Is Anyone Else Really Stressed About Scheduling their HS Day for later this year?

[Silvermist999]

Best advice is to plan 3-4 days at DHS and purchase park hoppers. Crazy to try and plan everything on a single day unless that is your only option. We have 3 different partial days planned for our 8-day trip the first week in March.

We are planning as many as 3 days at DHS on our upcoming 9 day March trip since we do not have park hoppers. I think that will give us the best chance to get on the rides in Galaxy’s Edge, Toy Story Land and the new Mickey and Minnie ride. We normally do 2 days at MK, but not this trip.

 

[NY Pirate Princess]

FP planning and booking was indeed stressful for a split stay party of 6 with rabid star wars fans! I am excited to go in early March, happy my Beach Club Davids reservation came through for easier access to HS, and hopeful that my can do relaxed attitude will help smooth the rough patches. Disney planning has always been almost my favorite part, but this trip has showed me what the universe has been whispering in my ear for years. Plan, yes. Be flexible. Have fun! I will report back if it actually works, but honestly, the fun part is the good part, not the perfectly executed plan.

 

[ckelly14]

Started a post for this very issue. Put me in the "stressful" camp. Our previous plans has always been to book RNR and ToT, rope drop both and ride multiple times.

 

[PrincessWithABlaster]

We are not going until September but I'm still watching. I like being fully up to date on our plans although we are totally flexible. If I could get my husband to spring for an Epcot hotel I'd be less worried.

We’ve been staying in the MK the last several years. Making the switch to Boardwalk and happy to be able to take transportation out of the list of worries.

OP, I was very stressed out about HS the first time we went (it was a hard park to schedule even before all this if you like shows). If it’s your first time, it’s all new anyway so it’s all going to be fun and exciting. If you don’t make it on a couple rides, it’ll be ok. Figuring out how to deal with it will become clearer as you get closer to your trip and you’ll adjust. I was at this point a few weeks ago. I’m working on accepting what I can’t change right now.

 

[YesterDark]

My general though process for my next trip is something like:

Get Boarding Pass for ROTR.
Get FP for Slinky Dog
Do whatever else.
Refresh for the other rides if I can.

 

[HuskieJohn]

Without the current FP+ situation my draft TP says there is too much for us to do at HS in one day...actually too much waiting in line is the real problem!!!

We have a party of 8 (well 7 will be doing rides) so getting a good 4th FP+ will be doubtful.

To bypass as much stress as possible for now we have planed a second day at HS. If we end up only needing a half a day at HS for the 2nd day then we still have tickets to the Universal parks. If we dont NEED to go back to HS then we will likely RD AK FOP then go to Universal.


My FP+ day is April 20th so I will be reviewing all trip info from March 5th until April 19th for any clue as to how to plan that first day. Hopefully WDW does not change the FP+ structure just before my booking date too as I have no doubt they will to make me work OT on the planning last min!

 

[CastAStone]

We have a party of 8 (well 7 will be doing rides) so getting a good 4th FP+ will be doubtful.

Under the current tiering, If you book all your scheduled FPs in the morning, You will have zero trouble getting a day of FP for RNR or TOT no matter how big your group is. If you go on a day that isn’t crazy, the same applies for TSM and AS2.

I promise.

 

[kupair]

Can someone answer 2 quick questions. Why is everyone getting to the park hours before opening to get a boarding group? Don't you just have to be in the park to snag a boarding group with your phone? We go in March - not sure how early we'll have to get there. Also...can you do a Rider Swap for Rise of Resistance? I think it might be overwhelming for my 5-year old. Thanks!

 

[piasalady]

Not stressed at all. We are going to be at Disney World starting Jan 18th. Our only day at HS is our first day which is also travel so there is no way we are getting a BG for ROTR. We go to Disney about every other year and I know we will be back again so no point in stressing. We will ride it eventually

 

[rajak73]

Heading down in October, not stressing about any rides, we were there in July 2018 with DS, DDIL, and grandkids, they rode Slinky in evening during emh, no FP just waited in line. DW and I didn't ride we were done for the day, also none of us got to ride FOP, Know what, we still lived and had great time!

 

[HuskieJohn]

Under the current tiering, If you book all your scheduled FPs in the morning, You will have zero trouble getting a day of FP for RNR or TOT no matter how big your group is. If you go on a day that isn’t crazy, the same applies for TSM and AS2.

I promise.

Thanks I will update my planning notes to allow for this.

My only other issue was that I wanted to ride SDD at night with the lights. So we may just need to close the park to make that happen.

