What is Fastpass?

[Squid2]

I've heard a lot of people mention Fastpass, but I've never heard an explanation of how it works. I understand it is a ticket system that cuts down your wait time... does it cost extra, do you have to get something special to get it, why can't everyone get it, etc...

Could someone explain how FastPass works in detail? Thanks.

Squid2

[RCTTalk]

Originally posted by Squid2
I've heard a lot of people mention Fastpass, but I've never heard an explanation of how it works. I understand it is a ticket system that cuts down your wait time... does it cost extra, do you have to get something special to get it, why can't everyone get it, etc...

Could someone explain how FastPass works in detail? Thanks.

Squid2

Fastpass is a system used in all Disney parks Worldwide. Certain rides that have long lines on a regular basis like Splash Mountain, Space Mountain etc. will have a Fastpass system near the ride where you insert your park ticket and it will spit out a ticket and it will tell you at what time to return to that certain ride so your wait time is cut down. You enter a seperate line, the Fast Pass line on that certain attraction and you are almost immediately let on the ride when you return. However, you can only have one Fast Pass at a time and your Fast Pass ticket will tell you at what time you can get another Fast Pass.

Fast Pass tickets are free. I'm not terribly certain if all park tickets allow fast passes on them but I know for certain Disney Park Hoppers allow you to get Fast Passes free of charge.

[BorisTheFish]

Originally posted by RCTTalk
Fast Pass tickets are free. I'm not terribly certain if all park tickets allow fast passes on them but I know for certain Disney Park Hoppers allow you to get Fast Passes free of charge.


i know that when i was at Magic Kingdom, my standard Magic Kingdom only ticket allowed me fastpass access...

[Harpo]

All visitors at Disney can use the FastPass for free.

Universal has something similar. For them, it's a bit more complicated. You can use it in a style similar to Disney for free, or you can buy a VIP pass that allows you to go into the bypass lines without having to get individual ride tickets. People staying at one of the Univeral hotels get the VIP pass for free.

The concept for Disney and Universal is similar to Six Flags' Qbot. (So far, I've only seen Qbot at SF Over Georgia and SF Over Texas.) Unfortunately, Six Flags charges quite a bit for Qbot, as well as for their FastLane at some of their parks where they don't have a Qbot.

Cedar Point has a handstamping program which works similar to the Disney FastPass, although I prefer Disney's way of doing it. With Cedar Point's method, there's a maximum of 2 stamps per day, but you don't have to wait until one is used in order to get another.

[Tristin]

Q Bot is worth every single penny. They have it at Six Flags Great Adventure. You can Q as many rides as you want at the same time. It's like a pager. When your time comes up for the ride it pages you with the name of the ride and you go there and walk past everyone in the hour long lines and ride it.

I always run around the park in a circel and tag every single ride and as soon as I'm done the pager starts going off and I hit the rides, in the same order I tagged them back to back with no waits. I can't imagine going to six flags without a Qbot. I hate lines, grrrr...

[alpengeist04]

The price for this years Q Bot at SFGRADV is ridiculous. I don't remember the price off the top of my head, but you better have a big group of people. If you don't you'll be paying more individually for Q bot then for a season pass.:eek:

[Harpo]

I'm afraid that I can't agree with QBot being worth it. I've been to two parks where QBot was installed (it wasn't at Great Adventure when I last visited there). The operations at those two parks rank as the #1 and #2 slowest operations I've witnessed out of the 143 parks I've visited. It was my opinion that such slow operations were practically coercing people into renting the QBot.

If the QBot were free, like Disney's FastPass or Cedar Point's FreeWay, I'd have no problem with it. The concept is very good. But, by having people pay for it, it provides incentive for the park to be inefficient (as evidenced by my visits to the two parks where I saw it in use), and I feel that's unfair to the lower-income visitors who are trying to have a fun day, but can't afford the extra frills of a QBot.

Anyway, that's my opinion.

