nighttowll
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Jun 29, 2013
- Messages
- 1,818
I was thinking of typing this up anyway. I tried to figure out what was different between me and the folks like JETSDAD. I did not have wild success with trying to figure that out but I found a few things that might help. These are based on me being a geek and spending way to much time making practice FPs and poking at the FP system. I literally timed myself getting FPs in various crowd conditions over multiple runs and variables. I did not put the results in a spreadsheet so I'm not an over the top geek.
Tips For People Who Do Not Have Fantastic Success With Refreshing to Do a Little Better
1. If you are new to this, go read the FP stickies and come back. Go on. Seriously, go read them. Lots of good info there. The FP priority list is in line with how easy or hard it is to get an FP day of in general. I do find M&Gs to be higher up the list in difficulty than they are listed in the priority list though.
2. Do all the widely reported things like splitting your party and grabbing any time for a ride you want and then modifying it to walk it in to the time you want.
3. If you have an iphone ... buy an Android. No. Just kidding. Mostly. But if you happen to have access to an Android phone as well, try them both (and report back which is better).
4. If you have an iphone download the Firefox or Chrome browser apps. I had noticably better success with Firefox than either the app or Safari. I don't know why and it doesn't make sense because it takes longer for the webpage to load than the app (as you would expect) but I consistently got headliners 5 to 10 mins sooner with Firefox than the app (which you would not expect since it's slower so I got in fewer overall refreshes). Note that it was taking half an hour to an hour to get headliners when I was practicing.
This is one of the things that leads me to believe there are factors on the back end of this software affecting refreshing that we don't know about.
5. Switch back and forth between WiFi and data in the parks to use whichever is faster at the time. It changes.
6. Noon was my witching hour for FPs. I got FOP in 10 mins at 12:45. Other people have reported that they also got FOP around noon. I had been trying to get one additional FP for my son on EE at 11:00. Party of 1 (DH and DD already had one) to overlap their 11:15 EE. Could not do it. Could not get an overlapping time with 15 mins refreshing. At 12:15 I popped on and was able to get all 3 of them EE basically immediately within minutes. This leads me to believe either that there is less switching of FPs in the morning or Disney might start seeding FPs into the system around noon. That is total speculation on my part and there is no solid evidence for it, but it would kind of make sense that around noon they would have a sense of how many people are in the parks that day and start adjusting. Again total speculation. But if you can have all 3 FPs used by noon be on the lookout for headliners around then. Don't be discouraged if you can't move up FPs in the morning because it may get noticably better after noon (others have reported better luck in the morning though so YMMV).
7. Don't get hung up on getting back to back good FPs. There are lots of activities to do that don't require FPs and there are easy to get FPs. Alternate to give yourself time to refresh and also not have to walk them in so far. So for example, after prebooked 7DMT, plan to go see Mickey's philharmagic. After tapping 7DMT, try to get PP for half an hour or 45 mins from then. If you can get it close enough to go right after 7DMT great, go, if not go to MPh and keep trying. Go on PP (assuming you got it), grab IASW (which most everyone should be able to get right away with no problem). Tap IASW and start trying to get JC with a plan to go visit Mary Poppins (or see Country Bears) if you can't get JC right away. This worked very well for me to reduce frustration when I couldn't get headliners because I was still getting things. It reduced time on the phone because I wasn't trying to walk FPs in to be immediately available, and allowed for smelling the roses by not trying to go ride to ride all the time. I felt like I really got a lot of good things and did all that I wanted but I was a little more balanced about things.
7. Don't buy package tickets. Buy them separately and do so a month or two before your FP window opens so you have freedom to practice. Try making same day FPs on a couple days that should have similar crowds to the days you're going. See how long it takes you to get what you want. Try splitting your party to see how easy you can get overlapping times. Try at different times of the day. See what gives you the best results and get really comfortable with the interface.
And that's all I got. Good luck.
So the only thing I’m really seeing is that I was on an iPhone and wasn’t switching back and forth between WiFi and cell service. I stayed on cell the whole time as we have unlimited data. Maybe they were intentionally slowing down my refresh times because of that?
We only had two people in our group. We walked stuff back and did just like you said, grabbing stuff for later on and then doing non waiting type attractions in between. I wasn’t picky about the times it gave, unless they were in the far future, and I wasn’t able to walk it back to something within the next 2 hrs.
