Park Hopping next trip...FP strategy Qs

[BaymaxForever]

Our trip this September will be the first we will have PH since FP+. My brother is getting the military 5day PH deal for his family, so my family is getting PH to match them. I am an uber-planner and am working out our touring plans. I have read the threads on getting FP at the first park and trying to get same-day FP at second park vs making them all at the second park.

Currently, I am leaning towards making our FP at the second and rope-dropping headliners at the first with a mid-day break (or not!).

Just curious to hear how this has worked out for others or if you you prefer trying to get same-day at the second park and what kind of availability you find.
Thanks for any input!

 

[Alesia]

It just depends on which parks we're doing and what I want to accomplish at each one. There's really no one size fits all strategy. I think looking for something like that makes planning so much harder.

 

[mesaboy2]

Either way is doable, what each person does is a matter of preference. Availability and strategies each have dedicated posts on the first page of the FP FAQ.

 

[mi*vida*loca]

This is how we did it on our August trip. It worked out great.

 

[wddub2015]

I like to plan FPs for the morning at the park I know we will start the day at. We then play it by ear and either decide to stay longer at that park or bounce to whatever other park we feel like heading to. The exception to this is days we start at MK. I already know we will spend the full day at that park, so we rope drop and take advantage of quieter morning hours, then have FPs planned for the early afternoon.

It has been a few years since I’ve been to WDW and last time I was there you had to use a kiosk to get 4th and more FPs. At that time we could still find decent availability for many attractions at the kiosks, but not the more in demand attractions like 7DMT. Now that extra FPs can be arranged on your phone it might be possible to get lucky with even those harder to come by FPs by just continually checking/refreshing, similar to how you can come by harder to find ADRs this way.

Something else I have done is plan FPs at one park, rope drop that park, ride everything we want without using those FPs, then cancel the originally booked FPs for those at another park and bounce there.

 

[Davey Jones II]

If you're going to rope drop the first park, I would book FPs for the second park, since you will be getting there later in the day, when FPs are more needed.

If you arrive later at the first park, I would book FPs for that park, then book ones for the second park as soon as you are done with your original FPs. If you started your day pretty late, you might even be able to stay up late enough to ride headliners near closing time (at your second park), when the waits are much shorter than usual.

 

[cassie58]

If you know you will hop to a second park, I would do as you mentioned, rope drop 1st park and do busy rides 1st, then have FP set for 2nd park, since may not get main rides there w/o long lines later in day. If you are not sure and might hop later, then I would do FP for first for 10-1, and then try for 4th FP at second park as soon as done 3rd FP, or as 5th, 6th, etc if you decide later in the day to hop. If doing 2nd method, remember to keep refreshing to try and get FP you want. We had luck when we decided to leave Epcot in Nov. to hop over to HS. Tried for FP at TSM, and got one, but was for the next hour, and didn't know if we'd make it over and through security to get in line before hour was up. Kept refreshing on way to bus stop, and managed to get one for an hour later to give us breathing room!

 

[wdwjeffc37]

We rope drop at one park (usually EMH) and set our FP+ for the afternoon at another park. FP+ for the headliners are pretty hard to come by if not made early so we go to the second park prepared with our FP+. Tiering at DHS and AK make it harder for this strategy. We will sometimes take a break at the resort between parks especially if we plan to do evening EMH. We often will go to EPCOT, Pandora, or MK late for the fireworks making it a three or four park day. We never visit without Park Hoppers. We love the flexibility. Cheers!!!!

 

[chloelovesdisney]

We almost always hop and make our FP+ in the second park.

 

[ChristineOH]

I like to do the FP in the first park. If you take a break, you have plenty of time to get a good 4th FP at the evening park. I don't like it if we run late or the park is unexpectedly busy and I am stuck without the ability to FP anything. That happened to us once at AK. We got stuck waiting at EE for 45 minutes after a domino effect of the safari taking longer than planned.
The exception would be if I was doing morning EMH and hitting the second park in the afternoon, rather than the evening.
But there's no one size fits all answer.

 

[BaymaxForever]

Thank you all for your replies...decisions, decisions!

 

[MainMom]

I like to book them at the first park. While I do make evening plans, they are more fluid and we sometimes change our minds. I wouldn’t like to lose out on the FP’s because we decided to swim or go to a different park instead.

 

[slpeters]

We were about evenly split between doing AM and PM FPs For us it really just came down to what was the must do that day. Both days that we had FOP FPs were AK FP days, one was AM, one was PM. Our last night there was the Monday before Thanksgiving and MK was supposed to be packed but I really wanted to end the trip at MK so we did our FPs there that night (along with a dinner reservation and a dessert party--the park was packed and it didn't effect us at all). As it happened neither of our evenings in DHS would have pre-booked FPs so we did them for our morning there.

Tbh while we did book same-day FPs on some days we didn't really find it necessary. We pre-booked the ones we were concerned about and then worked in other attractions when standby waits would be fine. We only waited more than 15 minutes a handful of times all week (two of which were our FOP FPs) and we didn't really do any of the rope drop craziness. Don't get me wrong we did rope drop every day but we never went to THAT ride at rope drop--because we had the FP later. My suggestion would be book FPs for the tier 1 attractions whenever it works in your schedule, do the tier 2s at rope drop and close and fill in with tier 3s in the middle if you feel like it.

 

[Donalyn]

I went back and forth on this issue of first park or second park, but decided first park. With a combo of RD and FP, I'm hoping that we can have some very productive hours in the am each day. Then we can either go for 4+ fastpasses at the first park or check out park 2 and see what it has left. My thought was that even if park 2 didn't have anything major left, hopefully something will be left. Or if not, we can do some of the non-ride things that we don't make enough time for normally. Either way - it will be a good day.

 

[sharonabe]

Thank you all for your replies...decisions, decisions!

I don't have hopper advice, but just curious how many people are in your brother's family? He can get 6 tickets, so if they aren't using all 6, they could use some of them for you to bring your cost down just a bit.

 

[BaymaxForever]

I don't have hopper advice, but just curious how many people are in your brother's family? He can get 6 tickets, so if they aren't using all 6, they could use some of them for you to bring your cost down just a bit.

There are four in his family, so he will purchase 2 tickets for my kids. Yay! Just my husband and I will have to buy ours regular price. Thanks for checking!

 

[sharonabe]

There are four in his family, so he will purchase 2 tickets for my kids. Yay! Just my husband and I will have to buy ours regular price. Thanks for checking!

NO...use the Salute for the adults and BUY the kid's tickets, cheaper still!

 

[cjwags10]

We do rope drop and then FP for later in the day/evening. This has always worked for us. We like to enjoy pool time in the afternoon. This way we can be flexible on where we go in the morning (or don't go and stay and relax) and always know we have a plan for later. We go on a few rides and then stay for the night time show. Everyone is different, but we usually plan our evenings based on what night show we want to see or a dinner. With this it makes sense for us to plan our FP's around this too.