Just back Saturday. This was my older DD's (turning 7) 4th trip. We went the same week last year, but went from the day after Mother's Day until the following Monday.
Honestly this was our most relaxing trip, we got to do much more than our last trip, and did not have to make all rope drops. We did 3 rope drops and 3 late arrivals (lunchtime) which we never do.
We averaged 5-6 FPs except for our 2nd day where we did EPCOT in the morning and then took the boat to HS, and our last night where we went around 1 but used a FP for the evening parade.
I will be honest in many cases lines WERE shorter than the posted times. We frequently got into standby lines with posted waits or 15, 20 or 30 mins and found them really walk ons, or 5-10 instead. I followed the advice here and grabbed FPs for the longest wait items like A&E, TSM, splash, kali, etc. we did every single thing in the MK and many things 2+ times! as well as seeing many of the characters. I think we did double what we did last year.
EPCOT other than soarin we did not need our FPs. The morning we had no FP in EPCOT, we did soarin, mission space, spaceship earth, nemo, living with the land, character spot, Journey, both boat rides in Mexico and Norway. We were the 1st in line to go into the just opened right side of soarin. We could have ridden again with 20 mins listed but decided to move on. We did some rides 2 times and went to HS by boat around 1. Where we did TSM, tot, great movie ride, saw Princess Sofia and had 4 pm dinner at sci fi, then left.
I did follow Josh's plan which was spot on as well. We could have gotten more FPs but we did not stay late in the parks bc we have younger kids who wanted to swim.
The only day we stuck with 3 FPs was our last night when we did BBB and used our 3rd for the 9pm parade. Which for US (but probably not others) was perfect. They were letting people in to the FP area around 815/820. By that time the non FP spots were 2 people deep. Frontier land was also full along the ropes as we walked there from the restrooms first before hitting the FP location. We normally stay there. We were in a nice front row location. We stayed seated after the parade and had a decent view of the fireworks. I noticed people suggested you move back but the crowds immediately pushed forward and bc we stayed seated with the people around us we had decent spots. CM were pulling people forward towards the castle with the green light up sticks. They must have had no view. We even were able to move back a bit closer to the planters. There was no way we were going to be able to move further back in the hub, it was immediate wall of people as soon as the parade passed people pushed closer to the castle and into the parade route.
Back to extra FPs. I would look at the wait times, then hop over to the closet kiosk and say I want x as soon as possible. (I picked things with 45, 50+ waits we wanted to ride). If you want A&E forget it, but mountains were there but not necessarily immediately (but by 3 pm you would not have been able to get an old FP for them to ride immediately anyway). There were no lines at the kiosks we used....walked up and got a CM within 1 minute each time. One night we hopped to EPCOT at 4 pm. Wanted soarin but it was gone, but they had TT, character spot, maelstrom and everything else, only soarin was gone.
I will say it felt more crowded than past trips, but it was deceptive bc lines were moving fast and were shorter than in the past. Also many waits were considerably shorter than posted as well. I could be remembering wrong but FP was not necessarily shorter than standby. We had FP for safari at 1 pm. Line said 20 min wait...but we walked into the FP line as a family in standby, but we merged at the same place.
Last year we had major glitches. Last May they had me listed as having a MB, just me, no one else in our party. It was before the testing so no one could figure it out. Our cards had to be fixed several times because we couldn't get into our room, had trouble tap ordering, I couldn't get into the parks, couldn't pull FPs etc. Wehad no problems this trip, no blue Mickey heads, no charging or room issues. Once or twice we had to re-enter our pin but we never had to visit a desk.
