Try this FP+ touring strategy when staying onsite with park hoppers

[heathsf]

How about setting up a second account under your spouse's email to hold your ADRs? Then you wouldn't get as much interference with FP.

But wouldn't it know that both me and DH were going to dinner and going to use FP+? Or do you mean a separate email that isn't linked to MDE at all?

But wait... if it's not linked, then I can't book at 180+10, right? I'm confused...

What are the limitations of booking overlapping FP+ and ADRs?

 

[heathsf]

Here's another question: Do I now Go to the AM EMH park, or avoid it? Does it come into play at all with the change in Fastpasses?

I'm wondering the same thing. For example, one one day Josh recommends Epcot as the best park and there are morning EMH at HS. So I'm wondering if we should start at HS and ride the headliners then go to Epcot with FP+ and lower crowds... or are we better off just going to Epcot for RD? I'm scared of not being at Epcot for RD since we can't FP+ both Soarin and TT. If we got to Epcot at 10:00 am on a recommended day could we do both without waiting an hour or more for one of them?

 

[ArwenMarie]

I found that if you do your FP+ reservations first and then your ADRs it didn't limit your FP times. Of course, this may not work if you don't want to wait until your 60 day window for ADRs but since we were flexible on where or what times we would eat it worked for us.

That makes sense. In November, I had to take out most of my ADRs, do the FPs, then put the ADRs back in. Next time, I will set up a separate account under my husband's email and credit card, and put the ADRs there. And keep the FPs in my MDE account, so I don't have to do that again!

 

[Aliceacc]

Our trip will be a family reunion, with my 3 kids, their 20-something year old cousins, and 3 sets of adults. (Not that the cousins aren't adults...)

Throw in a family medical crisis, and I'm pretty much the only one doing any pre-planning. I've already roughed out the ADRs for all 11 of us, knowing that some of them-- particularly the 2 breakfasts I've planned-- will likely go down in number.

I think we'll probably plan to skip the AM EMH parks. If the hope is to have people in more or less the same park, then I think our odds are best if we plan to leave that extra hour for sleep.

But, as much as I LOVE planning, I refuse to worry about any of this. I'll go with the advice I can find, combine it with my own gut, and see what happens. In past trips we've only waited ONCE for more than 20 minutes (our first trip to DHS, we got there after noon. There were no more FP's for TSM, so we waited 90 minutes. Never again.)

The best piece of Disney advice I ever got was this: don't give any one ride or attraction or meal or anything else the power to make or break your trip. If we don't get to Soarin' or TSM or Big Thunder, we'll still have a fabulous time.

We'll get to the parks at Rope Drop and hit a bunch of the headliners each day before it gets busy. We'll use 3 FP+'s per day, and get another 3 headliners each day. And we'll have a wonderful time... And we WILL get so Soarin' and Big Thunde and TSM because we know what we're doing.

Sure, I LOVE the planning. But I think that sometimes we on the Disboards forget the value of all we know. We forget that we're already miles and miles ahead of the thousands of people who arrive at the parks each day with no clue of what they're doing.They're all in line behind us, because they'll be enjoying the shops on Main Street while we're on our way to Space Mountain. And all those who think a Disney vacation includes sleeping in... they're not in front of us because we were there at rope drop.... they're on a different schedule all together. And, with this massive change in FPs, there will be lots and lots of return visitors who THOUGHT they knew what they were doing, but were unaware of the change. They're all in line behind us too.

We're all going to have a fabulous vacation, because we're not walking in blind.

 

[ArwenMarie]

But wouldn't it know that both me and DH were going to dinner and going to use FP+? Or do you mean a separate email that isn't linked to MDE at all?

But wait... if it's not linked, then I can't book at 180+10, right? I'm confused...

What are the limitations of booking overlapping FP+ and ADRs?

Yes, a separate email address. And a separate "identity" for my husband, in other words not that one that he is under our current MDE account that I manage. So the accounts won't be linked at all.

