Does anyone have any experience using apps like "Standby Skipper" (https://www.standbyskipper.com/) that book your lightning lanes for you? I'm interested to hear if they work, if they're worth it, and whether Disney frowns upon using them. I asked Standby Skipper support that last question, and this is what they said:
As with any other third party app associated with Disney, we have limited visibility as to what’s going on, on their end. I can assure you we have received zero communication from Disney regarding any policy violation. And you see we aren’t hard to find! We have had legal review the terms and have been told we aren’t violating the terms, but Disney can always change things and those are often left up to interpretation.
Wish I had a more black and white answer.
We have NEVER had a customer report they have been blocked or banned. I would still encourage you to review the terms associated with both them and us and that may help you decide if the service is the right fit for you.
Hey Everyone!
I went back in spring break and found it so tiresome to be by the phone 24/7 just to get LLs. It took me almost 2 hours to find frozen while park hopping. I went this Christmas and thought I'd give them a shot. When I was park hopping from animal kingdom to epcot I wasn't able to get a LL for Navi River till the end of the day. Since Animal Kingdom was my first park that was not convenient. I kept refreshing and trying on my own and could not get anything. I decided to let Standby Skipper do their thing and went to tend to my kids to get ready for the park. In the midst of getting ready I got the notification that I got booked for an early time slot. Then I tried for epcot with remy and frozen. When I tell you I was using skipper and myself, it was extremely hard to book anything with either. Nothing was showing up or helping me. While you do this as well you have to leave a slot open with no booking in order for them to book for you. I found that a little frustrating because you may have the 3 rides and you don't want to let go of one but have to in order to use skipper. Basically it doesn't modify them for you. It just books new LLs for you. I think you may just be better on your own. I wasn't able to gain much from it except for the Navi River. I just feel that someone may have to just sacrifice being on the phone for LLs or truly mastering the system like Rob lol.
Hey Kiran! It was good to see you last night. Sorry I missed this question when you asked and I'm guessing you no longer are looking for answers since you are here now, but I just thought I'd add that I haven't used this service. I have thought about trying it out for a video and they have invited me to do so a few times, but I really enjoy booking my own LLs. 😅
Giving your MDE login info to any third party system is a clear TOS violation. Standby Skipper's reply to you very clearly evades directly answering the question. I would take "we have received zero communication from Disney regarding any policy violation" as "We know we're breaking the rules but we haven't been called out on it, yet."
Frankly, I certainly hope Disney IT develops ways to detect use of third party booking services like Standby Skipper and render them nonfunctional. Trying to book lightning lanes while abiding by the rules where others are breaking the rules to use bots feels a bit like shopping on eBay back when it was rife with bots sniping auctions. It was infuriating and degraded the experience for all users.