I would love to hear from anyone who has done this about the experience, especially about where you sit and how early you had to get in line to enter. We have the dinner package booked, but am now wondering if we are just better off using a FP+ for this.
As I've heard you can only book the parades and special viewing (Fantasmic, Illuminations) on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. It seemed to be the case since we couldn't book the weekdays.
This is from out stay 8/7-8/16.
Fantasmic: was seated in the section next to the dining package people. One section off of direct center - same great views and they didn't allow the section to fill in with late comers until the last 10 minutes.
Illuminations was on the outside of the right gift shop in a roped off area. Right next to the handicap seating. They had wifi issued with getting the readers to work. We got in line about 20 minutes before out reservation because often with the stage shows we were given a time and arrived to find the locations already seated. We barely got a front seating spot because they started admitted people for the other side too. Seating never filled in to be more than two people deep and they kept the area roped off the entire time. Good viewing location.
Main Street Electrical Parade. The viewing area was in front of the castle in the round island. We were first in line and they again had reader problems. This are too started admitting people for another area. They kept the are roped off until they shut down the street and they promised to kept people from cutting in. Several times they escorted people from the area without bands. The location was great, the side and back ropes were kept up and Alice from Alice in Wonderland actually interacted with my daughter.
I have young kids so we never did much of the regular fastpasses. Our KTTW worked for regular FP and our original KTTW from earlier in the stay also work too. *hint* Shows were worth *NOT* (updated typo that added not) using the FP+ because you ended up bypassing a short line. Things that don't offer regular FP were nice like the mansion and Tomorrowland Speedway/It's a Small World when the lines were long.
You can change you FP+ times on the fly, but the earliest you can book is what current FP are being issued. So ones that are FP+ only you could often get on immediately.