 

[SaintsManiac]

Thanks I will update my planning notes to allow for this.

My only other issue was that I wanted to ride SDD at night with the lights. So we may just need to close the park to make that happen.

Best time to ride is right at park close. With 2 night time shows in the park the lines go WAY down.

 

[HuskieJohn]

Can someone answer 2 quick questions. Why is everyone getting to the park hours before opening to get a boarding group? Don't you just have to be in the park to snag a boarding group with your phone? We go in March - not sure how early we'll have to get there. Also...can you do a Rider Swap for Rise of Resistance? I think it might be overwhelming for my 5-year old. Thanks!

People dont know that they need boarding groups so they arrive early
People dont know that the boarding groups are random so they arrive early
To rope drop the other rides because there are so many more people in the AM because of the above.

To me anything more than 1hr early is unnecessary until March 4th or something else changes.

 

[HuskieJohn]

Best time to ride is right at park close. With 2 night time shows in the park the lines go WAY down.

That is my problem though that we want to see those shows. Its ok we will likely just stick to having 2 HS days.

 

[SaintsManiac]

That is my problem though that we want to see those shows. Its ok we will likely just stick to having 2 HS days.

It's pretty cool to see fireworks from Slinky.

 

[Moms]

We're going in early April and planning one day at HS. We have to assume they will still be dong boarding groups (nothing else to plan for at this point) so we will try to be there before opening so we can best our chances (staying at Boardwalk so transportation is manageable). After that we will see what happens. We have had our fill of SDD so our FP's will likely be for other rides like TSM. We will rope drop RNRC and TOT but after that ... we are primarily interested in Galaxy's Edge so will focus most of our time checking that out and plan to be out of the park early enough to ride the skyliner and go back to the resort for some pool time.

 

[DisneyMomx7]

We are going in July and I'm already stressed out - and I'm a Disney veteran!

It would be helpful if we knew which rides will be tier 1 FP and if the new rides will have FP at all.
We have at at least two days planned at DHS, and if we have to we can stretch it to a third. DH and DS are huge Star Wars fans so we will do whatever we have to, to make sure they ride the Star War rides. We already have ADRs at Oga's Cantina for two different days

 

[PetePanMan]

You just gave me hope! Just worried about getting a 9 and 12 year up early to get passes...

things have changed pretty significantly since this experience was made possible by the early entry.

 

[PaladinButters]

I don't see how it's not stressful.
We don't go till June. Who knows if boarding groups will still be used then for ROTR? It's impossible to have a strategy for it. Same with MMRR. We know NOTHING. I can't plan if I'll need a boarding group or a FP+ or some other 3rd thing yet to be invented. There are rumors amuck of tier restructuring, etc etc etc
So it's hard to know what to plan on FP+ for when everything could change before our trip.

YES! Put me in the 110% stressed club! We aren't even going until Oct/Nov (waiting to hear F&W dates) but I'm already hoping and praying every day that somebody reports the madness has ended and there's at least a standby line.

The only 'strategy' right now is to show up at open and hope you click your phone at the perfect second. Got an early group ? Great - day can go as planned, can use FP as scheduled and we can spend our evening at Epcot. Got a late group? Well I guess we'll leave and come back but there goes the dining plans we made six months ago because we can't risk the time of hopping and a sit down dinner while the group might or might not get called!? Watching the app like a hawk to try to estimate when we might get a callback just to make sure we can get back during our window. Third option - can't get a group (or get a backup that is never called) - Now that was our one chance and do we want to rearrange out only other morning before we leave and give up rope drop and plans at another park to try all over again? STRESS

 

[DavidNYC]

Not stressed at all. While it's not an ideal system at the moment it's probably the best for what the demand is and you know exactly what to expect. Get there at rope drop and you can generally get a good Smugglers Run FP. If you're at the front of the crowd, you can fairly easily get on Slinky or Falcon. If not at the front of the crowd you can probably have a fairly easy time at RnR or ToT. The only thing is that you can't expect a short line for Falcon AND Railway AND ToT AND RnR . . etc. But with proper planning from this board you can easily minimize you wait on at least a couple of those. Now - if I get there and there are technical glitches I'm sure I will get stressed. But the reason I'm on this board is that I know exactly what to do in order to get the most out of my day. Stress is often caused by unrealistic expectations - the fact is right now at DHS, it's a very popular park so you won't be able to do as many things as when the park wasn't as crowded. But we've seen this exact same thing in various iterations whenever there are new things. While I'd prefer the tiering to change, this is far less stressful to me than what was the situation with FoP !