as part of their wait. While in the original FastPass system, guests are technically waiting during this period, their ability to multitask would throw off these calculations, resulting in some guests being able to wait more hours than there are in the day, and it would make FastPass look like it increased waits for everybody, which is not fair to the system. Also, with FastPass Plus, how would you even do this? Did this guy wait 60 days to ride Seven Dwarfs, I guess technically but that might throw things off a bit. Anyways, The average posted wait

in Shapeland with no FastPass is 41 minutes, so if a guest did every attraction in the park in a single day, their average wait per ride would be 41 minutes. However, few guests actually do this, and most gravitate toward the popular attractions, so Shapeland guests actually find themselves waiting on average, 58 minutes per attraction. With the original paper FastPass, the average posted standby wait was 48 minutes. but the overall average wait when factoring in both guests' standby line decisions and those skipping the line entirely with FastPass, was only 40 minutes. 18 minutes less than without

Fastpass. But how is this possible? As we’ve discussed, service rate or capacity is determined mainly by design and operation, and it’s nearly impossible to increase an attraction’s maximum capacity after it’s been constructed. You can’t safely put more ride cars on Space Mountain or make it go faster, it wasn’t designed for that. So when we add paper FastPass to Shapeland, Shapeland’s top rides such as the triangle and the square see little to no increase in the number of riders, because they are already serving their maximum number of guests. However, other rides at Shapeland are not operating

at maximum capacity. The reason for the increase in the average amount of rides ridden goes back to what Bruce Laval claimed about FastPass backfilling less attended attractions, and it brings up a new concept within queuing. We know about how capacity and arrival rate can affect a wait time in different ways, but we have not discussed is the concept of a negative wait time. Now a wait time cannot be negative in the sense that you can get time back. For instance, I can’t ever give you back the time you’ve wasted watching this video. What I mean

by negative wait time is that when attraction is not filling it’s capacity, it is losing capacity. Look at this way. Let’s say a ride has a capacity of 1000 guests per hour, but only 500 people per hour ride it. It could be considered that this attraction has a wait time of negative 30 minutes, meaning that 30 minutes worth of people, in this case 500, could show up throughout the hour, and the attraction’s wait would still be 0 minutes, because these additional guests are merely filling empty seats on the ride. You might recall that this was

one of the problems with the original reservation-based system pitch in the mid-90s. If a guest missed their reservation, they leave an empty seat, and thus the attraction lost capacity. FastPass not only avoids this problem, but it actually helps other attractions at the park. Without FastPass, 1900 guests rode the Octagon, with paper FastPass, 4800 guests rode the Octagon, an increase of over 150%, but the average posted wait time never breaks 0, because these people are filling empty seats, and increasing the capacity of the ride. This explains why with FastPass, despite most attractions' standby waits rising, guests

on average waited less, because unlike with no FastPass, guests were actively being pushed to attractions with zero waits, which dropped the average overall wait per attraction. However, with FastPass Plus, this 0 wait threshold is broken in most cases, as with the Octagon, which previously went from a walk-on to an average of a 15 minute wait. The average standby wait in Shapeland with FastPass Plus is 67 minutes, but the overall average wait per attraction was 42 minutes. This is interesting, because while more people are skipping the line more often than with the original FastPass, the rise

in standby waits throughout the park are so significant that there is no change to the overall wait. In fact, the average overall wait per attraction with paper FastPass was 2 minutes less than FastPass Plus. FastPass does reduce average overall wait times by encouraging guests to go to underutilized attractions, so long as those exist. Finally, let’s look at the average number of attractions ridden, and if you’ve been paying attention, you should already know the answer to this. In the park with no FastPass, guests ride an average of 3.31 rides, but really the distribution looks like this.

