“Refresh” is my new favorite strategy

[Josh125]

This worked well for us, a party of two just back. I got FoP FPs the night before twice, both times around 11PM from the website. I was able to get a SDD same day on the app.

 

[FairWahine]

That sounds like an amazing day!!

It was an amazing day and well worth the vacation day I used. 9.3 miles of walking and the “Disney rash” on my legs to prove it.

 

[Greenfield1984]

Here now. Gotta say this strat has not been terribly effective.

Luckily its extremely quiet so didnt need to anyhow. I had a 15 min wait for soarin midday!

But thats all to say. We are a party of 7. I think this strat really suffers or may downright not work for larger parties.

Magic kingdom however it still is useful.

 

[Pete W.]

Here now. Gotta say this strat has not been terribly effective.

Luckily its extremely quiet so didnt need to anyhow. I had a 15 min wait for soarin midday!

But thats all to say. We are a party of 7. I think this strat really suffers or may downright not work for larger parties.

Magic kingdom however it still is useful.

Uncrowded parks probably means fewer people making FP+ changes and thus refresh won't yield as much.

 

[disney food]

hi guys we have been back for a week and i wanted to thank everyone for this thread and comment on how it worked for my party of 10.
First thought is i loved it! Seemed weird when reading this thread before we left but in practice it is so easy and we rode so many more things than we normally would.
I can so easily understand how a party of 2 wouldnt make any fastpasses at all and just hit the park.

That being said we couldn't get everything we were looking for all the time and i think i only searched once as a party of ten before splitting it up in groups of 4 and then groups of 2. Doing groups of 2 made it simple to find the ride we wanted and then adjusting the times to get everyone together. This was how we did it the majority of the time with me and my daughter modifying on each of our phones using my account.
I'm sure i am repeating things other have said but....
As soon as the end of the day arrives some fast passes open up for the next day but the real movement comes the day of and things continually open and change.
I did miss a time i wanted because you are used to hitting refresh but it didnt matter as the time came along again.

The only rides we didnt get or try that hard was SDD, mine train and FOP and we had fast passes for those so i wasn't worried.
we stayed at the boardwalk so anytime we came back to the room in the afternoon we would grab a FP in epcot.
It was incredibly easy to get soarin, test track and then modify the times downward.

One night we went in around 7 to use the Soarin FP then grabbed Nemo FPs (which werent really needed but the cast memeber said why not you'll save a few minutes) and then walking out of nemo i even used refresh to get 8 of us a FP to meet mickey, minnie, goofy in Epcot at 815 pm when line was still 25 minutes. i used refresh a lot to meet characters i usually don't see or wait for in all 4 parks

one morning We got to AK around 15 to 20 minutes before park opening but it was already opened and FOP was too long to wait ( a friend stayed on and waited an hour). so we rode EE a bunch of times and then headed over to dino land. Once off EE there were large amounts of people coming towards EE. Im assuming those who came off the ride already and those who just got there and saw the FOP line.
In dino they wanted to ride Primeval Whirl but 15 min is too long to wait for that. Since we didn't care to walk back to Pandora (thru the crowds) to ride the river ride there we cancelled those FPs and standing in front of the FP entrance we refreshed and got PW for that exact moment and walked on.

10 of us didnt all stay together all the time so refreshing was even easier for those who went off on their own.

We also would refresh our next FP after our magic bands were scanned for the current ride. That worked well too.

In Mk the kids used refresh for Splash and Space and we all used it to meet characters too.

In Disney Studios twice we went for 7 am (gates opened at 630 and rope drop was 645) and i lost count of the amount of times we rode RnR, TofT and star tours with no FP, or refreshing before 10am and of course all of Toy Story land. Just wasnt needed that early.

the only funny thing about a party of ten is when you ride RnR 5 times in a row --- you now have 50 pictures of that ride in your memory maker.
And that reminds me of SDD photos. i don't know if i (or any of the 10 of us) was standing at some place where your magic band gets scanned but i have photos of a bunch of people i didnt ride with and few times got a picture of Slinkys head which is the front of the ride.

