Planning for FP+ (I don't have the foggiest idea)

[Anal Annie]

So a couple of days ago I got my email saying that I could plan for our FP+ attractions for our Jan. trip and I'm feeling panic over all this advanced planning. I don't know what to do. I don't like this. We like to park hop and play it by ear. This is worse than trying to plan ADR's (which I hate doing too).

Are there recommended strategies yet? Should I be lurking over on the theme park board? Uggg. I was thinking that we probably need to guess which park we'll do first and try to tour those normally then use the FP+ for our best guess 2nd park of the day? I really don't like this 1 park / day restriction. I don't know where to start. Did I read that you can get a FP+ for Wishes? We've seen it so many times but we usually just stop wherever we are to watch it and have never planned ahead for it. If we do FP+ can we just show up right before it starts?? IS IT WORTH wasting a FP on it when you only get 3 a day now?

I am feeling overwhelmed - like a Disney newbie all over again.


ETA I just logged into MDE account and I don't see Wishes listed. Does that mean it's already booked up and I'm too late already or that I was mistaken about being able to reserve that?

 

[DisneyRegulars]

Deep breaths! I personally think right now the best use of FP+, especially if you are rope drop people, is to schedule them for the afternoon and evening hours. Yes, you will have to 'guess' which park you might want to hop to. It's tough. It adds an element of scheduling that you may not like. But be open to it. We found that a lot of stress was lifted off us, stress we didn't even know we had, when we knew we had prearranged time slots for certain headliner attractions.

Parades and fireworks like Wishes and Illuminations don't show up everyday or all the time. You have to keep checking back for them. You have not missed your opportunity, it just probably hasn't been released yet. I personally would not waste a FP+ on Wishes, but we did get one for Fantasmic so we wouldn't have to wait in line and could just walk up before the show.

You may or may not want to investigate the theme parks attractions and strategy board. It can get pretty depressing. If you've been to Disney many times, you probably know which attractions are best to get FP+ for, they will be the same ones you used to pull regular fast passes for.

Anyways, I think if you embrace it and give it a try you may find you actually like it. We did. I also have read many stories of people switching their fast passes the day before so you are not completely locked in, but you may have trouble getting super popular attractions like Toy Story Mania if you try to switch the day before or day of.

Also, that's quite the user name you have there.

 

[Anal Annie]

Deep breaths! I personally think right now the best use of FP+, especially if you are rope drop people, is to schedule them for the afternoon and evening hours. Yes, you will have to 'guess' which park you might want to hop to. It's tough. It adds an element of scheduling that you may not like. But be open to it. We found that a lot of stress was lifted off us, stress we didn't even know we had, when we knew we had prearranged time slots for certain headliner attractions.

Parades and fireworks like Wishes and Illuminations don't show up everyday or all the time. You have to keep checking back for them. You have not missed your opportunity, it just probably hasn't been released yet. I personally would not waste a FP+ on Wishes, but we did get one for Fantasmic so we wouldn't have to wait in line and could just walk up before the show.

You may or may not want to investigate the theme parks attractions and strategy board. It can get pretty depressing. If you've been to Disney many times, you probably know which attractions are best to get FP+ for, they will be the same ones you used to pull regular fast passes for.

Anyways, I think if you embrace it and give it a try you may find you actually like it. We did. I also have read many stories of people switching their fast passes the day before so you are not completely locked in, but you may have trouble getting super popular attractions like Toy Story Mania if you try to switch the day before or day of.

Also, that's quite the user name you have there.

Ummm. Yeah. I'm just a tad bit Anal Retentive but THIS is just TOO MUCH thinking.