22% of guests ride 2 rides, 21% ride 3, 16% ride 4, and the percentage declines from there. You can also see that around 13% of guests only ride 1 ride and 3% ride none. These are mostly people that favor activities and have a limited amount of time in the park. When the original Fastpass system is added, the amount of attraction ridden increases, going from 3.31 to 3.77. With FastPass+, we again see an increase, jumping to an average of 4.23 rides per guest per day. On average almost every single guest gets to ride one additional ride

with the new system. This is significant and proves FastPass+ merit as a tool for guest distribution, but it’s not the full story. This is the distribution graph we viewed early for when Shapeland has no FastPass implemented. This is what it looks like with FastPass+, when the average amount of attractions ridden increases from 3.31 to 4.23, assuming that the distribution is even and the system is fair to all guests. However, that is not FastPass+. This is the actual distribution graph for Shapeland under FastPass+. As you can see, more people experience less attractions, and more people experience

a lot more attractions, while less people are able to do what could be considered a reasonable amount of attractions, in this case 3 to 7 in a single day. With FastPass+, more guests are able to experience 8, 9, 10, 11 and someone found out how to do 39 rides in a day. These are people that got FastPasses for long waits like the Triangle and spent most of their time riding shorter waits like the Octagon, over and over again. Meanwhile, the amount of people riding only 2, 1, or even 0 attractions is up from no FastPass

and is far more than in the ideal FastPass+ distribution. This is because the waits for rides like the Triangle, Square and Circle are so long that if a guest chose to wait in it, they don’t have time to do anything else. Other guests want to ride rides, but they don’t want to wait over an hour, so if they enter during mid-day, they instead choose to eat a meal, gift shop, and then leave because the waits are so high throughout the park. So yes, FastPass and FastPass+ increases the average amount of attractions ridden per guest per

day. It’s a system that pushes people to go fill empty seats around the park, and as a guest distribution tool, FastPass and FastPass+ works. But in practice, from a guest perspective, the system benefits those that use the system and know how to use it well, while those that don’t use it or don’t know how to use it well, have it much worse than they did before. So at this point, your mid to late 2010s trip to Walt Disney World might have some additional context. Perhaps you even know where you land on this distribution graph, and

I can probably predict your opinion on the entire subject based on that. If you were here, booking 60 days in advance, and then riding 8 or more attractions per day, I imagine hat you enjoyed FastPass+. If you were here, not using the systeem, facing astronomical standby wait times and thus only experiencing between 0 and 2 attractions per day, you probably didn’t like FastPass Plus. Now these two sides might have some opinions on the other. If you didn’t use the system to its full effect you might have been waiting in long standby lines, watching hoards of

guests in the FastPass line cut you just because they researched the tips and tricks, and were able to pay for an on-property hotel. Those using FastPass Plus to their advantage believed it was those people’s fault for not doing their research and using the system that was available to everyone, despite that system requiring a certain amount of time, energy, technological literacy, English-proficiency, and money for on-site hotels. Even if you benefited and loved FastPass, the truth is that it only worked well for these people, because it worked so poorly for these people, otherwise most everyone would be

here in the middle. But since that is not the case, a palpable disdain exists between boths camps of guests. In queuing theory, this is called… Within the Disney Parks, there has become a class system, just like in the real world, except for this one is silly, mostly inconsequential, and you aren’t forced to live in it like a nightmare you can’t wake up from. The class system at the Disney Parks, for a long time, wasn’t based on money. After the discontinuing of the A through E ticket systems, all guests had equal access as long as they

could pay for the price of admission. As we discussed earlier, the in-park currency is time and any advantage came from knowledge. Those that read the guidebooks, knew the parks, and planned their trips had a leg up on other guests, but apart from paying for a tour guests knew to rush for Space Mountain in the morning, go into the left lane when available, experience the rides with the longest waits during a parade or fireworks, and so on and so on. In Shapeland, under no FastPass, it takes guests an average of 6 and a half hours to

