DIS~n~JAN said:
Does each member get a chance to get a fastpass or just one per reservation? We're travelling with my mom and she is on a seperate ressie. Thanks
FastPass is a system available to ANYONE inside a WDW theme park. You don't have to be staying at a Disney resort, you don't have to have tickets for multiple days, you don't even need to brush your teeth!
The way you gained entry into any theme park is by putting your plastic park ticket through a turnstile at the park entrance. You use that same card to get FastPasses.
Here's an example. Let's say at 11:00 a.m. you walk up to the Peter Pan ride in MK's Fantasyland. The sign says there's a 60 minute wait in the stand-by line (stand-by line means "the line"), and also a posted FastPass return time of between 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. If you want to do more than only Peter Pan, here's what you do:
1) take the card/ticket from each person in your party and go to near the Peter Pan entrance and you'll see between three and five FastPass machines
2) put one card into the FastPass machine
3) it will dispense one paper FastPass (about the size of a movie theater ticket) and also return the card to you
4) repeat this for each card you use, only one FastPass per card
5) take the FastPasses out, put them away in a safe place, and also put the cards away (it doesn't matter if the person who owns the first card you put in uses the fourth FastPass that came out).
OK, it's 11 AM and you can't return to Peter Pan until 12:30 p.m. You have 90 minutes. Get in the 45 minute line for Dumbo, ride Dumbo, get lunch at Pinocchio's Village Haus, and by then it's probably 12:30 p.m. or so. Since your FastPass window is between 12:30 p.m. and 1:30 p.m., go ahead back to Peter Pan!
Get in the line marked "FastPass return." You'll pass by 2 Cast Members. SHOW the first CM your FastPass but HOLD ONTO IT. GIVE your FastPass to the second CM, who is in charge of collecting them.
That's how FastPass works. NOW, for advanced FastPass theory ....
At the bottom of each FastPass, it tells you at what time you're allowed to get ANOTHER FastPass. If it makes sense for you time-wise, go get another FastPass (one for each person) BEFORE you get on the original FastPass ride. Since you have to wait for your FastPasses to "ripen," it makes sense to spend some of that time on another FastPass ride, get it? In the above example, by the way, Dumbo is NOT a FastPass ride.
It's actually a simple system, you'll get the hang of it once you're there.
To answer the OP's question, it's amazing how many people are walking around WDW parks and don't have any clue what FastPass is. One day in MK there was a 70 minute stand-by wait for Splash Mountain. For reasons too long to get into, we had 3 extra FastPasses for Splash after we just rode it; the FastPasses were ready to be used IMMEDIATELY. We originally thought we'd ride twice, but decided against it. Instead, we thought we'd spread a little pixie dust and give them to someone at the end of the really long stand-by line. Since it was my wife and me and our 5-year-old son, we looked for a similar party. We found two women and a little boy near the end of the line and asked them if they wanted our 3 FastPasses. They had no idea what I was talking about. They had no idea I was offering them a chance to ride NOW instead of wait for 70 minutes. I had to explain it to them. I think I even drew a picture at some point, but they eventually understood me, and happily took the FastPasses and left their line and went to the FastPass return entrance.
-- Eric
