GeorgiaHoo
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Nov 7, 2005
- Messages
- 3,719
We were at Disney last Tuesday-Sunday and wanted to post a few thoughts on Magic Band and FP+.
1. Magic Band - REALLY liked the magic band. Worked fine for room entry, park entry, purchases, etc. Didn't have to carry a wallet, KTTK, etc. Left the room each day with my phone, chapstick and magic band. We could head to the pool and didn't have to worry about how we would pay for drinks/snacks. Were staying at Yacht Club and they scanned your magic band to make sure you could get into Storm Along Bay. Only negative was at check-in when they had to reset my wife's magic band for some unexplained reason. Took 10 minutes or so for the CM to make this fix.
2. FP+ - we scheduled our FP+ about 45 days before the trip and were able to get the times we wanted and rides we wanted, focusing on the headliners while intending to arrive at RD each day and ride whatever we needed to ride. Just prior to leaving Disney announced the 4th FP availability but we didn't change our FP selections and figured we'd adjust on the fly during the trip. It was GREAT to be able to arrive at DHS at RD and ride Tower of Terror standby with little wait then walk on to Toy Story. Our FP for Toy Story was arround 10ish AM and we waited in line about 10 minutes total. That said, there was no availability later in the day at DHS for the headliners so that was a bummer. FP+ worked really well at MK too - there are tons of rides that attract people for FP+ so finding what you want was generally easy. Didn't use the fastpasses that we scheduled at Epcot because there was a rain out and didn't use at Animal Kingdom because we arrived at RD for morning EMH and didn't need and the day we were going late afternoon also rained out.
3. So, I was bashing FP+ pretty hard without having tried it but it generally worked pretty well during a week that had a lot of rain and wasn't predicted to be that busy. Still required a lot more advance planning that I like but if you are willing to spend some planning time you can make it work (but probably need to be at the park early). I would note that there were a LOT of people that had magic bands but still didn't seem to understand how FP+ worked. For example, one morning at DHS we overheard one family from England discussing the fact that they would have to wait in line for 95 minutes for Tower of Terror because all lines were that long when they probably could have reserved something later in the day that would have taken 10-15 minutes.
1. Magic Band - REALLY liked the magic band. Worked fine for room entry, park entry, purchases, etc. Didn't have to carry a wallet, KTTK, etc. Left the room each day with my phone, chapstick and magic band. We could head to the pool and didn't have to worry about how we would pay for drinks/snacks. Were staying at Yacht Club and they scanned your magic band to make sure you could get into Storm Along Bay. Only negative was at check-in when they had to reset my wife's magic band for some unexplained reason. Took 10 minutes or so for the CM to make this fix.
2. FP+ - we scheduled our FP+ about 45 days before the trip and were able to get the times we wanted and rides we wanted, focusing on the headliners while intending to arrive at RD each day and ride whatever we needed to ride. Just prior to leaving Disney announced the 4th FP availability but we didn't change our FP selections and figured we'd adjust on the fly during the trip. It was GREAT to be able to arrive at DHS at RD and ride Tower of Terror standby with little wait then walk on to Toy Story. Our FP for Toy Story was arround 10ish AM and we waited in line about 10 minutes total. That said, there was no availability later in the day at DHS for the headliners so that was a bummer. FP+ worked really well at MK too - there are tons of rides that attract people for FP+ so finding what you want was generally easy. Didn't use the fastpasses that we scheduled at Epcot because there was a rain out and didn't use at Animal Kingdom because we arrived at RD for morning EMH and didn't need and the day we were going late afternoon also rained out.
3. So, I was bashing FP+ pretty hard without having tried it but it generally worked pretty well during a week that had a lot of rain and wasn't predicted to be that busy. Still required a lot more advance planning that I like but if you are willing to spend some planning time you can make it work (but probably need to be at the park early). I would note that there were a LOT of people that had magic bands but still didn't seem to understand how FP+ worked. For example, one morning at DHS we overheard one family from England discussing the fact that they would have to wait in line for 95 minutes for Tower of Terror because all lines were that long when they probably could have reserved something later in the day that would have taken 10-15 minutes.
