Magic Bands vs Fast Pass? Are they a must?

[clmhood]

Can someone explain the difference between Fast Pass and Magic Bands? And would you recommend them for First-Timers with 3 children (10, 6, 2)?

I am in the VERY beginning stages of planning our FIRST trip to FW (and Disney) and am becoming a little overwhelmed with all the "extras". The boards have been great to learn from.

Thanks in advance!!

 

[wdw4rfam]

When you stay at a Disney resort now, you get a magic band. Its a bracelet that is your room key, stores your fast passes, dining credits (if on dining plan), and has charging to your room. You can go on and pre-book ride times (fp+aka fast pass) and they will be stored on your magic band. You get 3 per day as of now. If you stay offsite, you can't get magic band, or pre-book fast passes as of now.

 

[bama_ed]

Well there are no more paper Fast Passes. The machines have either been covered up or been removed.

You don't have to use Magic Bands. You can still get a ticket card to gain admission to the parks. Once inside you can attempt to schedule FP+ times (good luck with that).

I'm at the Fort now and using MB and FP+. The MB worked well at EPCOT for admission and for scheduling FP+ times. The only drawback is I hate scheduling days/weeks in advance. The tickets (type/# of days) is associated with your MB chip #. Your FP+ days/times are associated with your MB chip #.

So IMO if you want to FP at all, you use the MB. If you don't preschedule then you lose out to the UBERplanners who do use it and waiting till day-of-park to try to get Soarin' might be darn near impossible.

Bama Ed

 

[sippican]

Can someone explain the difference between Fast Pass and Magic Bands? And would you recommend them for First-Timers with 3 children (10, 6, 2)?

I am in the VERY beginning stages of planning our FIRST trip to FW (and Disney) and am becoming a little overwhelmed with all the "extras". The boards have been great to learn from.

Thanks in advance!!

First of all welcome!
You will learn so much from these forums. If you have not done so already, go to the My Disney Experience website and create an account. You can manage everything from that site, reservations, dining, FP+..... There are great explanations there, and it's pretty user friendly.
We love the Magic Bands, no more carrying credit cards, passes, etc. When it's time to order them, you can customize for colors. My grandchildren loved placing their bands up to the machines to watch the Mickey Head turn green.
Have fun planning. A trip to the Fort and WDW is magical.

 

[ChrisinNJ]

So IMO if you want to FP at all, you use the MB. If you don't preschedule then you lose out to the UBERplanners who do use it and waiting till day-of-park to try to get Soarin' might be darn near impossible.

Bama Ed

I was wondering about you and your trip. Did you preplan FP+? and how far in advance? Have you been able to get FP+ on the same day? I know you were not happy about the prospect of pre-planning.

We had a great experience with FP+ but we tried it in the testing phase with less people using it, and before they wet up the tiers in EPCOT. The tiers annoy me. With so few good rides in that park to limit my FP selection to only 1 of them is really ridiculous.

 

[bama_ed]

I was wondering about you and your trip. Did you preplan FP+? and how far in advance? Have you been able to get FP+ on the same day? I know you were not happy about the prospect of pre-planning.

We had a great experience with FP+ but we tried it in the testing phase with less people using it, and before they wet up the tiers in EPCOT. The tiers annoy me. With so few good rides in that park to limit my FP selection to only 1 of them is really ridiculous.

Christine,

Well I'm still learning-I did about 45 days in advance for EPCOT and MK. Yesterday I learned that 3 FP+ is all you get for the entire day. I thought it was like the old paper FP where you could "use one, get one" all day long. Sometimes we'd get 4 or 5 a day. But there are FP+ kiosks set up around the parks (usually in the old FP machine locations) where off-property guests and others can schedule their same day FP+. Also, ride queue have been altered for FP+. For example, Pirates of the Carib FP+ goes barely in the door, hangs a hard right through the wall and goes straight to one of the two boat loading chutes. So half the ride capacity is dedicated to FP+ which means they can handle a lot more FP+ per day. Rides like Splash Mtn with a single loading zone are probably set up to allow a very high percentage of FP+ as well.

My takeaway from yesterday was to be there at rope drop and walk on as many rides as possible before, say, 11am or noon. We walked on Buzz, Space Mtn, Pooh, Haunted Mansion, BTRR all before 1130. Only BTRR was long. Sign said 40 min wait but by the time the kids got off it said 80 and it took them 60. We had a FP+ for Splash but it had a very short wait (was cold yesterday).

Crowds also fell off hard about 8 pm so between then and 10pm we did Pirates, Jungle Cruise, Magic Carpets, Astro Orbiter/Peoplemover, and Little Mermaid. So schedule FP+ for between 11am and 8pm on busy days would be my advice. During the busy afternoon section we did less popular, high capacity stuff like Country Bears, Presidents, and FP+ for Peter Pan.

And remember you only get 3 FP+ all day long. Hope this helps.

Bama Ed

 

[sippican]

If I may jump in here.
We were told at one of the manned FP+ stations that it is 3 FP+ per day per park We never tried it out but it's worth looking into if you plan to park hop.
Of course, if could be another bit of misinformation, which seemed to be the norm. We also tried to swap off a FP for a different one on the day of the visit, but the available times were very late. The My Disney app on my phone did not work at all for changing out plans. We were told there were too many people on the app at the same time (well, duh!). The app worked beautifully during the test period last October, and the parks were pretty full then and you were still able to get paper FP in addition to your three.
As Ed says, the FP lines had virtually no wait at all, but we are not impressed with the new system.

