Being a 30-day “second class” guest who just went through the process, I can give you an honest and fresh perspective. While some of it is subjective, I will mainly stick to the facts. If you are staying off-site, you stand little or no chance of getting certain FP at 30 days out, mainly A&E, FOF parade and Wishes to some degree. You will also be limited to later day FP for 7DMT and to some degree ETWB. And depending on time of year and how busy, you can count on later FP for Soaring, Test Track and Toy Story. I did not run into any issues with Animal Kingdom. Now all of this holds true if you immediately log in at midnight (or 1:00AM depending on park closing that day). If you wait until the next day, your chances for 7DMT dwindle to the point where they will be gone, or at best only have very late times like from 9:00 PM on.
Now for the subjective part, it makes one feel like they are being treated second class for daring to not stay onsite somewhere. Disney is trying to entice (euphemism for strong-arm) you into to paying for one of their properties. Back to facts now, if you don’t stay there, then you really do not fully benefit from the FP system. However it’s advertised as the greatest thing since sliced bread for everybody. If they want to be upfront, then at the very least there should be a footnote stating something along those lines. What Disney should really do is level the playing field by at least reserving some FP for those who can’t reserve until 30 days out. That would be a little easier to take than fighting for scraps.
All is not lost though if you don’t mind constantly scanning their site your Disney Experience home page. A good strategy is to not book all of your FP for the entire group per attraction. So if you get 2 out of the 3 you like, then take the rest of the people and book single FP for different attractions around the same time. Check several times a day for the impossible to get ones with one of your single person FP attractions. You can then change that one FP to the new one should it show up. This greatly increases your odds because you are looking for a “single” slot instead of say 6 (if that’s your party size). This worked for me to get A&E for my daughter and granddaughter. I got 2 at different times but I was then able to later go back and exchange for new times that were at the same time (which was 12:30-1:30 PM, perfect!). I would say that I’ve put in a good 30 hours of combing the sites over the last 3 weeks, but in the end I was able to get just about everything I wanted. The only one that never panned out was earlier 7DMT. All 3 days at MK for me are at like 5:30 pm at the earliest. I have yet to find earlier slots that opened up. That one stinks because it doesn’t work well with the plan to leave the park at like 3:00 for a few hour break. So we are leave earlier, or stay later. Again it’s my little punishment for not staying in the mouse house, oh well.
Finally, you can do stand by with early morning ADR breakfast reservations before the park opens. You can get reservations as early as an hour before. This will get you inside the park early and at the very front of the rope drop lines before they let the masses stampede in. I am doing this twice. It does nothing for FP other than let you use them for other attractions, while you get to see the attractions with long waits before the crowds and lines build. Of course you still face the problem with most ADR’s being booked 180 days out. But again keep checking, people change plans and things open up. That’s how I found them. You can also use third party sites that will scan ADR’s for you for a nominal fee. This is worth it if you really want something that’s hard to get. I got Akershus lunch ADR for my family using this.
So moral of the story is, off-site = second class. But it does not mean you can’t get what you want if you’re willing to put the time in. I find it quite ironic that a vacation, which is supposed to be a decompressing stress relief, requires so much work and induces so much stress in order to just get what you pay for. It’s really crazy when you think about it!
Good luck!
I had planned on booking my fast passes early in the morning the day my 30 day window opens up. I live in a time zone which is an hour and a half later than Eastern Time. That means I will have to be up at 1:30am here if my fast pass windows open at midnight ET and up at 2:30 am if it does not open until after 1:00 ET. Instead, I planned on getting up around 6:00am my time. I know that being on the computer the minute your 30 day window opens is preferred but, given that I have to do this a number of days in a row and still go to work the next day, thought it was my best strategy. Now, I am worried that I need to do the middle of the morning thing instead if I have any hope of getting what we want. Maybe, I can get away with doing that only a few of my dates.??? This is the DW part of my schedule for when we are there:
