Fast Pass + Experience... So Far

[wonderboy1970]

Well today is 60 days out from my family's trip to the World. This will be our fourth trip, but our first with MB's and FP+. I am a big planner, so I have been prepping for my time to reserve FP+'s. We live in the Central Time Zone, so I stayed up last night until 11 pm our time, and was greeted with the option to make FP+ reservations! Our trip is for 8 days in the parks (no park hopper) and I had used Touring Plans to build tentative schedules with placeholders for our FP+'s. With these in hand, I was able to make all 24 FP+ reservations and get them in the time slots that I was wanting for all but about 3 of them. It took a few back and forths to get it where I wanted it, and the few that were in different slots were not so far off as make my Touring Plans worthless. All told, it took me about an hour last night to make the FP+ reservations and about another hour this morning to adjust the Touring Plans.

So far so good! Now to see how it works at the parks in March.

 

[Partridge4ever]

Were you able to get a time other than on the hour? 2:45 instead of 3 for instance?

 

[Oomiak]

Were you able to get a time other than on the hour? 2:45 instead of 3 for instance?

I am 60 days out today also. I was able to reserve several FP+ at times like 2:45, in fact, very few of mine are at the top of the hour.

 

[Partridge4ever]

How did you do it?

 

[bababear_50]

I just finalized mine--I must have hit the back button 100 times while trying to book these.
Also going in March
I am an early riser and hope to get a few extra rides in on EMH,,,I never used to do EMH parks in the morning .
I usually grab a coffee and cinnamon roll and jump on the first bus I see but now it appears I must have a bit of a "strategy"

Here are my FP+
I got everything I wanted but I am hoping I do not have to wait in a "FP+ Line"

Epcot
( need to sneak TT in here which I think I can do as the park has EMH from 8-9)

Soarin'®
9:00 - 10:00 am
Mission: SPACE®
10:05 - 11:05 am
The Seas with Nemo & Friends®
11:05 - 12:05 pm

Have a plan to do a "chocolates around the world activity I made"
Enjoy the Flower and garden festival and check out the food kiosks.


MK
(I don't like the mountains)
(Hope to sneak in Peter Pan's Flight,and Mickey's Philar Magic which I think I can do because of EMH 8m-9am)


Pirates of the Caribbean®
9:00 - 10:00 am
Haunted Mansion®
10:00 - 11:00 am
Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin®
11:00 - 12:00 pm
(just updated the times again)


Plan to hit "Sleepy Hallow" for a nutritious brunch!
Booked Wishes Dessert Party months ago.9pm ADR


DHS

Voyage of The Little Mermaid
9:00 - 9:10 am
Star Tours® - The Adventures Continue
9:35 - 10:35 am
Toy Story Midway Mania!
10:35 - 11:35 am
I book lunch at Sci Fi but had a heck of a time getting MDE to allow me to do this at 11:35 as it said I am overlapping a FP+.--I won and got the time I wanted.

Just grabbed a Groupon for the Hot-Air Balloon in DTD
sale $11.00 for one ---regular $18.00
or $20.00 for two people.

Booking all of these early will give me lots of time to relax by the pool and hot tub.

 

[Oomiak]

How did you do it?

I took what was offered, I didn't have to do anything special.

 

[wonderboy1970]

Here are some details on my FP+ reservations (which are much like others, but I thought I would give a complete accounting):

3/22: Rock n Roller Coaster (2) 1:00 - 2:00 pm
Toy Story (1) 1:00 - 2:00 pm
Star Tours (3) 4:05 - 5:05 pm
Tower of Terror (2) 5:45 - 6:45 pm
Great Movie Ride (1) 6:00 - 7:00 pm

3/23: Toy Story (3) 12:30 - 1:30 pm
Star Tours (3) 2:00 - 3:00 pm
Tower of Terror (2) 3:00 - 4:00 pm

3/24: Thunder Mountain (2) 11:00 am - 12:00 pm
Haunted Mansion (3) 12:00 - 1:00 pm
Pirates (3) 3:35 - 4:35 pm

3/25: Finding Nemo (3) 10:30 - 10:50 am
Kali River (3) 11:40 am - 12:40 pm
Everest (2) 12:40 - 1:40 pm

