Tell me about YOUR FP+ strategy (especially if it's worked)

[ZephyrHawk]

I understand that there are differing opinions on how to maximize FP+ usage, and I'm wondering what the best one would be for my upcoming trip. We're not really rope-drop people (though we might do that by default once or twice this trip because of ADRs). No park hopping planned this time. Currently, I think I'm favoring the "Do all your FP+ in a block right away when you plan to arrive at the park so that you can get a lot more FP+ for other attractions throughout the day" strategy. But now I'm reconsidering.

What have you done and did it work? What are you planning, and why?

 

[ELSA711]

That strategy worked for us last trip. We booked all of them 9-10, 10-11, 11-12 - before lunch we'd grab our 4th FP
It really only worked well for us in MK and EP to be honest.

We are more the 10-7/8pm crowd with a late 9/10pm stay twice in our trip.

AK was different, we did FP+ 9-10, 10-11 and then 2-3 for Kali to cool down. After Kali we got a Dinosaur FP no problem.

 

[JimmyV]

As you state, there are many different approaches. Here are some of the things that we do:

(This applies mostly to MK and AK):We don't use them in a block immediately at park opening, but wait a little bit. While it seems intuitive that one would want to use them up early in order to get more FPs, the truth is, you are either visiting on a day when more FPs will be available, or you aren't. If you are there on a crowded day and more FPs won't be available, burning them early in the day when standby lines were short was a poor use of FPs. And if you are there on a less crowded day when more FPs will be available, they will be there for you even if you use your FPs a bit later than park opening. So we generally book our earliest FP for a time between 10:00 and 10:30 and try to use them up by 12:00-12:30.

Nothing that has been stated above applies to Epcot. You aren't likely to get an extra "meaningful" FP at Epcot, so there is no use in trying to burn through your first three. Just pick times that work best for you. And arrive at RD so that you can ride the major attraction that you could not get a FP for before the line builds too much.

The same is true for DHS. It is hard to get a meaningful FP at DHS as your fourth FP unless you are there on a very light day (at which point FPs aren't all that important). Get to the park at Rope Drop to do the headliners that you cannot get FP for, and use your FPs whenever it makes sense for you.

 

[xlsm]

For us, FPs are most important at MK and DHS.

We do rope drop, though, and we knock out a lot of rides in the first hour or two that the park is open. In all parks, we schedule our first FP to be around the 10:30 mark, usually making the time frame 9:30 - 10:30, so we can have another right after.
We start on one side of the park and work our way around to the other side, so that helps us know how to time things - we know in general where we'll be based on what we're doing. Last August was our first FP+ trip, and it worked perfectly for us. There was no "killing time" while waiting for a FP, our FP rides were just stops along the way where we'd naturally end up. We'd grab a 4th FP, time determined by whether or not we were staying in the park or taking a midday break.

As for Epcot, DHS and AK, we ended up either changing or not using FPs at all (except DHS on arrival day, because we didn't get to the park until around 2.) except for Toy Story on our second DHS day. Star Tours was walk on, so that one expired, and we changed ToT to Indy. At AK we didn't need our FPs for Everest or Dinosaur, so they just expired.
Depending on the day, you could do AK without FP at all, except for Kali in the afternoon, which sees waits of around an hour in the summer. And that ride is NOT worth an hour in line. (It's not worth the FP line either, LOL, but our kids like it. I think it's too short!)
Mentioning DHS again, FPs really need to be made if you're doing afternoon touring. The limited amount of headliners makes the lines long, BUT Tower of Terror's line isn't too bad of a wait because it's themed so well, and RnR has the single rider line, so there are ways to get things done!

Focusing on MK, our best and most successful strategy is to rope drop, start in Tomorrowland and finish with most of New/Old Fantasyland by lunch time. Use FPs for 7 Dwarfs, Peter Pan OR big thunder, and splash mountain.

Or, start in Frontier/Adventureland, complete those and Liberty Square by lunchtime, and FP 7 Dwarfs, Space Mtn, maybe Peter Pan, adjusted to your own family's preferences of course.

