After addressing capacity, Disney CEO Bob Chapek spoke about theme park technology today at the J.P. Morgan Global Technology, Media, and Communications Conference.
Chapek cited the new Disney Park Pass theme park reservation system and virtual queues, such as the boarding groups for Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance, as examples of how technology helped guests stay safe during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Virtual queues are a hot topic in the theme park community, with many guests either loving or hating the system. However, the virtual queue process has already undergone many changes to make it easier for guests, and Disney will likely continue to hone the process.
Chapek specifically stated that the Disney Park Pass theme park reservation system would remain in place beyond the scope of the pandemic. However, this is not new information as the Park Pass calendars for Walt Disney World already extend into 2023.
Stay tuned to WDWNT for more Disney Parks news.
Park pass isnt a huge deal for me as you were already tied to a park with fast pass and dining reservations anyway. You can park hop somewhere else later. They need to fix the virtual though. We never could get on rise of the resistance on our last trip. If virtual signups were done like the old fast passes, where you get a ticket and come back later, it might work better.
It’s a HUGE deal for their local AP holders! Honestly, we wouldn’t live here or even have an AP if it was like this when we moved.
I agree. I will not buy another annual pass. The park reservation system greatly decreases the value of having one. It turns a great thing into a stressful thing. Waste of time and money
I liked the fast pass, we did a few theme parks everyday. I will check out France Disney theme park.
That’s annoying. Stuff like FastPasses and Virtual Queues are beneficial to Disney, but also give guests something of value in return. The park reservation system is really only good for Disney.
I won’t be going there anytime soon. The idea of Reserving to go to a park destroys the spur of the moment enjoyment that Disney was. Too bad. I hope all the die hard fans cry after they had to battle to give Disney their money. Pathetic at best
I live here in Kissimmee and have an annual pass. That was actually one of the reasons I got one, so that at any moment I could just go to a park. I would have dinner and, say oh I want so and so for dessert over in Animal Kingdom, and just go. Or have a rough day at work and say, I need to go to relieve some stress, and run over to a Disney park and just relax and get steps in or grab a bite and a snack and people watch. Not any more. I have to make in advance plans on whatever is available and unfortunately when that date cones I may not be able to actually even go. Or it becomes a hassle trying to go on that day.
My family drive from NY to Fla each summer and Disney was always a sure stop during the week. Now it seems our trips won’t include a Disney park anymore, as the ability to just go when we wanted to, or not when we felt not to, is gone. Why would I now want to plan a trip when I can go to a Disney, rather than plan a Disney day during a trip I can schedule?
In a way having a reservation system is a good thing of you are traveling a long way to get here. Vacations with airfair and hotel reservations are very expensive….being sure you can get in is not really any different from having a reservation at your favorite restaurant for your anniversary.
With attendance caps it requires advanced planning. When attendance levels get back to normal there should be lots of reservations available for same day entry. There will likely be walkup reservations available during off peak times.
gee, you’re right, this whole Disney Park pass reservation is getting too lame. :I Disney REALLY needs to remove the reservation and the virtual queues and bring back the Disney Fastpasses real soon.
That’s awful as a annual passholder that totally ruins the fun of going hey let’s hop over to magic kingdom this weekend or let’s go to Epcot tonight for a nice meal after work.
Agree with you 100%!
You would think that they can make it at least so that entrance during dinner is allowed any time.
Exactly
as someone who only goes 1 week a year tops im glad annual passholders cant get in whenever they want. it ruins the experience for those who only go periodically. Do you really need to go on rides once a week. grow up.
If you only go one week a year, our spontaneous Disney trips have little to no affect on your petty little vacation… don’t be a Debby downer. Nobody wants that crap here
Imagine having season passes to a football team. Only to find out you have to reserve ahead of time which games you wanted to go to otherwise they would fill up to capacity. And you are still being charged full price for the season pass.
Football fans would lose their minds if this was the case.
Well that’s your problem you can only go 1 week a year. I don’t see how an Annual Passholder could ruin your experience. Sounds like there are other issues here that you might want to work out.
Agree Walt Disney won’t accept this if he was still alive today
Gone are the days of spontaneous trips to Disney, I don’t like this new way. ):
I agree. This was the joy and ease of it for me. I understood and was fine with it while we were going through all the covid stuff but now maybe for passholders they could give more lead way.