Anyway, Thanks. Yet another annoyance from Disney. I just want to schedule these darned things and I don't want to keep checking back for the silly Wishes thing. I just want to be done with it. Leave it to Disney to botch that one up too. My DH had thought the Wishes thing might be fun for a change. We will be there over MLK weekend so I expect that it might be a little busy. Splash will be down and after the other 2 mountains we're sort of open for the 3rd FP. While MLK isn't as busy as SOME times of the year it IS a long weekend and the crowd prediction calendar we usually use shows crowd levels might be at 8's for Sat & Sun. Sunday night is pm EMH's at MK so I figured we'd do MK that night and I thought we could spare time to watch Wishes from a pre-planned spot for a change. I was also able to snag an ADR at Be Our Guest for Monday night (we go home on Tues) and the ressie is at 8:30 & Wishes is now sched. for 10 so I thought we could hit a FP for Wishes for one night or the other.

AK is early open on Monday and we usually do AK on early openings and leave by lunch. Of course we also usually utilize FP's there pretty well too so I guess we'll have to wait & see if the legacy ones are still in use.

EP is DS's least fav. park so I'm guessing we'll hit it early on Sat. (hit Soarin' first then single rider TT if the standby queue is long) then we'll hop over to HS at some point (although HS is early open that day so we'll def. want FP+ there in the afternoon or we'll just be screwed). I just gotta figure out what TIME we may want to do that switch. We dislike pretty much all of the food at HS so we don't like to be there at mealtimes. Meanwhile we have a dinner ressie at Boma for 8:30 so it's really just lunch that I need to work-around. It's likely my strategy will be to stay at EP until lunchtime then hop.

But now what if it's warm enough to hit the pool for an afternoon? When will we ever possibly fit THAT in?!

 

[rillsung]

Yeah I just did 19 days (or actually not because it won't let me do the last 3 days.) The way I'm looking at it as just an 'extra'. We know what our ADRs are so we have a pretty good idea of where we're going to be. If we're there to use the FP+ then great! If not, no big deal. We can still get regular FPs too. We actually miss out on a lot of FPs because they're gone before we are out of bed! We are rarely able to do Toy Story Mania or the Safari ride so this will allow us to do just that. My only thoughts on the system is that its annnnnooooyyyingly slow! Oh and then I kept getting website errors... And of course "these people in your party already have the maximum number of Passes". I was told that the limit was 3 per day so I don't get why I can't book the rest of them. Guess I'll have to call!

 

[Breyean]

Yeah I just did 19 days (or actually not because it won't let me do the last 3 days.) The way I'm looking at it as just an 'extra'. We know what our ADRs are so we have a pretty good idea of where we're going to be. If we're there to use the FP+ then great! If not, no big deal. We can still get regular FPs too. We actually miss out on a lot of FPs because they're gone before we are out of bed! We are rarely able to do Toy Story Mania or the Safari ride so this will allow us to do just that. My only thoughts on the system is that its annnnnooooyyyingly slow! Oh and then I kept getting website errors... And of course "these people in your party already have the maximum number of Passes". I was told that the limit was 3 per day so I don't get why I can't book the rest of them. Guess I'll have to call!

Aren't they already removing the old FP machines from the parks?

 

[Anal Annie]

Aren't they already removing the old FP machines from the parks?

I haven't heard that YET....I think they're still in a testing phase and they're not removing the old FP machines until after the testing is done (at least that was my understanding). I think the way it sounds like things are still going I would hate to be there over Christmas if that is the case.

 

[disfanforlife]

Just back from a week. If you are an early morning person, I would say to use your FP for afternoon. We got to the parks early and walked on most rides with little or no wait the first hour or two. I had scheduled some FP for morning and never used them. We did use others like - safari, mt. Everest, and Kali rivers at Ak. I would use your best guess which park you think you might be in. If you don't use them it's not a big deal. Not sure about wishes because we stayed at BLT and watched from there. Let me know how MLK weekend is because we are planning a big family trip at that time in 2015. Never been in January and hope its not too cold. We love going in November but our DD's are in college and can't go then anymore. There are still some regular FP machines. One place there wasn't one was Peter Pan and also the TSM had them but they were covered up and not in use. Space mountain, BTMR, SM, and many others still had them and we used many of them with our rooms cards.

