FP availability today

[WillowRain]

Wow that touring plans thing is interesting. It's got all FP times for 60 plus 10! I am at 70 now so 10 days til my window starts, so I can log in and see exactly what time I should be going for to pull. That is the most helpful thing I have seen on the internet ever! Thanks @BMAEC

 

[BMAEC]

Wow that touring plans thing is interesting. It's got all FP times for 60 plus 10! I am at 70 now so 10 days til my window starts, so I can log in and see exactly what time I should be going for to pull. That is the most helpful thing I have seen on the internet ever! Thanks @BMAEC

You’re welcome! I admit it has limitations, but it’s really the only way (that I know of) to view FP availability in the future since I have a resort package with linked tickets that won’t let me see FP on MDE. I’m just observing patterns right now because my 60 days isn’t until September. We had to move our Hollywood studios day to 60+1 so I was curious if there was a chance at booking a slinky dog. Doesn’t look like it although it’s possible, and at least now I know that they do become available after the 60 day mark, and even the day of. It does give me hope for 7DMT and FEA, although I’m looking at availability for late August which may be a slower time of year than early November! There’s also a chart on Touring Plans that list rides and when the FP become unavailable (or what time the day of they “sell out”) as the crowd level varies. I know to take it with grain of salt given the crowd calendars are estimates, but with my science background I love looking at data!

 

[AngiTN]

Touring plans has a Fastpass chart that shows you what fastpasses are left on the current day and for the next 60+ days! I’ve been studying it like crazy. Not sure if it’s free or part of the subscription service because I did subscribe.

It's horribly inaccurate.

 

[AngiTN]

If it's one of your first 3, you'd have to use it. We ran into this just a few days ago. Got rained out of BTMRR...had to use the Anytime before we could make more. But the system was being goofy...we used it, but it didn't disappear. The kids used it to ride SM twice in less than an hour. We weren't going to complain.

Actually, you aren't required to use your Anytime FP, and it wouldn't do any good if it did. You do have to book a new 3rd FP and use it. I learned the hard way during our last trip. We had a FP for ToT, it went down and came back up and we got an Anytime FP and we didn't even realize it. We rode ToT, it used our Anytime FP but that didn't count as our 3rd FP. I couldn't book another FP and never could figure out why, since I didn't even realize it used an Anytime FP. Went to GS where they figured it out.

 

[PrincessWithABlaster]

I believe if its 1 of your first three, you can add back that one to your three, not counting your anytime. Then when those three are used you can keep adding one at a time not counting your anytime. Has that been anyones experience?

Yes, we grabbed our 5th FP while we also had an anytime last trip. It becomes very important in the tiered parks. If a tier 2 of your first 3 goes down and you get an anytime you have to schedule another tier 2 before being able to book Tier 1 rides.

 

[PrincessWithABlaster]

I’m just amazed by this! Do you still mess with rope drop or just make your FP early to get through your 3 as fast as possible?

If you have not done this before, plan to RD at least your first few days. It doesn't work as easily for everyone as it does for a couple of the regular refresh posters. You can always ditch RD after your first day if you're happy with how it's working for you. But don't count on being able to get the top tier rides easily until you're sure you can. We used refresh extensively for everything but the top tier rides but still rope dropped most days.

 

[Randomsoulshine]

But that's the reason a lot of people use refresh and say rope drop is no longer needed. You sat outside the park for an hour...and had to get up early for that. We're here now, and just woke up a little while ago. We'll show up at HS around 10:30am and get as much done as the rope dropper. We've got our first 3 FP+, which we can blow through quickly, then go get more. That's the beauty of refreshing. If you want to be up that early, nothing wrong with rope drop. You just don't need to.

One strategy we use a lot is to show up near the end of our first FP+ window. So if it's 10am to 11am, we'll show up at 10:50am. That way, we don't even need to modify the second FP+...by time we get off the first ride, it's already time for FP+ #2. Then I only have to modify #3 and we're good to go.

