Curious how FP+ has changed your touring style, if at all?

[GreatLakes]

It really hasn't changed the way we do anything in the parks. I never really felt the need to do any micromanaging of my vacations and still don't. We rarely plan ahead of time what parks we will go to and still don't even with FP+. I have always said the same thing about ADRs and the misconception that you have to make all of those reservations way in advance.

We do make a best guess and grab some FP+'s based on what we might do that day but if we wake up and decide to go to a different park we will open up the app and change them. We did that a few times during our last trip and still rode everything we wanted to ride. Some with FPs and some standby. We don't mind waiting in lines for what we want to see.

I've been there before there were any FPs at all, during paper FPs and now during FP+ and don't really have a preference for any one way over the others. I still make it work with how I want to do the parks.

 

[Ladcassidy]

FP+ gives my family so much added flexibility. We begin our days at RD or a pre-park opening breakfast, then ride standby or meet characters with DD until the crowds show up. We schedule FP+ for our must-do attractions beginning about lunchtime. I make FP+ at 60 days out, then revise them right up until we use them. I've found the night before to be a great opportunity to make sure that our pre-set schedule still matches what we want to do, and have managed to rearrange our plans for almost everything if we have something different in mind. I've even seen A&E and 7DMT available for next-day use.

With the advent of FP+, we often take the opportunity to hop to a different park in the afternoon, and use our FP+ there, without worrying that all of the FP for the day will have been distributed.

We almost always change our FP+ on the fly each day, when we realize that we will miss our ride window because we are busy enjoying something else, or if we find a gloriously empty queue at a ride so that our FP+ is unnecessary. When our first 3 are gone, we go to the kiosk and grab the first thing that shows as available. We use MDE to change it to something more appealing, which in many cases means near our current location. Yes, replacement attractions and 4th FP+s can be sparse at parks other than MK, but I'm optimistic that will get better as new attractions open across all the parks.

On a related note, I'm surprised by how many people view their prearranged ADRs and FP+ plans as set in stone. Granted, it may be hard to replace an A&E FP+ or a dinner at BOG at the last minute, but almost everything else is negotiable. And even those hard-to-get reservations routinely pop up again as others families cancel their own plans for the next day or two.

 

[Lucius Best]

On a related note, I'm surprised by how many people view their prearranged ADRs and FP+ plans as set in stone. Granted, it may be hard to replace an A&E FP+ or a dinner at BOG at the last minute, but almost everything else is negotiable. And even those hard-to-get reservations routinely pop up again as others families cancel their own plans for the next day or two.

I think it depends quite a bit on how busy the parks are. For our first FP+ trip, we didn't really know what to expect, thus spent a lot of time planning, had no idea if it would be easy to modify FPs once we were at WDW. We made the FP reservations as if they were set in stone, and then if we were able to make changes at WDW, it was a bonus. For us, it turned out that on the day when the MK was pretty crowded, availability for additional FPs was very limited. But on another day when the MK was really slow, we were able to get additional FPs with return times 5 minutes away for just about everything. We got 12-15 FPs that day, not sure exactly how many because some of our additional FPs never showed up on MDE.

That was another factor for us: glitches in MDE. First time we tried modifying a FP, MDE malfunctioned and wasn't displaying it properly. MDE also occasionally would not display all the people on the FPs. Fortunately these were only display issues with MDE, and we didn't lose any FPs. Just pointing out that the ease with which we could make changes depended on availability, which varied from day to day, depending largely on crowds. For people visiting during busy times, I can completely understand if they don't expect to be able to modify their hard-earned reservations last minute.

 

[SoarinSC]

I'd say it's made me stop and relax more during my touring knowing I have things lined up for later. No more chasing FPs.

 

[Bullseye]

It actually hasn't changed how we tour at all.

Same here...other than I don't have to go get FP. For the most part it hasn't other than some standby lines are longer now. I'm willing to endure that to be able to schedule my FP+ times. Throughout the many months and hundreds of threads regarding FP+ I always contended that since we don't park hop and usually only got 3-4 FP a day anyway, it would have no effect.

 

[Mkrop]

I would love to know the time of year people are going that they are finding so much flexibility to change and such great availability for the 4th FP???? Unless their idea of a great 4th FP is Magic Carpet Rides and ours would be Splash I just dont get it.

We went at the beg of Aug. It has changed our touring style like I think robinb stated. We use to collect FPs and use them later, not so much in the evening but definitely later. There was such an ease to the day.