experience the top six attractions. If people showed up earlier in the day, they would have a jump on other guests, but for the most part, there are no hard lines separating visitors. This was introduced with the original paper Fastpass, but this was still a system that was free, with knowledge still being the dividing factor. This is how long it takes on average for a guest to do the top six attractions at Shapeland, but this time with paper FastPass. Here we see the different knowledge classes emerge. This is split between those that know the system in

and out, those that know how to use the system on a basic level, and those that did not use the system at all. Those that knew the system best could do the six attractions in less than four hours. Those that knew the basics of the system could do the six attractions in six hours. And those that didn’t use the system would have to spend eight hours in order to experience the six attractions. Money was reintroduced into the equation with FastPass+. Guests that stayed on-property would get to book 60 days in advance as a perk of

their stay, and if they utilized this perk, they could experience Shapeland’s six attractions in less than four hours. Those that understood the system but had to book within the thirty day window as opposed to the sixty day window would have to spend six hours to do Shapeland’s six attractions. And those that did not use FastPass Plus at all would have to spend 10 hours on average to do these attractions. And this is not accounting for walking, meals, bathroom breaks, or any other non-attraction activity. The disparity between these three systems and their categories of access is

staggering, and it showed just how much FastPass+ favored those that got premier access to the system. But you might be thinking, this doesn’t mean anything. Shapeland isn’t a real park, these are just fake numbers you made up. But that’s not actually true. Because Shapeland is actually Animal Kingdom. The Triangle is Flight of Paasage, the Square is Expedition Everest, the Circle is Navi River Journey and so on. More than that, the entire simulation is based off of a specific day at Animal Kingdom, Saturday March 23, 2019, a day with medium high crowds. We adjusted the dynamic

factors of the system to replicate this day as closely as possible, and then simply turned off FastPass and examined the differences. So all of these results, including this graph, is based off of Animal Kingdom with the top six attractions being Flight of Passage, Kiliminjaro Safaris, Expedition Everest, Navi River Journey, Dinosaur, and Kali River Rapids. For good measure, we also simulated Magic Kingdom and observed the same results, and while the park’s more diverse set of attractions helped to mitigate the effects of the system in some areas, all of the basic patterns we observed were the same

as with Animal Kingdom. So this disparity is real, and it has created rigid categories of preference among park guests. While the system does not treat everyone the same, it should be noted that not all of Walt Disney World’s guests are the same. For instance, you have families that save up for a once in a lifetime trip to the resort, you have regular vacationers that come every year or two, and then you have annual passholders that might go multiple times a month. Many argue, with good reason, that a system that gives preference to these once in

a lifetime vacationers is necessary, and a system with a distribution like this might seem like the solution, while a distribution graph like this might seem like it’s treating everyone almost too equally. However, this conclusion ignores many factors we’ve learned about queuing, such as capacity and demand. Let’s use an analogy. So there is a company that makes shoes, and you have two potential customers. Customer 1 really wants the shoes. Customer 2 does not feel strongly about the shoes. If the shoe company offered the shoes for $30, Customer 1 would buy them, because they really want the

shoes, and since $30 is a great deal for a pair of shoes, Customer 2 would buy them as well. However, if the shoes cost $100, Customer 1 would still buy them, because they really want the shoes, but since Customer 2 doesn’t feel strongly about them, they would pass on the offer. Now let’s say the shoe store offered Customer 2 the shoes for $30, while offering Customer 1 the shoes for $200. Customer 2 would take their offer, despite not caring for the shoes, and Customer 1 would also take their offer, because they really want the shoes.