I think it all depends on a couple of factors. Some days refresh doesn't work as well. But the main factor for us is that I have sleep issues and doing the parks late at night is tough. We take our break around lunch but usually leave a park by 3. So riding short lines in the first hour then fast passing then lunch break out of sun then more fast passes right after lunch then leave. If you can stay until later then I agree skipping rope drop would work. It just doesn't work for us on most days. We stayed all day for one park day but that was it. Most days we are out of there by 3 or 4. And yes I love rope drop and since I'm already up it works. We sit in the cool morning and have breakfast so it doesn't even feel like waiting and we have met people from all over the country and world. We managed to go to all four parks and never waited over 25 mins for a single attraction and most were less than 15 mins. And that was on crowded days. If I didn't have sleep issues then I could see showing up later but man is it already hot by 11. That's usually when we are ducking in for a nice table service meal. We just prefer the parks in the cool of the morning and the walkways aren't crowded at all. But whatever works for each family is cool.

 

[Klayfish]

Wow that touring plans thing is interesting. It's got all FP times for 60 plus 10! I am at 70 now so 10 days til my window starts, so I can log in and see exactly what time I should be going for to pull. That is the most helpful thing I have seen on the internet ever! Thanks @BMAEC

Do not rely on that...it's horribly inaccurate.

Actually, you aren't required to use your Anytime FP, and it wouldn't do any good if it did. You do have to book a new 3rd FP and use it. I learned the hard way during our last trip. We had a FP for ToT, it went down and came back up and we got an Anytime FP and we didn't even realize it. We rode ToT, it used our Anytime FP but that didn't count as our 3rd FP. I couldn't book another FP and never could figure out why, since I didn't even realize it used an Anytime FP. Went to GS where they figured it out.

Perhaps we were having a system issue that day. Like I said, it worked out great anyway because the Anytime didn't go away after we used it, so we got bonus FP+ out of it. We had about 3 days straight of MDE issues, they said it was due to a system upgrade. The day before, or maybe two days before, when all of us tapped a ride only 1 or 2 of us would register. The light turned green for all 5 of us, but only 1 or 2 would disappear from MDE. We had to get a CM to remove them from the system...and they said it was happening to a lot of people. But all has been fine the past several days.

 

[JETSDAD]

If you have not done this before, plan to RD at least your first few days. It doesn't work as easily for everyone as it does for a couple of the regular refresh posters. You can always ditch RD after your first day if you're happy with how it's working for you. But don't count on being able to get the top tier rides easily until you're sure you can. We used refresh extensively for everything but the top tier rides but still rope dropped most days.

I do agree with this even though I am one of the ones who seems to have a lot of success/luck with refreshing. There are times I still get nervous about relying on refreshing but I try to trust that we will be able to find what we want. On our December trip we had planned to RD EMH all week and did start out doing that.....then we found that we didn't get as much done during EMH as we did during regular park hours so we changed our plans and went for it (and got more sleep). Plan accordingly until you see first hand how well it will work for you.

 

[rentayenta]

We aren't planning on rope dropping at all; the trip is just DH and myself with lots of fun dinners with wine/drinks planned. We have our 3 FPs per park all set. Hope I have some luck with refreshing.

 

[twolittletinkerbells]

I do agree with this even though I am one of the ones who seems to have a lot of success/luck with refreshing. There are times I still get nervous about relying on refreshing but I try to trust that we will be able to find what we want. On our December trip we had planned to RD EMH all week and did start out doing that.....then we found that we didn't get as much done during EMH as we did during regular park hours so we changed our plans and went for it (and got more sleep). Plan accordingly until you see first hand how well it will work for you.

Dont know the party size, (too lazy to go back and see if its in OP original post lol) but I often have 7 and almost always 5, and its more difficult for me. 2 or 3 is MUCH easier to refresh and pick up extra top tier FP.

 

[MSPeeler]

Dont know the party size, (too lazy to go back and see if its in OP original post lol) but I often have 7 and almost always 5, and its more difficult for me. 2 or 3 is MUCH easier to refresh and pick up extra top tier FP.

Same for me. Refreshing for 5-7 here also and I don’t have much luck.

 

[JETSDAD]

Same for me. Refreshing for 5-7 here also and I don’t have much luck.

I'd probably break the group up and get overlapping FP times.

 

[glocon]

Has anyone had luck getting fop as a same day fp- either changing from Na’vi as their tier one or as a 4th+ fp lately?

 

[bryanb]

Has anyone had luck getting fop as a same day fp- either changing from Na’vi as their tier one or as a 4th+ fp lately?

