Disney says guests will be able to reserve ride times from home

I was pretty unimpressed by this idea. I'm already thinking I have to do too much planning and can't play it by ear enough. I absolutely don't want to schedule my rides.

I had to check the date on my calendar because I swore this was an April Fools joke. (By the way random story..I was looking at my planner the other day and on April 1 it said "April Fools has been moved to April 29th". I spent about 5 minutes googling this until I checked the April 29th box and saw that it said APRIL FOOLS! I hate jokes).

I absolutely love checking in..and planning ride times?!? What???

It's a planning step too far for me. Being able to decide what to do according to the crowds and how we feel is important rather than having to worry about sticking to a pre-booked rota.

This is far too much overplanning. I thought the 180 day ADR thing was bad enough. I absolutely hate this idea.

This is great! We're all in accord, although I know some family members who LOATHE standing in lines - the will absolutely LOVE this. But I agree with y'all. I like a little spontaneity, and interacting with CMs at check in - and just the thrill of CHECKING IN! - I'm not interested in skipping.

Thanks for posting, Jeff!

Are there things that you can think of that you would like to schedule? Or things that have to be scheduled (those pesky 180-days-out ADRs) that you wish you didn't have to?

To be honest the checking in thing doesn't really bother me at all, but the booking a ride time does. It just means that those of us who don't want to plan everything to death and stick to a mentally strictly-regemented schedule will be stuck in the stand-by lines all trip. No thank you. Ridiculous.

Off the top of my head I can't think of anything I would like to schedule? I'd get rid of the 180 day ADRs and have every restaurant as walk up/book on the day. If I were King of Disney.

I'm going through my file cabinet to find the "worst ideas ever" section under which to file book ride times.

Yes! and file that one right on TOP of the pile.

Yeah...I mean, what about no-shows? And can you only book once Disney makes sure you're actually a ticket holder? How in the world does that work?

I may not be thinking logically (no coffee yet) - but wouldn't they have the potential to fowl things up? Why make life more complicated? Ugh. Now my head hurts.

I was wondering about this too..this just seems like a weird idea. I don't like it. What happens if you don't show up..does your credit card get charged?

Wow, reserving rides ahead of time is a phenomenally bad idea, IMO. Even for those of us who are super organized (like me), this could turn into a problem. First, things never take the exact amount of time you think they're going to at WDW. On my last trip, I found myself frequently ahead of schedule or behind schedule on things--and none of that was because I had to wait in line for things, it was just how long it took to get from place to place. So I can foresee people missing their scheduled appointments a lot. Also, people should be allowed to be spontaneous if they want to be, and what happens to them if a ride is totally prebooked? (And then some of those people don't show up because they miscalculated how long it would take to get from point A to point B?)

I do like the idea of checking into your hotel room without having to stand in line at the desk, though.

I LOVE the idea of checking in before we get there. Although I wonder if that means that you'll never get into your room before 3?

Yeah I pretty much think these ideas are stupid! The online check in thing is nice, but I still want to go the desk to here the "Welcome Home!"

I would never want to reserve ride times ahead of time. I can be quite anal about planning things down to the last detail, but that is even too much for me. There just seems to be way too much margin for error; if you don't show up to a ride at the exact time you booked, are you pretty much SOL?

You know that's actually kind of a good point. The customer service is part of what makes Disney so fun. If they start limiting interaction is that going to diminish their selling points?

I agree..Disney is one of the few places I don't mind standing in line to check in because the interaction once I get there is just SO much fun. Especially once at POP..it was late and we were really tried but while we were waiting and waiting..like you always have to the CM in the next computer was free so she decided to teach us how to do the Hustle. Awesome..and I still remember it.

Wow - this is a terrible idea! Can you just imagine - the parent who gets to Splash Mt. fifteen minutes after their check in and raising bloody hell, thereby holding up everyone else even more? No thank you!

I DO, however, think putting the ability to get a fastpass on your smartphone would be cool. I'm just thinking off the top of my head - but make an app that ties your phone to you key to the kingdom. You want a fastpass for something in MK while in Epcot? You log in on your phone, it records your time so you can't get more than one in a timeframe (just like now) and when time comes you just show your phone to the CM with the Fastpass on it. That would alleviate the crowds around the big rides, and help keep people moving more. They can still have the regular machines, but with smartphones being so prevalent now, it would hugely reduce the amount of people using them.

I love the smartphone Fastpass idea.

I say we all send an email to disney about his Idea and say "NO PLEASE!"

Me too..because the worst part about FP's is you have to walk all the way to one side of the park to get a FP..then you're there..but you can't ride anything for two hours so you have to stall and ride all the short rides..but what you REALLY want to do is on the other side of the park. Does this happen to anyone else. It happens to me. Especially in AK.

Yep, or at least it would if we didn't send one person to get the FP's while the others shop or take a smoke break.