Rather than using simply supply and demand to find a fixed price to maximize profits, many companies will find ways to maximize profits via price discrimination, especially when there is an exess of supply. But as it applies to queuing, we’re not trying to maximize wait times, we’re trying to minimize them. While it sounds like a good idea to give preference to once in a lifetime vacationers, while those that visit frequently are favored less, it is extremely difficult if not impossible to enforce this. And with the way FastPass+ was set up, it often produced the exact opposite

results. Instead of priority access going to once in a lifetime vacationers, with secondary access going to those making semi-regular trips and with remaining or no access given to those making regular visits, the actual categories often looked like this, with semi-regular visitors that understood the system booking 60 days in advance, regular visitors and annual passholders without reservations booking within the 30 day window, and once in a lifetime vacationers often finding themselves out of luck, not realizing that they needed a bachelor's degree from MyMagic+ University with a major in FastPass+. So dynamic system, great in theory, not

so much in practice, and while this distribution might not look good at first glance, it often produces better results, because while there is no system in place separating guests, guests are still self-separating. The person that comes once in a lifetime gets to ride the top six rides in a little over six hours while the annual passholder or semi regular visitor likely will choose to not ride the top six rides in a single day because they go so often. The guest that comes once a month will probably not ride Kilimanjaro Safaris if it has a 90

minute wait, but they would if it had a fifteen minute wait, and because they come so often, they know the system, which means they can get a fifteen minute wait. And this family who comes once every three years is determined to ride Kilimanjaro Safaris no matter the wait, but because they come so infrequently, they don’t know the system, so they have to wait longer, which they do because they don’t visit that often. And to raise the stakes, for the regular vistor with an annual pass, the cost of their visit is abstract, as they paid a

fixed annual price and likely already got their money’s worth, while this family, knows exactly how much it cost for them and their children to be inside of the park that day, increasing the pressure to get their money’s worth, thus increasing the amount of time they are willing to wait. And because capacity of rides are determined by design and operation, the supply is finite, so this exact scenario plays out over and over again, to the point where someone might just wonder, hey if you have a limited amount of shoes to sell, stop giving them to people

that don’t want them for $30. Instead, just get rid of the system, and let people self-select. Some rides will have long waits, some rides will have short waits, but at least everyone will be making a personal decision based on the context of their visit and not how good they are at playing the My Disney Experience app as if it were a slot machine. I know that some might disagree with this conclusion, there you are, and I understand there is a level of subjectivity to this. Your experiences are not incorrect, FastPass+ allowed guests that were not

frequent visitors to have incredible vacations, but based on the evidence both in the simulation and in real life, the truth is that, in practice, FastPass+ was not a more fair system than no system, and it often was the opposite. Perhaps the best compromise between FastPass+ and a no FastPass park, is unsurprisingly, the original paper FastPass system, in its initial limited capacity. This retains the guest distribution benefits of the system, while also maintaining the natural self-selection process that guests go through when making decisions. Most importantly, while knowledge remains a dividing factor among guests, the original FastPass

system reset every single day. With FastPass+, when guests arrived at the resort, it was too late to educate them on the system. FastPasses for the most popular rides had already been gone for months. With paper FastPass, guests might find themselves unaware of the system on Day 1 of their vacation, but they could quickly learn it and be properly utilizing it by Day 2. This is why Disneyland’s MaxPass system was more favorable to many guests. It was essentially the original FastPass system, except for digital rather than physical, the only caveat being that it cost money to

utilize, which was its most divisive aspect. The original paper FastPass was an idea that was birthed from within operations, while FastPass Plus, by all indications, was a system birthed from marketing. Its intention was not to make operations more smooth within the park, its purpose was to be a key part of a larger guest experience initiative. So it should not be shocking to suggest, based on all of the evidence we have viewed, that guests and operations would fare better without FastPass+. But what am I talking about, they spent a billion dollars on this, they’re not getting

rid of anything. So…. (Ominous Music) (ROAR) So what started as a neat little idea has turned into a billion-dollar monster that is now actively eating guests at the park, what do you do? You could kill the monster, but you don’t want to because you spent a billion-dollars making it and some guests have befriended the monster and have really come to like it so that would be sad for them. Ok so we’re not killing it. What if the monsters was friends with everybody. Can’t do that, as long as the monster is still alive, it has to

