4th+ fastpasses for families taking afternoon break

[blabadie]

Hello,

I've been reading a lot about the importance of scheduling early fastpasses for your first 3 fastpasses so you can obtain additional fastpasses...

I can see how this could be helpful for visitors who stay all day and have maximum hours available to use additional fastpasses. However, our family rope drops a park and then leaves by about 2pm, not returning until a TS dinner around 5:30pm and staying to watch the nighttime entertainment (or sometimes having dinner at a resort restaurant and not returning to a park.)

I have checked online (around midday) at remaining fastpass availabiity and have found minimal remaining fastpasses that seem to work with our schedule. Granted, I have only checked this out on a few random days.

Is there are certain time that you have to be done with your first 3 fastpasses to really make this work? For visitors taking a similar afternoon break, have you found good availability for additional fastpasses at times that are useful for your schedule?

Thank you!

 

[BridgetBordeaux]

Hello,

I've been reading a lot about the importance of scheduling early fastpasses for your first 3 fastpasses so you can obtain additional fastpasses...

I can see how this could be helpful for visitors who stay all day and have maximum hours available to use additional fastpasses. However, our family rope drops a park and then leaves by about 2pm, not returning until a TS dinner around 5:30pm and staying to watch the nighttime entertainment (or sometimes having dinner at a resort restaurant and not returning to a park.)

I have checked online (around midday) at remaining fastpass availabiity and have found minimal remaining fastpasses that seem to work with our schedule. Granted, I have only checked this out on a few random days.

Is there are certain time that you have to be done with your first 3 fastpasses to really make this work? For visitors taking a similar afternoon break, have you found good availability for additional fastpasses at times that are useful for your schedule?

Thank you!

My suggestion for you is to set up your first 3 at about 9, 10, and 11am. Search for the 4th one after you tap into the 3rd one, while you are in the queue.

 

[CAS239]

We take afternoon breaks and we set our FP's up to usually start when we arrive at our second park. So our 3 will usually start around 3 or 4

If you want to just try for as many FP's as you can, then I'd start them at park opening. I go more for quality over quantity. When we rope drop a park we don't need FP's for the rides while the crowds are low. We ride what we want, then leave the park around 11 or 12. When we return is when we like to have those 3 fps already ready that are hard to get. This way I have a FP for say The Safari at 5pm followed by Dino and EE, vs getting A Bugs Life at 5pm then Primevil Whirl at 6

You can find good stuff later in the day but it'll be by constantly refreshing the app and trying to find one.

 

[disneyvoice]

Don't stress about this. We rarely actually make a 4th (or later FP). We typically rope drop and then get a lot done in the early morning hours. Then we have an early lunch, do some additional rides and start our FPs around 1:30-2:00. By the time we do our 3rd FP we are ready for dinner or we head out of the park. Based upon your typical daily schedule you really don't need to do your FPs early. You could just do rope drop and then do as much as you can before the park gets really busy, then head back to the resort. You could schedule one FP around 1:30 or so and the last two during the evening when you return. Personally I don't like being tied into specific rides at specific times ALL day long - we like to take it a little slower and have time to just enjoy the park. We've never felt like we couldn't do all the attractions we wanted to do because we don't get early am FPs.

 

[Roxyfire]

It's really going to depend on how many people are in your group. For 2 of us, it's fairly simple to find something fun later in the day if we take a break. If you're looking for 4 or more it's going to be a little more difficult unless you're looking to do less popular rides or break up into smaller groups. As far as strategy, I set my times for the 10 am hour, 11 am hour, and 12 pm hour. I try to do the first two back to back (1st later in the window, 2nd earlier in the window) then we eat if we want. If not, we find something short to do until the next window opens. After we tap in for that third ride, I'm on the app looking for something at our evening park for 4pm or later. I usually grab whatever looks good. I may refresh a few times until we get something good.

 

[Klayfish]

Hello,

I've been reading a lot about the importance of scheduling early fastpasses for your first 3 fastpasses so you can obtain additional fastpasses...

