FP+ Strategy - Morning vs Afternoon

CodeGoddess

DIS Veteran
Joined
Jun 26, 2015
Messages
706
Since we can't get a fast pass for every ride (especially the ones in MK), what is the better strategy. Should we get all our FP+s for the later morning/early afternoon and do standby lines in the morning for rides that have normally longer wait times since they will be shorter in the first hour OR do all FP+ in the morning so that we get through the high wait times rides the quickest possible?

Note: This is off season, crowd levels 2-4, and non-EMH day
 
This question has been the subject of major debates here for well over a year.

Bottom line, reserve FP+ the way YOU think it will work best to suit your style.
 
For me, it depends on what park and what time of year. For the MK on a low to mid crowd day I would prebook FP+ for Mid morning 10:00-11:00, 11:00 - 12:00 and 12:00 - 1:00. Spend the first hour or so riding standby. Then do your 3 prebooked FP+. You can then get a 4th FP+ at the Kiosk before heading to lunch. After lunch you could continue to get FP+ at the kiosks for decent (non headliners) rides for a large portion of the day.
 

We used varied tactics. We park hop almost every day and it depends on where we start out.

One day we started at DAK. It was going to be hot so we used FPs there because we knew that Kali would have a long wait by late morning. We scheduled World Showcase for that night.

Another day we started out at the MK, but planned to be at DHS that afternoon/evening. Since we were doing rope drop and lines were short we scheduled FPs at DHS.

The only day we reserved FPs in the MK was our arrival day. We set those for late in the evening since we were arriving late. We hopped to the MK in the afternoon/evening twice later but relied on getting additional FPs and stalking short standbys both times. That worked pretty well for us.
 
I like starting mine around 10. We arrive before park opening and ride standby. Then we usually use the first one around 10:45. Straight to 2nd from there. Kill time with something and then 3rd one as soon as the window opens. Then get the 4th....However, many people prefer to do it differently.
 
We usually try to get them earlier so we can get more later on, however sometimes it's not really possible if there's only one option for a time and it's much later on as was the case w/ 7DMT this time (We could've checked after that but by that time we had to rush to get to MSEP and Wishes, after that didn't seem worth checking). We figured it was worth it so we kept that FP and tried to avoid any lines we felt were too long with any that we didn't have fp for
 
For me with my last two October trips, I didn't hop, got to the parks at rope drop, or with an early pre-park open ADR and I found that any use of a FP+ during the first two hours, was just a waste of a FP+ and then, if I wanted to get another, I'd have to find a kiosk.... So, if I had an early FP+ time, and got there and didn't need it, I would go standby and switch my FP+ for another ride at a later time. This year, I am going to try and schedule them after noon, I think.
 


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