Just back - stayed offsite and actually liked FP+

[conniehar90]

We just returned from a 10 day trip. We stay offsite and hit the parks for 6 days. I was really stressed about FP+ and was positive I would hate it. The rest of the family was positive they would hate it too. In the past, our typical day included many repeats of our favorites with FP-.

Well, our trip was great. We had to schedule our FP's in the park on the first two days as it wasn't available online. We had no issue doing this - everything was available. Once it was available online to offsite folks on the 31st, I was able to schedule the rest of our days with no issues.

We always hit rope drop and did that again this trip and were able to hit our favorites. For me it was nice that I could schedule our FP's so I didn't have to run around collecting them as I was always the runner. We even threw out the idea of sleeping in a bit later on our last day as we already had our FP's scheduled for later in the day but the kids opted to get up early to get in more rides.

At the end of the trip we discussed this and decided that the only affect it really had on us was for TSMM. We usually would FP this ride at RD and then ride standby. Then we might be able to get another FP later in the morning if they weren't all gone. Our DHS day was on the 31st and when I went to schedule our FP's the only time available was 8pm. We were not scheduled to be there late that day so we opted for the RNR FP (another favorite so no big deal).

My plan then was to hit TSMM at rope drop and hopefully get 2 rides in. This did not happen. We were there early and maybe 8th in line at the turnstile. We made up ground on our fast walk to the ride so I am confident we were one of the first ones in the building. We walked right on the ride. When we exited, the sign said 60 minutes! The line was outside the building so we didn't attempt another ride so only had one ride on this trip.

The only other thing we noticed was longer lines for rides that don't normally have one. On Friday, we attempted to go on Small World 3 times and it was consistently 30 minutes long with the line snaking at the entrance. I am the only one that likes this ride (lol) so we never wait for it. We came back during the parade and got right on. We also saw a huge line for Pirates at about 11am. We just skipped it and came back later that night and walked right on.

I can imagine that the current FP situation is not ideal during the holiday weeks but it worked fine for us this week.

Any other questions, ask away!

 

[MichiganDVC]

Wait, you stayed offsite and liked FP+? Blasphemer! You must not have read the other threads and posts on here, because what you've done is not allowed.

 

[ChattyAshley]

So when you did RD & got your FP+s the morning of, there was still a good selection of time windows? After reading eight billion threads about all the people booking their FP+s online in advance, I'm worried that if I have to get mine the morning of, there won't be any left.

 

[ChelleFeegan]

I am so glad to hear this. We are going the end of Aug, just as the holidays begin to end and it gets a little bit quieter.

Glad you had a magical time

 

[conniehar90]

Yes, we had to book our FP's the morning of at AK and MK. At AK, we actually arrived late morning as we had just arrived late the day before. Everything was available and I had no lines at the FP kiosk. At MK, we did rope drop and rode Space and Peter Pan before hitting the kiosk. Everything was still available. We FP'd Space, Splash and Speedway. I decided I didnt like the time of one of them and went back and changed it later with no issue.

One thing I didn't like was not having a print out of the schedule. We had to take a picture of it which was a pain. My DS and DH always have their phones on, but my phone is horrible and I am in charge (ha) so I hated to have to keep asking them to pull up the picture. When I scheduled them on-line, I had to write them down and bring it with me. It would be nice to get a small receipt like print out but I know that goes against the concept.

 

[helen1662]

I have to agree with you too, I've just returned from a 10 day visit and stayed off site. We had no problem booking our FP+ in the morning (we waited mayboe 5 minutes) and everything was available.

HS I booked the day before when booking FP+ became available for offsite guests. I only remember to do this at 9pm the night before, everything was available except TSMM, we decided to get to the park at robe drop, this did not happen :-( we got the TSMM about 9:15 and the wait time was already 80 mins, but luck was on our side! We decided to come back later to see if the wait time would reduce at all and we walked straight on the ride even though the wait time said 60 minutes, we late found out that the ride has broken down and had been closed and we happened to be in the right place at the right time when it reopened!!

 

[katallo]

This will be new for us. We are purchasing tickets when we arrive. Should we have an account completed under My Disney Experience, so we can schedule FP.

 

[ChattyAshley]

Yes, we had to book our FP's the morning of at AK and MK. At AK, we actually arrived late morning as we had just arrived late the day before. Everything was available and I had no lines at the FP kiosk. At MK, we did rope drop and rode Space and Peter Pan before hitting the kiosk. Everything was still available. We FP'd Space, Splash and Speedway. I decided I didnt like the time of one of them and went back and changed it later with no issue.

One thing I didn't like was not having a print out of the schedule. We had to take a picture of it which was a pain. My DS and DH always have their phones on, but my phone is horrible and I am in charge (ha) so I hated to have to keep asking them to pull up the picture. When I scheduled them on-line, I had to write them down and bring it with me. It would be nice to get a small receipt like print out but I know that goes against the concept.

Oh yay! That makes me feel much better. I've been worried that we'd get there at rope drop and still be very limited with FP+ options. So when you get to the kiosk, are there CMs there to help? Does it take very long to schedule everything? I'm sure I'll be flustered and have no idea what to do!

*We're going May 1-6 but just barely booked and haven't received any of our stuff yet so we can't pre-book yet. Also two of the days we are there we'll spend with off-site friends who aren't buying their tickets until the day of, and since we want to do everything with them those days, we'll end up needing to get FP+s the morning of.

 

[MuddyTires]

How were posted standby wait times compared to actuals? I've read a lot of people say that actual time in standby lines was usually must less than the posted time. I've also heard that from a few people I know who have gone in the past month.

In fact, one family said that there could be waits posted of 20 to 25 minutes, but then they would walk on or wait only 5 to 10 minutes. The single exception was when an actual wait for SM was more than a half hour longer than the posted wait, but they subsequently learned that there was an incident requiring the ride to shut down for a period of time while they were in line.