eat a certain amount of people. What if the monster had more friends than it does now? In order for the monster to be able to have more friends, i.e. FastPass users, there would need to be more ride capacity. This could be done by adding new attractions, however, many argue that this will trigger induced demand, which is when increasing the supply of something also increases its demand. The most common example being a highway adding another lane, and rather than reducing traffic, it actually increases congestion. This is not perfectly comparable to theme parks. The reason traffic increases

when you add a lane to a highway is because the increased supply reduces the price, or in this case, congestion, enough for the demand to increase in response. New drivers are not generated simply by the allure or appeal of the lane itself, however, in theme parks this is the case. New rides, especially good ones, almost always draw in new guests, often offsetting any capacity gained by the addition. Also, building new rides is expensive and takes time and is by no means a quick fix. What if you could increase the capacity of an already existing ride.

As we’ve discussed ride capacity is finite, and is determined by design and operation. You can’t just put more ride cars on Space Mountain or make it go faster. What if it wasn’t finite? Well unfortunately it is, unless you were to just build a second dumbo right next to the first one, so they did that. But that’s an easy one, you can’t do that with most rides, like can you just build another theater for Soarin’, you can actually and they did. But that was to support the new Soarin Around the World ride film, would they really

do that with a ride just to quietly increase capacity. But despite all of these strategies to increase capacity and thus slow down the monster, the monster continued to grow for a factor we have not even discussed yet. Attendance. When paper FastPass was introduced in 1999, 42.6 million people visited Walt Disney World annually. When XPass was developed in 2008, 47.1 million people visited annually. By the time FastPass+ rolled out in 2013, 50.1 million people visited annually. In 2014, 51.5 million people visited. In 2015, 54 million. By 2019, over 58 million people were visiting the resort annually,

a sixteen percent increase since when FastPass+ was introduced. The FastPass system was designed to be dynamic but the rate at which attendance increased was unpredictable, and FastPass+ did not operate well under it, so the monster only grew bigger. Some parks fared better than others. For instance, Magic Kingdom has a wide array of attractions and appeals to many different demographics. When attendance increases, not all of those additional visitors want to go to one specific ride. If the park has an annual increase of 100,000 visitors, not all 100,000 visitors want to ride Space Mountain. Compare this to

a park like Animal Kingdom, that in 2017, added Pandora: The World of Avatar a heavily promoted and well-received addition to a park that doesn’t have that many attractions to offer. From 2016 to 2017, Animal Kingdom saw an increase of 1.7 million guests. From 2017 to 2018, it saw an increase of an additional 1.2 million guests. Because this was sparked by a single land that only had two attractions, it is safe to assume that the majority of these visitors not only wanted to ride Flight of Passage, but that they were determined to. Not only were they

determined to, but it was the only reason they chose to visit Animal Kingdom in the first place. This is known as inelastic demand, when the wait time of a ride has little to no effect on the amount of people to ride it. This was the case of Flight of Passage, as it seemed that no wait time would turn guests away. As a result, wait times increased to 1 hour, 2 hours, 3 hours, 4 hours, 5 hours, and one day, there was a posted 6 hour and forty minute wait for the 4 and a half minute

attraction. So with attendance increasing, and with additional capacity, on its way, guests were starting to notice the issues. In response, departments throughout Walt Disney World argued that they should be given additional FastPasses. Guest services wanted more Fastpasses for compensation purposes, while the resorts argued they needed more Fastpasses at the 60 day mark so that hotel guests could receive their perks. In 2018, club level guests at select resorts were allowed access to a new tier of FastPass+, allowing them to book six fastpasses in advance, 3 at the 90 day mark and 3 more at the 60

day mark for an up charge of $50 per person per day. The more FastPasses that were handed out the more the monster grew and grew and grew. Then, in the summer of 2019, Universal Orlando debuted a new ride at their Islands of Adventure theme park, The Wizarding World of Harry Potter’s Hagrid's Magical Creatures Motorbike AdventureTM. The new ride was heavily anticipated and drew large crowds. There was only one issue, it did not work, at least not consistently. This led to frequent downtimes throughout the first few weeks of operation, and when paired with the massive demand,

