What are your preferred FP times?

[cbellasmomma]

Assuming you can get any time you want what's your preferred time for your FP's? Or is it all based on something else?

On arrival day I plan to make my FP's for around 3:30 at MK because I'm not sure if we will check in right away or leave our bags and come back after. It's also not a huge deal if we miss them.

But the next day I am at MK pre-park opening. I was going to just make them for first thing in the morning but that doesn't make sense right? Is it even reasonable to make FP's before 12? And is one FP time a longer wait than others? I'm assuming even if you have a FP you are in line with other FP holders?

Clearly I haven't done this before....

 

[ELSA711]

Assuming you can get any time you want what's your preferred time for your FP's? Or is it all based on something else?

On arrival day I plan to make my FP's for around 3:30 at MK because I'm not sure if we will check in right away or leave our bags and come back after. It's also not a huge deal if we miss them.

But the next day I am at MK pre-park opening. I was going to just make them for first thing in the morning but that doesn't make sense right? Is it even reasonable to make FP's before 12? And is one FP time a longer wait than others? I'm assuming even if you have a FP you are in line with other FP holders?

Clearly I haven't done this before....

I have only gone once with FP+ and it was late October 2014. It was a slow week so with MK I booked all my FP+ at 10a, 11a and 12. We had BOG lunch at 12:55 so once we used our 12noon FP for 7DMT I went at 12:15pm and got once for after lunch with PP. The kiosk did not had PP listed, I got Buzz from the kiosk and simply changed it to PP on my app. I found this to happen a lot after using my first 3. The kiosk only offered a few choices but once I grabbed a FP for something like Buzz or Small World I changed it to what we wanted through my app which had more choices..not sure why.

Everyone is different, but I like my FP back to back between 10am-1pm so before my lunch break I can already have my next FP for after lunch, this only worked well in MK though for us.

 

[Lucius Best]

Personally we are rope drop people, and our goal was to get as many FP as possible.

FP+ is great for going to the park on arrival day, you can have 3 FP waiting for you when you get there.

You don't need FP first thing in the morning, but on a 9am park opening day, we find crowds start to build between 10:30-11am. On our last trip we typically booked FP for 10am/11am/12pm. Note that you have an entire hour-long window, and can usually return 5 minutes early or up to 15 minutes late. We never used our first FP at 10am, we would usually return near the end of that window. After using first 3 FP, we would go to a FP kiosk and try to get a 4th FP, and hit a nearby counter service for lunch. Our afternoons were much more flexible, how long we stayed at park or went back to the pool depended on crowds/lines/heat/FP availability/etc. How many more FP you can get depends on crowds and what park you're in (easier at MK because more rides).

You are right that even with FP, you are not cutting the entire line, you're getting merged in. But every ride is different in terms of when the merge happens. FP return wait times for us were usually longer in the afternoon than the morning. Certain rides like Thunder Mountain and Safari seemed to usually have long lines (over one hundred people) backed up just to enter the FP queue. We also occasionally saw long FP waits at RnRC, Everest, TestTrack, Splash, Buzz, Soarin. Splash Mountain merges you in very close to the boats (as does 7DMT). Space Mountain had no merge when we were there: standby went to the left track, FP went to the right (same with Pirates). Barnstormer merge is pretty far back and was slow even with FP. Rides like RnRC and ToT and HM have merges before the pre-shows. You can expect to wait 5-10 minutes with FP, and possibly 15-20 if it's a busy afternoon.

 

[tink9702]

11, 1,2 or 1, 2, 3 at both MK & HS. Epcot it's all three early morning so 9,10,11 so that I can head to World Showcase quicker. At AK my FP+ choices would be Everest, character spot & Kali so based on where those are in touring I'd try to schedule Kali for 12, Everest for 1 and then character spot much later, say 3?

 

[ELSA711]

Personally we are rope drop people, and our goal was to get as many FP as possible.

FP+ is great for going to the park on arrival day, you can have 3 FP waiting for you when you get there.

You don't need FP first thing in the morning, but on a 9am park opening day, we find crowds start to build between 10:30-11am. On our last trip we typically booked FP for 10am/11am/12pm. Note that you have an entire hour-long window, and can usually return 5 minutes early or up to 15 minutes late. We never used our first FP at 10am, we would usually return near the end of that window. After using first 3 FP, we would go to a FP kiosk and try to get a 4th FP, and hit a nearby counter service for lunch. Our afternoons were much more flexible, how long we stayed at park or went back to the pool depended on crowds/lines/heat/FP availability/etc. How many more FP you can get depends on crowds and what park you're in (easier at MK because more rides).