 

[Anal Annie]

What a far from perfect system. It took me like close to 90 min. and 2 phone calls to Disney IT. First, I couldn't find my DH to customize his MB and then I got a msg. that said my DS had too many FP+'s (when he DIDN'T because I was doing all of us at once / together). The system was really slow and froze up on me 2x. And then when I went to double check everything at the end it kept showing Sundays FP+ selections on Monday. Then I went to Saturday and it also showed Sunday. So I went back to Monday and then back to Saturday and it was OK then I went back to Monday and then back to Sunday. It just didn't seem to be able to keep up with changes. It also took me a really long time to edit my TIMES. That was reallllly cumbersome and I was not happy with the options (times) it chose FOR me. I thought it would have been a lot more efficient to show me ALL the times for the day rather than blocking out times that were already in use. For EX it was trying to get us to arrive at the park a lot earlier than what I wanted. So I started editing by trying to move my latest res. back and then work my way to the first one. But the way the system worked I had to move everything 2x because it wasn't showing times that overlapped. Very frustrating. It also only gave me options to choose ON the hour when I know darned well that the passes run in 5 min. increments. I would have LIKED to have been able to select a couple of times at say 5:15 to 6:15 rather than only being able to select 5-6:00 etc.

I had heard that you could only pick Soarin' or TT at EP but that was a non-issue for me since I decided we'll just go at rope drop for EP and leave by lunch. I was NOT aware that the same scenario was in effect at HS where you could only choose TOT or RNP but not both. So I chose TOT since we can single rider RNP if we have to. I was also caught off guard that we could only pick the attraction ONE time. Since Splash is down for refurb. in Jan. my DS wanted to do BTM 2x one day and Space 2x on another day but we could only pick them 1x each. That was another annoyance that threw me for a loop in my planning.

On one of my calls to IT they said that the testing phase is currently still running thru January and the old legacy FP's should still be there in place until at least the testing phase is finished. It does not sound like they are ready to pull them out altogether just yet (even tho from what I've read they are in limited supply now due to the FP+ system).

 

[wdrl]

We have been here at WDW since November 7th and have had no real issues with the new FP+ system. Now that I've used it, I have to say that I like it. There are quirks with the system, but they don't pose any real problems that can't be overcome.

Here are some random thoughts about FP+:

The legacy FP kiosks are still in place. There are rumors that the legacy FPs will be removed sometime early next year, but they are just that, rumors.

Its easy to change FP+ experiences and/or times. If you have a smartphone with the free MDE experience, you can make changes as late as before a scheduled FP+ comes due. So at 10:58 AM you can cancel your 11:00 AM FP+ experience to something else.

Its also easy to change Parks the day before, or to wait until the last minute to select the Park you want to visit. Tomorrow is our last full day at WDW and left the day open because we couldn't decide which Park to visit. At about 9:00 AM this morning we decided we'd visit MK with a friend. We copied her FP+ selections to our MDE so we can spend some time together at MK. Around 11:00 AM, we decided to change two of the experiences and got different times for them.

Bottom line: You aren't tied to the selections you make at 60 days out. You'll have plenty of chances to make some changes between now and your visit.

Currently, Disney has a lot of CMs in the Parks dedicated to help guests with the FP+ system. In the next few days, DVCNews.com with have an article about the FP+ kiosks. We don't have a smartphone, so its nice for us that we can use the CM's iPads and kiosk terminals to manage our FP+.

 

[Anal Annie]

We have been here at WDW since November 7th and have had no real issues with the new FP+ system. Now that I've used it, I have to say that I like it. There are quirks with the system, but they don't pose any real problems that can't be overcome.

Here are some random thoughts about FP+:

The legacy FP kiosks are still in place. There are rumors that the legacy FPs will be removed sometime early next year, but they are just that, rumors.

