A quality person for my heart.
Watned to come back to this when I was able to respond better.
It's totally fair and allowed (and frankly GO FOR IT) to go every night and see every house and every attraction while using Express. I don't think there's any moral, ethical, or whatever limitations on using the product you paid for.
My original post was bouncing off of another poster commenting how they FELT like passes with express were a cheat to the event. They feel like it because Universal sees what the price break even point is for the product (probably a combination of the average times guests with the pass go, how often they visit the houses, when they visit, etc. Remember you scan for Express and that's all tracked) where most guests would get a deal out of FFP but also it pushes them to spend more than they would have normally ("hey instead of going one night we can just upgrade to this pass!"). So if someone goes significantly more than that break point it's easy to see how they're "cheating" the system. I think a lot of folks liked that feeling!
I think the issue is the negative connotation of "cheating" and using that term when I could have probably gone for a different one.
I liken it to cell phone data. You have unlimited data. So using 100GBs is fine. However, after a certain amount, you might be throttled if you're in a congested area. If you're consistently in the 1% of users data, you might get reached out to in order to determine how to lessen the data you're using (maybe you need an internet plan, here you go at a discounted rate).
UO could never figure out how to actively throttle to account for high congestion houses or days. So no, no one is "cheating" it or even "abusing" the system. You're using it as it was intended, but over what the expected average usage would be by somebody by a magnitude of X (whatever X is). And that's breaking the system.
There was a comment at some point about this not being about guest satisfaction, but I would push back on that (sorry that I'm deviating from your post, Joe). There's a cost associated with recovering guests. There's lost revenue as part of that and the risk of permanently losing a guest from coming back to the event or to UO in whole. In addition, more times spent in lines for houses, means less time purchasing merch/food/drinks. If you're frustrated, you're less likely to part with those dollars more freely.
There's something to be said about balance and the value of it, especially in an event like this where it's primarily human driven (less reliance of rides and automation). Without the ability to expand capacity, you have to determine how to best manage expectations and satisfaction.
As someone else said, local population in Orlando has exploded as well and I think for many (I know if I still lived there and wasn't working at UO, I would get one) the FFP (with or without Express) is a great value because the event itself is going to be different each night in some way. Not massive like new houses or characters, but the experiences you witness can be altered, the people watching aspect is different, how the characters interact with people, etc. There's great value in being able to be part of that because it's not static, but very dynamic. But, like I mentioned, it's all human driven, and there's only so much you can do with that in terms of capacity before it feels too much and smothering.