Ouija boards - does the ideomotor effect always come in to play?

I have never used a ouija board, but I've had several friends who did and they all reported essentially identical experiences...that nothing strange at happened. The planchette didn't move at all unless one of them consciously decided to move it to make things less boring, and if they did it went exactly where they moved their hand to get it to go.

This seemed a totally reasonable explanation to me - that it was essentially a gimmick toy that didn't really do anything - so I was pretty surprised when I read about the ideomotor effect, and that apparently ouija board planchettes ARE actually supposed to move.

So I'm curious - does the ideomotor effect always occur? Does it rely on an expectation of what will happen to begin with? (Pretty sure everyone I knew who had tried it didn't believe it would work to begin with).