Looks like Disney World has once again stopped selling all annual passes except the Pixie Dust Pass (FL residents only, $399). Unreal. https://disneyworld.disney.go.com/p...coming-a-passholder/#drawer-card-drawerPdPass
Genie +/ lighting lanes are also imploding with the higher crowds. This video is an hour and 45 minutes long but it's well worth your time. It does a deep dive into the failures of this FastPass B.S. Under Bob Chapek's leadership It's fairly apparent that he's way out of his league with his greedy, data driven, profits first, cut everything philosophy in leading the parks. The fact that they stopped selling park tickets and annual passes for Thanksgiving week sort of proves that Disney, in its current state, is not capable of handling the crowds that they HAD to KNOW were coming. I bet there's absolute panic in upper management right now with the realization the guests are overpaying for these vacations and Disney simply can't provide them with anything resembling an expected Disney vacation experience. I think about all this cast members that they laid off and how now they really could use them. The housing prices in Orlando are ridiculous. That means that it's going to be extremely hard to hire people at the wages that Disney is paying. People simply can't afford to work there and manage to cover their costs of living. I really hope that this backlash continues and that the board of directors realizes that Bob Chapek is not the best person to be running Disney. His failures are really problematic for the guests, and it's just eroding guest satisfaction and the desire for repeat visits. I can't imagine how bad it's going to get at Christmas if they're having these sorts of problems at Thanksgiving now. Disney IT simply cannot handle the app and the demand that's placed on it by the guests. This Genie Plus / Lightning Lane system is simply an upcharge ripoff. It pisses me off to no end that Disney is actively creating conditions that are causing these lines to become unmanageable in an effort to persuade people to plunk down their $15 plus whatever they want to pay for these lightning lane attractions. I think the Genie Plus system is going to become universally hated by guests because they are experiencing firsthand all the problems that it causes. Bob Chapek must have been out of his mind to think that the staffing that he has now could have made this app functional. The thing that really bugs me about this Genie Plus system is that they should just scrap it. Everybody should just wait in the lines. If they had an app that was honest about wait times, like the ones that Touring Plans provides, they could just encourage the guests to self-select their rides based on wait times that they could see in an app. People aren't stupid and enough people are using their phones to make this the best choice to solve the crowding problems. There's always going to be crowding at the most popular rides when the parks are crowded. Well I was there for 3 weeks in October and November I would just open up touring plans and see where the long lines were and the short lines were and gravitate towards the shorter lines. That's it. That's the best that Disney's going to do with managing their lines. Just present accurate wait times for rides and encourage people to look up wait times on the app. There is no reason to clog up the lines and jack up the flow with this FastPass garbage... End of rant. I shall immensely enjoy watching the parks implode under the stupidity of Bob Chapek's decision making processes. The faster that things implode, the faster that the decisions will have to be made to fix the problems... And problem number one is named Bob Chapek. ~Joanie
My AP expires April 29th. I was thinking about not renewing it and just getting a new AP in December at Pixelmania and then it would cover October Pixelmania 2023. If they’re not issuing new AP then, I guess it would be a gamble if I just bought a regular ticket and tried to apply to an AP next December? I’m got a few months to figure it out.
TouringPlans had a great article on the break-even points of regular tickets versus annual passes: When Should You Buy a Disney World Annual Pass? – Out of State Edition. Unfortunately, the lack of benefits and high prices of APs means you have to visit for more days than in the past. Study the numbers and make your own decision. My problem is that the constant threat of COVID variants makes it hard make those spontaneous "just because I have an AP" trips.
I think the prevailing presumption is that the halt of selling APs was just their way to control crowds over the holiday season (especially with Genie+ issues). So best guess is that they’d start selling them again in the new year. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
Re: Dennis's Touring Plans post: What they are saying is that a 10 day park hopper* pass = 68.00 per day, correct? (10 days is the max # of days they will sell you a ticket) thus $68 is the lowest possible price. *Not sure if I should be using hopper or base for an AP calculation $1,299 divided by 68.00 = 19 days That means that you start to save money on park tickets after 19 days, not including factoring in parking, merchandise and food discounts. Is this what they are trying to say? They way they presented the charts was virtually incomprehensible IMHO. What the hell does 1 day base ticket "S" mean?? ~Joanie
Thank you @ddindy. We usually go for 2 - 7 day trips. Which looks like maybe break-even or close. Not sure what we’ll do. I’d like to let me pass lapse and buy a new one and activate it next Pixelmania. If they’re still not issuing passes, maybe we’ll just buy a regular ticket and convert it to a AP? In March we’re getting a AP discount for Riverside - we switched from Pop to Riverside for about the same $$$(I think Riverside was $42 more for the 7 days). But we don’t buy a lot of merchandise for the discount and we split up dining between QS and ADR, so not a lot of discount there.
