Do I need to wake up early?

[disney144]

How fast do tough to get fastpasses go? We will be there for 8 days in January. Wondering if I need to wake up at 4am (on the west coast) to make my fastpasses, or if it can wait until 5:30 of 6 (9am EST)

 

[mesaboy2]

Depends on what you want. For FOP, you need to wake up early. For most other things, you don't. You may find the Availability post in the FP FAQ helpful.

 

[barbliny]

If you plan your AK day(s) on day 5 and onward, and you are somewhat open on the time of day for the fp for FoP - you can sleep the extra 90 minutes - based on my experience yesterday.

But, in the grand scheme of things - waking up at 4:00 am is no harder for me than 5:30 am. You can just take a nap after finishing!!

 

[Gehrig1B]

Are you staying on site or off? This makes a bit of a difference regarding availability. If on site you should be able to snag Flight of Passage somewhere toward the end of your stay. You should also be able to get most of the FP+ reservations you want without having to awaken in the middle of the night.

If off site you will probably be out of luck for some of the E ticket rides regardless of what time you awaken each morning.

 

[disney144]

Are you staying on site or off? This makes a bit of a difference regarding availability. If on site you should be able to snag Flight of Passage somewhere toward the end of your stay. You should also be able to get most of the FP+ reservations you want without having to awaken in the middle of the night.

If off site you will probably be out of luck for some of the E ticket rides regardless of what time you awaken each morning.

Staying onsite and hoping to get FOP. We are planning on an AK day for our last day.

 

[Gehrig1B]

I see only one reason for you to miss your beauty sleep. With AK being Day 8 you will be fine. If you want a specific time early in the day you might forego the sleep but that is only a guess on my part.

 

[Amanda999]

If u want fop at all, or specific times for FEA or 7DMT, wake up early. It will make your vacation so so much easier.

 

[alex9179]

I'm going in Jan. and waking up early. I'm in Central, though, so not as bad! Whether it will be necessary or not, I'll feel better getting everything scheduled.

 

[SarahInMN]

I am also a west coaster - we arrive in October. I booked FP's today for my in laws (they arrive 2 days before we do) and had no problem getting FOP but I deliberately picked the last part of the trip so 60+7 days. It gave me a ton of peace of mind to just get up and do the FP's but I suspect I would have been fine for 60+7 at 7 am PST.

 

[Melissa Sheridan]

Isn't there only three hours time difference between east and west coasts? So if it opens for bookings at 9EST, isn't that 6:00 am for the OP and not 4:00 am? Am I crazy?

 

[JETSDAD]

Isn't there only three hours time difference between east and west coasts? So if it opens for bookings at 9EST, isn't that 6:00 am for the OP and not 4:00 am? Am I crazy?

FP reservations open at 7:00EST.

 

[Denise W]

Isn't there only three hours time difference between east and west coasts? So if it opens for bookings at 9EST, isn't that 6:00 am for the OP and not 4:00 am? Am I crazy?

Fast Pass booking opens at 7:00 am eastern time.
Denise

 

[Klayfish]

The only ones you'd really have to be up early for are FoP, NRJ, 7DMT. Everything else isn't a big deal.

 

[mamamelody2]

Well, I know I'd be too excited to wait. And nervous that I would miss out on that coveted FOP FP.

 

[ghtx]

I'm going in Jan. and waking up early. I'm in Central, though, so not as bad! Whether it will be necessary or not, I'll feel better getting everything scheduled.

Actually being in Central time means you will have to wake up one hour earlier than those of us in Eastern (6AM CT = 7AM ET). Though you don't have it as bad as those on the west coast!

 

[alex9179]

Actually being in Central time means you will have to wake up one hour earlier than those of us in Eastern (6AM CT = 7AM ET). Though you don't have it as bad as those on the west coast!

I know. I was responding to the OP, who is on the west coast.

 

[shairpdrh]

I overslept and while I have no idea what it would have looked like an hour earlier, I had trouble with FOP and got everything else exactly as I wanted. We are only there 3 days so we had limited options. I have managed to get all but one FP+ over time, but I would have preferred to have it settled the first day. Based on what you described you might be fine sleeping in a bit.

 

[kathy884]

As an off site visitor with just the option to reserve 30 days in advance I booked the soonest I could and that was totally not necessary. Do note that this was a low crowd time in September and that the only Disney theme park we were doing was the MK. I wanted to book FP+ for my three lines that would have the longest waits based on Touringplan.com projection. The truth was I could not get 7DMT, but my stand by wait at least is just projected to be 30 minutes (still longer than I want, but if only one ride is like that - OK). As for the other FP+ I did get -- I got them first and one time and then after playing with the plan more changed times and it was easy to get these again. Do note though morning times were gone right at the earliest point and later, but afternoon and evening were plentiful both times. I ended up booking FP for Winnie the Pooh and Peter Pan (on my touring plan, but there is no way we would wait for these, so the FP was perfect). All our other lines except 7DMT were listed at less than 15 minutes, so hardly worth a FP+. I did a second evening ride on Space Mountain just after dinner and used FP+ for that.