waits climbed to up to 10 hours. Why is this relevant? Because, also in the summer of 2019, Disney was opening its heavily anticipated Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge. After reports that crowds for the new land were far less than expected, the chairman of Disney Parks, Experiences and Products Bob Chapek took a jab at Universal saying quote, “The deep secret is that we don’t intend to have lines ... If you build in enough capacity, the rides don’t go down and it operates at 99% efficiency, you shouldn’t have 10-hour lines. So, 10-hour lines are not a sign of

success. It should be seen as a sign of, frankly, failure.” Coincidentally, Disney was about to debut another ride for Galaxy’s Edge, Star Wars Rise of the Resistance, the land’s signature attraction, which, like Hagrid’s, did not work consistently, and the ride was primed for the FastPass monster to swallow guests, resulting in huge wait times. Under pressure to open the ride anyways, Disney took extreme measures to ensure that wait times remained under control, to keep guests comfortable and satisfied and not at all because the chairman of the parks publicly deemed a ten-hour line a failure in the

press months earlier. When Rise of the Resistance opened at Walt Disney World in December of 2019, it utilized a new virtual queue system that completely eliminated the standby line in favor of assigning guests boarding groups that would be called throughout the day. The idea reportedly came from, of all places, the DMV, that had implemented a customer service system in which guests calling the help line were given a call back rather than being put on hold. So that’s where we are everybody. The virtual queue nearly eliminated lines for Rise of the Resistance, but it left many

guests frustrated when boarding groups ran out almost immediately in the morning, with the app informing guests that the ride was booked for the rest of the day before the sun had even come up, but hey, there were no ten hour lines so it did its job. Speaking of new systems, also in 2019, at the D23 Expo in Anaheim, Bob Chapek announced, whatever this is. “It’s called Disney Genie” (Applause and laughter) “It will put customized itineraries geared towards your interests at your fingertips, cutting down on the need to plan and research.” So with the old system

raging on, a new one just beginning, and a future one in development, the beast was growing faster than ever. Every attempt to fix the problem was at best a stall, but most often, the attempts only made the monster’s damage worse. The amount of guests that the system benefited declined, while those that did benefit were more loyal to it than ever, because it was more necessary than ever to have a good time at the parks. The more FastPasses that were added to the system, the more the monster grew, the more people that came to the parks,

the more the monster grew, The monster grew and grew, until Walt Disney World had succumbed to the beast. “Well, boss, good news. We broke everything.” “Huh? What do you mean?” “You know that thing that doesn’t directly make us money that we spent a billion dollars on?” “Yeah…” “Well it’s broken, but on the bright side, it also broke everything. Look.” “Those people are just trying to go to the attractions, why is it…” “Eating them? I don’t know.” “Why isn’t it eating those people?” “Oh, those people are friends with it.” “Oh my gosh, how is this good

news?” “Everything is broken.” “Yeah but how is that good?” “Come on boss don’t you see? Everything is broken, which means we can charge people money to bypass the mess we created.” “Huh.” “Right now, most of the people that have befriended the monster are buying rooms at our hotels, and as a perk, the monster won’t eat them, as much. But our research shows that getting rid of this perk won’t really hurt our hotel business all that much, so instead, let’s just start charging people to be friends with the monster. Look at this graph, this kind of

advantage shouldn’t be a hotel perk, it should be an additional charge.” “Dotson, you’re a genius.” “Boss, that’s not even the best part. Look at these people, they’re where the real money is.” “We’re going to charge people to have a worse day?” “No of course not, but we’re going to make money from them. See, it takes these people 10 hours to do six rides, that’s not even accounting for walking, bathroom breaks, or meals. The park is only open for 12 hours. There’s no way they’re going to do those six rides in a single day, which means...”