I was reading it that a 7 day Park Hopper was $629, but this 7 day Park Hopper had a 10 day window to use it in. So 2 - 7 day trips with a 7 day Park Hopper would be $629 + $629 = $1258. Close to break even for an AP. Disney then actually makes more $$ on short trips - tickets ?
I can't really add too much since I have the advantage of being a Florida resident, so my exorbitantly priced annual pass is still cheaper than those out of state...and I was able to renew my pass when I returned to Disney in September. this year. I think the pricing is getting a little out of hand though - I can always justify the AP because I go to Disney so often, but it used to be after more than 4 days, the pass paid for itself, and now it's more like 8-10 days. I go around 20 days a year, so still fine for me at the FL resident price. But this Genie+/Lightning Lane stuff is just the most blatant, horrid money grab BS I've seen in the history of Disney and all of those on the board who approved it and went along with it should be put into Cryo with Walt's head. And Chapek is not only the worst Disney leader, he's one of the worst in the entire business world...at least from the standpoint of the Disney fans and visitors. From a profitability standpoint, I hate to say it, but he's probably doing very well. I thought the parks felt pretty crowded in September, but not more than pre-pandemic levels. But last week, the parks were the most crowded I've experienced in the last 10 years. It wasn't just crowded for pandemic times, it was far worse than pre-pandemic times. There were lines to get into every STORE just to shop. There were lines at every cart selling soft drinks...not just the food booths, just a simple water or Coke required a line of 20-25 people. The food booths had queues of 50+. And inside the big stores, the queues to get to the registers looked worse than the line at Haunted Mansion. Any ride that had virtual queues were gone in 1-2 minutes in the morning and afternoon windows. I just couldn't bring myself to purchase the Genie + or any individual lightning lane passes - so I just tried to work in rides when the lines weren't as bad...I was determined to not pay out the extra money - I certainly could have - I even had $400 of rewards dollars to spend - but I'd rather spend it on good meals and alcohol than to purchase a FastPass that used to be free. I rode less rides this time, because some lines were just too much...at MK, Pirates was the best at only 20 min. Haunted Mansion ended up being about 40. Peoplemover was 25. Those were the only ones I rode. At AK, I only rode Kilimanjaro which was initially 1hr 20min when I first got there, but when I circled back later in the afternoon it had dropped to 40, so I jumped on the line. At Epcot, Living with the Land was only 5, Spaceship Earth dropped to 10 just before sunset, but I skipped all other rides which exceeded 1 hour. Walt would go postal if he saw what they're doing to his parks.
I agree with everything you said! A little bird told me that they are compiling guest complaints when you email them to guest services about what's going on. This data is being carefully watched by the c-suite executives. Even though there is widespread outrage on social media, the board of directors needs to see feedback that is being sent in to guest services by actual guests. Now is the time to do that because they know that there's a problem, but it has to reach a critical point where the feedback has to come from the right sources and be of enough volume where they can justify making changes. A situation similar to the noodles at O'hanna comes to mind where they received overwhelming feedback to guest services and they made the change rather quickly back to offering the noodles. ( NOODLES for God's sake!!! How dumb is Disney??) Even if you just wanted to copy paste a few lines talking about your dissatisfaction it would help. Specifics like you're a Florida annual pass holder, you're concerned about the price, and your concerned about the genie disaster, long lines & poor service is the feedback they supposedly are looking for. Log into your my Disney account and leave feedback via that portal. They really need to pay cast members higher salaries to attract more workers, but data driven Bob is unwilling to do this. Your feedback has the potential to push them in this unavoidable direction. Did you know that when Disney was calling back CM's after the layoff, they intentionally did not call back employees at the higher hourly wages... with the misguided thought that they could attract new workers at entry level wages. More than a few cast members experienced this and reported it on social media. Every drop means more water that gets dumped on Bob Chapek's head as he gets pushed out the door. The scuttlebutt says that there is a movement of foot to stop the bleeding that the cheapskate Chapek approach has caused. I don't buy into the rumors that Bob Iger will come back, but changes definitely have to be made and I think Disney needs a loud push from their customers to make this happen. ~Joanie