Yes. I was in Animal Kingdom today and was able to find same day FP on Flight of Passage three times. The first two were at 4:40pm and 6:30pm. Each one took less than 10 minutes of refreshing in the morning. Unfortunately, we would not make it to AK for either time, so I threw them back. We got to Animal Kingdom after 7:00pm, but by then with so few hours left in the day, FP were very scarce. After trying the refresh method for an eternity, we gave up and got into the standby line. By the time we got to the front of the line, we got lucky and picked up a FP and were able to ride twice back-to-back. But it was not fun, and I spent more time staring at a phone than I will care to do again.

Based on this one anecdotal experience, I'd say it is absolutely possible to get a same-day FOP FP (as long as this practice doesn't keep growing).

Tip #1: I would try to grab it earlier in the day where you have the best chance of people changing their plans. Toward the evening, people are probably more locked into their plans and not letting go of their FP.
Tip #2: 4th FP was satisfactory for me. In my case, there was no need to book it as one of my first three. If I was trying to change from Na'vi to FOP, it would've involved more scrolling since Na'vi came up far more often (Na'vi was very easy to get), and was listed first. Doable, but just slower.
Tip #3: Can confirm -- the mobile site is much faster.
Tip #4: If it's taking too long to get FOP, you'll start to resent "Dinosaur" (which had no wait at night and needed no FP) but kept showing up listed first. When FOP and Na'vi are not offered, seeing "Dinosaur" listed first is your instant feedback that you were not successful, and stimulus to hit the button again.

Also, I now have a new appreciation for how monumental the MDE system is. Although it gets a lot of criticism for being buggy, and error messages abound, the number of transactions going through it every second is really a marvel that you can observe first hand when refreshing.

 

[ShadeDK]

Same-day FoP is still possible as a 4th FP - although similar to PPs, my (also anecdotal) experience during several trips over the last year is that it's become just a bit more difficult to find them as easily. My suspicion is that it's because the refresh method has become more mainstream (on my last trip, I heard one person loudly explaining it to their friend while walking through Adventure Land - they obviously forgot the first rule of Refresh Club). In December, I was able to grab 4th FPs for FoP and continue to move the time around without too much effort. More recently, I've had to settle for whatever slot popped up without much success in changing the time.

The tips from @bryanb are spot-on. I'll add that using refresh I tend to see more options/activity: (1) right around the hour and half-hour; and (2) during the 11am to 4pm window as people's plans are changing for the day. Very much agree with the tip that selection/options dwindle as you move into the evening. It's still possible to use refresh for more popular attractions then but the hit/success rate goes down. And as a regular refresh user, I will say that I not only resent Dinosaur, but also Barnstormer, Disney & Pixar Short Film Festival and Disney Junior - Live on Stage!

 

[PrincessWithABlaster]

Has anyone had luck getting fop as a same day fp- either changing from Na’vi as their tier one or as a 4th+ fp lately?

We saw it twice on our AK day in May for a party of 5. It took 10 mins the first time at 12:45 and came up after I had been refreshing about half an hour trying to get a dusk KS around 3:30.

Navi seems to be very much a wild card. We didn't see it come all day and I've seen a few other reports of that (I did see it pretty regularly when I was practicing). I've also seen reports of it being really easy so YMMV.

I had the best luck from noon to park close. I had very little luck in the morning. I was able to get TT, Illuminations, Space Mtn, and HM in the last hour of park operation. I figure people get tired and leave the park earlier than they planned. It's harder to do because you get slowed down by the message that FP distribution is done for the day, but it still worked for us.

I feel like the take away is it works differently for different people so for the best luck you have to keep trying different things to see what works best for you. Keep refreshing (but only to the point where you are comfortable with how much time you are spending on your phone), enjoy all the rides you get this way, but don't count on anything being a definite if it's going to be upsetting if you don't get it (unless that anything is Barnstormer).

It's a great plan B if you can't get FOP prebooked but plan C should probably then be to ride at park close if you don't ever get it.

 

[glocon]

Has anyone had luck getting fp for PP same day as a 4th+ fp?
I’d like to ride it, not a must do, but don’t want to use one of our first three for it.
And our MK day has late emh that day so maybe can ride then?
What do you all think?

 

[JETSDAD]

Has anyone had luck getting fp for PP same day as a 4th+ fp?
I’d like to ride it, not a must do, but don’t want to use one of our first three for it.
And our MK day has late emh that day so maybe can ride then?
What do you all think?

Personally I find PP to be fairly easy to get (much to the annoyance of DD who doesn't understand my enjoyment of the ride). It would be right there with the mountains for difficulty though I often find it easier than BTM.