Started yesterday at DHS and hopped to DAK.
We were lucky and able to get on
MDE at exactly the right moment to get an ILL$ for Rise--after the ILL$ system was down for quite a while starting at 7 am.
At 7am we booked G+ for TSM.
At lunch we booked G+ for KS at DAK for 3:20.
We arrived at DAK around 2:45 or so. Booked G+ for KRR since nothing for NRJ was available--or ever became available. Also, no ILL$ for FoP were available when we decided to hop and none appeared at all the entire time we were there.
The G+ for KRR wasn't necessary. By the time we got to KRR--around 4:15 pm, the standby wait was 5 minutes.
We've been here almost a week and we still haven't figured out how to get all the G+ attractions we want on any given day. The only exception to this is days where we wanted only 1 G+ ride, so essentially paid ILL$ price for it.
If we stayed in the parks from open to close, we would have less of a problem with this, I think, but we don't. Often by 2 hours after park opening, G+ times for desirable attractions are already for times in the late afternoon so, for us, there was no point in our booking them,
Furthermore, we spend a heckuva lot of time hanging around, waiting for the next thing we booked. I can't imagine why Disney would think this benefits them. Does it? How could it?
And we and a huge % of the people around us in every park we've been in are constantly staring at the phone screen.
And for everyone who thinks that WDW made G, G+, and ILL$ to even the playing field so that somehow knowledgable guests wouldn't have an advantage, I have big news for you: Knowledgable guests still have an advantage because, judging by everyone I've spoken to in the last week, hardly anyone knows how these new systems work. I mean, people aren't even aware they need park reservations. And innumerable people I've chatted with had no idea that you didn't need to buy G+ in order to purchase ILL$.