For FP+ lovers: Any helpful hints for those who are afraid FP+ will ruin their trip?

[disneyerin]

I think we can all agree......some people are having a wonderful experience with FP+ and some leave WDW hating it. Sure, a lot of it can be about attitude and expectations, but I just got done reading a thread where the OP was on the phone "at least 30 hours" with Disney trying to fix what should have been a simple problem, and then having ridiculous waits when they finally went.

These experiences seem so random. A trip to WDW really has become like drawing straws it seems.

So I wanted to start this thread to help those "soon to be vacationers" who want to experience as many rides as possible while having minimum issues with FP+

This is NOT for folks who are OK with just a few rides and are happy with walks around the parks soaking in atmosphere......like me.

So, for those of you who have had positive experiences with FP+, resolving technical problems, accessing the right kind of help with Disney CMs, and planning strategically around crowds and rides, please post what has worked for you. Is there a way to avoid hours and hours on the phone to fix a problem? What are you're special "ticks" and strategies for making the best out of FP+? Any phone numbers that work better than others? Any CMs (that are more helpful) we should be asking for?

I can think of one off the top of my head: If at all possible,order your park tickets as part of your resort reservationsIt makes it so much easier if you need to add any days!

Any more ideas?

 

[morethananyonex]

Use the system as little as possible. Less changes means less chances of errors. There's nothing you can do to fully protect yourself from any of that stuff. You can try to make things as uncomplicated as possible (package with Disney, everyone has the exact same things, etc.) but in the end, much of it is a crap shoot. People who aren't experiencing problems aren't doing anything special, they don't know how to fix them any better than other people, they're just luckier.

For someone who wants to ride as much as possible, I would schedule FP+ for headliners in busiest time of the day in the busiest park you'll be in that day. Once scheduled, I would make sure not to move them. Head to a park at rope drop to maximize your time on other rides. Take advantage of later hours where crowds may decrease.

Basically, try to use the system as little as possible while still getting the most out of it. Clear as mud.

 

[redrosesix]

Agree with above, and I'll add this...

If you're staying onsite, the best place to get help is at the Concierge desk. There is no toll free number for Disney and we weren't going to call long distance from Canada to get issues fixed before we arrived. But until all AP holders and offsiters get to book fps in adv, even selecting fps and fixing issues the day before is good enough.

Assume 20-25 minutes for FP return lines except for rides like Captain EO, total 30 minutes to do each ride. You have no way of knowing how many people picked the same window as you, and there is no way to see how many people are already in the return line when you get to the ride.

Assume an hour for SB rides. Posted waits may be nothing like the actual waits. If it says 5 minutes and then a bunch of FP holders keep showing up, the SB line won't move. But if it says 30 because that just happened while they were timing it, you might actually get through it in 5-10 minutes if no FP holders show up.

Having said this, select the rides you really want to do and use a FP. And don't look back, don't second guess yourself. Yes, you may save time if you change your FP to something else if the SB time is posted as 5 minutes... but you may not.

Arriving at RD and doing EMH if you can are still the best strategies to get the most done on your park days.

 

[2Tiggies]

Very practical advice on here so far But then the posters thus far on this thread make sense to me and have proven what I deem to be logical approaches

Arriving at RD and doing EMH if you can are still the best strategies to get the most done on your park days.

We usually do a lot of EMH anyway. What I'm wondering is if they are going to be the only tool we have left to try scrape a bit more out of a park day, whether they are about to become a whole lot busier. Maybe not. But they might. If we could get Disney to reinstate that third Magic Hour they took away a few years ago that would be even better.

 

[JimmyV]

More of the same from me. Don't go crazy planning, and then changing, then planning and then changing. Most reports of failure seem to revolve around this. Don't feel compelled to book your FPs 60 days out. Do it 20 days out when you are fairly certain, (based on hours, EMHs, parades, shows, fire works, ADRs) where and when you want to be each day. Then, lock in your FP+ for wherever you will be each afternoon. FP+ is best used between 11:00-6:00. Once you are locked in, stick to your schedule and hit Rope Drop (or EMH if you are so inclined). FP+ has done nothing to alter the fact that the early morning hours (and the wee hours of the night) are still the best, coolest, least crowded times in the parks when you can accomplish the most. You are far better off hitting Rope Drop than memorizing the best phone numer for Customer Service, IMHO.