We do love FP+ for the days we wanted to sleep in, and prior to that getting DH to sleep in wasnt happening. But then we would get there, use our 3 FP+s try for a 4th, have nothing available and look at each other and say now what, we now needed to stand in long standby lines for things that werent long before like Goofys Barnstormer or Haunted Mansion???

We were the type of family that likes to ride headliners over and over and we are finding that difficult to do. The tiers are killing our style.

DH doesnt read here or anywhere else and believed the hype of the ease and flexibility of getting the FP+s esp the 4th, that many times he would yell at DS17 for not being able to change something or get BTMRR as the 4th FP. Luckily I remembered the tip of getting anything at the kiosk and then moving it around on the app, DS17 would run ahead, here is a change we never used a runner under FP-, and book anything then come back and we would try to figure stuff out and DH would get ever frustrated that nothing we wanted was available. Now under FP- we would have had those FPs from earlier or we would have ridden our filler rides with little to no wait. We also tried to change some things the night before bc we were thinking of changing parks, I forget which ones bc once again DH was getting frustrated so I went in the other room. We would have lost of FPs for the rides we like for stuff we didnt...not fun. DS17 gave him the phone and said you try, DH did and there was nothing. Now DH and DS17 rarely argue and they argued more than ever about this stupid system.

Well once we figured we could ride things more often that we like by going at rope drop, riding headliners, then using our FPs for the headliners again, then ride as many filler as we could get with the 4th which wasnt many, we were much happier campers but sleeping in went away once again lol

 

[GaSleepingBeautyFan]

I've found that I do better spreading out my FP+ so I'm not hurrying from land to land in Mk, Ak or DHS. I will use a FP+ in an area and the ride anything else in that area standby and if I'm going to shop or meet characters, I'll do that in the area before moving on to the next area of the park.

I also find that I tend to get more frustrated when it's crowded and will leave a park and go back to my resort or to DTD instead of staying in the park.
I used to play bus roulette sometimes and now I can't do that anymore with FP+.

 

[Moushe]

I'm a planner so I love being able to plan our day almost to a T. My kids are little though (2.5 & 9mo) so pre-planning is almost a must for us wherever we go. I may change my tune when my kids are older and no longer wake up at 6am bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

 

[disneyjunkie]

I would love to know the time of year people are going that they are finding so much flexibility to change and such great availability for the 4th FP???? Unless their idea of a great 4th FP is Magic Carpet Rides and ours would be Splash I just dont get it.

We went at the beg of Aug. It has changed our touring style like I think robinb stated. We use to collect FPs and use them later, not so much in the evening but definitely later. There was such an ease to the day.


We do love FP+ for the days we wanted to sleep in, and prior to that getting DH to sleep in wasnt happening. But then we would get there, use our 3 FP+s try for a 4th, have nothing available and look at each other and say now what, we now needed to stand in long standby lines for things that werent long before like Goofys Barnstormer or Haunted Mansion???

We were the type of family that likes to ride headliners over and over and we are finding that difficult to do. The tiers are killing our style.

DH doesnt read here or anywhere else and believed the hype of the ease and flexibility of getting the FP+s esp the 4th, that many times he would yell at DS17 for not being able to change something or get BTMRR as the 4th FP. Luckily I remembered the tip of getting anything at the kiosk and then moving it around on the app, DS17 would run ahead, here is a change we never used a runner under FP-, and book anything then come back and we would try to figure stuff out and DH would get ever frustrated that nothing we wanted was available. Now under FP- we would have had those FPs from earlier or we would have ridden our filler rides with little to no wait. We also tried to change some things the night before bc we were thinking of changing parks, I forget which ones bc once again DH was getting frustrated so I went in the other room. We would have lost of FPs for the rides we like for stuff we didnt...not fun. DS17 gave him the phone and said you try, DH did and there was nothing. Now DH and DS17 rarely argue and they argued more than ever about this stupid system.

Well once we figured we could ride things more often that we like by going at rope drop, riding headliners, then using our FPs for the headliners again, then ride as many filler as we could get with the 4th which wasnt many, we were much happier campers but sleeping in went away once again lol

We only travel during school breaks. This year's trip was during Easter. (Next year's trip is also during spring break, but the last week of April) The 4th FP option was a joke. Esch time we tired it, our options were Stitch or Laugh Floor.

 

[bluezy]

I would love to know the time of year people are going that they are finding so much flexibility to change and such great availability for the 4th FP???? Unless their idea of a great 4th FP is Magic Carpet Rides and ours would be Splash I just dont get it.