Pick up your extra FPs for pretty much any other ride in the park for any time during the day. We had no trouble picking up 4th, 5th, even 6th FPs for our family of 4 on a very hot, very busy week in August last summer.

We will employ pretty much the same strategy this summer.

I hope you have an amazing trip, and don't let FP+ get you stressed. It's really not as confining as some people seem to think. If you know how you like to tour the parks, it's pretty easy to make them work for you

Good luck!

 

[Momof3WDW]

We have only done FP+ once so far. However I agree that you should plan on using them a little later in the morning and afternoon when the lines start to get longer. We travel with young children. So I also suggest making FP+ choices in one area of the park. Unless you have the option of running back and forth around the park. With kids all under 5 that was the mistake we made. And we spent a lot of time listening to children complain about walking by rides they wanted to do.
This year we are centering our choices around the kids and if we (adults) can get on the bigger rides great. If not, then next time.

 

[TJA]

We have loved FP+ from the start -- and still do!! It works for us because we do not like to rush to parks in the mornings. The ability to now make FP ahead of time versus rushing to the parks to rush to a FP machine is priceless to us!

We make our FP's right in a row, beginning with the time frame of 9:30-10:30ish, figuring on getting to the parks each day towards the tail end of our first FP. That way, we can get directly onto our 2nd FP right after the 1st one. I try to make our 2nd FP one that might take a bit longer so that we don't have a lot of waiting time until our 3rd FP. Then immediately after our 3rd FP, we make a 4th and usually have lunch while waiting for the 4th or else find a no-wait ride to go on.

 

[Magpie]

For us, it really depends on which parks we're going to. We're rope droppers who like to go back to our resort for a nap after lunch, and then head out to a different park in the evening.

So, if one of those two parks is Epcot, then that's where we'll make our FP+ choices, regardless of whether it's morning or evening. That's because my husband is a HUGE Soarin' fan, and can't miss any chance to ride it. Next, if neither of the two parks is Epcot, but one is Hollywood Studios, then we'll probably use our FP+ there, so I get my ride on TSM. That's not a guarantee, though - if I got to ride TSM twice the previous day, I might decide to use my FPs at the Magic Kingdom instead. I try to spread things around.

I never use FP at Animal Kingdom, preferring instead to either visit very early or just before close and take advantage of the rides then. That will likely change when Avatarland opens, or if they offer FPs for the nighttime shows.

And then, of course, there's the matter of my dining reservations. Sometimes you just can't fit FPs neatly around them, so that can also affect my decision.

So, essentially... it depends. There's many, many different factors that play into whether we use up our FPs in the morning, or save them for the late afternoon. In general, over an 8 day trip, it works out to about half one way and half the other way. The most important thing, for us, is that we get to ride our favourite rides. We don't really care if we maximize our FP use, or even if we actually use all the ones we've booked (in Epcot, we generally don't, as the only one we care about is Soarin').

 

[jtowntoflorida]

We have had three trips with FP+ fully rolled out. I won't discuss the strategy for our first trip with FP+, as during that trip the legacy system was still operating.

We used the "try to use all FP+ in the morning in order to be able to book a 4th" strategy on our first FP+ only trip in August. It worked well then, but crowds were also as low as I've ever seen them, and the 4th FP+s we pulled were for Star Tours. We were able to pull a 4th FP+ for POTC that trip, for late at night (9;55-10:55 according to MDE), but I'm not sure if I tried for an earlier slot or not. After that trip, I was relatively satisfied with FP+, but we also didn't really need it much because crowds were so low.