I get the virtual queue system. They need to do something better than fast pass +. With FP+ most of the time they managed to create a secondary standby line of people w/ FP+ due to their over allocation
compared to the resort capacity. But the park reservations is just a way to get the $ benefits of annual passes and open ended tickets and still make everything work with reserved capacity of individual tickets per day. That’s a crappy way to “manage capacity” That’s just a way of maximizing their attendance while minimizing their resources for the day. Great for $$, but the customer experience suffers. Park hopping will eventually be a thing of the past and customers will be annoyed by the lack of spontaneity. Yet they are making all dining reservations at 60 days complicating planning. They made the fun spontaneous part of a Disney trip less fun and made the more complicated dining reservations more spontaneous making dining less fun as well. That’s two strikes Disney. What’s your plan for the 3rd strike?
Exactly.
Once again it’s all about Disney getting more money and taking more away from your dollar value. They have been slowly and but consistently taking away more and more all while the prices go up and up. There is basically zero benefit to staying on site anymore.
As for their plan for a third strike, in my opinion they’re on about their 10 strike now.
I hope the virtual queue applies to all the rides. If I have to wait an hour for a ride, let me at least do it while eating lunch, kill two birds with one stone. I’d likely spend more time in shops if I’m killing time waiting for my turn in a virtual queue.
I think the virtual queue will only be for E-ticket attractions. Ratatouille seems like it would have a virtual queue when it opens in October.
Honestly I’d like to go into the queue
Doesn’t work that way. For Ride of the Resistance, even when you are lucky enough to win the “ride lottery” there was still a 45 minute wait after my time was called to get on the ride.
Did this tool box short a bunch of Disney stock or something?
Enron had better cooperate leadership
Between this and their political views, it’s getting disgusting.
The virtual que system is a complete disaster. My family traveled from Missouri to specifically ride The Rise Of The Resistance but was unable to reserve after multiple attempts on multiple days. Very frustrating.
I asked Disney for a refund but they refused. I call it false advertising to lure me into their park under false enticement to ride their “newest” attraction but then unable to do so. What kind of business sells a service and then doesn’t deliver on that promise? A bad one. My family will NEVER return to Disney as a result of this ridiculously dumb system.
It sounds like you were either unlucky or didn’t try early enough. As a former Disney employee at ROR, I can honestly say that happens a lot — the worst is for people that travel from other countries and don’t have a good command of the English language. They wouldn’t understand the system at all and were at a distinct disadvantage when it came to getting in the Virtual Que. I have to say that I felt genuinely sorry for people that were in the situation of traveling far just for ROR and were not able to experience the attraction (OK, I will rub it in and say that I have been on it over 30 times — to the point of boredom). I was surprised that during my tenure, nobody ever yelled at me when I would give them the bad news that there was nothing that we could do to help them. :>( I would like to thank the guests for that as I am not sure if I would have been as polite if I were in their shoes. Please keep in mind that the purpose of the Virtual Que is to get as many people on the attraction as possible (once each). Disney can’t make everybody happy, but there are a lot of people who are working there doing the best that they can given the limited availability, downtime of the complex attraction, and the sometimes limitless crowds.
Bad move Bob…. Bring back fastpass and allow annual pass holders the ability to actual go to the park…. C’mon man
I won’t be going to Disney World, it ruins the fun of being with people.
CEO Bob Chapek needs to go.
If the park reservation system is going to reflect true pre-pandemic capacities, I guess its not that big of a deal since parks only reached capacity on a few days a year (Christmas, NYE, etc) but if its going to make a last minute planned weekend getaway at some random time of year a challenge then that is outright horrible.
Great point!!
Park Pass is ridiculous once capacity reaches 100%. The Park pass system was meant to close off a park once it reaches capacity due to restrictions.
I hate the idea that I can’t take a last minute trip to the parks because everything is booked up.(Or at least I can’t go to a park I want because it’s been booked for 3 months)
Now I have to plan months in advance for an impulsive trip???
The Park Pass system is ridiculous once they are back to normal operating protocols.
For example, We stay at Fort Wilderness, and my kids would oten take the boat over to Magic Kingdom to grab breakfast and then come back to Fort Wilderness before we hit our park for the day. Now they can only do that on the 2 days(eg.) that we have Magic Kingdom reservations.
Ridiculous!
The virtual queue needs to be more equitable. There are people who get on RotR every day while others never make it because their phone or their fingers aren’t fast enough.
That was our problem as well. How many people reserved for the morning session also reserved for the afternoon session while others couldn’t get on even once. You literally could buy passes for 7 days straight and have no guarantee of ever getting on that ride….that is a complete rip off and I am no longer attending the park for that reason alone.
You can only get one RoR pass per day.
