I was amazed at how well this worked!
We were at
Disneyland all week last week, and it was the first time I'd actively searched (using MaxPass) for FastPasses that other people had canceled. I'd read about it here on the forums, but I wasn't sure if it was something that I could regularly expect to find. I
did find them. Practically every time I looked, if I kept at it.
I know others have described how this works, but for those who haven't seen it, here's a typical scenerio:
It was late morning at California Adventure, and we wanted to ride Radiator Springs Racers. The standby line was an hour long, the kids weren't comfortable with single-rider, and FastPasses were currently being distributed for late afternoon. I went through the MaxPass process up to where it told me the return time for RSR. Then I hit the back button, immediately re-selected "California Adventure" for the park, and quickly scrolled down to RSR. And then I did this over and over as fast as I could until all of a sudden the return time was
significantly earlier than it had been a second before (someone had just canceled their FastPasses for that time slot).
I found there were a few keys that made this work a little better. (1) Learn to go quickly: touch-touch-swipe (just the right amount of swipe). (2) Don't get discouraged if you don't get an earlier time in your first 20 tries -- most times I had long since lost track of how many times I tried before I got an earlier return time. (3) Don't get so mesmerized by your touch-touch-swipe that you mindlessly hit the back-button before you realize that you just saw the time you should have taken -- it
probably won't be there when you get back. (4) Grab it
fast when it is there. You don't have time to think about it or to ask you spouse or kids of they want that time. It will be gone!
It worked in many different scenarios: When the return time was an hour away, we'd get it in fifteen minutes. When the return time was a few hours away, we'd shave a couple of those hours off. And even in the evenings, when there wasn't any availability for a particular attraction, we'd eventually get it (I got RSR, Toy Story, and Soarin' all at different times when this was the case).
You have to be
somewhat realistic in your expectations. Later in the evening, when the only FastPasses available in DCA are Goofy's Sky School and Grizzly River Run, you can't expect that someone is going to cancel their RSR. And you're unlikely to find FastPasses that are currently several hours out now available with an immediate return time. But you should be able to improve your return times
significantly.
A few other thoughts:
It was a
relatively uncrowded week last week (although it got busier as the week wore on). That
may have helped as people may not have been as willing to cancel their FastPasses if there weren't other FastPasses (for other attractions) available with relatively near return times.
We were a group of four. Obviously, if your group is larger than the group that just canceled, their cancellation isn't going to show up on your app. So larger groups may not work as well.
I personally don't do the more extreme thrill rides. So I was often waiting while the others rode. That gave me lots of time to do this (although I did it while walking between attractions, too, and obviously while standing in line.
It worked so well, that at one point, my daughter said to me, "Okay, Dad, no more FastPasses until we get down with [a couple of the non-FastPass attractions she was wanting to do]." It actually got to a point where we were getting too many FastPasses too quickly for her (and the canceled FastPasses were a big part of that).
Glad it worked so well for you.