 

[ChrisinNJ]

And remember you only get 3 FP+ all day long. Hope this helps.

Bama Ed

It was 3 FP+ in November as well, just without the tiers in EPCOT and HS. We had booked FP+ in advance, but I made many changes on the fly since a lot of the rides I had FP for were less than 10 minutes wait in the standby line. So I changed 2 of my FP to different rides later in the day. I am just wondering if same day FP or changing times is possible with everyone using the system, or if everything pretty much books up solid....

Not that it matters, we won't be going to Disney this year.... maybe next year... too many other trips on our bucket lists.

 

[ChrisinNJ]

If I may jump in here.
We were told at one of the manned FP+ stations that it is 3 FP+ per day per park We never tried it out but it's worth looking into if you plan to park hop.
Of course, if could be another bit of misinformation, which seemed to be the norm. We also tried to swap off a FP for a different one on the day of the visit, but the available times were very late. The My Disney app on my phone did not work at all for changing out plans. We were told there were too many people on the app at the same time (well, duh!). The app worked beautifully during the test period last October, and the parks were pretty full then and you were still able to get paper FP in addition to your three.
As Ed says, the FP lines had virtually no wait at all, but we are not impressed with the new system.

I don't park hop, but if ai purchased park hopper tickets I would be upset to only be able to get FP in one park per day.

The app not working and not being able to change times are 2 things I was worried about after our last trip. We were there while you could still pull regular FP, though we didn't. And not everyone was using FP+ at the time. I was afraid once they switched to FP+ only there would be little to no chance of being able to change FP times or rides from within the park. The app not working doesn't surprise me either. It worked while we were there but it was sooooooo slow. It took forever to pull up current wait times. Their wifi in the parks isn't the best either.

 

[Running_Bell]

As far as park hopper and FP+... when I called to get details I was told that it is 3 FP+ for one park each day... you could not share them among parks or have 3 in each park in one day. This was kind of a bummer for us too since we are planning to park hop.

 

[bama_ed]

Well I'm not a hopper. So, true, my statement would only apply to the one-park-per-day approach.

Bama Ed

 

[Judique]

Well I'm not a hopper. So, true, my statement would only apply to the one-park-per-day approach.

Bama Ed

Actually, your approach would work with hopping.

Go to your rope drop park and ride everything you can as a walk on that will have huge waits later.

Hop to your next park and use fast pass to do the big rides that will always have long waits after rope drop.

 

[amylevan]

As of right now, you only get 3 FP+ per day and they must all be used in 1 park - no hopping.

(There is a WDW survey circulating right now asking about modifications to this rule, but this is how it stands right now.)

 

[iheartpeterpan]

I can verify it is only one park. I tried to add FP+ in a 2nd park last week and could not.

 

[sippican]

I can verify it is only one park. I tried to add FP+ in a 2nd park last week and could not.

Good to know. We were told it was 3 per day, per park by one of the CMs in the FP+ line at Epcot. Then again, we were also told we could get additional FP after our window expired by a different CM at the FP station. They really need some additional training, there's better information here. We also had to wait in line when one of our FP rides closed for issues and we were unable to get another with the app. (which was basically useless).

 

[bama_ed]

Actually, your approach would work with hopping.

Go to your rope drop park and ride everything you can as a walk on that will have huge waits later.

Hop to your next park and use fast pass to do the big rides that will always have long waits after rope drop.

JudyQ, clearly you're smarter than I am about this FP+ stuff. I would have never have thought of that. My hat's off to you.

Bama Ed

 

[super_camper]

Can someone explain the difference between Fast Pass and Magic Bands? And would you recommend them for First-Timers with 3 children (10, 6, 2)?

I am in the VERY beginning stages of planning our FIRST trip to FW (and Disney) and am becoming a little overwhelmed with all the "extras". The boards have been great to learn from.

Thanks in advance!!

FP+ is going to be necessary with 3 kids if you intend to do any attractions after about 11:00am when the lines start to grow. Now magic bands are just plain cool so I'm not sure why you wouldn't use them as they're currently free with your tickets.

When our kids were that age (a few years ago now) we spread the attractions out over the day and put in lots of breaks for snacks etc. and down town at a quiet place . I think FP+ would have been a great benefit for us then.

The biggest issue I see with FP+ is you have to pick a specific day in a specific park to make the reservations. We like to wait until we're confident on the local weather forecast before deciding what parks on what days.

 

[sippican]

Well we knew it was just a matter of time!

http://www.wdwinfo.com/news/General...disney-updates+(Disney+Updates+-+wdwinfo.com)

 

[Running_Bell]

Sadly... it looks like you still can't reserve more than 3 in advance... this plan proposes that you must use all 3 FPs before you can reserve more and it has to be done at the park kiosk. We were going to do our FPs in the late afternoon when it was more crowded... by the time we will be able to use them and reserve more... all extra FP times will be gone I'm sure. Oh well... I am really looking forward to being able to get them for other parks in a day though.... even if at the kiosk.

 

[clmhood]

Thanks so much for all the replies! I have ordered a few books and maybe I can educate myself a little more. I joined "My Disney Experience" as suggested.

Bama Ed--I am your neighbor in North Alabama! ROLL TIDE!!!!