Disappointed with Disney – made park reservations back in February for May after visiting the park in February ( it was safe and only 1/2 people occupancy) found it great . Just went and they open the doors to all ! What the hell – they should if waited until all the reservations people were done with !! Plus star wars should of opened there on Park – not part of Hollywood studios! Much too crowded don’t think I’ll ever go back there again
Can you get a FASTPASS
If the park reservation system is here to stay, they need to give AP holders more than three days to book.
If the park reservation system is here to stay, I simply won’t be going. There is MUCH more to central florida than just Disney and I speak as a person that’s been a lifelong Disney fan who has been going there since there was only a Magic Kingdom and 2 hotels. I vote with my wallet and Disney’s ridiculousness overall has lost me for now. Perhaps future changes in favor of it’s guests can change my mind, time will tell.
Another great point!! I just renewed my AP with the hope that by this time next year most things will be back to normal but now this gives me doubt… I just want FP back and to be able to go to a park for a couple hours at the end of the day without having to deal with park reservations being unavailable even though I have the top AP </3
Well, there is no reason to buy an AP now. Thanks for making me save 1200 dollars, Chapek
That’s exactly what he wants. He doesn’t value APs, he thinks they’re in the way of his 1 time a year vacation guests. When, if they took the time to do the research or count the numbers, they’d see APs spend just as much if not more over the course of a year at the parks and resorts than once a year families do.
The problem with the Virtual Queue is that every other ride will experience longer lines. Right now, a person can decide whether waiting in a long line for a ride is worth it. If the answer is, “Yes.” then they stay in that line. That prevents that person from going on other rides during that time, but it guarantees they have a chance to ride the one that is most important to them. The other “less popular” rides maintain smaller lines, because riders don’t feel that waiting in a long ride is worth it. This is the law of supply and demand. By artificially removing the wait time for the “more popular” ride, you wind up artificially increasing the wait times for the “less popular rides. The park rides as a whole are more busy – with only the most popular rides having no wait time. You have also lost out on controlling your own destiny with regards to going on the ride. Without being able to stand in a line, you now need to be quick enough to gain a spot in the virtual queue. If you don’t get into the virtual queue fast enough, there is nothing you can do to ride the ride.
Avatar Flight of Passage is a good example of how the line system works. It’s the probably the most popular ride at Disney Animal Kingdom. People wait for the ability to go on this ride. Each person gets to decide at what wait time, the ride is worth it to them to go on. If the line is 60 minutes more people will be willing to wait than if the line is 180 minutes. Each person gets to choose.
If this cuts down on the amount of people in the parks, I’m all for it. I’m not a disney fanboy and never will be so I only go once every couple years. Making a reservation isn’t a big deal and there won’t be so many people. Awesome!
I tried to renew my platinum plus AP but they told me that pass is unavailable now and I can only renew to another tier pass so the top tier pass is now the platinum pass, which advertises no blockout dates, even tho Disney plans on keeping the park pass reservations in place —rolls eyes— and now I won’t be able to enjoy typhoon lagoon or blizzard beach :( wtf Disney… losing a lot of value from your AP
Are the virtual queues for every ride?
Well this sucks. With this reservation system, fast pass, restaurant reservations, etc, Disney is taking all spontaneity out of a trip to the parks. Everything becomes a hassle. I don’t want to have to get a freaking reservation to go to the parks.
Chapek needs to go. He doesn’t understand Disney culture or Disney fans.
Park pass can be an issue when you are a park hopper. There is no guarantee that you can go onto another park. I don’t like having to wait until 2 to move on. Waiting until Disney is normal again. We visited during the pandemic when you could only take off the mask when you were eating or in your hotel room. Don’t recommend it, willing to wait.
In reality Disney cares the least about its AP holders but needs them for revenue and DVC…this trend will start to cut back in AP holders but it may be what they want to a certain extended.
Does anyone know if the tram will be back after June 15th?
The park pass system is absolutely disgusting. I have no idea why Disney refuses to keep track of who is in the park like any other park would. The park pass system completely devalues annual passes as well as self admission passes for CMs. No longer is Disney the “park in the backyard” it is solely just whatever pleases the board and lines Chapek’s pockets. Absolutely disgusted to see that he refuses to do away with a terrible admittance system that was never around before. Park capacity was monitored before Covid and other parks like Universal do not have an idiotic reservation system just to go into the park. Chapek is a greedy SOB CEO I wish he gets ousted and someone with some brains and a family mindset can come in and revert Disney and get the parks and resorts back on the right track.
Walt Disney won’t accept this! He made the park so people can go wherever they want he didn’t make it so you can buy reservations. Sorry but they need to remove the reservation system. To make Disney happy