 

[Pdollar88]

Keep trying to modify my 9/8 5:45 Navi FP into a FOP FP. Hoping I can get something - I do have FPs booked at 3:45 and 4:45 as well.

Not the end of the world if I don’t as I’ve ridden FOP before, but would love another go.

 

[Pdollar88]

This worked well for us, a party of two just back. I got FoP FPs the night before twice, both times around 11PM from the website. I was able to get a SDD same day on the app.

Interesting! So perhaps I should also be checking through the website, not just the app.

 

[pitpat]

Interesting! So perhaps I should also be checking through the website, not just the app.

That's not necessarily an app vs. website thing, just an availability at that time thing. Night before and day of are when the most changes happen.

 

[Babe the Blue Ox]

Keep trying to modify my 9/8 5:45 Navi FP into a FOP FP. Hoping I can get something - I do have FPs booked at 3:45 and 4:45 as well.

Not the end of the world if I don’t as I’ve ridden FOP before, but would love another go.

FoP can happen, but it’s not the easiest to catch.

If you can’t get a FP, just wait until the end of the day when the line is short. There have been plenty of recent reports of 20 minute waits close to closing time.

 

[stephd219]

Keep trying to modify my 9/8 5:45 Navi FP into a FOP FP. Hoping I can get something - I do have FPs booked at 3:45 and 4:45 as well.

Not the end of the world if I don’t as I’ve ridden FOP before, but would love another go.

It can absolutely be done! Week before last, we picked up a fourth fast pass for FOP while we were at HS. This was for a party of four, so not a huge party, but not a small party either. Good luck!

 

[Angeni11]

We are there next week and I am still trying to move our SDD fastpass from 5:15 to an earlier time with no luck.

Hoping we can rope drop it then I can change that FP to something else if I can't move it.

 

[TIME4DIZ]

We are there next week and I am still trying to move our SDD fastpass from 5:15 to an earlier time with no luck.

Hoping we can rope drop it then I can change that FP to something else if I can't move it.

Same day is far more effective than any time prior. Keep the faith.

 

[crazedprincess]

We are there next week and I am still trying to move our SDD fastpass from 5:15 to an earlier time with no luck.

Hoping we can rope drop it then I can change that FP to something else if I can't move it.

Try the night before! I was able to move our FOP FP from 6:20 pm to 12:30 pm by checking and refreshing the night before around 8 pm. It took about 15 minutes of refreshing for me.

 

[Bork]

Just got back and I had no luck changing FP+ before the day, but had quite a bit of luck getting anything for a 4th FP+ on the day of, including FOP twice, 7DMT once and anything else without much effort.

 

[NinjaCat]

I booked my Fast Passes on 9/3 for my November trip. Originally I was unable to get SDD for my party of 4 on 60+3. However, through refreshing I was able to get a time at 6:50, then 6:10 and finally I just got 12:20. It took 3 days, but I did get what I wanted. Just wanted to give hope to anyone who is still trying to get a difficult fast pass.

 

[Belle's Librarian]

I booked my Fast Passes on 9/3 for my November trip. Originally I was unable to get SDD for my party of 4 on 60+3. However, through refreshing I was able to get a time at 6:50, then 6:10 and finally I just got 12:20. It took 3 days, but I did get what I wanted. Just wanted to give hope to anyone who is still trying to get a difficult fast pass.

I was also unable to get SDD at 60+3 but got one same day for a party of 3 by using refresh to modify our Saucers FP. This was 2 weeks ago.

 

[Mamapapa]

I just posted a new thread on this - we were there last week. This did not work for us. Not once. Not a single FP worth grabbing ever came up and I tried multiple group formations down to searching for one person and still got nothing after over an hour of trying. I don't understand how people on this thread could have so much luck, and my family have none...