You are right that even with FP, you are not cutting the entire line, you're getting merged in. But every ride is different in terms of when the merge happens. FP return wait times for us were usually longer in the afternoon than the morning. Certain rides like Thunder Mountain and Safari seemed to usually have long lines (over one hundred people) backed up just to enter the FP queue. We also occasionally saw long FP waits at RnRC, Everest, TestTrack, Splash, Buzz, Soarin. Splash Mountain merges you in very close to the boats (as does 7DMT). Space Mountain had no merge when we were there: standby went to the left track, FP went to the right (same with Pirates). Barnstormer merge is pretty far back and was slow even with FP. Rides like RnRC and ToT and HM have merges before the pre-shows. You can expect to wait 5-10 minutes with FP, and possibly 15-20 if it's a busy afternoon.

I will be one to second Barnstormer as a slow FP, not even sure why I used one. I only made that mistake once

 

[NJlauren]

I did a mix, but I think it depends if you are park hopping or taking breaks. One day we did AK in the am and then Epcot in the afternoon so we did FP at Epcot.

If we were doing MK at any point during the day I used FP there. Mid morning worked for us. If we took a break we did the last FP right before the break which worked well for us, but we did MK and then Epcot so no FP at Epcot. If your going back to the same park after a break it may be better to RD then do what you can and have FP for when you get back.

Sorry if I was rambling hope that makes some sense.

 

[cakebaker]

We park hop every day with an afternoon break so our fp's are almost always for late afternoon or evening.

 

[wisblue]

One big factor is whether you intend to spend all day in one park.

We usually take a midday break and hop to a second park, so I like to make FPs for the second park, starting around 4 or 5 PM. That's like treating that park the same as you would on an arrival day.

If I was going to spend all day in one park, I would probably make my first FP reservation around 11-12 and do as many things as possible standby in the first 3 -4 hours after park opening. Depending on crowd size and which park you're at, the availability of 4th FPs for things you really want to do can be pretty slim, so using FPs early hoping to get more might do more harm than good. You might find yourself using FPs to bypass shorter lines early and then not getting anything you really want later. IMO, the only time using FPs early may be beneficial is at MK on a low to moderate crowd day.

As for FP lines, how long you wait to get on the ride with a FP depends a lot on how the ride is structured. For attractions with a layer or two of preshows, like Soarin or MS, you should expect to wait longer than one where you go directly to the vehicle boarding area. Also, the number of people returning with FPs at any one time can vary, especially if the ride has had any breakdowns earlier in the day.

Our experience has been that, for rides with no preshows and continuous loading, we are usually on the ride vehicle within 5-10 minutes, and more often than not it's been on the low end of that. But, you have to be prepared for the possibility that you will wait a little longer.

 

[Hootch]

Ideally it would be in the afternoon, but practically it varied. Currently, Epcot Futureworld and DAK are a little more than half day parks for us. With the tiered FP+ set up in FW, going at rope drop and having FP+ that morning allowed us to work through everything we wanted to do. (World Showcase was done on a separate day.) We had a similar situation with DAK. We wanted Kali a little later in the morning. With higher temps, we knew the line would be long. Standby was 70 minutes when we had our FP time.

When we did morning FP+ ressies, we went to the MK in the evening. We had some success with mixing additional FP+ with shorter standby lines to fill up the time. With the wider availability of FP attractions available, there were headliner FPs available into the evening.

 

[GeorgiaHoo]

I'm trying to figure this out so I can book our FP+ for our October trip (still have a few months to plan it out). I will say this is one of the things I really dislike about FP+ - having to plan seven days of park time 60 days before I get there. Setting that aside, I'm currently leaning towards late morning. We will have park hoppers and arrive each morning around rope drop. On arrival day we are going to AK in the early afternoon so I'll have FP for Safari, Everest and probably Dinosaur (though we won't ride it). I'll probably schedule Dinosaur before we even get to the park so that it will be expired and we can use Everest/Safari and then perhaps schedule another of those if available. For MK I'll probably try to schedule 7DMT about 10:30 (assuming a 9:00 park opening) and we'll ride Splash, Big Thunder and Haunted Mansion first thing - we've always found those to have minimal waits during the first hour or so. May use the other FP for Peter Pan and, dunno, Buzz or Pooh? For DHS we'll probably ride Rock n Roller coaster and Tower of Terror first thing and then have FP for Toy Story, Tower of Terror and Star Tours beginning around 10:00. Uncertain what we'll do for Epcot other than FP for Test Track. We'll leave around noon each day and go hang out at the resort and then I'll try to schedule additional FP at whatever park we go to in the evening.

 

[Capang]

DD is 4 so for us we do rope drop and FP the big attractions like 7dmt, Splash and BTMR in the morning. We get a ton done that way and then schedule a 4th FP by noon for after naps and break. It Works well for us.