[Tristin]

I have never had a prblem with it. I only visit sfga about 4 times a year. I allways drop the $20 for the Qbot and I have never had to wait for any rides. I guess it depends on how much waiting in hour long lines bothers you. I hate lines, so $20 in my opinon is more than worth it. It would suck if they made it free, then I would have to share my express lane with screeming cring chilrdren. No thank you...

[alpengeist04]

I was referring to the gold Q bot which is more money then the regular Q bot. Since I won't pay for it I don't know the price for this year. I do know that they have increased the price for 2005 at SFGrAdv.

Edit: I just went to a GrAdv forum and they said the prices for Q Bot for 2005 are as follows:

regular Q Bot: $30 1st person, $15 for additional people
Gold Q Bot: $66 1st person, $33 for additional people

Of course, I won't know for sure until I'm up there on June 7th and 8th.

[gdude335]

at SFMW a fast pas cost 15 bucks. It gets you ahead of the line but you do not get to chose your seats. I think you go in by the exit.

[BorisTheFish]

Originally posted by alpengeist04
<snip>

regular Q Bot: $30 1st person, $15 for additional people
Gold Q Bot: $66 1st person, $33 for additional people


geez, i end up having to pay this much in £ for a standard ticket over here!!:eek: :sulk:

[Beano]

What about a fastpass at Alton Towers, how much is that? It doesn't say on the w/s and I'm in the middle of planning a big day out with my m8s.

[BorisTheFish]

if i remember correctly, Alton use normal tickets to "book" a time on the ride...This is only done for the big 3/4 rides, and only on very busy days until mid afternoon....In fact, not even Thorpe Park charges for special tickets, both parks instead offer Single Rider Queues

[Beano]

Originally posted by BorisTheFish
if i remember correctly, Alton use normal tickets to "book" a time on the ride...This is only done for the big 3/4 rides, and only on very busy days until mid afternoon....In fact, not even Thorpe Park charges for special tickets, both parks instead offer Single Rider Queues
I'm confused, do you mean fastpasses are free until mid-afternoon?

[BorisTheFish]

Originally posted by Beano
I'm confused, do you mean fastpasses are free until mid-afternoon?

the fast pass system when i was last at Alton Towers worked in such a way as you use the barcode on the back of your ticket in a special machine near the ride, this gives you a time to return to the ride. However, due to the fact that there can only be a limtied number of tickets, they run out by mid afternoon, and the machines are promptly removed.
However, i have never been 100% sure about when they operate these schemes, as when i went during a weekday they ran this system, but when i went at a weekend, they weren't running the Fastpass system...

[Beano]

Originally posted by BorisTheFish
the fast pass system when i was last at Alton Towers worked in such a way as you use the barcode on the back of your ticket in a special machine near the ride, this gives you a time to return to the ride. However, due to the fact that there can only be a limtied number of tickets, they run out by mid afternoon, and the machines are promptly removed.
However, i have never been 100% sure about when they operate these schemes, as when i went during a weekday they ran this system, but when i went at a weekend, they weren't running the Fastpass system...
I'm sure they'll have it up this weekend, when I went 2 years ago, they had just built Air and the que for that was 3 hours!! 3 whole hours I tell ye. Same que time for Nemesis, so I didn't go on those 2.

I think the two longest que for me was The Oblivion, and strangly enough, I think The Corkscrew's que was a good 20 minutes. The Oblivion's que would have been cut by 20 minutes for me because it was just my luck that I was queing right behind a group of thugs that had had loads to drink and were on the verge of fighting. It caused loads of pollava, the trains had to be stopped outside and the peeps were helped out by the ride guys onto the other side of the platform. And there was nothing happening for about 20 minutes, except for the noise of the people in front of me having a massive argument and the little annoying speaker saying somthing like "submission in t-minus 5 minutes". Now if Peter Kay found that annoying (as he memtoined about it in his comedy show top of blackpool tower), how would he have liked to be listening to it for 20 minutes. It was just my luck because we were due to be on the next ride.

