Come one, come all, get your FastPasses here!!!

DeWayne Bevil at the Orlando Sentinel has a story posted yesterday about a new experiment Disney is conducting at Animal Kingdom with the FastPass system -- centralized FastPass distribution. Guests can go to one location and get a FastPass for any attraction that offers FastPass in the park.

I'm not so sure about this one. I'm a huge fan of FastPass, but part of the magic of FastPass is actually going to the attraction to get your pass. Guests play the game of FastPass time vs. standby line time By making FastPasses available at a central location, FastPass becomes the ONLY option, thus making the odds of FastPasses running out much sooner is pretty high.

I also assume that the one-FastPass-per-person rule (with some exceptions, see this post for more) will remain in effect.

Let's carry this idea forward and put it at the Studios, a park where FastPasses for the major attractions runs out very quickly (think Tower of Terror, Rockin' Roller Coaster and Toy Story Mania). The rop-drop happens and instead of people hurrying to one attraction, they instead rush to the central FastPass location to get passes for one of the E-ticket attractions. That place will become so crowded it will be insane. You'll practically need a FastPass to get a FastPass.

Even with a centralized FastPass distribution, Disney has to keep the FastPass machines at the individual attractions. If Disney ONLY has FastPass distribution at a central place, it will be bedlum and the entire FastPass system will be worthless, so I very much hope Disney doesn't decide to pull out the individual machines.

I'll try to look at this on the plus side. Having a centralized location does offer convenience. If, for example, you want to get a set of FastPasses for Soarin' and then catch the standby line at TestTrack, you wouldn't have to go all the way to Soarin' to get the passes and then hustle all the way over to TT, hopefully to get a short standby line. A central location would be beneficial in this instance.

I guess I'll have to see just how this pans out before I decide if this is a good idea or not.

What are your thoughts? Keep it or ditch it? Post a comment!