I am not judging, I swear, but I can't seem to find the language I need to be clear:
This is kinda what I meant by abusing the system. People running into the parks to hoarde as many FP tickets they can, which they have absolutely no intention of using in the time which is written on the ticket. Then someone who arrives only one hour later who wants to use it in their afternoon at a reasonable time, may find a very late return time, or even all the Fastpasses completely used up for the day.
I always thought the spirit of FP was that you go up to a ride, and find the line is longer than you want to wait in. So you deicde to get a FP, and come back a little later after you have waited in some other more reasonable lines: eseentially re-distributing the crowds to other nearby, less busy rides, thus evening out the crowds more throughout the park. And making the guest feel like they have more flexibility in how they spend their time (rather than waiting for 1:30 in one line, waiting :45 in this line, then waitin :15 minutes in the other FP line).
The model being suggested here is instead you grab all the FP the system will allow you to hoarde as early in the day as possible, and then essentially have a "magic fastpass" that you can use any time of the day. Are you seriously saying this is not abusing the system, and is how Disney intended it to be used??
I am offering this up as a way to understand your reasoning better, and NOT saying "You are bad an evil and should be punished." LOL I just don't understand how one can rationalize that this is how the system is "meant to work", and encourage people to go grab FP and use them "whenever". Those time windows represent a way to control crowds and provide a better guest experience for everyone.
If I "ran the show", I think I would limit FP distribution a little bit. I wouldn't ever let the system hand out a return time for 7 hours later. I would allow it to hand out a limited number of passes for up to a limited window thereafter--maybe 4 hours would be reasonable. That way, if everyone runs in at 8am to grab FP's, one will never find that the return time has leapt to 8pm by the time they go to get a FP at 10am. The machines would simply not give FP's, and perhaps the sign could even add some indicator saying "X# FP's left for 3:00pm - 4:00pm Return" When all those FP's ran out, it would wait until the next hour to hand out a certain number of FPs for the 5-6pm return window...
I am not the amazing statiticians (sp?!) that Disney clearly has working for them on this. But some way to control it a little more might help make the system work better as a crowd control measure (which is what it is at its heart), and encourage people to work within the system a little more toward that end, rather than trying to find any loophole that might make their stay more enjoyable possibly at the expense of others...
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