....

We were a party of 5 at Disney World in mid-June this year. We choose our park days based on the crowd calendars at easywdw and usually go to the most recommended park each day (at least on our "long" day at that park). While our 4th FP+ options weren't great at Epcot or DHS (mostly due to the lack of rides period) we were still able to get something that we wanted to do at each of those parks. When we made a 4th FP at AK around noon I think there was availability for everything except KRR. We were only looking for Dinosaur so I didn't pay close attention to exactly what was available but I remember seeing EE, KS, and FOTLK among others. We wanted Dinosaur for mid afternoon and had no problem getting that. At MK when we scheduled a 4th FP+ at 1:15 the only things that weren't available that I noticed were 7DMT and A&E. All the mountains were still there as well as about 4 pages worth of other options. We had numerous options available with immediate return times. We were heading out for a break at the resort for a few hours so we chose a FP+ for Space Mtn. with a return time in the early evening since that's when we knew we'd be back. After using our FP+ for Space we also got some for Buzz, Tomorrowland Speedway, HM, JC, ETWB, and maybe 1 or 2 others but by 10:00 we really didn't need FP's as almost everything was a walk-on.

And while we only had 1 ADR for BOG made ahead of time, we checked availability of dinner ADR's every afternoon and even for a party of 5, every day we had 20-30 options with availability between 5:00-8:00.

 

[epcotty]

The main way it's changed my touring style is trying to find the ever changing fp+ stations when I go with family who buy tickets on the day, which also applies to when we go and have used up the first 3

 

[Roxyfire]

I'm a planner so I love being able to plan our day almost to a T. My kids are little though (2.5 & 9mo) so pre-planning is almost a must for us wherever we go. I may change my tune when my kids are older and no longer wake up at 6am bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

You might be surprised at how long that lasts. My son is up on Saturday/Sunday at 6:30 am and he's 9!

 

[PirateD]

I'm trying hard to wrap my head around how FP+ will change our touring but it seems hard to predict. I'm trying to read as much as possible so I do appreciate this thread and everyone sharing their experiences. I am trying to be positive about FP+ and just embrace it since it's here to stay and because I am really so excited that we have this opportunity to all go back to Disney. However, as the main planner and gleaner of info from the Dis, I do feel a lot of pressure to get it right for our family group.

It's hard because we have several family members in our group who really do not like being tied down to set plans and are not enjoying having to try to decide on so much in advance. I can't say that I blame them. I love to plan and talk about Disney but this does feel like too much even for me. I'm concerned because we are going at Christmas when smart touring is an absolute must and there's little room for error. We had it all figured out with legacy FP but I'm definitely feeling overwhelmed and frustrated in trying to come up with a good touring plan for us with FP+.

 

[Lucius Best]

It's hard because we have several family members in our group who really do not like being tied down to set plans and are not enjoying having to try to decide on so much in advance. I can't say that I blame them. I love to plan and talk about Disney but this does feel like too much even for me. I'm concerned because we are going at Christmas when smart touring is an absolute must and there's little room for error. We had it all figured out with legacy FP but I'm definitely feeling overwhelmed and frustrated in trying to come up with a good touring plan for us with FP+.

I was lucky, the first big family trip I was coordinating was before FP+, my siblings weren't thrilled with the idea of rope drop and planning park days/meals in advance, but once they got to WDW and experienced the crowds and lines, they saw how much we were able to accomplish and realized how important it was to have a smart plan. So on our recent family trip WITH FP+, they were totally on board with the additional planning, even though they didn't like it.

There's lots of good information in this thread, chances are you can find comments from people who used to tour like you did with legacy FP, and see how their park touring strategies have changed. As for Christmas, rope drop would be a must for me. It's been a while since I have been at Christmas, but my parents go then, and they love the 7am EMH at MK for getting things done.

 

[PirateD]

I was lucky, the first big family trip I was coordinating was before FP+, my siblings weren't thrilled with the idea of rope drop and planning park days/meals in advance, but once they got to WDW and experienced the crowds and lines, they saw how much we were able to accomplish and realized how important it was to have a smart plan. So on our recent family trip WITH FP+, they were totally on board with the additional planning, even though they didn't like it.

There's lots of good information in this thread, chances are you can find comments from people who used to tour like you did with legacy FP, and see how their park touring strategies have changed. As for Christmas, rope drop would be a must for me. It's been a while since I have been at Christmas, but my parents go then, and they love the 7am EMH at MK for getting things done.

