Fast Pass + opinions please!

[CJca5cents]

Hello all! My family will be making our first trip to Disney in the middle of November. We get to book our fast passes tomorrow. I was hoping to get a few opinions about what we should book. I have four year old and one year old daughters. Our four year old is probably going to be just shy of the 40" mark. We have four days of park tickets (and we are taking one day off in the middle). Here is our schedule:

Day 1:

Breakfast at BOG before the park opens
Head to fantasy land to try to get in line for the Seven Dwarfs ride and then ride what we can.
Spend the afternoon/evening at HS (after a rest)

I am planning to use our fast passes for the day at HS, especially since my husband wants to ride Star Tours, and we all want to do TSMM.

Day 2:

Animal Kingdom in the morning, Epcot in the afternoon/evening

Is there much that I need a fast pass for in Animal Kingdom? The only ride we want to do is the Safari ride. I figured our fast passes would be better spent at Epcot for Soarin' (for my husband and myself), and Test Track for my husband.

I hate to wait to use fast passes until the afternoon, but the rides we want to do in the afternoons/evenings in these parks are ones I don't think we will stand a chance getting by the time we arrive. We are planning to be at the morning parks for rope drop.

Our last two days are going to be spent at Magic Kingdom. Are fast passes for the electrical parade typically still available later in the day? I figured with our two small ones, it would be nice on the night we are there and they do not have the Christmas party, to not have to scout out a place to watch the parade. But I also don't want to miss out on being able to get more fast passes, which I know we will if we choose to fast pass the parade. We plan to go back to the hotel every afternoon for a rest, but I am still not sure how late we will be able to stay at the park before the kids are falling asleep or getting cranky.

My main questions are: would you save your fast passes for HS and Epcot on the first two days in the afternoon, and is the fast pass for the electrical parade worth it?

Thank you for your help!

 

[mesaboy2]

You may find the green link in my signature helpful.

Some short answers:

Generally best strategy to use FPs in second park if hopping.
FPs at AK are among the least useful.
Getting FPs for any parade or fireworks is very unlikely on day-of.

 

[CJca5cents]

Thank you! And your link was very helpful! For some reason I did not see that post before (I swear, I have read what feels like a million on here and not seen that one). The last time I was in Disney was almost 13 years ago, so things have changed quite a bit.

 

[Lucius Best]

My main questions are: would you save your fast passes for HS and Epcot on the first two days in the afternoon, and is the fast pass for the electrical parade worth it?

If you want to hop to HS in the afternoon, you definitely want to save your three FP for HS. If you are out of BOG breakfast before rope drop crowds are let in, you should be able to do 7DMT without a crazy wait. On the mornings we went straight to 7DMT at rope drop, we waited around 20 minutes.

Same thing with Epcot, if you want to do Soarin' in afternoon, you should save FP for Epcot. Note that Soarin' and Test Track are on the same tier, thus you can NOT reserve FP for both. But Test Track does have a single rider line that can be a lot quicker than standby. As for AK and Safari, if you're there at rope drop the line will not be bad at all.

If you look at mesaboy2's green link, you will see a link to the "Dibb", which shows FP+ availability. It looks like for the MSEP, there's no availability 60 days out, so if it's extremely difficult to get MSEP FPs, that should make your decision on fastpassing the MSEP easier. For your MK days, I would reserve the 3 FPs at 10am/11am/12pm, then get a 4th FP at kiosk before heading back to the resort for afternoon break.

 

[CJca5cents]

Same thing with Epcot, if you want to do Soarin' in afternoon, you should save FP for Epcot. Note that Soarin' and Test Track are on the same tier, thus you can NOT reserve FP for both. But Test Track does have a single rider line that can be a lot quicker than standby. As for AK and Safari, if you're there at rope drop the line will not be bad at all.

Thank you for the reminder! Soarin' is our top choice, so we are going to FP+ that. I was planning to send my husband through the single rider line on Test Track if he wants to ride that. I have everything written out so when midnight comes, I can get everything as fast as possible.