is early morning fastpass pointless on busy crowd days?

[justme0729]

I am thinking about strategy for scheduling fastpasses...I am thinking about whether it would be worth it to schedule fastpasses early in the morning like 8am or 9am during heavy crowd times (thinking for christmas week). Specifically, I was thinking space mountain or Peter Pan at 8am and Mine train at 9am, then ADR at 10:00 and then another fastpass at 12. Then, if there are fastpasses available, we can try for a fourth/ fifth FP. Are the lines going to be really short anyway and make scheduling fastpasses in the early morning pointless? To me, it would be worth it if the standby wait was at least 30 minutes. We plan to leave the park by around 1pm anyway.

Thanks in advance!!!

 

[lroger01]

I would check the wait times tomorrow - July 4th - also a very busy crowd day. Watch the times starting at opening at all the parks and track how long it takes for your must-do's to get past 30 minutes stand-by.

With this info, you should have a pretty good idea of what you might be able to do at opening and when FP+ would allow you to extend your day.

Don't forget to account for any time differences between your location and Florida.

 

[disneyag]

We were there early the last week of June. We made rope drop at each park and commented how it seemed to be a waste of a FP first thing in the morning. People were getting in the FP line for things when there wasn't a long SB wait.

We did 7DMT, Splash Mt, Big Thunder Mt, and Splash Mt again all before 10:15am all without FP on a day when MK opened at 9.

 

[cg1200]

Having just been there I would say book your FP's starting about 1-2 hours after rope drop. I would not waste any FP's before 10am. You will get on plenty of rides standby before 10am even on very busy days. Especially if you avoid 7DMT and Frozen at MK. Those two attractions will cost you a lot of time if you try to do either standby. Let everyone else go there while you hit the other rides which will have shorter lines.

Epcot and DHS will be a little harder to navigate just because there's so many fewer rides. But I would book an FP for Soarin for 10am and go to TT first thing. By the time you get off TT, the FP for Soarin will be good. You likely will not get on the major attractions more than once during peak times. So I would start booking FP's later in the morning.

And good luck getting FP's on the day you're in the park after you've used your third one. There will be none left for any good ride. Maybe MK might have a few left for some decent rides but forget Epcot and DHS. No chance.