 

[agavegirl1]

More of the same from me. Don't go crazy planning, and then changing, then planning and then changing. Most reports of failure seem to revolve around this. Don't feel compelled to book your FPs 60 days out. Do it 20 days out when you are fairly certain, (based on hours, EMHs, parades, shows, fire works, ADRs) where and when you want to be each day. Then, lock in your FP+ for wherever you will be each afternoon. FP+ is best used between 11:00-6:00. Once you are locked in, stick to your schedule and hit Rope Drop (or EMH if you are so inclined). FP+ has done nothing to alter the fact that the early morning hours (and the wee hours of the night) are still the best, coolest, least crowded times in the parks when you can accomplish the most. You are far better off hitting Rope Drop than memorizing the best phone numer for Customer Service, IMHO.

This makes a great deal of sense and echoes my current planning. The exception to "not booking 60 days out" would be the Mine Train if FP+ is available, so at least choose one MK day that far in advance.

 

[ZoZo]

Just back from my first trip with FP+. We stayed on-site, so I booked our FP+ about 30 days out. But then we did change several things ahead of time, prior to our arrival. Didn't have any problems making changes using the MDE app on my iPad, with the exception of one "ghost" FP that wouldn't go away. I just had to remember which one was the "ghost" so I wouldn't get confused.

Once we arrived, we ended up having tons of changes to FP+. Completely changed which parks we were going to for about half of our days there. It was really, really helpful to have a smartphone to make these changes; otherwise, we would have been stuck with the kiosks or trying to make my changes in the evening with my iPad (which I refuse to carry with me in the parks). We were quite lucky that the MDE app on the smartphone worked almost all of the time. It was actually quite easy to make changes on the fly, at least for us. One thing I found was that sometimes it worked better to cancel all of my FPs for the day, then "start from scratch" and make new ones, rather than try to change them one by one. I had tried and tried to change our TSM FP time. Because I already had three FPs booked, I had to keep fiddling with our time windows to try to change our FPs from afternoon to morning. I finally got frustrated and canceled them all, then tried to get new ones -- and lo and behold, got a 10:00 am FP time, just like I wanted! I was quite nervous to cancel them completely and start over, but it ended up working for us.

Otherwise, we usually followed the strategy that lots of people do: get to a park at rope drop, and save your FPs for later in the day when it's more crowded.

I found it hard to predict what we would want to do so far in advance, so we ended up changing our FPs a lot. But except for a few glitches, it worked very well. Do I still prefer the FP- "legacy" system? You bet. But FP+ wasn't nearly as bad as I had feared. But I can't emphasize enough how helpful it was to have a smartphone. Without it, we would have definitely had to wait in line at the kiosks, which would be a pain.

PS - at AoA every morning, they had CMs with iPads available as people were standing in line for the buses, helping them make FP+ reservations before they arrived. I thought that was cool, but I shudder to think about how many additional CMs they're having to pay to be available for stuff like this. They seem to have "staffed up" a lot to handle the implementation of FP+, since so many guests don't understand it. The old FP- system was much easier to understand.

 

[catra121]

Agree with everyone else. Make plans and then stick to them.

RD is still the best way to ride a bunch of rides with small lines...especially if you can make it to EMH in the AM.

I did split my FP+ reservations throughout the day...one before lunch or right after (depending on if lunch was at 11am or noonish) and then two in the later afternoon/evening. I found this made sure I didn't spend a lot of time rushing from one to the other and minimized a need to reschedule one if I hit any unexpected crowds or lines.

When park hopping...I used all my FP+ in the late afternoon/evening at the second park. That helped me to make the most use of my time at the second park.

I don't have a smart phone and didn't need one in the parks. I just had a little notepad with my FP+ times on it for each day along with my ADR times and confirmation numbers. We didn't have any issues with the system.

Just in case...I guess it would be a good idea to know where the kiosks are in the park so that IF you need one you will know where the nearest one is. But that is the extent of planning for problems that I would do. No need at all to have to spend any time on the phone with Disney...at least from my experience.

 

[KatieCharlotte]

Have one account for the entire family and don't link to anyone else.
Make no changes, except to move your FP+ to your preferred times when you first make your selections.
Click on "back" when you get an error message or a blank screen or anything else weird happens.
When FP+ randomly disappear, log back in an hour later and they will probably be back. Don't call.
Plan on using RD as much as possible for shorter lines w/o a need for FP.

 

[RoosMama]

Have one account for the entire family and don't link to anyone else.

