FP+ Experiences

[DisneyKidds]

We all know it, they are like......noses, everybody has one. I appreciate everybody's perspective. Always fascinates me that two different people, on a trip at the same time, can have two completely different experiences. That's what's so great about individuality. Knowing what works or doesn't work for different people can be a big help to everyone planning a trip!

So, share your experiences, and leave the debate aside. Not sure if I can do this, but I do want feedback based on EXPERIENCES, actual trips using FP+. So, if you've been and used FP+ let us know when, what worked for you, and what didn't work for you. We've all had differing experiences, let's respect them all....

I'll go first. Been 4 times using FP+. The first two were summer of 2013 and December 2013, both during testing. I won't comment on those, because the test wasn't a true picture, although it allowed us to use parts of the system while still pulling paper FPs.

The second two trips were Summer of 2014 and a New Years 2015 trip.

What worked? Frankly, for us, just about everything. On both trips we had no trouble reserving the FP+ we wanted for everyone. Yes, including A&E and 7DMT, and it wasn't even at 60 days. I do think as more people use FP+ those two have gotten harder to get, especially A&E. After already "locking ourselves in" to a park previously by making dining ADRs, it wasn't that difficult to pick a couple of rides to reserve in the parks I knew we would be in. As we are rope droppers and am EMH people, we scheduled FP+ for the evening. Walking into Epcot or DHS with FP+ in hand for Soarin/TT or TSMM/RnR was quite nice. With a little bit of moving (maybe a half hour of 'puter strokes) it wasn't hard to stack the FP+ to minimize down time in between.

What didn't work? FP+ beyond 3. We only tried twice. Didn't wait more than 10 minutes at the kiosks and got Buzz and BTMRR....but with evening FP+ reserved there wasn't a lot of opportunity to get additional FP+, although we never really seemed to need them. Standby lines....yes, I believe they have gotten longer on rides that never used to have FP+. Not that we couldn't ride them with a short standby line, but sometimes we'd have to pass by a ride like Pirates when the SB was 45 minutes....and come back later in the evening when it was only 10. A minor inconvenience for us, but inconvenience nonetheless.

So tell everyone about your experiences, and let's follow the rules.

 

[Mikie]

One trip with it, in October with crowd levels of 5-7. Group of 12 traveling together and choosing almost all FP together. Base tickets.

Like you, we were already "locked into" parks based on our ADRs, so it was just a matter of choosing rides for each park day.

Lots of anxiety in advance due to simply dealing with something new and some intimidating feedback from the DIS.

The process of booking was easy and I was pleased to find availability for all 12 of us for all our choices without splitting into sub-groups or other timing shenanigans. We booked 7 dwarfs, Toy Story, but not the other most popular A&E, fireworks or parades. I booked on our 60 day mark, but in the middle of the day, not up at midnight doing it.

In practice, it really worked well for us. I had reviewed park maps and our dining schedule so that our FPs made sense according to time and location. I liked having ride, meal, ride, ride so that we took advantage of early park hours without FPs and then only needed to keep track of our first FP time and progress through our "appointments" then return to free-form park touring.

Kiosks: I really didn't go searching for them, but didn't find them easily. When I did look for a nearby one, I saw a line long enough that I thought it wouldn't to be worth waiting. Used the app to look at various standby times and as long as there was a attraction we liked with a wait we found acceptable, we figured "why bother to wait for a kiosk when we can just wait for a ride?" We always found something with moderate or short waits to do instead.

A big group automatically comes with planning and coordination requirements, so it didn't feel over scheduled to me. The non-planners in my group had no responsibilities for it but still said they didn't even like hearing me talk about my planning I think I'll still like it when igo with just immediate family, but we'll have to see if it feels over-scheduled then with a more flexible party.

ETA: the 4 year old didn't know Frozen when we booked, but loved them by the time we went - no availability for any FPs on any of our days. 2 FPs in Epcot weren't needed due to short lines and switching from figment or spaceship earth to nemo or (I forget, the land?) was do-able. Playing with the app in-park was often spotty and couldn't get it to work but luckily we didn't need it for anything critical and I used a different wait times app when that happened.

