I am in the same boat as the OP - booking A&E is THE critical FP+ for our family.
So
@ktlm - just so I have this right, I have to choose my 3 FP+ but there will be a toggle or something that I can click to say "all members of party" or something? Tell me I don't have to do this four separate times - we'd never be together!
(your story scared me, can you tell? LOL.)
I've haven't yet had to pick my fastpass. When you're picking the FPs to "lock it in" do you need to pick all 3 rides you want to FP for that day or is it a ride at a time?
Eviebug, Are all your family members linked in
MDE (they automatically are if they are in your reservation and do not have their own accounts)? If so, you can do everyone at the same time. When you click on FP+ PRIOR to midnight (or whatever time it kicks in for you), you will only see your name. Don't panic. When you hit refresh as the magic time arrives, you should see everyone in your party listed. You then click on every name that you want to book the same FP+ for and hit next. It will then take you to a list of attractions. You pick your 3 on that list. Then it gives you option for those 3 (assuming they are available) to be scheduled. One option scheduling the page will be showing, and then there are tabs that give you Option 2; and Option 3 that you can click if the first times that come up aren't where you want them. Typically one of the options will place the 3 early in the day, one afternoon, and one late in the day. (I can't remember if there are just 3 options or if there is a 4th- I know there are not more than 4). Once you decide which option you want, you hit confirm (or whatever the button says). It then should assign you those FP+. Look to make sure you got what it told you that you were going to get--- that is where it screwed us up. We hit confirm and instead of giving us what it showed we were getting- DD got A&E and DH and I got something else. I have not seen anyone else report on the disboard of that happening to them- so I would bet it is rare. I wouldn't stress out about it- just be sure to look once they are confirmed instead of just assuming it was giving you what it was supposed to give you.
Once the 3 are in place, you then can move times, change attractions etc. At 60 days out, other than A&E and 7DMT, you can pretty much move any other ride at MK to any time you want it. Get those locked in where you want them and then worry about anything else. DD wants to ride 7DMT every day at MK, so I do FP+ for all or MK days first before messing with anything at the other parks. Doing it that way, I have not had an issue with getting anything at the other parks, other than having to put TSM at a slightly different time than I really wanted.
Mudbug- as set out above, you pick your 3 at once -then you can move anything around or change attractions. You can pick just 1, BUT unless something has changed, used to if you only picked 1 or 2, instead of 3, there was no way to go back and pick the others without dumping everything you had and starting over. They could very well have fixed that, but I wouldn't take the chance. Just pick the 3, get an option set, and then you can change the other 2, to better times or different attractions. If you are just trying to tighten up the times, or trying to switch the order of 2 a trick I have learned is to move one totally away from where you want it to make room for the other and then move it back.
For example, let's say they give me:
A&E 9-10
SM 10:05 to 11:05
PP 11:10 to 12:10
I don't want to have to leave Fantasyland to go over to Tomorrowland and then come right back. The system is not going to give me an earlier time for PP, while SM is there. I would move SM to something like 4:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. Then I would move PP to 10-11. Then I would move SM to 11-12.
Hope this helps!