I was going to say this also. I've noticed a lot of the problems on the boards seem to come from linking accounts. I have an account and I organize everything for my whole family (including grandparents). We had no problems with MM+.

 

[catra121]

I was going to say this also. I've noticed a lot of the problems on the boards seem to come from linking accounts. I have an account and I organize everything for my whole family (including grandparents). We had no problems with MM+.

I never thought about this but that's true...I only had my one MDE account and have organized all my trips from that one account for the whole group. Made things very easy to organize.

 

[practicallyperfect77]

Not so much a strategy, but for all the smartphone users, I would definitely recommend getting an external phone charger. I have a razr maxx and my phone was dead usually by 1pm. I do use it to take pics, but was on it lots checking MDE for my FP+ ressies and wait times for other rides.

 

[Good Morning Dewdrop]

we've had 2 trips with MB and no 'real' problems (you all know I'm now jinxing myself for your benefit )

the things I think we've done that have helped things work out well are

- we (like other posters) have one MDE/ MDX account for all 3 of us - no linking to other accounts

- I've always done everything via our laptop - not sure if that has helped (we only recently got an ipad) but I do wonder if not dealing with the app and just directly with the website has helped.

* note only problem we've ever had was a few 'ghost' FPs - they all eventually disappears and I could always go to the edit page and only the 'real' ones would be there.

Good luck all!

 

[MichiganDVC]

I agree with most of what everyone already said, with a few additions?

1. Go ahead and make FP+ 60 days out (unless you're going in mid-June like I am. In which case, please wait til the last minute)
You can always change them and I don't think you'll have much trouble. I've been to WDW twice with MBs and have spent zero hours on the phone with them. Some, not all, of the problems people have are due to browser issues or using the app, not a computer, etc... So that leads me to #2:

2. Use your best computer to do your FP stuff before you leave home. Save the app for in-parks only.

3. Do you have two smartphones in your party? If so, turn one off (or turn off WiFi and extra apps to save its battery) and use the other one first. Then when your first phone starts to get low, switch the primary FP phone. This way you'll get double the smartphone time without having to stop and charge one.

4. This is hard to do as practice, but learn how to change your FP times from the smartphone app. There was a little trick that I could have used to switch around a couple of FPs during my last trip to MK, but I didn't realize it until it was too late.
Here's what happened: I prearranged BTMRR and Jungle Cruise for my 11:00am and 12:00pm fastpasses. Roughly around 10:45, I chickened out of BTMRR and switched it to Pirates (that I planned to do as standby next anyway.) Got to Pirates and it was a 5 minute wait, so I tried to make my Jungle Cruise FP for 11 rather than 12.
Here was the problem: That darn Pirates FP was in the way. And you couldn't just "cancel" Pirates and you can't have more than one FP for a single ride, so I could replace Pirates with Jungle Cruise.
Here's the trick: If you want a later FP to replace an earlier one, move the earlier one to WAY later, like 8:00pm. Get it out of that slot! Then, go back and slide the desired ride into its earlier FPs slot.

If I had done it right the first time, I would have instantly moved Pirates to 8:00pm and slide Jungle Cruise from the 12pm slot into the 11:00am slot. By the time I figured this out, it was 10:58am and the 11:00am slot was gone. I was forced to slowly eat a Dole Whip, see a parade, and ride the TTA. It nearly ruined my whole trip!

 

[disneyerin]

Great ideas!

 

[disneyerin]

Bump!

 

[MermaidMommy]

Just got back from a 10 day trip, and we found the app to be ridiculously unreliable. I know everyone's experience is different, but it only worked about half of the time for us - otherwise it wouldn't load or had "system challenges." Then, when we could get it to work, sometimes my daughter would drop off our account, or sometimes I would, which presented us from being able to make FP reservations. We ended up using the website much more frequently than the app.

Also, we found several times that there were different FP+ options on the app than on the website. For example, I was trying to change our reservations so I could get the FoF parade. It wasn't an option on the app, but I could select it on the website. However, at the same time, the website didn't offer me BTMRR as an option, but the app did, so I was having to go back and forth between the two to finally get what I wanted. So, if you're not seeing something you want, it's worth checking both places.

If one person's band doesn't work, try another person's band in your party. We had several times where my band would work but DD's wouldn't, or vice versa, but they still let us both through.

Most importantly, print out or take screen shots of your FP reservations. That way, if your band doesn't work for some reason, or you can't get into the app because it's not working, you have a record of what you have.