After that trip, though, I began to loathe FP+. Instead of derailing this thread with commentary for why I dislike it, I'll just give facts. Luckily, MDE's "Show Past Items" feature gives me the data I'd like to share. I'm just offering facts for what we experienced...you make the call whether this would be satisfactory for you. I will say that we are not local, are a party of 4, and we have young kids who like to re-ride their favorite rides and generally avoid anything that falls into the thrill ride category. BTMRR and Splash are favorites; Space, EE, and RNRC are avoided. We generally arrive at RD unless we're having a sleep in day, which we do the mornings after parties and late nights.
Looking in MDE, we had the following experience:
December 14th: At MK; last FP+ window was 1:40-2:40. Was able to snag a POTC FP+ for the group by taking two overlapping times (4:40-5:40 and 5:10-6:10).
December 15th: At DHS (this was a late arrival day due to going to MVMCP the night before); last FP+ window was 2:20-2:35; was able to get a 4th FP+ for Star Tours for 5:50-6:50.
December 16th: At AK; last FP+ window was 2:05-3:05. No 4th FP+ available.
December 17th: At DHS; last FP+ window was 11:35-12:35. No 4th FP+s available for Star Tours, which made us sad pandas. So we hopped to MK and managed to pull overlapping FP+ times for the four of us to meet Mickey with windows of 2:30-3:30 and 3:30-4:30.
December 18th: At Epcot; last FP+ window was 11:15-12:15. No FP+s available for anything we wanted for the rest of the day at that time.
December 19th: At MK; last FP+ window was 11:50-12:50; 4th FP+ pulled was for Aladdin at 1:10-2:10, but when we got there, SB wait was only 10 minutes. Tried to change it to something else, but there was nothing available that we wanted to ride for the rest of the day.
December 20th: Departure day; so we were only able to be in the park until noon. POTC was down during our FP+ window and we didn't want to ride any of the replacement experiences, so we left the park after using only two of our FP+s.

On our trip last month, we were only at Disney for 2 1/2 park days, and were going primarily for SWW, so we didn't try for a 4th any of our days.

What I found frustrating about trying to use the FP+s early is that with the exception of the super popular rides (Peter Pan, 7DMT, and TSM), there is really no reason to use a FP+ before 11:00. So it almost feels like you're wasting a FP+ just to try for a 4th...and even by noon or 1:00, the rides that still have FP+ availability are either really far out in the future or are things with short SB rides later in the day. So for us, that strategy didn't really work well because then we had no rides that we really enjoyed doing in the afternoons. I think I'm going to change strategy on our next trip and see if it works better, and other than the super headliners, book most of my FP+s for mid-to-late afternoon or early evening and not even bother with the 4th. For all the stress it caused, the 4th just doesn't seem worth it to me.

 

[Mikie]

My goal in the first place is to use FP+ when it's really saving me a long wait, so I feel it had value to me vs using it when the line was a wait would have been tolerable to me anyway. I haven't been a hopper, so I'm not needing to save FPs for an evening park. I don't necessarily care about trying for extra FP, although others who do that frequently and well may use a lot more than me and may do more total rides with less total waiting. . .

I also want to reduce the "I have an appointment" feeling on vacation. Therefore, I liked using my FPs scheduled around a lunch or dinner (whether ADR or just a time when I know we'd grab QS). I'd schedule something like 11-12, 12-1, lunch, then 1:30 or :45 to 2:30 or :45. I'd either do rope drop and take advantage of decent lines for the first few hours, or sleep in and show up by mid-morning. Have to clock watch a bit to try heading to the first FP near 12 (almost the end of its window), straight to ride #2 whose window is now open, then go grab lunch for a 12:30 ADR or quick service. Right after that, hit the 3rd FP.

Depending on how long the meal was, I may be early in the last window or closer to the end. Depending on park and crowd levels, this may still be early enough to get additional meaningful FPs. I use the rest of the day for "anytime" attractions, shows, character dinner, and check the app for nearby rides with reasonable standby waits. If you're an afternoon break family, it's time to head out and nap/swim!

I felt this method saved me time riding when lines were longest while still avoiding the problem of going to opposite ends of the park for various FPs at different times throughout the day.

 

[SureAsLiz]

One thing that I do to maximize my FP is to reschedule when I can.

If you have 3 passes booked 9-10, 10-11, 11-12:

Use the first FP. Use the app to check for an earlier timer for your 2nd FP (once you go through both tapstiles, the system will allow you to essentially double-book a time slot. So if you use FP1 at 9:30, you can now reschedule FP2 to start at 9:35, assuming a slot is available)

Do the same thing after using FP2.

