Wisblue, I can't remember if you said you park hopped or not.
But if you were going to HS and wanted to do both TSM and RnRC, you'd get there early and ride one of those standby (or maybe even both if lines were light) and you'd save your FP+ for later in the day? What would you use those three FP's for?
And once you used them, what about the rest of the day? Would you leave the park and call it a day since you've been up since 6:30am?
Or would you hop to another park? And once you got there, would you wait in standby or would this be the park you reserved your FP's for? And if this is the park you reserved your FP's for, how could you have riden more than one headliner earlier in the day at HS without FP and without standing in at least one very long line?
I'm trying to wrap my head around your suggestions because yes, touring styles differ, and with ours we never, ever waited in a line more than 20 minutes long (well, at least until this last time when some FP lines started taking longer than that) yet we rode everything we wanted to and I know that won't really work as well in the future as it did in the past, but I can't figure out how we would even come close to realizing the same amount of enjoyment just by getting to the park early.
I've explained this numerous times, so I'll lift this from my post yesterday about why FP+ works well for us. This is from the thread that was closed for moderation later in the day:
"We like to get to a park at opening and do as many things as possible with short waits. This strategy has always worked well for us, even during the busiest times of the year (when we usually have to visit), especially when those times have AM EMH. We were never big users of paper FPs, because touring in the morning we liked to sweep through the parks and didn't like having to get a FP and then have to arrange to return to that attraction later to use it. If we saw a posted wait time of 20 minutes for something we wanted to do, we were more inclined to get in the line and ride right then instead of having to come back. We also learned through experience that many of those posted wait times are inflated, especially in the morning.
We also like to take breaks in the middle of the day to escape the crowds in the parks, especially during those busy times. I remember reading in a guidebook before one of our first trips that "Disney World is like a large sundae. You will enjoy it more in small bites". We found that to be true for us when our daughters were small, and we still do things that way now. Paper FP does not work well for those midday breaks because by mid to late morning the FP return times would often be when we intended to be eating lunch or be out of the park completely.
After our breaks, we usually like to go to a different park, maybe to see a specific evening show, to eat at a specific place, or just for some variety. With FP+ we can now get FPs to enjoy a few popular attractions in those evenings, when paper FPs would be long gone for the day."
As I explained earlier in this thread, when we go to DHS we would usually arrive at opening and do TSMM, TOT and RNRC (usually single rider) without using FP and without long lines. This usually takes less than an hour, as it did on Sunday, December 28, a level 10 day at DHS.
After that we can move on to other attractions that don't have long lines (GMR, Animation Academy, Star Tours, Backlot Tour, shows, etc.) and have an early lunch. On that particular day we went right to DAK from DHS because we wanted to see the Christmas parade and FOTLK. We had our FP+ reservations at DAK-Safari, EE, and Dinosaur. For us, that was a very full and enjoyable day. Maybe you would have found it too boring for your tastes.
Before FP+ we would sometimes grab a FP for TSMM to do it a second time, but this trip we didn't do that because we had FP+ for TSMM on two different evenings of our 4 1/2 day trip.
One big difference between our touring styles seems to be that we really aren't that interested in doing certain attractions multiple times per day for multiple days on one trip. We don't measure our enjoyment or the success of our trips by the number of rides we do, the number of FPs we are able to collect, or how many hours we spend in the parks. We are generally satisfied if we can do most of our favorite things once per trip, especially when the trips are relatively short.
I also don't necessarily measure the value of FPs by how many we get. I find those FPs in the late afternoon and evening to be more valuable than ones that you can round up right at park opening because they are allowing us to bypass much longer lines at a time when FP was never an option. Kind of like I would rather have 3 $20 bills than 6 fives.
