Fastpass return hour choices?

[princesspumpkin]

thanks a lot everyone for the info and your patience!

 

[Cannot_Wait_4Disney]

The allot a certain amount per hour. Imagine the chaos if everyone that got a fast pass all day showed up at 5pm. It would defeat the entire purpose of fast pass. So they like you to try and use them on time. Now most of the time, it doesn't matter too much if you're late because most people return at the return time and those that don't do not all come at once. And most fastpass rides aren't so jambed up it becomes an issue. But I have seen a fastpass refused due to lateness on Soarin at about 3pm. The cm wrote a later time to return on the fastpass though.

 

[Robo]

The allot a certain amount per hour. Imagine the chaos if everyone that got a fast pass all day showed up at 5pm. It would defeat the entire purpose of fast pass.

I've seen this argument posted several times.
But if you examine the way FP are ACTUALLY USED, it's specious and irrelevant.
The fact is, this simply would NOT ever happen.

There are far too many people who are "otherwise engaged" at any given hour for them to "all show up at the same time" for something as insignificant as a ride on a given FP attraction.

Take the "worst case scenario" which (at this point in time) would be Soarin' or EE.
The FP's are all distributed relatively quickly and most FP are actually USED (sometimes dispensed FP's simply go unused as guests just don't care to go back to a given attraction for whatever reason).
But being "hot" new attractions, most of the dispensed FP are used within a few minutes of the marked time on the passes... people are anxious to ride the "hot" rides as soon as possible. There are usually LINES of folks waiting for the exact MINUTE to tick by so they can enter the FP queue.
So the "everyone shows up at 5pm" would not be the case with "hot" rides.

Now consider the older more-established FP attractions.
There are fewer passes issued in the early part of the day (not as "hot" a ride anymore).
And the "novelty" of riding "SOON" is not as strong.
But even THEN, many of those who opted to get a FP will use them ASAP.
So those who "hold" their FP's to ride after the expiration time would be quite low and the chances of THEM "all showing up at 5pm" is statistically insignificant.
There are too many OTHER things to do... and there is no incentive to "show up" at ANY particular time (since the FP "window" has already PASSED anyway.)

So if you get a FP and choose to wait past the "window" and instead use it later in that SAME DAY it was issued... go ahead.
Most times the CMs won't even give it a second look.

(Just don't show up at 5pm, that's when "everybody else will be there".)

 

[bicker]

The allot a certain amount per hour. Imagine the chaos if everyone that got a fast pass all day showed up at 5pm. It would defeat the entire purpose of fast pass. So they like you to try and use them on time.

Good point. If this becomes a problem, we'll see Disney forced again to take a great service and change it so that is no longer so great anymore, just like many other great services in the past.

 

[princesskaelybear]

We had problems with a fastpass just this past Saturday. We had gotten a fastpass for Voyage of Little Mermaid with a return time of 12pm to 12:20pm. We hopped on Great Movie Ride and were running just a few minutes late. We were denied admission into Voyage of Little Mermaid at 12:27pm by the Cast Member at the fastpass return lane. We went to get new fastpasses and the Cast Member there said that the other Cast Member should have let us in (they hadn't even started seating the standby line yet for that show). We ended up just getting another set of fastpasses and just went to watch Beauty & Beast while waiting. It was disappointing but we just dealt with it as it had already been a tough week.