A major part of Grandpa’s Crushing It strategy is to ride standby. I know that this can be controversial. Disney’s line skipping offerings, Lightning Lane Multi/Single pass can save major time. Especially if you want to cram as many rides in a visit as possible. Crushing It is not about just riding the rides. It is about slowing down and enjoying the whole park. Disney Parks are a magical place. The magic gets a bit tarnished when you rush between attractions trying to keep to the Lightening Lane schedule. This post will cover some of the basics on riding standby. You can slow down, relax, and soak in the magic. Imagineers have created this magic for you.

What Disney won’t tell you

There are several things about Lightning Lane that Disney will not tell you. The first is kind of obvious. Disney controls the inventory. What this means is Disney will set all the parameters for the Lightning Lane passes. These parameters include things such as number of passes, standby ratio and return times. The inventory of available passes is reviewed throughout the day. If conditions are right, then more passes are added, or the return times are adjusted, or both. That is why all Lightning Lane strategies include frequent checking Lightning Lane availability in the Disney apps. This lets you see if more passes become available as the day unfolds.

Another thing that disney won’t tell you is the standby ratio. What is that you may ask? This is the number of Lightning Lane guests that are admitted per standby guest. For instance if the ratio is 20, then 20 Lightning Lane guests are allowed to go in for each standby guest. I’m sure that all of you have been in a standby line and you have seen a bunch of Lightning Lane holders admitted while standby is being held up. That is pretty frustrating under the best of times. This ratio can be as high as 100 to 1! At this level, the standby line moves 100 times slower than the Lightning Lane! As with other parameters, this ratio is adjusted as the day progresses.

Ok so what does this all mean? At the end of the day, Lightning Lane passes are a big negative impact to Standby. In the old days before any line skipping “tools” things were pretty much even. Everyone was treated the same. The line you saw was the line everyone waited in. Now with the Lightning Lane passes, you can be sure that standby is at best unpredictable. A long line may move ok, and a short line be held up due to a high ride ratio. The posted wait times are a guide, but those are manipulated as well.

So why Grandpa do you insist on not using these passes? I for one hate paying for something “extra”. These passes are yet another cost on top of already expensive tickets. The old paper fastpass was free and worked well. The bean counters in charge decided they were missing a revenue opportunity, so came up with the pay for the privilege systems we have today. It can be a large financial burden on large families since every person in the party needs to pay for a pass. With the crowd based and park based pricing, it is also hard to budget. Even if we take the nominal cost of $30, a family of 4 would be shelling out an extra $120 a day, just to “skip” the line.

Ok Grandpa, you say that people do find value in Lightning Lane. That’s fair. For families that are making a once in a lifetime trip, it is probably worth the cost. It does mean for those families, choices have to be made. Lightning Lane or extra souvenirs, It is a trade off especially when budgets are tight. Grandma and I tend go to the parks much more often and usually stay longer than most. This means we don’t feel compelled to do everything on one trip. We go to relax, recharge, and forget the outside world. That is what Crushing It is all about.

That said it also goes against my nature to “pay to win”. I find it discriminatory, unfair, and furthering a caste system. Ok that sounds harsh and I won’t dwell on it. I realize your views may be different and I would love to hear from you.

So is there anything you can do to help make standby less frustrating? Of course! The next post will be about how to survive in a Lightning Lane pass environment. In the meantime, let me know in the comments about your Lightning Lane and standby experiences. Stay Tuned.

Until Next time.