Its easy to change FP+ experiences and/or times. If you have a smartphone with the free MDE experience, you can make changes as late as before a scheduled FP+ comes due. So at 10:58 AM you can cancel your 11:00 AM FP+ experience to something else.

Its also easy to change Parks the day before, or to wait until the last minute to select the Park you want to visit. Tomorrow is our last full day at WDW and left the day open because we couldn't decide which Park to visit. At about 9:00 AM this morning we decided we'd visit MK with a friend. We copied her FP+ selections to our MDE so we can spend some time together at MK. Around 11:00 AM, we decided to change two of the experiences and got different times for them.

Bottom line: You aren't tied to the selections you make at 60 days out. You'll have plenty of chances to make some changes between now and your visit.

Currently, Disney has a lot of CMs in the Parks dedicated to help guests with the FP+ system. In the next few days, DVCNews.com with have an article about the FP+ kiosks. We don't have a smartphone, so its nice for us that we can use the CM's iPads and kiosk terminals to manage our FP+.

I was mainly concerned with getting it done early because I've read that the legacy FP's are running out very early in the day now and I was concerned with getting "in" for rides like TSM. It is only a long-weekend trip for us over MLK so we won't have a whole lot of time for tooooo much park hopping and some parks we may only have time to visit for a 1/2 day. When we are there for a normal week-long trip it won't be as critical because I know we will have more visits to each park in a day or two and we'll have more time to spend in stand-by queues.

I was really irritated with how long it took me to get our FP+ times rearranged. It was annoying that I couldn't just pick what time I really wanted right off the bat and I had to start with one of their "suggested options" first. If I could've just said I want X, Y and Z and this time, this time and this time I would've been done in 5 minutes. Instead I was online for like 90 minutes trying to get it all sorted out because of the way the system worked and how slow it ran. I won't want to spend that kind of time making changes AGAIN...

 

[mouse]

So you have to wait until 60 days out to plan your fast passes? DH & I will be in WDW in a couple of weeks. I can't believe how long it took me to set everything up on MDE and I think of myself as fairly tech savvy. There will be nine of us traveling in April. I am already breaking out into a sweat just thinking about setting up fast passes for that trip as the kids range from toddler to teenagers & won't be interested in the same attractions.

 

[wdrl]

I was really irritated with how long it took me to get our FP+ times rearranged. It was annoying that I couldn't just pick what time I really wanted right off the bat and I had to start with one of their "suggested options" first. If I could've just said I want X, Y and Z and this time, this time and this time I would've been done in 5 minutes. Instead I was online for like 90 minutes trying to get it all sorted out because of the way the system worked and how slow it ran. I won't want to spend that kind of time making changes AGAIN...

I agree that it can be a tedious process to modify FP+ experiences and or times. However, we've done enough changes that we've figured out some shortcuts. First, we pick three FP+ experiences and choose the 'suggested option' that is best for our needs. Then, we go in and modify the time for our top priority FP+ experience (such as TSM at DHS). More often than not we find that the system will offer us a better time than what it originally offered. If necessary, we then modify the times for our second and third FP+ selections. We can usually modify a day's worth of FP+ selections in well less than 10 minutes -- and that is when we are using Disney's in-room wi-fi.

Another trick we've learned is not to sweat it if the system shows weird FP+ selections for an individual after modifying a FP+ time or experience. For example, the system might show me with four FP+, or the same experience at three different times. Usually, we just exit MDE and when we reenter it everything appears like it should.

By the way, here is that article on DVCNews.com about the FP+ kiosks in the Parks: http://dvcnews.com/index.php/other-resources/2442-fastpass-kiosks-at-the-parks.

 

[disfanforlife]

So you have to wait until 60 days out to plan your fast passes? DH & I will be in WDW in a couple of weeks. I can't believe how long it took me to set everything up on MDE and I think of myself as fairly tech savvy. There will be nine of us traveling in April. I am already breaking out into a sweat just thinking about setting up fast passes for that trip as the kids range from toddler to teenagers & won't be interested in the same attractions.

