75 days here...can't come soon enough.
I need to sit down and more accurately try to pick out FP+ selections. I would love some advice from anyone there recently or now in how they changed touring plans with the new system.
We have been enough that we are not park open to close people any more. We usually hit parks at rope drop do all we want, use a few fast passes and get back to the hotel by 2:00 to enjoy the pool. We prefer dinner in resorts over crowded parks but will venture to Via Napoli any time.
I am an early riser so I am inclined to say we should still hit rope drop and not change our normal routine too much. But the idea of letting my hubby sleep in, relaxing in the am, getting some pool time and heading to the park for late afternoon FP+ times and dinner is appealing to me.
Yesterday our 60 day window opened to pick fp+'s but I'm just not in any hurry to do it. We have used fp+ on our December trip and found that we switched around almost every fp+ that I had preselected. It is just really hard to plan that far ahead.
Anyway, my tips would be:
1. make the fp+'s for later in the day or in the evening. Most rides are walk on's early or have short wait times
2. make the fp+ for the most popular rides - check the wait times on the
MDE app to get an idea of which rides usually have long wait times. We were surprised that some of the most popular rides, like Haunted Mansion or POTC, often had very short wait times
3. match the fp+ to where you plan to eat dinner. When eating at Ohana's then make it for MK. If eating at Cape May then make it for Epcot or HS. We had an ADR for dinner at the BC so I made some fp+'s for HS in the late afternoon. We did those rides then walked over to the BC for dinner. It was perfect.
4. back in December it was very easy to switch the fp+ times, the rides and even the parks on the same day. People who were there Christmas week were able to switch ride times on those busy days. the only rides that are hard to switch are the most popular ones, like TSMM and Space Mountain, for example.
If rides are not that important to you, and they weren't to us, the fp+ system really works out nice. In some cases we were able to change a fp+ while in the park and then get on the ride only ten minutes later, bypassing a long standby line. I'm not sure how it is going to work when all of the parks are fp+ only. At least the resort guests will be able to use their mobile devices to switch around fp+ selections while in the parks, which is convenient.
Daydreaming about WL and can't wait to be back. We thought our upgrade from moderates to a deluxe last year was a one time thing. But as a family we just could not imagine not heading back to the lodge after our great trip last year. Staying in a one bedroom at VWL. Now if I can just get through two crazy busy months at work...
We fell in love with WL after one stay, too. We were there in Feb, booked a bounce back for December, then a few weeks ago decided that we just had to go back one more time. Cheap room rates in January was enough of an incentive to bring us back again.
