Category — zzzz. Rumor-mongering

DISNEY WORLD FREE DINING

As I posted yesterday, the current forecast is that Free Dining will come out for Disney Visa holders on May 1, and for the general public on May 7–not May 5.

But this is a forecast, not carved in stone.  To keep up with what actually happens–in case, for example, it does come out May 5!–I suggest doing two things:

• First, sign up for email notification about free dining from my friends at Destinations in Florida.  Click this link, fill out the form, reply to the confirmatory email, and you are set!
• Second, check this thread (click “last page”) every morning.  If things happens sooner than expected, you’ll find out quickly there–any news will show up right after 7a eastern.

Word is that the Brazilian deal will include the following eligible arrival dates, and thus so too might the general public deal:

• 8/31 to 10/03
• 10/26 to 11/1
• 11/9 to 11/20 and
• 12/12 to 12/23

Treat these as forecasts, too.  General public offers are often hairier than Brazilian ones. The US offer may be the same; it may be only for the late August-early October dates; it may be for all these basic date blocks, but with slightly different start or end dates; or it may be something entirely different.

For the best FAQ on free dining you’ll ever read, see this.

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Two different sources have told me that while September Free Dining will open for Disney Visa on May 21, Free Dining offers will open to the general public on May 7, not May 5 as many–including me!–have forecast.

See this for more!

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Update: or maybe May 7?

My buddy Joe Black is now forecasting that Free Dining for September 2014 will open to the general public for booking on Monday May 5.

(For the full scoop on free dining, see this.)

This is still just a forecast, and may be wrong.  But Joe thinks that Free Dining will open then, will likely open a bit earlier for Disney Visa cardholders, will have eligible arrival dates from late August into September, and may extend well into September. As usual, certain resorts and room types will be excluded.

Joe also think that there will be additional free dining for later in 2014, to be announced mid-summer. This last bit is a reversal of predictions that he and I co-authored late last year…and no one would be happier to be wrong!

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Sometime this summer—my bet is June 13, by the way, technically spring—On July 8th the second installment of Harry Potter at Universal Orlando will open at Universal Studios. The effect for Harry Potter fans will be to make Universal a two-day park.

For Disney World this has multiple implications, and its responses will likely try to address then all. The core issues for Disney are

1. Harry Potter will draw incrementally more people to Orlando, so Disney’s task for these is to grab some of their time and money while they are in town
2. Of the people who would have come to Orlando anyway, Disney’s task is to not lose too much from people spending time and money at Universal that they might otherwise have spent at Disney World

In this post, I’m gonna focus on the second issue, as it is widely misunderstood—and in particular the role of FastPass+ in it.

The best way to see the new and older Harry Potter is to get a two-day multi-park ticket, stay in a Universal hotel, and use Universal’s early entry to hit one area each morning, fitting Hogwarts Express rides back and forth in as well.

For younger kids, though, there’s not enough age-appropriate stuff to stay all day at Universal—and that’s where FastPass+ kick in.

In the olden days, the best way to see Disney World was to arrive before open, see a bunch of rides first thing, and then pull old-style FastPass+ over the rest of the day. Guests who arrived in the afternoon—e.g. after a visit to Universal—would see long lines stand-by lines and Fastpasses either gone or with very late return times. Nobody with Disney World experience would advise that such could be a great day.

But with FastPass+, you can book three great Disney World rides for the late afternoon/early evening and be able to see them with hardly any wait. So a day that begins at Universal and ends at Disney World can be a much better experience—one that would be recommended, rather than suggested as to be avoided.

This is the key point. With great late days available at Disney World, the competition is no longer about which park gets the only entry that day—competition is about how to spend the afternoon and evening. That’s a much easier competition for Disney to win with pre-teens and their families.

Note that Disney’s recent deals have had a lot of “buy this many nights and tickets, and get another ticket day free.” It’s been years since Disney World has had free tickets for so many deals—and the effect of these is to make another afternoon/evening at Disney World that much more doable.

And you can also see other stuff happening in late August and September that has the effect of making Disney World more attractive in the afternoons and evenings—one that’s clear, one that’s speculative, and one that’s probably me just making stuff up.