I planned everything for our trip. We had a group of 8. But not a huge difference image for the kids. We had friends with us who had never been to Disney before and were happy that I did all the planning and reservations for them!

 

[SnowWhite2]

I was on the phone with Disney today asking questions on the bands and FP+. The CM said that we can pull regular FP along with the FP+.

As with all conversations with CMs, you mileage may vary...

 

[wdrl]

I was on the phone with Disney today asking questions on the bands and FP+. The CM said that we can pull regular FP along with the FP+.

As with all conversations with CMs, you mileage may vary...

Currently, that is true. The legacy FastPass kiosks are still in place. But those kiosks will eventually be removed. Its anybody's guess when Disney will pull the plug on them, but my guess is that they will be gone before Summer 2014.

 

[Chuck S]

I just returned. I did do a lot more planning because of FP+. It was a bit of a learning curve. Like the OP, I rarely planned anything, outside of about 3 ADRs during an 8 night stay. Although I never really park hopped. I just stayed in one park all day, usually.

I learned:

1) There is really no reason to make FP+ assignments for morning rides, even though I was often at the parks for, or shortly after, rope drop. Most rides during my stay were basically walk-ons until about 11:30. The exception would be traveling during prime travel and holiday periods.

2) If a ride shuts down, your FP+ will not be honored later for that ride. You will be given a paper "any ride" fast pass. I was loaded in BTMRR, safety bar down waiting for dispatch when the ride halted and was evacuated. I did use the "any ride" FP for BTMRR later in the day.

3) With the old FP system, I was always at the ride a few minutes before FP time. I realized with FP+ that I really did have a full hour for entry, and since the lines were short I rode other rides during that hour and arrived for my FP+ time shortly before expiration.

4) I will not plan FP+ for every day of my trip in the future. There really was no need to do so. On this trip, I felt like I needed to plan every day with FP+ and dining reservations. I will not do so again, and will play it ear on many days during the trip. Much more relaxing. I usually am at WDW for 8 or 9 nights per trip. In the future, some days my "park of the day" will be determined by whichever bus arrives at my bus stop first.

5) Do, however, plan to use FP+ at least once during your stay for every park to be sure of getting the E ticket attractions.

 

[DevonsDisneyMom]

I just returned. I did do a lot more planning because of FP+. It was a bit of a learning curve. Like the OP, I rarely planned anything, outside of about 3 ADRs during an 8 night stay. Although I never really park hopped. I just stayed in one park all day, usually.

I learned:

1) There is really no reason to make FP+ assignments for morning rides, even though I was often at the parks for, or shortly after, rope drop. Most rides during my stay were basically walk-ons until about 11:30. The exception would be traveling during prime travel and holiday periods.

2) If a ride shuts down, your FP+ will not be honored later for that ride. You will be given a paper "any ride" fast pass. I was loaded in BTMRR, safety bar down waiting for dispatch when the ride halted and was evacuated. I did use the "any ride" FP for BTMRR later in the day.

3) With the old FP system, I was always at the ride a few minutes before FP time. I realized with FP+ that I really did have a full hour for entry, and since the lines were short I rode other rides during that hour and arrived for my FP+ time shortly before expiration.

4) I will not plan FP+ for every day of my trip in the future. There really was no need to do so. On this trip, I felt like I needed to plan every day with FP+ and dining reservations. I will not do so again, and will play it ear on many days during the trip. Much more relaxing. I usually am at WDW for 8 or 9 nights per trip. In the future, some days my "park of the day" will be determined by whichever bus arrives at my bus stop first.

5) Do, however, plan to use FP+ at least once during your stay for every park to be sure of getting the E ticket attractions.