I can see how this could be helpful for visitors who stay all day and have maximum hours available to use additional fastpasses. However, our family rope drops a park and then leaves by about 2pm, not returning until a TS dinner around 5:30pm and staying to watch the nighttime entertainment (or sometimes having dinner at a resort restaurant and not returning to a park.)

I have checked online (around midday) at remaining fastpass availabiity and have found minimal remaining fastpasses that seem to work with our schedule. Granted, I have only checked this out on a few random days.

Is there are certain time that you have to be done with your first 3 fastpasses to really make this work? For visitors taking a similar afternoon break, have you found good availability for additional fastpasses at times that are useful for your schedule?

Thank you!

We're a family of 5. We never rope drop, it's of no real benefit, IMO. We show up around 9:30am or so. We hit our 3 FP+ immediately. We'll often leave around 2pm or so. If we do come back, it's spur of the moment and is often around 6pm or so. You have to refresh, but we have very good availability of extra FP+. We get plenty of them, for top tier rides...or some of them will have the lines get short toward park close anyway.

 

[slpeters]

I will say that we toured the way it sounds you guys are planning to--rope drop (we actually did EMH) each day and an afternoon break. I built my plan around three FPs a day and it worked fine--sure sometimes we got others but I didn't really find it necessary. We were there for a week with crowd levels from 7 up to 10, did pretty much everything, and only waited longer than 15 minutes four times (two of those were FOP FPs). We would sometimes do a fourth FP; I think one day we got six. But a few days we actually scheduled them in the evening because that was where the must do, long lines experience was. It seems to me that the time when you really need the extra FPs is the afternoon--and you're not going to be there anyway. I always kind of thought the whole scheduling them first thing so you could crank through them didn't make a lot of sense--I mean you have a FP at 9am? The only rides with lines at 9 am are the ones you should be FPing. It just seems like a waste to me. When we did FPs in the morning park we did like 11, noon, 1. That way at noon when it start to get really bonkers you go on two headlines without a line, get lunch, do one more and leave. And we actually found that doing that the taking a break thing sort of played into the 4th FP thing pretty well (although maybe not the 5th, 6th, 7th)--at about one when you're leaving the parks and most people are looking for FPs at one and two, you're looking for 5, 6 or 7. We found most days we could get a top tier FP for our evening park on the way back to the resort.

 

[Klayfish]

I always kind of thought the whole scheduling them first thing so you could crank through them didn't make a lot of sense--I mean you have a FP at 9am? The only rides with lines at 9 am are the ones you should be FPing. It just seems like a waste to me.

There's no right way to do it, it's an individual thing, so don't get me wrong. But the reason behind the above is so that you can quickly get more FP+. We book our first 3 FP+ for as soon as we get there. We'll go through our first 3 by 10:30am pretty often (we move them as we go). Then we can start grabbing more, even for Tier 1 rides. Then the next and the next and the next. If we stay from 9:30am to 2:30pm, we can easily go through 6-8 FP+ including more than one Tier 1. Then if we come back at night, we get more. Unless it's a ride that doesn't need FP+, like Philharmagic, we almost never do standby.

 

[slpeters]

There's no right way to do it, it's an individual thing, so don't get me wrong. But the reason behind the above is so that you can quickly get more FP+. We book our first 3 FP+ for as soon as we get there. We'll go through our first 3 by 10:30am pretty often (we move them as we go). Then we can start grabbing more, even for Tier 1 rides. Then the next and the next and the next. If we stay from 9:30am to 2:30pm, we can easily go through 6-8 FP+ including more than one Tier 1. Then if we come back at night, we get more. Unless it's a ride that doesn't need FP+, like Philharmagic, we almost never do standby.

Oh I definitely get it--I think it just comes down to doing it the way you're comfortable doing it. By the time we get to our first FP we might be ten or twelve rides in so I just felt like I was good with three at that point. I mean you've got to go to the Tiki Room at some point, right? It sounds like neither of us wait for much of anything so that's cool. I just think it's great how there's info on the board about how to accommodate all sort of touring styles into a truly magical time in the World.