 

[ThistleMae]

I was in on the 2013 testing. The three of us had no issues. We booked out FP's the night before, so the times were limited because we didn't book ahead. But we were still able to do the rides we wanted. We had no trouble using the bands for anything. There were some people there that had issues with the bands not working but this was the testing period, so I assume those initial kinks got worked out. We also used the kiosks a couple times for soarin'. I love the band. We didn't need to worry about a key or money or swimming! Slap it on and go. My granddaughter has an IPhone this year, so she will be able to use her app to check out what lines have shortest wait times. It's reassuring to know that you will be able to get on at least three of your favorite rides each day, without substantial waiting. I'm happy with the service.

 

[DisneyKidds]

I failed to mention MBs. I really like not having to carry park tickets, cash, or credit card. They need to link in DVC and TIW, so people don't have to carry those cards for the discounts. MBs worked well, generally. Yes, did have to stop at the front desk twice so get one of our MBs to work at the hotel room. Maybe twice we didn't get a green Mickey and needed assistance When entering a park, but it was for one of the kids and could have been a finger scan issue, which predates FP+. Just a couple minute slow down.

 

[Disneylover99]

3 trips in testing when regular FP was still available. We used regular FP more then FP+ during the testing cause it was more convenient. Plus our bands never worked properly on all three trips and we kept getting sent to guest relations.

August 2014 - 18 day trip
Hated FP+.....family decided to join us last minute and we were rarely able to get fp's together. At the FP kiosks waits were long for the fourth fp. We waited in line once for 20 minutes. Standby lines were longer because of FP+.

December 2014 - 10 day trip between the 20th and 30th.
Appreciated FP+ during this busy time. It was Suprisingly easy to change fp's around the day before. We mostly went for the atmosphere at Christmas though, but it was nice to not have to get there for rope drop and know that we had 3 great rides to look forward to.

All in all.....during busy times I think FP+ worked great. But I really don't like it with low to medium crowds. It just makes the standby wait times longer IMO.

 

[fitzperry]

2 FP+ trips on which to base my opinion, and it just doesn't work well for us.

First one was December 2013 . . . lots of glitches for one of the families in our party (on the bright side, cast members were giving them fistfuls of paper fast passes to make up for their trouble, and there were plenty to go around). Also, trying to coordinate fast passes for a large group is just a giant PITA with FP+. And we are not the type of people who want to schedule a three minute ride two months in advance. It's just absurd, and it diminishes the experience for me.

Second FP+ trip was this past week with one of my daughters for a cheerleading competition. Really no technical glitches this time (although I heard the entire magic band system was down for a few hours last weekend, but we weren't in the parks then). Again, however, we were trying to coordinate with a large group, which simply does not work well with FP+. I miss being able to walk up to the kiosk with a handful of tickets and get a fast pass for everyone. This was particularly true for this trip since we did not have the opportunity to book FP+ in advance (tickets were distributed when we arrived for the competition, and even if we'd had them earlier, we didn't have the competition schedule). Cast members at ToT and Star Tours were very accommodating and let us slide by when times didn't overlap, but no such luck on RnR. Trying to do more than 3 FP+ was a joke - lines at the kiosks were a mile long and there were no fast passes left that would justify that wait. My daughter and I did manage to get 7DMT on Saturday evening thanks to a friend who was watching availability on the touring plans app (a few opened up about 24 hours before), but we were the only ones who got it.

 

[DisneyKidds]

Fixed the Title, so as not to scare anyone away figuring this would be the usual opinion debate fiasco. Purely looking for experiences, both good and bad.

 

[JanaDee]

Fixed the Title, so as not to scare anyone away figuring this would be the usual opinion debate fiasco. Purely looking for experiences, both good and bad.

The board is full of threads sharing experiences, both good and bad.

 

[jtowntoflorida]

We've had 3 FP+ trips...once during testing in October 2013, and then two since then, after full FP+ rollout--one in August 2014 and one in December 2014. On our October and December trips the crowds were rated as average (5s and 6s) and in August they were supposedly 4s but based on the crowds we experienced, I'd put them closer to 3s or even 2s.

