Just Back (Dec 3-11). Refreshing for 7 & HS FP Drops

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Excellent! I haven't been able to keep an eye on it since the Gold AP blackout started so thanks for the update and glad it worked out for you!

I was so happy that I was able to modify my Toy Story Mania FP for it because I was only able to get a SDD FP for the last day of my vacation. I wasn’t sure if timing would work out with DME. Now my goal is to try to modify that FP for an early morning one at 9:30.
 
I tried this during my trip in November with no luck. Glad it worked for you though. The other thing that I found was that I was disappointed in myself being on the phone so much looking for the next thing. The refresh strategy takes A LOT of time and I was missing what was happening at the moment.

I did the refresh strategy for my group of 7 last year and it worked relatively well. I often tried one person at a time and that was sometimes faster.

One time though I simply couldn't get Talking Mickey for 7 people (in the next half hour) and 2 of us had to sit out.

I do agree that sometimes I had to spend a little too long on my phone and my family teased me when they saw my game face on. One morning my DD17 got irritated with me when I tried and tried and tried to get a Rock n Roller Coaster FP for the same morning. I just needed it for 2 people! Finally I realized she preferred to skip the ride and just enjoy each other than for me to bury my head in the phone for 5-10 mins.

My whole family far prefers are tightly scheduled itinerary with everything preplanned in advance so we can all just relax and follow the schedule when we are there. As the planner, this is much less stressful for me when I am actually at the parks.
 
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Just got back from another great trip. I was nervous going into this one because I rely heavily on refreshing for FP's night before and day of but normally for only 3 people....this trip was 7 people so I didn't know what to expect. Here are some pointers from my trip.

Absolutely break it up into groups of 3 & 4 when refreshing and go for overlapping times when looking for anything popular. Stuff like Dumbo just look for 7, it will be fine. I usually work on the group of 4 first as it will be a bit more difficult and then do the group of 3 to match/overlap.

Will this work for rides such as FOP & SDD? YES! I had the start of the days all nicely laid out with FP's selected and AK planned for 2 days near the end of the trip. After 2 days everyone decided they wanted to do AK the next day! My heart kind of sank a bit knowing that FOP would be the highlight and assuming the odds would be low. That night I was able to get overlapping FP's for the 7 of us for an AM time slot for FOP. One of the things I personally wanted to do this trip was ride SDD at night but of course I was not willing to hold up an entire day of refreshing for 1 evening FP. During the rain one afternoon I managed to get SDD for that night for the 7 of us. The only ride that I didn't look to add day of was 7DMT because we did it once standby right before our MVMCP night and everyone preferred other rides. All other rides we were able to add with reasonably short waits (sometimes we would just go watch a show or grab a snack to fill some time).

It does take more patience and more flexibility than refreshing for a smaller group but it does work.

Now to the Hollywood Studios FP drops. I posted about it a few weeks ago but kind of tucked it away into another thread....didn't want to jinx it for my trip. It is something I watched for weeks leading up to my trip and now can say that for at least 5+ weeks it has worked including during my trip. Every day that I have checked I have noticed 2 FP drops for HS for all of the TSL rides. Same times every day. At 9:31AM it opens up a lot of FP times for all TSL rides including SDD for FP's between 11-12 (start times). At 2:31PM it drops FP's for TSL for 4-5. We used these drops both times one day for SDD. Again we broke it up into 3/4 because I didn't want to risk it not working on a larger group so I do not know how well it works for groups larger than 4. I watched again this morning at 9:31 and it worked. To note, if SDD is down in the morning there is a chance it might not be included in the FP drop (noticed this 1 time a couple of weeks ago). I also do not guarantee this will continue to work but it has been consistent and it did work for us.

I just wanted to post because I do tend to promote refreshing as a great way to plan a trip but also know that many groups are larger than my normal group.
wow!:thumbsup2
 


@JETSDAD Do you know if this is still working? All our FP's are booked, so I can't check current day to see anymore.
Yes, I got FP during a drop for Slinky on Thursday last week. I did it during the afternoon drop so I could ride at night (which I didn't find I liked as much as a daytime ride, but I guess that's a different subject)
 
Yes, I got FP during a drop for Slinky on Thursday last week. I did it during the afternoon drop so I could ride at night (which I didn't find I liked as much as a daytime ride, but I guess that's a different subject)

Loved it both day and night but I do prefer evening with it all lit up. I can't stop smiling when I'm on that ride lol
 
Question about the anytime FPs that we discussed earlier in the thread. Anyone know how close to closing they have to be to be good for the next day?
 
Sorry for just now reporting back, but @JETSDAD your tip worked for us on our trip too! We used it on 12/25 and 12/26 to get SDD FP+ at 2:31.

I just about had heart failure, though, when my D blabbed about the FP+ drops to our Minnie Van driver on the evening of 12/26, lol! He was asking us if we were having an ok time and getting to ride the major attractions despite the crowds. My D, who just turned 17 and almost never talks to people she doesn't know, out of nowhere piped up and said, "Oh yeah, my mom learned this trick that there's this secret FP+ drop at certain times of the day and we kept getting to ride SDD even though the wait time was 3 hours!" I quickly shot her a look and chuckled and said that I had a "friend" who'd thought he noticed drops at certain times and asked me to try it. Thank goodness the Minnie Van driver said, "Oh yeah, I know all about that...did you know they have it for FOP too?" LOL! He cautioned us that the times can change though...usually when too many people are on to it. He hinted that he had buddies that worked in IT.

