I will be in Disney World late June/early July. I am coming for a conference and bringing my 20yo son. Our first day there (Sunday), the conference doesn't start until noon, so our plan is to rope drop HS for a few hours, and then I will leave to go to the conference, and then come back when it's over at 4. We plan to do the same thing on our Animal Kingdom day. Our Epcot day, I won't go into the park until the late afternoon/early evening time.
I'm familiar with
Lightning Lane, but I have not been since they started doing the three reservations in advance. I am *hoping* that for AK and HS we can book three rides for that morning and then maybe get lucky and get a few more in the evening, but in my past experience with LL, they are usually gone by midday. Do you think it's worth it for us to purchase LL multi-pass for those two parks? And what about Epcot....if I buy it, would I be able to book my 3 for later in the day/evening?
Lightning Lane availability for LLMP is different from what it was for
Genie+. As Dave already explained, you buy LLMP days ahead of time and get to see what attractions (up to three) and times you are offered before you have to decide to buy or not. You even get a few minutes to play around and try to modify your selections (including times) before making that decision. However,
MDE will not let you overlap times by much before the day-of your park visit, so don't expect to get your exact choice of times.
On your AK and HS days, what is gone "by midday" is not the issue, unless you're hoping to get
everything you might want. LLMP is a use-one-book-another system. E.g., if you tap into your first LLMP attraction at AK at 8:05 AM, you can immediately book another; at 8:05 AM, you should have a pretty good selection available. If you got the three most popular selections when you bought LLMP days earlier, you should certainly have your choice of all of the remaining ones then. (I would expect everything to be available then, even Na'vi River Journey, the most popular LLMP in AK .) So, by Noon you may have already made six or so selections, your original three and three more.
HS may be more of a challenge since some attractions (most notably Slinky Dog Dash) may be unavailable by day-of. If you're only buying your LLMP three days before your park day, Slinky may be unavailable then. But availability may pop up on day-of for previously-sold-out attractions. And if you're able to tap into your first attraction or two early in the morning, there should be something worthwhile available then. So, you may not get everything you want in HS but you'll have your first three, and something else worthwhile, and then maybe a few somethings less worthwhile.
At Epcot, the problem is that the three most desirable LLMP attractions (Test Track, Frozen Ever After, and Remy's Ratatouille Adventure) are all in the same tier, usually called Tier 1 although that's not the Disney term, so you can only book one of them beforehand. You won't be going to Epcot that morning and can't book another in that tier until you have tapped into an attraction (or your Tier 1's return time has expired), and by then those three may all be unavailable. I'd make the decision about whether to buy LLMP there based on your first three attractions. You should be able to get one of those three Tier 1's plus your choice of two other attractions for later in the day or evening when buying LLMP.
Please note that I'm talking about LLMP. LLSP can sell out earlier and unavailability could be an issue if you can't purchase until three days before your trip. But you'll know that before you have to pay for it.
