Schedule fastpasses for morning or afternoon?

[mykidsmom]

We will be there this Thursday for a 4 day vacation. We have our fastpasses currently scheduled for mornings to early afternoon with hopes that we can grab a few more after using all 3. And also keeping in mind that it may rain/flood in the afternoon as it has done recently.

But now rethinking strategy and wondering if we should ride standby in the mornings and schedule fast passes for the afternoon? We are not avoiding all early entry parks. Thank you in advance for any insight

 

[erij11]

We will be there this Thursday for a 4 day vacation. We have our fastpasses currently scheduled for mornings to early afternoon with hopes that we can grab a few more after using all 3. And also keeping in mind that it may rain/flood in the afternoon as it has done recently.

But now rethinking strategy and wondering if we should ride standby in the mornings and schedule fast passes for the afternoon? We are not avoiding all early entry parks. Thank you in advance for any insight

I think it depends on how much you want to get done and your touring style. My group is doing 4 park days in July and I scheduled all 3 of our FP+ for evenings starting around 5pm. I plan to do rope drop (1 EMH morning at MK) with part of my group, take a break at our resort for a few hours and then either hop to another park with our FP+ or return to the same park with our FP+ as we are doing 2 full MK days. My hubby is not a morning person so he plans to sleep in and join us for the evenings. We will see him at the resort for lunch. I'm also afraid of how hot is going to be so I'm planning to try to avoid the hottest part of the day in the parks.

I'm not too worried about getting a 4th FP+. If we do, it will be nice. If not, we will ride what we can standby as we plan to close down the parks! It is our first trip and I'm Ok with not being able to do everything. It will be amazing to just be there. I hope you have a great trip!! I would love to hear what you decided to do and how it all worked when you get back!!!

 

[Happyjen27]

On days we planned to be there early, we did Rope Drop and rode standby in the morning, then started using FP+ around 11AM. That got us out of the parks around 2 PM for naps, and, I think that might coincide with when the summer rains come.

 

[LSUfan4444]

ride standby in the mornings and schedule fast passes for the afternoon?

For the most part, that is our plan.

We try to schedule two back to back then the third some other time. For example...splash and thuinder from 11-12 and 12-1 or maybe pirates and haunted mansion from 1-2 and 2-3 that way we can hit one at the end of the window and the other at the start and it reduces dead time between FP+.

So, if we're not hopping we may do something like:
arrive for RD, fp+ 11-12 and 12-1, lunch from 12:30-1:30 then another FP+ from 1:30 - 2:30

if we are hopping it might look like:
arrive for rope drop then after lunch hop to another park where we have a fp+ from 4-5, 5-6 and 8-9 waiting for us.

 

[nkereina]

As others have said, it depends on how you want to do things. If you are rope drop people and stay at the park all day going from ride to the next, you'll want FP+ in the morning so you can take advantge of the 4th, 5th, etc from the kiosk. If you move at a slower pace and/or take a mid-day break, you may want to do stand-by in the mornings and schedule FP+ for the evenings. Time of year also makes a difference - stand by for most rides can be relatively short during slow times of year, but not so much during other times.

 

[JanaDee]

Ours are scheduled in the morning, with plans to be out of the park by noon and spending the afternoon at the resort.

We'll make our 4th FP before we leave for the afternoon, if that is the park we'll be coming back to for the evening.

 

[kay1864]

I go with whatever RideMax generates on my touring plan. Since we wanted to ride BTM twice one morning, it gave me a 930 standby (10 min) and a 1015 FP. Worked out great, since standby was 30 min by 1015.

Then again, it depends on what you're riding, and if you're taking breaks. We always take an afternoon break at MK when the crowds are high, so RideMax scheduled around that. If you're doing MK in one day (with no afternoon break), then RM will likely tell you afternoon FPs.

Either way, IMHO money well-spent for a multi-day trip. $4.25 a day is cheap compared to having to spend an extra hour or two standing in line in this week's heat and humidity.