Ever done a "No Advance Dining/FP+" Challenge?

[Klayfish]

Plus, I use FP to allow us to sleep in on some trips. It's nice to be able to roll in to the parks at say, 11:00 in January, and start our FP for the day.

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. We're simply not rope drop people. Nothing against it, but we just have utterly zero interest. We get up at 4am every single weekday, pretty much all year round, so when we're on vacation we have no desire to wake up early. We don't sleep until noon, but even 7:30 or 8:00am for us is bliss. By time we get showered, eat breakfast, etc...we don't even walk out the door of our rental house until 9:00am or later. We'll set our first FP+ for 9:15am to 10:15am for example. That way, when we enter the park, we're deep into the first FP+ window and can hop right on even though we weren't there for rope drop. When we get off that ride, it's pretty much time for FP+ number 2. And on we go... Yes, there have been days where we're rushing through the front gate trying to make our first FP+, but never completely missed one yet.

But like I said before, while we always make our first 3 FP+ as soon as we're able to...either 30 days our or just 6 days out, sometimes we'll change them the night before or even that morning. Regardless, we always have our 3 pre-booked, but the rest is purely winging it.

 

[Mrs~Incredible]

Great thread!

We are planning to go with the flow more this time around- I think it’s fun to see what adrs just pop up. Think we will book a couple of key FPs ahead of time, but for the rest of the trip we will probably make FPs on the way to wherever we are going that day- if at all.

We’ve been enough that we are mostly excited to absorb the details and get involved in things we haven’t done before

Have fun!

 

[disneydreamer1980]

This is probably sad, but just thinking about going to WDW with no FPs or ADRs literally makes me nervous . I can’t imagine it, but going solo may not be as hard to get last minute ADRs and there’s always single rider lines. For my party of 7 (9 with my parents) it would be pretty much impossible to get a spot to eat at any TS place last minute.

 

[rentayenta]

If we visited more than once every 6 years then possibly. It sounds like a fun way to go and honestly I was thinking of scrapping all ADRs aside from Cal Grill Brunch and Wine Wed at Jiko but I just can't do it.

 

[wdw&sonny]

I don't make advanced plans because I need to. I make advanced plans because I can. The only thing I like more than a trip to Disney is planning a trip to Disney.

 

[JETSDAD]

We usually only have a couple of ADR's made for a 7-10 day trip and wing it the rest of the way. While we do make advance FP's we often change that up the night before or day of if we feel like doing something different.

 

[k8Davies]

ADRs aside from Cal Grill Brunch and Wine Wed at Jiko but I just can't do it.

What the is Wine Wed at Jiko and why haven't I heard about it.

Okay I've just googled it, and if it is still taking place on my next trip I'm booking it. Look at me I'm planning my ADR for a trip a year and a half away - this winging it thing would never work for me lol

 

[ConnecticutNonna]

We always go with no ADR, and only eat TS.
We never go without FP though. That seems just silly to me. FP are crucial. ADR are not.
We open the app and make reservations for food somewhere when we are hungry. There are oodles of great options available.
FP don't work that way. We can't find oodles of convenient FP immediately.
We divvy up park days in some manner that seems logical to us and plan our FP based on that. It's always worked well. We've rarely woke up and said, I really don't want to go to X today, I want to go to Y instead. All we want is to get in # umber of days in a particular park each trip, as long as we do that, all is good.

ETA - Another reason we don't go without FP, I approach every trip as if we may not be back. It's just a thing. Even though we have AP and we always plan to return (usually have another trip already booked). I never assume we'll be back. Never know what may happen that our situation changes and we can't get back again, for whatever reason. So I never want to skip any ride. This is why we always FP all rides, at least once.

I love how you said things can change and you may never be back...
Life just turns on a dime, doesn't it?