Annual Passholders not getting fair shake on FP+

I agree AP holders not staying on property should get some benefit over nonAP holders staying off site. I think it should be something like this

60 days - guests staying on property
45 days - AP holders not staying on property
30 days - all others

When I booked our FP for August, it was the first time I encountered not being able to get FPs that I wanted. (We used FP+ in December, April, and May with no selection problems at all--we were even able to make reasonable changes same-day in the parks with no problem.)

Even at 60 days, I was too late to book Anna/Elsa meet & greet and I think it is because we are only staying one night in a qualifying hotel and at 60 days from check-in, you can book your FP selections for your entire trip. My booking window activated for 7-8 days from when Disney thinks I'm arriving on August 24. Since I'm only staying until August 25, that week-long booking window from my arrival date was useless to me. Anyone who arrives from August 18 or 19 on actually had access to the FPs on August 25 up to a week before I did. So even booking within minutes of my FP window opening up, I was not able to get a FP for this very popular attraction. Actually, I did get a FP, but it was on our departure day and the time was after our flight leaves Tampa...so that's not really too helpful.

Now, I don't really care that I couldn't get it because we will be back in September and I'll try again then. If I don't get one at all, it's not the end of the world. I'm an adult and if I don't get to meet the princesses, life will go on. (Had the same thing happened on 7DMT, that would have been a different story! ) What I did notice was that as I was trying to make some adjustments and checking times to see if I could switch my Anna/Elsa FP time that other attractions were also unavailable--namely Festival of Fantasy and Wishes. On our earlier trips, they would not have even appeared on the list until closer to the actual date, but now they are on the list and greyed out as "unavailable". I wonder if they are still delaying the release of some of these FPs or if they truly are gone for that day already. It is a relatively small reserved area, so I guess it is altogether possible that the FPs are gone already, but I haven't seen that happen before.

All of this is well in advance of the 30-day mark, so unless they are holding back FPs for each release date, there may be some attractions that will be habitually unavailable for AP holders and offsite guests. I do agree with JoAnn that a 45-day window from AP would be more a fair approach, but even then, some FPs will already be gone--at least during busier times.

I do understand why Disney doesn't show favoritism towards those of us who hold an AP. We show loyalty by purchasing an AP, but we pay a lower cost/day than folks who are traveling on one 10-day trip for the year. (It's possible for this not to be the case, but if you're paying more per day than if you had bought a multi-day ticket, then you picked the wrong ticket.) I'll use our family as an example--based on our cost and usage this year, our AP gets us into the parks for a little over $12/day. Also, I will have had 35 park-day opportunities this year to try to get the FPs that I want. An adult on a 10-day base ticket is paying roughly $35/day and they only have 10 opportunities to get the FPs that they want. In some cases, days guests are only coming for 1-2 days, paying $100 or more for the same day that I enjoy for $12 and they only get one or two shots at booking their FPs. So I suspect that this is part of the reason that we don't get a 45-day window or some other preferential treatment.

Perhaps SoG will soon be part of the 60-day booking window. I thought I heard last week that Swan/Dolphin were gaining some of the additional "on-site" perks--I think it was 60-day FP window.

There are several different and separate issues here:

1. They are still "testing" out this FP+, MDE, etc. So give them feedback, especially if you are a passholder. If enough passholders dislike this way of doing it, I would hope that they will consider changing it.

2. I will tell you the same thing I was told by the DVC sales rep when we were about to buy into it: consider it WITHOUT all the perks, bells, and whistles. Do you still want to have it? In other words, would you still buy an annual pass if you do not have all these perks? Note that these perks are NEVER guaranteed, were never part of the "agreement" when you bought the annual pass, and as we had seen over the years, can be changed, modified, or even completely eliminated! We buy our annual pass simply based on the amount of money that we would have saved when compared to buying park hoppers for all the days that we go to the parks in a typical year. If this is no longer economical, we will drop it, as we had done so in the past. We give no consideration to all the "perks" that we get by having the annual passes.

3. Unfortunately, or fortunately, we have not encountered this same problem, because we had always stayed in a Disney resort for all our visits.

4. Is this Disney's way of giving different "tiers" to their guests, with guests staying on property as being the most favorable to them and thus, being given the most perks? After all, as a passholder staying off site, you also do not get to stay or go in for EMH. So there are definitely perks that on property guests get that an annual passholder does not.

Moderators: I suggest this thread be moved to the Theme Parks forum.

Zz.

We very nearly had the same problem for our week-long trip in September. There was no Anna/Elsa availability left for any of the days that were most convenient for us. I ended up having to cancel an ADR at California Grill to fit Anna and Elsa into our schedule, near the end of our week.

Yes. Even if there were no additional advantages to having an annual pass, I get to go to WDW three times, a full week each trip, for less than length-of-stay park-hopper passes would've cost for just two full weeks. And hubby gets to go FOUR times on his pass. The ticket savings alone make the annual pass worthwhile.

I think I'm fairly ambivalent about the 30 day window. Of course, since we pop over for a day at a time, I'm in a different category than the rest of you.

At most, we plan FP+ a couple of weeks in advance. We're not really character meet and greet people, so the only thing I really haven't been able to grab yet is 7DMT. (we're headed to MK on Sunday and grabbed Space Mountain, Big Thunder RR, and Splash Mountain FP+ with about 7 days notice, all in times that work for us).

But we also figure that whatever we cannot do right now, we'll do in the fall when it's slow. I'd much rather wait in line for 7DMT in November than in July...

We are Florida resident AP holders. At 30 days out, I pick our FP+ and I almost never have an opportunity to get FP+ for the most popular choices~Wishes, FoF, TSM, & 7DMT, are a few of the most popular choices that are always gone when I try to schedule our FP+ at 30 days. This particularly affects my DH and I because our favorite way to enjoy WDW is in the parks 100% of our vacation, riding as many rides, and doing as many attractions as possible.

While I agree that people staying on property should get a few extra perks, I believe that AP should get extra perks too. Especially local AP that go many days a year. They give us locals a discounted rate on AP and I can only assume it's because they know we have the best chance of coming back many days(translation: spending lots of money) a year. Because of this, I am surprised that we don't get any further perks, besides the 10% discount at some places.

We may not pay to stay on property, but we go 35-45 days a year and if you add up how much money we spend all those days a year + AP cost, we are spending more than many people that pay to stay on property for one vacation a year. I don't think those people should lose any perks, but I do think we should have some. And giving AP 60 days out for FP+ choices would be an awesome perk!

Amen to that!

I agree, that would be a simple solution! Way too simple...

I would like to point out that cast members still can't pre-select fastpass+ selections and are stuck with day off selections.