Assuming you were able to moderately reschedule passes, you could easily get through 3 hours of FP reservations in a much shorter period of time with shorter waits in between.

This works best earlier in the day when more slots are available, but is not impossible in the early afternoon.


I did this on July 3rd and was able to get 6 FP (including 7DMT as FP4), meet 3 characters that can often have long lines (Gaston and Peter Pan especially), watch 2 FoF parades, 2 Dream Along with Mickey shows, 2 rides of the Carousel of Progress (thanks to some pretty intense rain) and almost every other theatre show, plus some other recharge breaks and standby lines all before finding a perfect spot at 8:30 for the 9pm fireworks show (that was delayed by 1.5 hours)

 

[BuckeyeBama]

We go during low crowd seasons. We book all FP+ the night before, as we do not decide which park we want to attend until then. We have never missed a FP+ for our rides of choice, and we prefer the popular ones. I am not sure that we will ever go to WDW during busy season again as the implementation of FP+ removed our ability to be spontaneous during those times of the year - a must for my wife.

 

[DougEMG]

I've got a family that likes to sleep in; I'll blame this on the 3 hour time zone difference; and are always slow to get going in the mornings, so for us I normally try to book all three FP+ in a row starting at around 1pm.

For our next trip I was thinking about trying out booking FP+ just in the evenings for some of the days.

 

[Jennytoon]

I also want to reduce the "I have an appointment" feeling on vacation. Therefore, I liked using my FPs scheduled around a lunch or dinner (whether ADR or just a time when I know we'd grab QS). I'd schedule something like 11-12, 12-1, lunch, then 1:30 or :45 to 2:30 or :45. I'd either do rope drop and take advantage of decent lines for the first few hours, or sleep in and show up by mid-morning. Have to clock watch a bit to try heading to the first FP near 12 (almost the end of its window), straight to ride #2 whose window is now open, then go grab lunch for a 12:30 ADR or quick service. Right after that, hit the 3rd FP.

We also are fans of this strategy (although I'll put out the caveat that it's only one factor and sometimes other things like showtimes or criss-crossing the park cause us to deviate). As @Mikie says, this can help to reduce the appointment feeling on vacation, because it gives you one large block of scheduled time, not multiple appointments throughout the day. The other feature we find is that we only have to remember what time we plan to show up for FP#1, because after that the windows are all open like dominos ... it's not that big a deal, but it feels a bit nicer than checking repeatedly so we can remember what time four different things are. I have a great memory, but by day 3 it kind of becomes a blur and it can be harder to remember what it is that we're doing *this* day.

If you show up for your FP and there is not a long line, remember that you are not compelled to use it. Wait in the 5 minute line, and while you're there hop on your MDE and see what you can change that FP for later.

If you don't see anything good on the kiosk when getting 4+ FP, don't spend a lot of time analyzing the options. Take something, anything, and change it on your smartphone. Many people report that when they do this they see lots of options that were not available at the kiosk.

FP+ are not the heart of your vacation. Make your ressies and your plans, sure. But if you find that you are done with the parks and you have a couple hours to go 'til that FP for ToT ... then if you really want to ride ToT, just go stand in the line, and otherwise just leave the park. It makes no sense to wait two hours to go on ToT when nobody wants to be in the parks and you could leave in only a half hour if you just waited in the line, or to hang around for two hours to ride a ride that nobody really cares about that much right at this minute, but it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that it does, because, because ... it's a FP+! Same if you do want to stay in the parks, but just feel like doing something else -- don't let the fact that you have a FP+ keep you from changing your plans if you'll enjoy doing something else more.

 

[ArwenMarie]

We have had three trips with FP+ fully rolled out. I won't discuss the strategy for our first trip with FP+, as during that trip the legacy system was still operating.