Thanks! I really, really appreciate your insights as they help confirm what I was thinking. Probably our biggest change we will need to make with FP+ is switching our touring over to a rope drop touring plan especially using those 7 AM EMH. Most of us are on board and prefer rope drop but a few are reluctant. I think I need to be confident that it is the best strategy and just go for it for the majority and let the others know that it's ok if they want to sleep in and just want to meet us there.

In the past, we have been offsite at my brother's house at Christmas time and have arrived later, built up our FP and hit high capacity rides with low wait times and then stayed a couple of late nights for repeats. I know a lot of people now say it was impossible to tour late and still get FP's with legacy FP, but we had it down to a science and it worked great for us. Those of us who like rope drop compromised because we had such good success. However, with increased standby wait times on a lot of the old walk ons, I just don't see it working this time around. We are onsite this trip so that's another change for us. I think it will make it easier to go back to the resort to rest after early mornings, but it's still hard to envision how it will all work.

 

[Lucius Best]

Thanks! I really, really appreciate your insights as they help confirm what I was thinking. Probably our biggest change we will need to make with FP+ is switching our touring over to a rope drop touring plan especially using those 7 AM EMH. Most of us are on board and prefer rope drop but a few are reluctant. I think I need to be confident that it is the best strategy and just go for it for the majority and let the others know that it's ok if they want to sleep in and just want to meet us there.

We usually try to go during low crowd periods, but our old strategy during busy times (not Christmas) was rope drop at a park, then stockpile paper FP for use later in day/evening after pool/resort break. Or hit a morning EMH park for a few hours, and hop to a different park before noon. I think if I was going at Christmas time now with FP+, I would plan on rope drop every day, with midday breaks on many days, park hoppers, and take advantage of late park hours and morning EMH. I probably wouldn't count on availability of additional FPs at kiosks. Basically be at the parks early, and avoid being in the parks like MK and HS when they are most busy 1pm-5pm. Use the long midday breaks to relax/snooze at the resort/pool before hitting a park for the evening.

I'd recommend poking around on the boards, see if you can find any posts detailing experiences at Christmas or Easter. Or start your own post if you're looking for feedback specifically from Christmas veterans.

 

[larryz]

I really wish people would stop yapping about all of the tricks/extras/pixie dust... As soon as the masses find out the tricks, then things change.

So, you're saying people shouldn't share tips and tricks here on the DISboards...?

 

[GreatLakes]

So, you're saying people shouldn't share tips and tricks here on the DISboards...?

Tips and tricks that are within the rules, sure. But I do think sharing things that might be skirting the lines of Disney policy or sharing pixie dust moments can eventually ruin them. Many times on these and other boards things that are done to add a little extra pixie dust to experiences are spoken about, requested, and eventually escalate to the point where they are expected.

The best example I can think of are the oft mentioned towel animals. They went from something that was done in a few rooms per day to being expected not only by every person but on multiple days per trip. Yelling "Andy" or the pushup contest with Gaston are other examples.

I have a few things I know about on Disney property that are definitly skirting Disney's rules but I don't talk about them. The best way to get a loophole you know about closed is to talk about it. It might not be worth the money to close the hole if 50 people a year take advantage of it. If multiple people per day do that cost/benefit analysis changes.

YMMV of course.

 

[Jennytoon]

Tips and tricks that are within the rules, sure. But I do think sharing things that might be skirting the lines of Disney policy or sharing pixie dust moments can eventually ruin them. Many times on these and other boards things that are done to add a little extra pixie dust to experiences are spoken about, requested, and eventually escalate to the point where they are expected.

...

The best way to get a loophole you know about closed is to talk about it. It might not be worth the money to close the hole if 50 people a year take advantage of it. If multiple people per day do that cost/benefit analysis changes.

We received some pixie-dust on our most recent trip (a $50 error that was totally our muff-up and was smoothed over in a very nice way that saved my husband a trip back to our resort). The CM who helped us warned us that the method he used fell within his discretion, but that many things he had formerly had the discretion to do were not available any more due to too many people posting them on the interwebs as something you could ask about. He did not actually say the words "please don't post this on FB, etc.", but it was clear that was the intent of his statement, and that his goal was to be able to retain the ability to *have* discretion about these type of things.

 

[disneyjunkie]

So, you're saying people shouldn't share tips and tricks here on the DISboards...?

If it mean thousands of visitors will start to expect/DEMAND the things they read about here, thus forcing Disney to revamp them, then yes, people should keep some tricks, tips,info...to themselves.