Beginning on 5 August 2021, Disneyland Paris will officially launch Disney Premier Access, a paid “skip-the-line” service that replaces FastPass. The new system, which Disney soft launched today, will allow guests to return to an attraction at a specific time and skip the standby line.

From anywhere inside the parks, guests can use the App to book an assigned time slot for select attractions, prices (at launch) range from 8€ to 15€ per person per ride depending on the attraction and day of use. Guests without a smartphone can also purchase Disney Premier Access at select locations in the parks.

At this time, only the most popular attractions at the Disneyland Paris park and Walt Disney Studios park will be available:

• Autopia
• Buzz Lightyear Laser Blast
• Star Wars Hyperspace Mountain
• Star Tours: The Adventures Continue
• Peter Pan’s Flight
• Big Thunder Mountain
• Twilight Zone Tower of Terror
• Ratatouille: L’Aventure Totalement Toquée de Rémy

As a way to prevent individuals from booking passes before in advance, guests can only purchase a premier access pass once they have entered one of the parks or from a Cast Member (at City Hall or Studio Services). The Disney Premier Access pass will be valid on the day of purchase only. Children under three will not need their own pass providing they are accompanied by an adult with a valid pass.

If an attraction is closed or down for an extended period of time, Disney states that guests will receive a new Pass in the “My Disney Premier Access” section of the app. They can wait to see if the attraction re-opens or use their new Pass to access the Disney Premier Access line for any other eligible attraction, at any time. Like the former FastPass, guests can only purchase and hold one premier access pass at a time.

Although the Disney Premier Access program replaces FastPass, guests still have the option of waiting in line or utilizing  the Disney Standby Pass, a virtual queue (when capacity and demand calls for it).

Many fans were not happy with this new system as they took to social media to express their disgust.

Twitter user @scottgustin wrote, “This is absolute madness. $18/pp to skip the line for Buzz Lightyear.” A follow-up tweet stated, “Just to be clear – I’m not against paid FastPass. I actually like the idea. But this ain’t it. I do think we might see an ‘à la carte’ approach at Walt Disney World, but I don’t think it will be exactly like the DLP (Disneyland Paris) program.”

DSNY Newcast tweeted, “… this Disney Premier Access is NOT going to go down well at those prices.” Tom Bricker from Disney Tourist Blog wrote, “Color me skeptical, but I just don’t see [the] utilization of Premier Access being very high.” A commenter on WDW News Today simply wrote, “One word: Greed.”

Others commented that if “people don’t like it then don’t use it. Stand in line.” Mark – @raymondmark on Twitter – posted, “DisneylandParis’ PremierAccess is not a requirement. Standby is still available and will likely be minimally impacted by this new system. Everyone needs to stop acting like this is mandatory to ride rides. People pay $100+ for fast passes at nearly all theme parks.” Shanghai Disneyland has been charging guests for fast passes, albeit as a bundled package instead of individual attractions, for years now.

However, there were others who did not mind the new system and thought that if it was for one or two attractions that they were not able to get on due to long queues, then the price was “worth it.”

Disney blog Laughing Place, was at Disneyland Paris today testing the new system out. They paid for a Premier Access Pass to Hyperspace Mountain. “We were able to purchase it through the app (with only a slight delay during the payment process), and the time slot was immediate,” wrote Edith Gervin. “While there was no line for Premier Access – the attractions utilise [sic] the previous FastPass lanes, meaning they merge with the standby line at a certain point. For Hyperspace Mountain, these two lines merge quite early on – meaning we did still experience a 5-10 minute wait (while the standby wait time was 30 minutes).’ She went on to say that the “Premier Access more often than not will still require (at least a short) wait time regardless. It essentially operates the exact same way as the previous FastPass system.”

Many fans of Disneyland and Walt Disney World are very concerned that this will be the future of the U.S. parks sometime soon. Some are predicting this will happen within the next couple of months.

When the parks slowly reopened due to the pandemic, Disney cancelled many of their perks due to revised health protocols, including FastPasses. As the parks continued with their phased reopenings, FastPasses were no where to be seen. It has been rumored for quite some time now that Disney has wanted to monetize FastPasses at these two parks. As with other new programs that Disney has recently instituted at the parks, e.g. a park reservation system, the pandemic has provided the opporutnity to make over the FastPass program with no disruption to guests.