“They’ll have to come another day, which means they'll have to buy more tickets.” “They’ll have to buy more tickets!” “Exactly, either they buy into the system to do everything they want to do in one day, or they have to do multiple days, which means more money for us.” “This really is genius.” “And all it took was a billion dollars and a lot of mistakes.” “Well Dotson, in life, you win some, you lose some, and sometimes you manage to do both at the same time.” “There’s just one problem, the friends of the monster are not going

to be happy with us when we charge for this.” “You’re right. That would a PR nightmare. It would take some sort of global cataclysmic event that would shut down our business long enough for us to make drastic changes to our operating procedure~ while also giving us a shield from criticism of those changes.” (Thunder crack) “Oh, did you not hear-” “Breaking just in to our news room. A historic move amid the Coronavirus. Walt Disney World and Universal Orlando, both announcing they are closing their theme parks.” “And your reaction?” “Sad. Heh heh.” “Do you understand why?” “Yeah.”

“Yes” After being closed for four months for the Covid-19 Pandemic, Walt Disney World reopened in July of 2020, while Disneyland would not reopen until April of 2021. When they did, both Fastpass Plus and Maxpass had been suspended for social distancing purposes, and a new park reservation system was implemented to limit crowds. Bob Chapek was now the CEO of Disney, after Bob Iger suddenly and coincidentally retired 2 weeks before the world shut down. Chapek commented on the changes coming to the parks as they reopened, saying quote “Obviously, nobody wants to have the parks closed for up

to a year. But at the same time, we realized that was a unique opportunity maybe to advance some things that would have been difficult, if not impossible, for us to go change in an operating environment. And so we’ve made some moves already, but we’re going to make further moves.” These moves were revealed in August of 2021, when Disneyland announced that both FastPass+ and MaxPass would be officially discontinued. Replacing the programs would be the long-anticipated Genie app. The Genie app would use all of Disney’s internal data as well as guest preferences to intelligently plan itineraries in

order to maximize efficiency throughout the parks. Unlike FastPass+, Genie is simple. There are now four ways to visit attractions, the standby queue, the virtual queue, Lightning Lane through Genie Plus or Lightning Lane through additional purchases. For any ride, guests can still choose to wait in the standby line, except for the rides in which they can’t, which are the ones using virtual queue. If an attraction is using virtual queue, guests must wake up at 7 am on the day of and attempt to join the virtual queue from their phones. If they don’t get a boarding group

then they will have another chance once they are inside the park at 1 pm. If guests don’t want to wait in the standby line or use a virtual queue, for $15 per person per day, they can upgrade to Genie+, which is similar to Disneyland’s MaxPass, allowing them to obtain one Lightning Lane Pass every two hours or after the first one is redeemed, except rather than being inside the park they can make their first reservation from anywhere at 7 am on the day of. However, not all Lightning Lane attractions are included in Genie+, some are available

for additional purchase with varying prices depending on the season. For instance, the Lightning Lane for Rise of the Resistance, which moved to a seasonal standby queue, will cost $15 per person. So guests either pay $15 per person to enter the Lightning Lane or enter the standby queue, if it is available, if not they need to wake up at 7 am to enter the virtual queue, or just pay the $15 per person to enter the lightning lane. See, simple, and hugely popular. Or is it? Who’s to say? There were rumors of paid FastPass long before the

pandemic, since Disneyland, Hong Kong Disneyland, Disneyland Paris, and Shanghai Disneyland all utilized some form of a paid FastPass system, and with the introduction Genie Plus, Tokyo Disneyland is now the only remaining park to utilize free FastPass, still using a combination of paper and digital passes. There’s two ways to look at this change, the optimistic version and the pessimistic version. The optimistic version is that Disney is once again trying to improve everyone’s enjoyment of the parks, this time by reducing the amount of people using the FastPass system. If this occurs, it will reduce standby wait times

