I'm at the airport on the way home. Figured I'd give you an update.
To recap: we had a campsite booked for 1 night. We are a family of 5 so we could not book a room at one of the less expensive resorts since they don't fit 5 so a campsite was our best option. We had 5 day park hoppers attached to our reservation. I had the magic bands shipped to a friend in the US since I am in Canada and they don't ship them here. I did not want to have to pick them up at the resort.
At 60 days out, I was able to book FP+ for my check in and check out day only. Every day after that, a new day opened up and I could make my selections. So Dec 27th (or something like that) I was able to make my FP+ selections for Feb 27/28, then Dec 30th I could make them for March 1st, Dec 31st for March 2nd.
I checked in online then on our first day at the parks, we physically checked in at the resort. I don't know if you need to do this but I wanted the parking pass. We checked in at 10am then went straight to the parks, never having set foot into the resort.
Our FP+ selections worked perfectly all week. I even changed a day around at the end of our week (days after we had checked out) and and no problems booking them. We went on Friday instead of Saturday so I canceled Saturdays and booked for Friday with no issues.
For those who ask "why would you waste money on a throwaway room?" here is my answer: the 1 night room/campsite cost 90$. We got to park for 2 days (check in and check out) which normally would cost 30$ for both days so we really only spent 60$. We are a family of 5 with 5 day tickets and booked 5 days worth of FP+. That comes to 2.40 cents per day per person to save ourselves a lot of waiting time.
We did not *have* to do rope drop to guarantee ourselves short waits or deal with whatever times came out of the kiosks (who knows if those times were convenient to our plans). On the days that we did do rope drop, we had short morning waits, then took a break and park hopped - we used our FP+ for our evening park and had more short waits.
We also saw the lineups for the FP+ kiosks - OMG !! You need a FP for the FP kiosk ! if you wanted to change anything, you needed to go to a kiosk again rather than using
MDE from the rental house or our smartphone. To us, it was well worth the 12$/day. To others, it might not be.
So, as of today, it does not appear that Disney is in any rush to "close the loophole". They got our money for the campsite which was pure profit. We used none of the services at the campground and no one had to clean up after us. (cause we were not really there). We used the perks that came with the room but not the actual room. Win-win !!
So, until Disney changes the current plan and let's offsite guests book FP+ in advance, I highly recommend the throwaway room !
When I talked with my sister yesterday she was actually excited about going back to the campground we stayed in when we were kids in the 70's... lots of memories. I actually have more memories of the campgrounds from that vacation than MK! Anyway, we booked two sites, and I think we will actually use them to let the kids run around and get a taste of Disney on arrival day, as we are not planning on going to parks that day. Maybe get some pizzas and use the picnic tables and such. No tent camping though.