 

[BaymaxForever]

For our next trip...After much deliberation, I’ve decided to rope drop first park, take a break, and save my 3 fastpasses for the afternoon/evening.

Like was said earlier, I’m going for quality vs whatever I can get.

 

[Gehrig1B]

We will rope drop, start FP+ at park opening plus 2 hours, all back to back. We may leave during the busiest part of the day and then work for more in the evening, usually at a different park. It is not uncommon for us to get 8-10 fast passes in a day. There are 5 of us and we take turns working MDE while queueing.

 

[blabadie]

This information has been very helpful. Thank you! We are a family of 5, so I'm a little concerned about later fastpass availability for our group size but will try to take advantage of extra fastpasses for the evening where we can. It is promising to hear of some families our size having success with this.

I think I will try to generally schedule mid-morning to early afternoon fastpass times (with an eye for doing all 3 prior to lunch if it suits our schedule), but will consider any extra fastpasses a bonus and not the focus of our touring plan.

 

[Gehrig1B]

This information has been very helpful. Thank you! We are a family of 5, so I'm a little concerned about later fastpass availability for our group size but will try to take advantage of extra fastpasses for the evening where we can. It is promising to hear of some families our size having success with this.

One strategy we use pretty successfully is to go for extra fast passes in smaller quantities and then combine. You can get FP+ for 3 people at one time (say 4:00) then find another for the other 2 in your group for another time that overlaps (maybe 4:30)... That way you still all ride together. Good luck.

 

[blabadie]

One strategy we use pretty successfully is to go for extra fast passes in smaller quantities and then combine. You can get FP+ for 3 people at one time (say 4:00) then find another for the other 2 in your group for another time that overlaps (maybe 4:30)... That way you still all ride together. Good luck.

I think I will give this a try. Thanks!

 

[RJstanis]

One strategy we use pretty successfully is to go for extra fast passes in smaller quantities and then combine. You can get FP+ for 3 people at one time (say 4:00) then find another for the other 2 in your group for another time that overlaps (maybe 4:30)... That way you still all ride together. Good luck.

This.

No matter what plan you use, that strategy helps with whatever touring plan you use.

We were a party of 7 in MK on a Saturday the week before Christmas and had zero issues with 4th FP. We rope dropped Fantasyland and New Fantasyland, used our 1st FP at 9 on 7DMT since we were already going to be there. Rode everything and made our way to Haunted Mansion for little wait, and then used our 10-11 FP for Splash Mountain at 1055, our 11-noon FP immediately afterwards and was able to get Pirates of the Carribean for when we're coming back from our break for our 4th FP for 7 people. I think that was for around 6 or 7p. When we used that we still had some options for 7 for decent rides that evening, and even more options by splitting the group into cross-secting times. We took a 3 hour break and saw the FoF parade (@2pm) with a front row spot, and only main ride we missed that day was Space Mountain (and IASM and Motor Speedway if you count those as major rides) which we rode several times during the Xmas Party the following night. Never waited more than 15 min for anything, and was never rushed.

 

[Klayfish]

Like was said earlier, I’m going for quality vs whatever I can get.

The wonderful thing is that you can have your cake and eat it too... You can get quality and quantity if you want. It takes some refreshing, but we had our kids ride Space Mountain literally back to back during Xmas week. FoP is very hard to get, but for anything else we want to do, we can get it via FP+ same day.

 

[piratepride]

I would try to have your three FP's finished by noon and look for the 4th after you tap in and get in the FP line for your third.

 

[stsomewhere]

I was able to get 4th ( Winnie the Pooh) , 5th( Peter Pan),and 6th ( small world) last week. It was very busy.

 

[GaSleepingBeautyFan]

I usually do mine around 10, 11 and noon since I hardly ever make it to a park before rope drop. Then I have lunch around 1pm before leaving the park for a break if I'm doing one.

In that case, I look for one around 4 or 5 pm. Some parks I have better luck than others. I have had good luck with MK and AK.

Occasionally I can get test track as a 4th one but mostly it's been something like living with the land or imagination.

At DHS, I've not been able to get a 4th FP recently for something I want to ride again since there are basically only 4 rides in the park right now.