while giving once in a lifetime vacationers the option to experience more. The fact that they are using the MaxPass model of only allowing guests to book passes day of, seems to be a deliberate attempt to reduce the negative side effects caused by FastPass+. Combining this with rising ticket prices, which reduce demand, and a park reservation system to place a cap on guests and predict how many guests will visit, Disney now has more control over crowds than ever. Plus, the Genie app’s suggestion and itinerary tools will be able to reproduce some of the positive distribution features

of FastPass+, by directing guests to underutilized areas of the park, and it could even increase the average number of attractions per day. The pessimistic version is that Disney wants money. They increase ticket prices not to reduce demand and lower crowds, but because they can. They’re not charging for FastPass to get less people to use the system, they’re charging for it because they can. The $15 price for Genie Plus seems to be a good indication that Disney expects a majority of vacationers to buy into the system, and if utilization remains anywhere close to FastPass Plus, every

travel agent and vacation guide will suggest that their travelers buy into the system, because $15 to experience all of the rides in one day is a lot cheaper than spreading out a park visit over two or more days. The paid FastPass system also gives Disney more motivation than ever to inflate wait times, and favor Lightning Lane over standby , with the job of the Cast Member at the merge point becoming even more difficult. The truth might be somewhere in the middle of these two outlooks. Disney understands they need to reduce usage of FastPass Plus, and

rather than getting rid of it, they choose the option that also makes them money. So far, the amount of passes offered seems somewhat limited. With Lightning Lane on popular attractions running out quickly in the morning, but who knows if this will remain the case. As with FastPass and FastPass Plus the true effects of the new system likely will not be seen for quite some time. So the FastPass Beast has finally been killed, or maybe it’s just been put inside a cage, behind stronger paywalls. Maybe it will get out one day, or maybe it will remain

under control, but what a monster it has become. In a way, we’ve truly come full circle. In 1971, Magic Kingdom opened with a ticket book system in which guests had to pay to ride each ride, and exactly 50 years later in 2021, guests are once again paying to ride rides, or at least skip the line. Despite a similar destination, the path that queueing at the Disney Parks has taken over the past five decades was anything but predictable, and this long, winding narrative shines a light on an oft-overlooked aspect of the theme park industry. We have

examined ad nauseum the ways in which Imagineers and theme park designers create immersive worlds that transport guests out of their reality and into a new one, but the story of FastPass is one of the rare tales that belongs not to the Imagineers, but to operations. If the Imagineers job is to design and construct environments that entertain and immerse guests, it is the job of operations managers, Cast Members, and industrial engineers to operate and maintain these environments, and their job is more involved in a park’s escapism than one might initially think. When operations finds strategies and

tests systems that have the potential to take the guest experience to the next level, they are not merely increasing guest satisfaction, but they are supporting the environments and stories of the parks by offering a higher level of escapism. There is no better example of this than FastPass. Long lines have always been a disruptive force in the Disney Parks, detracting from the guest experience and often the design intentions of the park’s theming. After all, the real world has lines, at the bank, at restaurants, at the DMV. Attempting to remove them, or at least giving guests the

ability to avoid them, has the potential to create an experience better than reality, thus assisting in the escapism and immersion of the parks. However, with the evolution of FastPass, we also saw the opposite side of this coin. Instead of operations creating a reality better than ours, the disparities and inequalities of the real world were allowed to creep in. Whether guests were separated by knowledge specific to the park or their personal financial situation, utilizing a system that allows for these disparities can take away from the intention, uniqueness, and beauty of the theme park experience. This is

not to say that these strategies weren’t worth experimenting with, and I’m sure we’ll see many more in the future. As we know, queueing is always evolving, and no one knows for sure what the next step will be, but what does seem certain, is that as long as there is something worth waiting for, there will probably be a wait for it. So, I’ll ask you again, how much do you know about lines?