3/26: Spaceship Earth (3) 1:00 - 2:00 pm
Test Track (3) 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
Mission Space (3) 3:00 - 4:00 pm

3/27: Nemo & Friends (3) 4:00 - 5:00 pm
Mission Space (3) 5:00 - 6:00 pm
Test Track (3) 6:00 - 7:00 pm

3/28: Jungle Cruise (3) 8:00 - 9:00 pm
Tomorrowland Speedway (3) 9:00 - 10:00 pm
Space Mountain (3) 10:00 - 11:00 pm
(These are late on purpose, I could have gotten earlier times)

3/29: Toy Story (3) 10:00 - 11:00 am
Star Tours (3) 11:00 am - 12:00 pm
Tower of Terror (2) 12:15 - 1:15 pm
Great Move Ride (1) 12:15 - 1:15 pm

All in all, not too shabby. As you can see, I have a few timeslots where the three of us are split up (DW is not interested in most thrill rides). Great Movie Ride FP+'s might end up being throw away, since we plan to ride as a group without FP+.

At AK, Nemo is probably not needed as a FP+, but we are only staying half day and there are not too many other options. We plan to do the Safari ride first thing (after a few Everest runs by my son and I at Rope Drop) so the wait time for that should be nearly non existent. No reason to stay later in that park until they release their new night time show.

One other thing, I have ADR's for most days and the FP+engine was keyed into those time slots so I did not have to make any changes for that reason. The only edits that I made to the times the system gave me were to mesh up with my Touring Plans, and I was able to fit them into the pre scheduled slots pretty good with only slight changes to the plans. I really think that having the Touring Plans already scheduled, optimized and ready to go prior to scheduling my FP+'s made the process very easy. The reverse might be true as well, but Touring Plans made some recommendations as to what rides and what times were the most suitable for FP+, so that was good information to have IMO. Like I said in the first post, I am a planner and will probably always take weeks to put together my plans for WDW. If you are not a planner, your experience will most likely be much different. Not bad, just different.

 

[Robo]

I took what was offered, I didn't have to do anything special.

Are the attractions that you took, attractions that you WANT?

 

[g-dad66]

I don't know if my experience was typical or not, but for me:

The Options (A, B, C, Best Choice) which were offered had hour-long windows that mostly didn't start on the hour (e.g. 10:35-11:35).

BUT.. when I then went in and individually changed the times of each attraction to a different time (which I did for every single attraction for every day), the choices offered were nearly always on the hour (e.g. 10:00-11:00).

You can also change any of the attractions individually to a different attraction, if you want.

 

[mediamark]

I just got back from 5 days at the parks. I had set up my FP+ selections 60 days in advance to what I thought I wanted. Let me tell you that the option to change your selections on-the-fly while you are at the park is VERY nice! I made several same-day changes to our FP+ while we were there. For example, yesterday we had fastpasses for Haunted Mansion but when we got to it there was only a 10 minute wait, so we decided to go thru the standby line for it (actual wait was about 5) and while in line I changed my fastpass to Buzz Lightyear which had a 35 minute wait. The ability to see current wait times on the app really helps you out with this.

 

[66Tink]

Don't mean to hijack this thread, but it seems as though most of you are going in March as we are too! My question is we have a room only booked and were planning on buying tickets when we arrived; do you think that we should buy tickets now to book FP+ or should we gamble that there will be selections that we want when we get there? We are only planning on (2) park days...your input is appreciated

 

[DeeCeeSW]

My question is we have a room only booked and were planning on buying tickets when we arrived; do you think that we should buy tickets now to book FP+ or should we gamble that there will be selections that we want when we get there?

Are you saying that a room only ressie does not give you access to FP+ online? I have a room only trip planned and have my own tickets (which unfortunately cannot be linked at the moment).

 

[66Tink]

Are you saying that a room only ressie does not give you access to FP+ online? I have a room only trip planned and have my own tickets (which unfortunately cannot be linked at the moment).

I am pretty sure you can link tickets to your room only ressie and make FP+ selections, but I don't have tickets yet and was concerned if I wait until check in to buy tickets that my FP+ choices may be limited...was curious what others thought

 

[EagleG17]

Thanks for the Groupon info....just bought one myself!!