Park hopping with fastpass+

[bella2117]

Sorry if this has been discussed but we just got a pin for free park hopping and I love the idea and this is my plan: go to rope drop at one park in the morning and stay until around lunch. Go back to the resort and relax for a few and then go to a different park and use our fastpasses there. Sounds like a good idea but it messes with some of our ADRs which I'll figure out. Good? Bad? Thanks for any input.

 

[rwdavis2]

Whenever we go again that's how we'll use FP+ much of the time. At the second park. But that would also be useful if you just want to sleep and then use them at a single park.

 

[Stinky_Pete]

This is exactly what I did in October. Rope drop first thing in the morning, then FP+ in the afternoon or evening.

It was great to see Wishes and the Electrical Parade in the reserved areas without having to line up so far in advance.

 

[redrosesix]

Sorry if this has been discussed but we just got a pin for free park hopping and I love the idea and this is my plan: go to rope drop at one park in the morning and stay until around lunch. Go back to the resort and relax for a few and then go to a different park and use our fastpasses there. Sounds like a good idea but it messes with some of our ADRs which I'll figure out. Good? Bad? Thanks for any input.

We did that, but I have to add -- your best strategy with or without hoppers is to be at the park at RD. You don't have to hop every day, and with some parks being open much later than hours, you can also hop in the evenings (like from DHS to MK at 7 pm). So if you have some ADRs you'd really miss if you had to drop them, I wouldn't stick too strictly to the hopping at lunch time idea.

 

[2Tiggies]

We are a bit strange in that we do hop, I don't like the way FP+ has forced me to plan but the hopping aspect of our touring style remains relatively unaffected.

Contrary to what many are doing, we are actually mixing it up and doing some of our FP from late morning to mid day and then leaving the park or going for lunch, and heading out to a different park for the evening as we usually do.

It would probably help to give you the reasons why this works for us, but for the most part, our evening park was not our ride time. Epcot is a popular evening choice for us because we'd go for dinner and fireworks and just relax and walk around. If MK is our evening park it is sometimes a bit different but I am booking FP for later parks only if we are not doing RD at our morning park or otherwise I have picked the park where we are spending the most time that day and just booking FP for that one.

 

[georgina]

A pin for free hopping? I've never heard of that. Is it something new?

 

[GeorgiaHoo]

RD for morning EMH then head back to the resort then off to another park in the evening with FP+. That said, we are using FP+ in the morning/early afternoon at DHS for Toy Story and Tower of Terror because we are only visiting that park once and are concerned that even if we get to DHS at RD we'll have a long wait for Toy Story.

 

[vicb]

We are a bit strange in that we do hop, I don't like the way FP+ has forced me to plan but the hopping aspect of our touring style remains relatively unaffected.

Contrary to what many are doing, we are actually mixing it up and doing some of our FP from late morning to mid day and then leaving the park or going for lunch, and heading out to a different park for the evening as we usually do.

It would probably help to give you the reasons why this works for us, but for the most part, our evening park was not our ride time. Epcot is a popular evening choice for us because we'd go for dinner and fireworks and just relax and walk around. If MK is our evening park it is sometimes a bit different but I am booking FP for later parks only if we are not doing RD at our morning park or otherwise I have picked the park where we are spending the most time that day and just booking FP for that one.

This is very similar to what our park style has always been. We will be in Epcot 2 of our 5 evenings for dinner and Illuminations, not necessarily to ride rides.
I did do my FP+ in reverse order on arrrival day, we arrive in the afternoon, plan to hit AK primarily just to ride Everest in the last 2 hours that park is open, eat at Yak and Yeti then we are heading to HS as it is the eve. emh park. I used my FP+ to ride TSM and TOT before park closing then we will hit up other rides during emh.
The day this new policy effects us the most is the day we plan to do Epcot in the day then dinner and evening at MK, would like to have used atleast one FP at MK eve. Oh well....