Like the OP, I'll dismiss the October 2013 trip since it was during testing and we still had legacy FP at that point, so it didn't give a true indication of how the system worked.

On our August trip, I came home liking FP+ more than expected. We were able to secure FP+s for everything we wanted generally at the times we wanted with not too much hassle. To get the times I wanted for both A&E and 7DMT, I did have to go with overlapping times rather than all 4 of us at once, but that didn't bother me too much, but we were only on a 3 day trip. I generally scheduled the FP+s for late morning to early afternoon. We were able to pull additional FP+s after the prebooked ones without problems. We like to ride Star Tours, like, A LOT (we rode it 9 times in 2 days on that trip) and we were able to pull FP+s for it throughout the day without any problems. At the MK, I can't remember what we pulled for additional FP+s, but I know we got a set of FP+s for Splash for one of the pulls, and that we were able to pull others as well. Though I will say that the FP+s didn't save us a whole lot of time because the SB wait times weren't long. It was unseasonably hot, even for August (or so the locals say) and there just weren't many people in the parks. For instance, we rode TSM SB on two different days with around a 20 minute wait in the late afternoon/early evening, and we saw a posted SB wait time for A&E for 40 minutes early in the evening on the Saturday of Labor Day weekend, which was also an EMH day.

So I had high hopes going into our December trip. Thanks to some luck (and a couple of glitches), I was able to get all the FP+ times exactly when I wanted them. Because it had worked well to schedule our FP+s to be used by lunch in August, I did that again in December, counting on being able to pull additional FP+s. Well, that did not work out. Essentially, we didn't end up doing any afternoon or evening rides because there was such limited availability for the 4th+ FP+s. One day at the MK, we could have gotten a FP+ for Aladdin, but the SB wait was only 15 minutes. During a week long trip, we only pulled two additional FP+s...one for Mickey (and we ended up waiting in the FP+ line for 25 minutes, which was the posted SB wait at the time) and the other for POTC. In each case, I only snagged them with 4 overlapping times rather than all 4 of us at the same time. Now, granted, POTC was down A LOT that week, but to only be able to grab FP+s for rides we didn't really need them for was a complete bummer. I also think the "recovery" options for when a ride goes down kinda stink. We had a FP+ for POTC on our last day, and of course it was down during our FP+ window. We had no desire to ride any of the options offered so that FP+ opportunity ended up wasted because we had to leave to catch our flight home and couldn't wait for POTC to come online.

After December, I concluded that if we travel during any time with average crowds or above, we need to change our method of using the FP+s and our expectations as well.

We've never had a trip with the MBs where there hasn't been at least one glitch to deal with. On the October and December trips, at least some of our bands didn't work some of the time to get into the room. On all the trips, we had at least one meal where we couldn't pay with MBs because of the system not working in the restaurant. So despite Disney's assurances that all we need is our bands, we always take a backup method of payment with us.

 

[prudence64]

No problems for us

 

[Monykalyn]

Only one trip with FP+ late June 2014 --> and offsite as well. Didn't even realize about booking FP+ until about 3 weeks out-Several glitches/adjustments during that period resulted in getting SDMT, A&E with no problems and at times that worked for us (late in evening as I had planned a late MK day after waterpark). Had FP+ for POTC but didn't really need it-ran through FP line then immediately walked on the SB line (kids just loved tapping Mickey in the FP line lol). Was also on receiving end of a favorable glitch-was when they moved LWTL to first tier and I was able to switch that for TT (already had Soarin' FP+). Got TSMM no problem at good time and was able to add my in-laws when they (finally) purchased their tickets.

I completely agree with PP about the FP+ recovery system if a ride is down-just make it an "any park, any attraction, anytime" FP+-if you are already past the FP+ sensors then you get an "anytime" paper pass good for a week (if I remember right), if just in line or breaks down at FP time then you get one for that park that day.

Overall-FP+ worked for us that trip-will see if it works as well for us on upcoming trip