Fellow Rope Droppers, what time of day do you FP+?

[Katie Dawn]

It seems to me it makes more sense to ride non-FP rides in the morning when the crowds are low, which means getting FPs for a little later in the morning or early afternoon. But I am FAR from an expert on this topic. I am using Touring Plans which is great to suggest WHICH FPs to get, but forces me to choose the time. I want it to pick the time for me. So what is your philosophy?

 

[gatorlisa]

If hopping (the norm for us), we book FPs for the second park of the day, which usually means mid to late afternoon. If we were to not hop, we would probably book FPs beginning after lunchtime and plan to ride standby til lunch.

 

[MaryKatesMom]

I'd recommend going to all the non-headlining FP+ first thing. What I mean is I can get SM, Splash, PP and BTMRR done at MK in the first hour or so while almost everyone else is in line at 7DMT. Same thing at AK, Pandora is full, TSMM draws the crowd at HS and FEA draws the Epcot Crowd.

I never make a 9-10 AM FP+ for that reason.

 

[GADisneyDad14]

We are RD people and we usually have our first FP in the 10-11 window, maybe 9:30-10:30 depending on the plan... but probably wouldn't actually use that FP until later in either FP window. I fall into the camp of enjoying the extra FPs after we've used the 3rd, so I don't like to have that third one hanging out there too late in the day.

I like to time it so I'm using that first FP towards the end of the window and my third towards the beginning of the window to maximize my time, if that makes sense.

 

[mesaboy2]

From the Strategies Post in the FP FAQ:

- If staying in a single park for most of the day and arriving at park open, the best time of day to schedule FPs is often late morning to mid-afternoon. This approach balances the competing desires to have useful FPs (when lines are longest) with the ability to get additional FPs (when they may still be available).

 

[Tomh]

First FP+ of the day generally doesn't start until at least 9:30, usually 10:00. That way, I know I have at least that first hour, maybe hour and a half, to hit stuff standby before the lines build, then I get into my FP+, and get through them still early enough in the day to get a pretty good selection for FP+ 4 etc.

As GADisneyDad14 said, the firs FP+ I will get in line for towards the end of the window, say 15 minutes before it expires. The 3rd FP+ I will get in line for as soon as the window opens. This way, I get as much time in the morning for standby rides as possible, and I finish my 3rd FP+ as soon as possible, so I can book FP+ 4

 

[MaryKatesMom]

mesaboy 2 is correct. That is what we do. Unfortunately for us we've had to eliminate our TS lunch we always enjoyed. It felt to over scheduled and rushed.

 

[flortlebap]

10-11 usually, unless we want to park hop and get a 4th, in which case I make them all as early as possible.

 

[mtemm]

For MK we opted to start with earlier ones, but then adjusted as possible and as we saw our day shaping up. So last week our MK day went like this:

Plan was rope drop pp (me and twins), and Space (dh and ds15). Then 9:10 dwarves, 10:25 HM, 11:25 splash, noon lunch at plaza.

What ended up happening:
Rope drop Peter*
(Space ended up down so dh and DS 15 quickly ran and did Peter while twins and I went from Peter to small world)
small world*
Fp 9:10 dwarves*
Splash was a walk on still so did standby
Thunder boys did standby
Teacups girls did while boys did thunder
Fp 10:25 HM*
Pirates* Fp (switched splash fp to pirates since pirates now had a 25 min wait)
Lunch at Plaza at noon
Mickeys philharmagic*
Boys space* (fp)
Girls HM* (fp)
Pooh* fp
Little mermaid (fp)*
Cop*
People mover*
Train*
Buzz fp 5:15 (fp)*
Carousel
BOG 6:15*

So we started our fp early but stayed flexible with them, altering those we could if we could get on standby earlier. Pirates line built up faster than expected based on my obsessively tracking weeks prior. Lol.

Epcot worked fairly similarly.

AK we found we really couldn't get fp changed around once there but rode a lot standby fast because of pandora, so that schedule stayed the same (Na'vi rope drop, safari we rode early instead of waiting for 10am fp, everest and kali and fotlk were all back to back with no wait. FOP fp at 11:40, dinosaur Fp 12:40. I tried hard to switch that around with kali but standby for dinosaur was long and kali fp could not be had till night time.

 

[LucyBC80]

We hope drop and normally we start using FP as early as 10:30am but we also space them a little. So 10:30am, 12pm, 2pm are the usual times for our FP, one headliner at each land, usually BTMRR, Jungle Cruise something at Fantasyland on one day, Space Mountain, 2 Fantasyland attractions on the other day. We more than likely are able to find a fourth, sometimes a fifth selection on most days, as we're never there during busier times.

 

[tsme]

I usually have our first FP around 10 or 11, then we go eat lunch, and have the remaining two back to back after lunch. We also park hop, but rarely try for a 4th FP in next park.

 

[Queen of the WDW Scene]

Honestly it depends on what rides I want to go on.
At MK if I don't care about going on 7DMT I make them between 1pm and 4pm and then try to get more after that.
If I do want to go on 7DMT like the trip I have coming up I try to make it for mid morning. This trip its for 10:10am-11:10am.
I also have an 11:05am ADR for BOG.
I will spend my RD time covering that area of the park.

At HS since I generally PH to Epcot I try for a day when there's EMH and hit up RNR and TOT and then make my first FP+ for TSM from 9am-10am. I make a second FP+ for TOT to go on after the first BATB show and then we can go to Epcot.
I have not had good luck making an Epcot FP+ for a tier 1 even if I look right after TSM FP+.

At Epcot since there's not a ton of rides I end up trying to RD one tier 1 and have a FP+ for another tier 1 from 9am-10am and then make my tier 2's for right before and right after lunch.

I don't RD AK enough to have a plan.

 

[ColoradoMom12]

We do our first FP for late morning (10:30 or 11:00-ish). If I can time it just right and get a second one back-to-back with the first, that's ideal. The we can use one right afternoon another. Like 10:45-11:45 and the next one 11:45-12:45. Then we'll leave the park (or get some lunch and then leave) and come back about 4:00, use our third FP and start adding as many additional ones as we can until leaving.

 

[Delirium]

We hop and 75% of the time, we'll FP the second park. The other 25% is when we sleep in and don't rope drop. In those cases, with an arrival usually between 11:00-12:00 we'll FP the first park and plan nighttime activities in the second park that don't require FP.

 

[mi*vida*loca]

Since we go in the summer we do midday breaks at the pool and then use our FP+ for our PM park. Starting around 5-6 pm. We never have a problem rising all of the headliners multiple times.

 

[Katie Dawn]

OP here. Thank you so much for the replies... this is very helpful!!!

 

[CAS239]

Usually around 11ish. Or we'll start our FP's at our second park at around 4ish.

I never schedule any FP's within about 2 hours of park opening. No need imo when lines are short

 

[Disney Princess]

We park hop, and as others have shared, we usually FP our second park. We can accomplish most things by rope dropping. If there is more than one headliner at our morning park, we pick one to do. We'll hit the other(s) a different morning or with a FP when that is our evening park.

 

[pens4821]

We usually go in the winter so start ours in the early afternoon. We are thinking of going next summer, so will adjust our plan as we will try to be out of the parks from about 1-5. So we will try to get as many rides done as we can in the AM, go back to the resort, then hop to another park and plan our FP at 5,6,7 ish. We know we are limiting our FP this way, but honestly even the other way we rarely (unless in MK) used more than 3 anyway.

 

[BaymaxForever]

Usually around 11am with either a 9am open or 8am EMH.