Thanks to everyone who has been sharing their experiences on this and other threads. In the last two days I've read all 179 pages here and quite a few in other threads.
My question is a little different than the others I've seen. My husband and I just decided to head to the world for Sept 27 to 30. We have annual passes, in the form of the new RFID cards. And I was able to add them easily to
MDE (I notice my room keys from May are still listed there as well
).
We're booked at Swan because we want to be walking distance to Epcot and Jellyrolls, and it's just so much less expensive than the deluxe resorts in the same area. We don't do the dining plan or magical express and really don't care whether I pull out a credit card vs a room key or magic band to pay for things (plus I'd have to pull out the AP to get the discount, so the wallet will be open anyway). And finally I love that the cafeteria at Dolphin is open 24 hours.
However, with arriving at Noon on Friday and leaving at 5pm on Monday, and spending at least one late night at Jellyrolls, my rope drop options are limited. Making Fastpass Plus reservations seems like an ideal way to hit my favorites later in the day without having had to be at rope drop to pull regular fastpasses on this short and last minute trip.
I'm tempted to add some cost to this trip for the access to FP+. But the additional cost to switch to BC for all 3 nights is high (+$500 with the annual pass discount). But paying for one night at Pop, even if we don't stay in the room, is much more palatable.
So, has anyone had first hand experience with either a ghost room-only reservation at a testing resort or a one night room-only reservation where you did stay at a testing resort, using annual pass only and not package/MYW tickets, and then being able to make a FP+ reservation for a later date while NOT staying in any Disney owned resort hotel?
I read the comments about someone from the Pod Cast being able to still make FP+ reservations for dates after his stay at Pop. But I also saw some people contradict that.
Much confusion. So now that we've got a couple of months worth of testing out there, I was hoping perhaps someone who's local has done this and could let me know.
Thanks.