We used the "try to use all FP+ in the morning in order to be able to book a 4th" strategy on our first FP+ only trip in August. It worked well then, but crowds were also as low as I've ever seen them, and the 4th FP+s we pulled were for Star Tours. We were able to pull a 4th FP+ for POTC that trip, for late at night (9;55-10:55 according to MDE), but I'm not sure if I tried for an earlier slot or not. After that trip, I was relatively satisfied with FP+, but we also didn't really need it much because crowds were so low.

After that trip, though, I began to loathe FP+. Instead of derailing this thread with commentary for why I dislike it, I'll just give facts. Luckily, MDE's "Show Past Items" feature gives me the data I'd like to share. I'm just offering facts for what we experienced...you make the call whether this would be satisfactory for you. I will say that we are not local, are a party of 4, and we have young kids who like to re-ride their favorite rides and generally avoid anything that falls into the thrill ride category. BTMRR and Splash are favorites; Space, EE, and RNRC are avoided. We generally arrive at RD unless we're having a sleep in day, which we do the mornings after parties and late nights.
Looking in MDE, we had the following experience:
December 14th: At MK; last FP+ window was 1:40-2:40. Was able to snag a POTC FP+ for the group by taking two overlapping times (4:40-5:40 and 5:10-6:10).
December 15th: At DHS (this was a late arrival day due to going to MVMCP the night before); last FP+ window was 2:20-2:35; was able to get a 4th FP+ for Star Tours for 5:50-6:50.
December 16th: At AK; last FP+ window was 2:05-3:05. No 4th FP+ available.
December 17th: At DHS; last FP+ window was 11:35-12:35. No 4th FP+s available for Star Tours, which made us sad pandas. So we hopped to MK and managed to pull overlapping FP+ times for the four of us to meet Mickey with windows of 2:30-3:30 and 3:30-4:30.
December 18th: At Epcot; last FP+ window was 11:15-12:15. No FP+s available for anything we wanted for the rest of the day at that time.
December 19th: At MK; last FP+ window was 11:50-12:50; 4th FP+ pulled was for Aladdin at 1:10-2:10, but when we got there, SB wait was only 10 minutes. Tried to change it to something else, but there was nothing available that we wanted to ride for the rest of the day.
December 20th: Departure day; so we were only able to be in the park until noon. POTC was down during our FP+ window and we didn't want to ride any of the replacement experiences, so we left the park after using only two of our FP+s.

On our trip last month, we were only at Disney for 2 1/2 park days, and were going primarily for SWW, so we didn't try for a 4th any of our days.

What I found frustrating about trying to use the FP+s early is that with the exception of the super popular rides (Peter Pan, 7DMT, and TSM), there is really no reason to use a FP+ before 11:00. So it almost feels like you're wasting a FP+ just to try for a 4th...and even by noon or 1:00, the rides that still have FP+ availability are either really far out in the future or are things with short SB rides later in the day. So for us, that strategy didn't really work well because then we had no rides that we really enjoyed doing in the afternoons. I think I'm going to change strategy on our next trip and see if it works better, and other than the super headliners, book most of my FP+s for mid-to-late afternoon or early evening and not even bother with the 4th. For all the stress it caused, the 4th just doesn't seem worth it to me.

Awesome data, very clearly laid out.

I didn't know you could Show Past Items. Very cool. Where is that?

 

[ZoZo]

I understand that there are differing opinions on how to maximize FP+ usage, and I'm wondering what the best one would be for my upcoming trip. We're not really rope-drop people (though we might do that by default once or twice this trip because of ADRs). No park hopping planned this time. Currently, I think I'm favoring the "Do all your FP+ in a block right away when you plan to arrive at the park so that you can get a lot more FP+ for other attractions throughout the day" strategy. But now I'm reconsidering.

What have you done and did it work? What are you planning, and why?

One thing to be aware of is that "using your FPs early so you can get a lot more FP later" strategy doesn't work very well at most of the parks. It works best at MK, since they have lots of different rides and attractions - many more options to choose from, and they often have availablility for those fourth, fifth, etc. FPs as the day goes on (if you're not going during a really busy time of year). A lot is dependent on what time of year you go - there might be lots of additional FPs available at MK in, say, September (one of the slowest times of the year), but not in April, the summer months, or the

The other parks have far fewer rides and attractions, and you often can't get additional FPs after using your first three, especially for the really big attractions (TSM, RnR, ToT, Soarin') because they're often completely gone. Even at slower times of the year! You might be able to get a FP to a "minor" ride or a show that seats lots of people, but not very often for the big ones.