 

[All American]

Glad to hear you had a positive experience. The whole FP+/MDE thing seems a bit daunting. Add to that we'll be staying off-site as well. I am trying to keep an open mind about it all. Reading posts like yours really helps. Thanks for the positive feedback.

 

[crazyventures]

Thank's for posting your experience! I was nervous when all the FP+ hoopla started but I'm glad things worked out for you. Makes me feel a little better for my November trip!

Luckily I'm a MEGA planner!

 

[minmate]

I was nervous about FP+ too as an offsite guest. I was grateful to have the prebook option open just days before we went into the parks. I linked our tickets on my MDE account and added the app to mine and dh's phone (in case one died - my phone battery dies very quickly).

I would still say even if you are buying tickets day of, to get there early and buy your tickets before rope drop if possible. You should be able to link them through the app and while waiting for the park to open, choose your FPs. The kiosk lines still looked long to me -- too long to bother with considering the trade-off of shorter wait times in the morning.

We were there Wednesday/Friday last week and while it was spring break, we never waited in a line longer than 20 minutes for a ride (parade stake out spots excluded). That's not to say the lines were never longer than that - they were; but we used the Rope Drop to noon-ish/break or FPs in the afternoon/ride during or after evening entertainment strategy.

We actually only found we saved significant line waiting time with the use of our FP for Soarin' and FP for Splash (both around 3 p.m. on their respective days). When arriving at the rides of our other 2 FPs for each day, the lines were only 10 minutes.

We consciously chose not to ride PP at MK and TSM at DHS in lieu of other rides. We could've gotten on each of them at one point as we walked past them with posted times of PP (20 minutes around 10 a.m.) and TSM (35 minutes around 10 a.m.) but we chose not to.

The app was glitchy and did not work well while we were in Epcot on Tuesday. It worked a bit better while at DHS that same day. It also worked great on Friday and throughout the rest of the week when I checked it outside of the parks.

 

[momof2n2]

Thanks for sharing your experience.
I'm still not ready/willing to risk not having the no-repeat rides thing, but it's nice to hear people are having good trips even with FP+.

 

[Griffin226]

We were there between Christmas and New Years when the crowds are at the worst. We have been to WDW 13 times in 17 years, but never at Christmas. I was scared to death about what we were getting ourselves into.

I would say that FP+ definitely made our trip better. We knew before we left that we would get on our favourite at least once during the trip. We moved FP around during our trip using our phones and never had a problem, we found if you didn't like the times offered we just started over and got different times that worked. Yes, the app needed work (it still might, hard to know since we haven't tested it yet).

Being there between Christmas and New Years I don't think we expected to do walk on for any attraction, surprisingly enough we walked on a number of attractions.

Lines were definitely longer for attractions that didn't have lines before, but I think that helps overall. The busier rides will have slightly shorter lines and the not the busy rides have slightly longer. I suspect it works out in the end.

Overall, I would say that FP+ is better than what was there. We always followed the rules tho--didn't horde FP's during the day to use later and waited to try to pull a new one until the return time on our old one had passed. I don't think I knew that you could return whenever you wanted and didn't need to pay attention to return times.

I am looking forward to our next trip--might not be for a couple of years tho (these trips don't seem to get any cheaper).

 

[minmate]

We found posted wait times to be within 5 minutes of actual for us, sometimes faster, sometimes slower. However, we didn't actually jump into any lines greater than 20 minutes so I don't really know about the longer wait time accuracy.

 

[conniehar90]

Oh yay! That makes me feel much better. I've been worried that we'd get there at rope drop and still be very limited with FP+ options. So when you get to the kiosk, are there CMs there to help? Does it take very long to schedule everything? I'm sure I'll be flustered and have no idea what to do!

Yes, they had CM's at every kiosk in the morning to help. Or you could book them with a CM with an iPad that is standing in the same area. They all have blue shirts on so you can't miss them.

If you have an account set up with your tickets linked it doesn't take long at all. If you don't have everything set up before hand, you will have to assign each person a ticket, so that will take longer to get set up the first time.

It seems like the program comes up with suggested return times for you so you really have to have an idea of when you would like to ride, when you get there. The CM will accept the suggested times and then go back and try to change them for you to the time you really want. I had one CM really push me to try to ride Splash at 10am because it was supposed to storm later. I wanted to ride around 1pm so I just stood my ground and he booked it for me. Huge storms did roll in around 2pm so he was right, but I did not want to ride so early in the day when it wasn't super hot yet.

How were posted standby wait times compared to actuals? I've read a lot of people say that actual time in standby lines was usually must less than the posted time.

We found that for the most part posted wait times were way over exaggerated. We often walked on rides that said 20 minutes. However, we also saw some that seemed understated. At BTMRR, we saw a posted time of 20 minutes, but the line was all the way at the entrance and wound around inside - there was no way that was 20 minutes. A friend of ours got in the TSMM line that said 50 minutes and she said it was pretty spot on.

One thing that really baffled me was when I would see folks using a FP for Space Mountain at 9 am right when the park opened. They could have just walked in the stand by line and changed it to a later time and gotten two rides! We saw that happen numerous times. We saw someone using a FP for Small World when the standby line was 10 minutes. Change it to something else! There are so many rides at MK that there had to be something else they could have changed it to! This isn't really the case at the other parks, but at MK for sure!

 

[Tagstime]

Glad to hear it worked out well for you. Were also staying offsite this trip. We just did our FP+ about 2 weeks ago for our upcoming trip this weekend. We had no issue booking FP+ for everything we wanted for the late afternoon and evenings as we planned. We also plan as normal to hit rope drop to beat the mid day rush.