Princess M&G

[jshoemak]

I have a question about meet and greets. Are fast passes for Cinderella and characters from frozen necessary? How does fast pass work with these? Does the standby line enter after all of the people with fast passes?

 

[LSUfan4444]

I have a question about meet and greets. Are fast passes for Cinderella and characters from frozen necessary?

No, FPs are never necessary. Without the, you could face an extended standby wait time though. Without a FP for headlining attractions, it is recommended to arrive at the park :30-:45 minutes to advertised park opening and heading directly to those headliners that you do not have FP reservations for.

How does fast pass work with these? Does the standby line enter after all of the people with fast passes?

It works like all other attractions. There is a separate FP entrance and they will let in a certain % of FP guests for every standby guests thus reducing your wait time. I will say on my last trip in January, my FP wait for the princess was the longest we waited for any attraction we FPed.

 

[Khara]

Fast Pass is supposed to guarantee that your wait will be shorter relative to the standby wait, usually by letting in far more FP people than standby people at the point where the lines merge.

The problem with character meet FPs is that characters have lower capacity than any ride, even with the extra magic in Princess Fairytale Hall, and thus the lines move more slowly. So if there's already a line built up by the time you use your FP, even with a FP the wait will be long.

I used one midafternoon on Rapunzel last trip, and the FP wait was 45 minutes with a 90 minute standby wait. Faster than standby, but still a much longer wait than what we usually associate with FP. And on Valentine's Day, when Rapunzel and Eugene met together for the first time in forever, the line reached 90 minutes FP and almost 3 hours standby. Luckily I had the foresight to do that one at rope drop!

I predict that demand for Anna and Elsa will be similar to the Rapunzel and Eugene situation every day. So I'd still recommend doing them at rope drop, but if you can't, a FP will probably still be better than the current situation in Norway.

 

[jshoemak]

I think we are going to try rope drop for 5/13. Hopefully we won't have to wait long.....

 

[ktlm]

Anna and Elsa have had a minimum of a 2 hour wait (their meet and greet at EPCOT opened at 11:00 when the park opened at 9:00 and people went straight there to get in line), and their wait has at times gone up to 6 hours. While no one is sure how they move to MK will affect the lines yet, you can bet that their stand by wait is stil going to be really long. I'm betting the standby line is not ever going to be below an hour and a half even at "low" times. You could still be looking at a several hour standby wait. The only way you might get lucky is if you happen to make it to the very front of the line as their meet and greet will probably start when the park opens. You can bet that people will be making pre-park opening breakfast reservations to get to that line before the park opens.

As far as Cinderella, after she moved to Fairytale Hall, when we were at WDW at a lower crowd time, her wait was usually between 20 minutes and an hour, BUT Rapunzel's wait was usually between 35 minutes to over an hour. Now, Cinderella and Rapunzel are moving in together with one line. I'm betting that is going to increase the standby lines as they are both popular. I would bet the norm for that line may be an hour or more.

With FP+, you have a shorter wait. There are 2 lines, one for FP+ and one for standby. They take some people from the FP+ line, and then they will take some people from the standby line and so on and so on.