Great info! Thank you for sharing! We just decided on a whim to head down to Disney for a long weekend (12/20-12/24) before the holidays! I don't know why but we have a two week trip planned in May and I have been having serious anxiety over this whole FP+ thing so I'm using this dec trip as my trial! Lol! So one of my biggest concerns is that I ordered my tickets but haven't received them yet to link them to MDE so I can't make any FP+ selections till they arrive. My fear is with my arrival so close, are there still going to be FP+ times available for the E ticket attractions? Going during such a busy time of year I want to make sure we hit the big name rides at all the parks and my thoughts were to use the FP+ for those attractions.

Any strategies you think I should go with? Should I book the FP+ for the afternoons and try to use the legacy FP in the morning? Being such a short trip, I want to make the most of the time we are there.

 

[wdrl]

2) If a ride shuts down, your FP+ will not be honored later for that ride. You will be given a paper "any ride" fast pass. I was loaded in BTMRR, safety bar down waiting for dispatch when the ride halted and was evacuated. I did use the "any ride" FP for BTMRR later in the day.

We, too, just returned from WDW and our first experience with FastPass+. We had a slightly different experience when we had FP+ for attractions that were down. It happened to us twice, once at Hollywood Studios and once at the Magic Kingdom. Both times Disney sent an email alerting us that our FP+ attraction was down. The emails told us we could use our FP+ at one of eight different attractions, one of which was the original attraction. Also, we were given the flexibility of using the FP+ any time until Park closing; we were not limited to using the FP+ only during the original one-hour time slot.

There was a slight twist to our specific situation relating to the emails. Since we don't have smartphones or access to our email while in the Parks, I didn't read the emails until we returned to our villa several hours after the fact. I became aware of the alternative FP+ when a Cast Member at the downed attraction directed me to another CM who is dedicated to helping guests manage their FP+. The FP+ CM scanned my MagicBand and explained my options, essentially telling me the same that I would read later in the email.

BTW: the CMs that are dedicated to helping guests manage their FP+ are easy to spot. There is an article on DVCNews with photos about these FP+ CMs.

 

[Anal Annie]

So today, 6 days after my "opening day" for ordering our magic bands and FP+ selection we received a cute package from Disney. It contained a Mickey themed USB that lights up when you plug it into the computer (I guess DVD's are a thing of the past). The contents were designed to get us excited over our trip and for using the new MDE system and it contained a short video and a booklet about setting up all of our stuff on NOVEMBER 18. Couldn't they have just emailed this video? Did they really need to spend all of this money on marketing for elaborate packaging and a customized USB? While it was definitely CUTE I'd much rather they use the money spent on this to cut the price on tickets or food than these types of mailings. It contained absolutely NOTHING that I needed and nothing that I hadn't already done yet. If they want to send this type of marketing crap out why don't they time it to arrive BEFORE your 60-day window opens? Then it would've meant something. A week late is just stooopid and a waste of money Disney.

 

[Chuck S]

So today, 6 days after my "opening day" for ordering our magic bands and FP+ selection we received a cute package from Disney. It contained a Mickey themed USB that lights up when you plug it into the computer (I guess DVD's are a thing of the past). The contents were designed to get us excited over our trip and for using the new MDE system and it contained a short video and a booklet about setting up all of our stuff on NOVEMBER 18. Couldn't they have just emailed this video? Did they really need to spend all of this money on marketing for elaborate packaging and a customized USB? While it was definitely CUTE I'd much rather they use the money spent on this to cut the price on tickets or food than these types of mailings. It contained absolutely NOTHING that I needed and nothing that I hadn't already done yet. If they want to send this type of marketing crap out why don't they time it to arrive BEFORE your 60-day window opens? Then it would've meant something. A week late is just stooopid and a waste of money Disney.

I'm jealous, I didn't get one.

In reality, custom thumb drives cost very little, as do the Magic Bands themselves. Even shipping is a small expense compared to the income received from cash rooms. Ticket prices aren't going to drop, tourism is up. And as long as DVC dues aren't dinged for these charges I see no problem.

There are a lot of people, especially cash guests, that like all the "warm fuzzies" stuff before their trip.