• The clear one: Food and Wine is beginning a week earlier in 2014 than in prior years—adding that much more attractiveness to Epcot in the afternoons and evenings that week.
• The speculative one: The Magic Kingdom has more and earlier 7p closes in September than in past years. The widespread guess is that this means that Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party will have more and earlier shows in 2014 than in the past—e.g. an earlier show may be September 1. Later in the month, there’s likely to be two more shows than in recent years. Add it up, and Magic Kingdom becomes more attractive in the evenings. (Confirmed.)
• The made-up one: Disney’s Hollywood Studios has four straight nights in early September (the second through the fifth) with no Fantasmic scheduled. It’s been years since the last time that happened. Sensible people are guessing that this is because of a quick rehab to the Fantasmic operations. But I can’t help wondering if there might not be some special event planned those evenings to make HS more attractive those nights…perhaps a test of a villains party?

I’m probably wrong—as usual—on that last guess. But more broadly, Harry Potter is gonna happen, and it’s gonna have a real draw for some subsets of people who would otherwise attend Disney World. FastPass+–and some of the other items I’ve noted—make afternoons and evenings at Disney World much more attractive than they’d otherwise be, making its parks more competitive for the second half of a visitor’s day…

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April 1, 2014–Today multiple sources are reporting that Disney World has entirely and irrevocably canceled its new FastPass+ program.

Disney’s FastPass+ program (up until today…) let Disney World guests pre-schedule the wrong rides in the wrong order at the wrong park up to 60 days in advance. (Thirty days for off-site guests and annual passholders, and 13 days for vampires.)

With the cancellation, guests will be back to making bad decisions only in real time.

The background to the cancellation is beginning to leak out—and (if true) it’s astonishing but only too credible to anyone who has a. worked in large organizations, b. been inappropriate and c. committed typos.

Apparently the genesis of the debacle was an effort kicked off several years ago to make Disney World rides more accessible to those on scooters or wheelchairs, and/or those whose body sizes matched poorly to more than 40 year old turnstile, aisle-way, and ride seat sizes.

With so much re-work planned for ride entries, exits and queues anyway, the scope of the project was expanded to also include interactive queues, personalized greetings, hand puppets, and other features of 1990s technology.

This project had a formal corporate name, but became known internally as the “plus” or “+” project.

Sadly, one particularly insensitive executive—reputedly on loan from ESPN—started referring to it in a particularly insensitive manner, using a word which, while close to FastPass+, has two fewer letters.

Well, you can guess what happened next. The crude new nickname made its way into an email, a senior exec called the team on the carpet over it, and a fast-thinking middle manager claimed that it was simply an unfortunately poorly spell-checked typo, and what the team really meant was FastPass+.

“FastPass+?” the senior exec murmured. “Hmmmm…What are you all thinking about?”

In response, the team simply made up on the spot the entire FastPass+ program as we knew it until today.

The program then became a showpiece in the CEO succession race at Disney, as the two of the three key potential CEO candidates were viewed as either the champions (Jay Rasulo) or implementers (Tom Staggs) of FastPass+, and there we went…

So why cancel it now? Well, no one is talking yet, but my thought is that since the only potential CEO candidate without a background in the parks left Disney last month (Anne Sweeney), the way is now clear for Rasulo and Staggs to jointly walk away from the program without advantaging another potential successor.

I’m sorry to see FastPass+ go. Regardless of its unkind genesis and flawed pedigree, FastPass+ has enormous benefits for those first-time visitors who take advantage of good advice on how to use it. And it’s kinda embarrassing for Disney, following other high-profile cancellations like the pain-themed DVC offering, high-speed rail at the Animal Kingdom, and the Minnesota Pavilion at Epcot.

On the other hand, the constant whining about FastPass+ on various Disney fan forums thankfully will now come to an end, and everyone can instead return to whining about Horizons.

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Hey, this deal has been released. See this!

ROOM RATE AND FREE DAY DEAL TO COME OUT JANUARY 6?

Expectations are high that a room rate and small ticket deal for April 20-June 15, 2014 will come out for the general public Monday January 6.

Reports this morning are that this deal is already available to Disney Visa cardholders.

The deal seems to include not only a room rate discount, but also one free ticket day after a minimum buy: e.g. buy 4 days, and get the 5th free.

I don’t have any more specifics, but as I learn them–or my buddy Joe Black tells me them–I’ll pass them along!

HOW TO SCREW THIS DEAL UP

Well-meaning but inept advice is showing up here and there that non-Visa people–that is, the rest of us–should book now to “lock in your room,” and then convert your room to the deal later.

Deals don’t work this way.  You are competing for the inventory of the deal with everyone else, whether or not you already have a room.

So booking before the deal does not help you one bit in getting the deal once it comes out.

Moreover, the more who book now, the less pressure there is to have a deal at all–so booking now may reduce the number of rooms made available, or even narrow the dates offered.

So don’t book now, unless you plan to go with or without the deal!!

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