Back onto the fastpass system, I sure hope its free just like at Diney Land, I've been told that cost , which is cold. :sour:

[Dan2330]

If I recall Disney made some modifications to the Fast Pass- it still works the same but they did change some things about it.

I can never see CP going to anything faster than the dumn handstamps they are doing- With all of the damn coasters they have u almost need 2 days to hit them all with possible repeat rides.

Six Flags Great America uses some kind of line jumper progam- card you get with I think 6 lines you can jump- even with the line jumper you still have somewhat of a wait- If I recall Raging Bull times even for line jumpers could be as long as 30 minutes- not worth it for the overhead they charge.

Was at PKI (Kings Island) last summer, I don't recall them doing any kind of program which seems fair to me...

[RCTTalk]

Well, if anyone here is planning a trip to Disneyland this summer be sure to use Fast Pass. Or else you'll be waiting hours on end for all the great rides.

I find it wierd that some people there hate Fastpass because they "think" it makes the lines longer which is farthest from the truth. If there were no fast passes, it would make wait times even longer because even more people would be standing in line for a certain ride than people with Fast Passes because they are elsewhere in the park. So in a way Fast Pass does shave off the lines and spreads the crowds elsewhere until they have to go back for that ride. Even then, when people return, they have an hour to return to that ride and not everyone that has a Fast Pass for that ride will return all at the same time. Plus, Fast Passes are limited to each ride.

What I'm trying to say to the Fast Pass haters is that Disneyland would probably be just as popular without Fast Passes and without them, I'm pretty sure wait times would be astronomically high.

Also, the service is absolutely free and the people who snub Fast pass users aren't incredibly smart because they can use the Fast Pass system just like them. Unless, they wait in stand-by to make a stand. Sorry if I ticked off Fast Pass haters but the system works and I doubt Disney will get rid of them. I'm not talking about the people on the boards here, I'm talking about the people on other boards like MouseInfo who trash Fast Passes when they are life savers for tourists who want to do all the rides they can before they have to head back to their homes.

[Harpo]

One of the funniest things I witnessed was at Disney/MGM Studios. I had a FastPass for Rock 'n' Roller Coaster. As I was walking up the Fast Pass entrance, a person standing in the regular line said, (Imagine a stron British accent) "Oh, very nice. Look at those people with their fancy Fast Passes. Booooooooooo!" My thought was, "Um, it's free. You could have gotten one, too."

I really like the free queue management systems -- it helps spread people throughout the park and improve crowd management, thereby allowing more people to experience more attractions. The ones that cost money, however, really bother me, since they're not equally available to everyone in the park -- only the wealthier visitors get to buy the benefit.

[RCTTalk]

Originally posted by Harpo
One of the funniest things I witnessed was at Disney/MGM Studios. I had a FastPass for Rock 'n' Roller Coaster. As I was walking up the Fast Pass entrance, a person standing in the regular line said, (Imagine a stron British accent) "Oh, very nice. Look at those people with their fancy Fast Passes. Booooooooooo!" My thought was, "Um, it's free. You could have gotten one, too."

I really like the free queue management systems -- it helps spread people throughout the park and improve crowd management, thereby allowing more people to experience more attractions. The ones that cost money, however, really bother me, since they're not equally available to everyone in the park -- only the wealthier visitors get to buy the benefit.

Funny how the idiots make fun of the smart ones. Should of said, enjoy your line. LoL. Since we went to Disneyland on a Saturday, it was fairly crowded and we used Fast Pass for many rides, Tower had a 60 minute wait, Big Thunder had 30 minutes, Indiana had 30 minutes, California Screamin had 40 minutes etc. it's common sense to use Fast Pass when you don't feel the need to stand in a big line. I wish Matterhorn Mountain and Peter Pan's Flight got Fast Pass, those 2 rides could really use it.