Disney World Fast Pass

Disney World has come up with a brilliant idea to increase the amount of rides a person can get on during their trip to the parks. They developed these things called fast passes that allow a person to go up to little machines located at various places and use their ticket to recieve a fast pass. The fast pass has a time on it and the name of a ride. If the person goes to the ride at the time on the card, they can bypass the line and get directly on the ride.

The bad part is that you are only allowed a certain amount of these passes per day. Well we certaintly had to find a way around that.

On the back of the fast pass machines is a small button. Have someone hold down this button while you follow the normal procedure for recieving a fast pass. As long as that button is held down the machine will continue to give you passes untill you feel like you have enough. No more lines.

The only problem with the Disney Fast Pass is that it doesn't work unless only a small percentage of the park attendees use it. The longer lines of people waiting to get into rides on the Fast Pass track during the Thanksgiving week of Disney-ing we did convinced my family and me to just wait it out in the regular lines.

More proof that even well planned and intentioned systems will start to decay when the population using them gets too large.

Fastpass, such a controversial topic. Basically it is a reservation system for an attraction, it is a concept that was pioneered at a theme park in Europe and then improved upon by Walt Disney World. Now it is being used in different fashions by theme parks all over the world. How it works is such - when you approach the entrance of one of the attractions that offers it you see what the current Fastpass return time is and some machines under the sign. You can insert your theme park ticket into the machine and it will give you a time within which to return in which you will have little to no wait. Simple right? There is also the other line next to the Fastpass one; this is the Stand-By line for those folks who do not want to use Fastpass. This system has been in use for over two years now and as with all new systems has had its challenges.

People for some bizarre reasons think they have to pay for it. This is despite all the signs saying it is a FREE service and is available to everyone. This means they wont try or ask about it all day and then wonder why they have long waits… Darwinism anyone?

People are afraid to try new things, finally since it has been around long enough for people to see it on multiple trips to the park and they have read enough about it they are willing to try it.

People have an aversion to passing others in line, they view it as unfair or cheating. Disney has solved this by installing barriers so people can’t see from one queue to the other and can pass the Stand-By line without feeling guilt.

On busy days it was useless due to all the times being given out early on in the day leaving many guests without a chance to try it. Adding it at more attractions and also allowing guests to receive one every two hours overcame this.

Abuse was a big problem, people found ways to get around the system such as the above poster who pushed the button on the back of the machine… that was changed to require a key. Also people realized that it only looked to see that you put a Disney ticket into the machine, it was a dumb terminal. It didn’t know that that was the ticket you used back in 1996 to get into Pleasure Island. Now it checks to ensure that you have entered that park on that day.

As you can see it is quite the interesting system, hopefully you will try it.. and not be afraid.