I'm a proponent of rope dropping and getting as much done as possible those first three or so "golden" hours with short lines for standby. Then saving my FPs for later in the day, whether I take an afternoon break or not. I might try for additional FPs at MK, so if that's my strategy, I would use schedule the FPs for earlier in the day (maybe starting at 10:00) and trying for more later. But not at EPCOT, DHS or AK.

 

[MikeandReneePlus5]

We booked them in the mid-morning/lunch time period for the most part and it worked out well. When we got to a park early we rode standby and then used them, and when we slept in we just used FP+ when we got there.

It worked out well. We only used more than the 3 scheduled ones at MK and DHS (for GMR and F!). The 4th at Epcot and AK is pretty useless because at Epcot they aren't available and at AK they aren't needed.

(we also booked in the evening for one day when we park hopped and that worked GREAT but doesn't apply to the original poster's question since they aren't getting park hoppers).

 

[ddavev3]

I'm also in the rope dropping/later FP camp. It works really well for my family. In my experience, it's nearly impossible to get a 4th FP for anything decent outside of MK when we go in the summer.

 

[jtowntoflorida]

Awesome data, very clearly laid out.

I didn't know you could Show Past Items. Very cool. Where is that?

Go into My Reservations and Tickets. On the right side near the top, right above My Reservations, there is an unassuming box (that doesn't really look like a drop-down) that says Show All. It's right below the MDE "Map" that shows where you're at in the MDE web hierarchy. Anyway, there is a little inverted triangle there, and if you click on it, a drop-down menu appears. You can scroll all the way to the last selection, which is "Show Past Items" and it will show all of your hotel reservations, ADRs, and FP+s since the start of MDE. It's a pretty cool feature and really helps to eliminate revisionist history when talking about what you were able to do while in the parks.

My apologies for not screenshotting...I can't do that at work with all the restrictions we have.

 

[austinwildflower]

We just went to the world early this July, and I would not recommend using up your Fastpasses first thing in the morning and then counting on more to be available afterwards. During anything but a truly low attendance time (such as mid-September or mid-January), you can't count on more passes to the most popular rides being available same day at all. Not saying it's impossible, but it's a gamble to count on that. There are shorter lines everywhere during the first hour, so it's a waste to "spend" Fastpasses anytime then. Instead, hit the popular rides that you don't have Fastpasses for first thing, then a few less popular ones during the second hour, then begin "spending" your Fastpasses when the park has been open for two hours and has really started to fill up. Schedule your Fastpasses in a row from that point (excepting any meal breaks), then you'll be able to try for more passes, which will likely be for second-tier type rides.

If you don't arrive first thing, then I do recommend using your Fastpasses whenever you arrive (this will take about 3 hours), then try to fill up after that. The nice thing about arriving later (especially 2pm or later), is that you know the crowds will only diminish as the day goes on, and you'll be up for staying until park close.

 

[ArwenMarie]

Go into My Reservations and Tickets. On the right side near the top, right above My Reservations, there is an unassuming box (that doesn't really look like a drop-down) that says Show All. It's right below the MDE "Map" that shows where you're at in the MDE web hierarchy. Anyway, there is a little inverted triangle there, and if you click on it, a drop-down menu appears. You can scroll all the way to the last selection, which is "Show Past Items" and it will show all of your hotel reservations, ADRs, and FP+s since the start of MDE. It's a pretty cool feature and really helps to eliminate revisionist history when talking about what you were able to do while in the parks.

My apologies for not screenshotting...I can't do that at work with all the restrictions we have.

Got it, thank you. It's not working for me right now (technical difficulties lol!) but good to know.

Yes, definitely will help when looking back to see what you actually did