Thanks again for posting about this...it was absolutely amazing! I felt a little guilty watching so many people waiting in the long lines over and over again throughout our trip (12/20-12/27) when we were able to pretty easily use the both the refresh strategy and your tip as well. We only waited in one standby line the entire trip...and it was only for like 5 minutes to see the Muppets 3D, lol. It was super weird...we actually had more a lot more success using refresh on this trip than we did in June! I noticed several other people with similar reports that they had a surprisingly easy time pulling 4+ FP+ during Christmas week this year. I wonder if it's an aberration, or whether what someone else proposed is true...that the holidays have a higher % of people who aren't theme park commandos, who don't do the research to learn all the tips and tricks?? I sure noticed a lot of people who seemed utterly clueless about FP+, and a lot of people using the FP+ machines (and looking very confused)...even people who had smartphones!, and a lot of people standing in line to order food (again, people who had smartphones!) at QS restaurants that had mobile ordering. On Christmas Day it was insanely packed in TSL (3 hour waits for SDD etc) and we had an early FP+ for it. Afterwards we were hungry and wanted a snack from Woody's Lunchbox, but my D pointed out the line was insane. I said no problem, let's give mobile ordering a shot. Voila, we had our food in 5 minutes! (Finding a seat was much more of a challenge, though). Seriously, the ordering line must have been at least 30 minutes long...so not sure why so many people ignored the signs about mobile ordering and waited in line anyway!
 
@reluctantredhead Any chance your Minnie Van driver mentioned what time the FOP drop was?? :)
No he didn't...he said he'd lost track because it had been changed a few times. That's the part where he used some words (can't remember what specifically) that led me to believe that he had specific info or knew someone on the IT team who was involved with it. Since we were leaving early the next morning and we were coming back from the park, I didn't push for more details...I'm sorry! I really thought we were going to get in trouble because my D had let the cat out of the bag, lol, so I wasn't at my most mentally sharp. :(
 
No he didn't...he said he'd lost track because it had been changed a few times. That's the part where he used some words (can't remember what specifically) that led me to believe that he had specific info or knew someone on the IT team who was involved with it. Since we were leaving early the next morning and we were coming back from the park, I didn't push for more details...I'm sorry! I really thought we were going to get in trouble because my D had let the cat out of the bag, lol, so I wasn't at my most mentally sharp. :(
We booked a late trip and didn’t get slinky it FOP. I’m trying to under stand this... on the day I’m going to Hollywood should I only have 2 fast passes booked???? Or can I do this method by hitting modify? Thanks
 
We booked a late trip and didn’t get slinky it FOP. I’m trying to under stand this... on the day I’m going to Hollywood should I only have 2 fast passes booked???? Or can I do this method by hitting modify? Thanks
No, we actually had 6 FP+ that we'd already booked that day (3 "anyone can book" FP+, and 3 Club level FP+), and we'd already used all of our "anyone can book" and one of our club level FP+. So what OP was talking about wasn't a "booked in advance" FP+, but rather a day-of FP+ that you can get while you're in the park. For us, on the dates I mentioned, we had already used our 3 regular "anyone can book" FP+ and were adding more, one-by-one, as anyone who wishes to can. I'm not sure how or if it would work if you were trying to modify one of your pre-booked ones to get one of the "dropped" ones...that might be too many moving parts to work??? But in our case, since the drop was at 2:31 if I remember correctly, we had already burned through our 3 pre-booked FP+ by about 12:15 and were using the refresh strategy to pull 4+ and beyond from that point on...until about 2:27, when I got "ready" lol and made sure that I could be trying for SDD right when the clock struck 2:31. So at 2:31 we didn't have any regular "anyone can book" FP+ and were just trying for the ones that were about to be "dropped" (that OP wrote the post about). Does that make sense? I hope so, lol...it turned out to be harder to explain than I imagined!

ETA: We actually never tried for the FOP FP drop because I didn't realize on our AK days that there was one...so I'm no help as to the times on that one. But I can imagine it would work the same way. Just be ready and waiting to book them in-park on the day you're there, at the "drop" time. HTH!
 
We booked a late trip and didn’t get slinky it FOP. I’m trying to under stand this... on the day I’m going to Hollywood should I only have 2 fast passes booked???? Or can I do this method by hitting modify? Thanks

I haven't done this so I'm speculating but if you're trying for the 9:31 drop, you would want to not have either not booked a tier one at all or not used one you've booked. If you book and use a tier 1 you would not be able to pick one up. If you book a Tier 1 then you need to modify it. If you only book 2 FPs then you would add a 3rd. You could also choose 3 Tier 2s and modify any one of them.

Also you're other FPs need to be booked later so that the window these open in is free. Take a look at the screen shots in this post to see what times were popping up.
 
I haven't done this so I'm speculating but if you're trying for the 9:31 drop, you would want to not have either not booked a tier one at all or not used one you've booked. If you book and use a tier 1 you would not be able to pick one up. Also you're other FPs need to be booked later so that the window these open in is free. Take a look at the screen shots in this post to see what times were popping up.

If you're wanting to do the 9:31 drop I'd recommend having tier 2 FP's set for 9-10 and 10-11. This way the 11-12 window is open to add SDD. If someone has a tier 1 they would need to modify and not have another FP selected over the 11-12 window (or at least it would need to end before 12 but it would reduce the possible options). The other option would be nearly impossible to accomplish by completing 3 FP's in the first 31 minutes of the park being open (I won't say it's impossible, just very very very hard lol).
 
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