Everyone can book at 180, just not 180+10. So for the really tough ADRs, I still might want to keep those under my account if we have an onsite stay.

In November, I found that if I had ADRs in there, it only gave me FP times that worked around the ADRs, and with a very wide time range. Which was silly and also made it hard to get the timeslots I wanted. So I ended up taking a lot of them out, then putting the FPs in, then putting the ADRs back in. Which is why next time, I am going to make the separate account

 

[MommaBarb]

This was not my strategy initially, but I've had to redo everything and this is more or less our new strategy. I may need to have a discussion about DHS. We only plan on being there for the morning, and the only ride we MUST do is TSMM. We may rope drop it and just do SB and save our FP for Epcot since we already have a dinner planned there. We're doing an AM in Epcot where our main objective is Anna and Elsa and there are AM EMH. I made my ADRs at 180, and THEN all this FP stuff happened. It's like a perfect storm affecting my planning.

 

[MsMagical]

Excellent!! This is my exact strategy! I have some days thrown in where we are at one park all day but that's because we have a really long trip and APs. I'm hoping that I get to actually see some things I've never seen before - shows and exhibits and such now that I don't have to run to our favorite attractions to grab fast passes and zig zag the park to ride everything. When I select my fast passes, I usually have to move them around anyway and I always have one Option that has a fastpass conflicting with my ADR.

 

[heathsf]

Yes, a separate email address. And a separate "identity" for my husband, in other words not that one that he is under our current MDE account that I manage. So the accounts won't be linked at all.

Everyone can book at 180, just not 180+10. So for the really tough ADRs, I still might want to keep those under my account if we have an onsite stay.

In November, I found that if I had ADRs in there, it only gave me FP times that worked around the ADRs, and with a very wide time range. Which was silly and also made it hard to get the timeslots I wanted. So I ended up taking a lot of them out, then putting the FPs in, then putting the ADRs back in. Which is why next time, I am going to make the separate account

Thanks for explaining!

 

[wisblue]

Yes, a separate email address. And a separate "identity" for my husband, in other words not that one that he is under our current MDE account that I manage. So the accounts won't be linked at all.

Everyone can book at 180, just not 180+10. So for the really tough ADRs, I still might want to keep those under my account if we have an onsite stay.

In November, I found that if I had ADRs in there, it only gave me FP times that worked around the ADRs, and with a very wide time range. Which was silly and also made it hard to get the timeslots I wanted. So I ended up taking a lot of them out, then putting the FPs in, then putting the ADRs back in. Which is why next time, I am going to make the separate account

Wouldn't doing that also complicate making FP+ reservations because you wouldn't be able to make them and change them together? I think you would have to make the FP+ reservations separately for each account too.

 

[ArwenMarie]

Wouldn't doing that also complicate making FP+ reservations because you wouldn't be able to make them and change them together? I think you would have to make the FP+ reservations separately for each account too.

Not sure I am following.

I was thinking you keep all of the FP+ reservations for the entire family on one spouses's account, along with park tickets and hotel. The only thing you put on the other MDE account are the ADRs.

The one issue as heathsf pointed out would be losing the +10 benefit. But you could fiddle around between the two accounts and perhaps leave the super hard ADRs on the account that has the hotel stay linked to it. Or book them all on the onsite account at 180 +10 and then try to move them over to the other account...whatever.

In any case, the point is to free up the FP+/hotel/tix account from ADRs as much as possible to open up more timeslots for day 60, and for making any changes after that.

 

[wisblue]

Not sure I am following.

I was thinking you keep all of the FP+ reservations for the entire family on one spouses's account, along with park tickets and hotel. The only thing you put on the other MDE account are the ADRs.

The one issue as heathsf pointed out would be losing the +10 benefit. But you could fiddle around between the two accounts and perhaps leave the super hard ADRs on the account that has the hotel stay linked to it. Or book them all on the onsite account at 180 +10 and then try to move them over to the other account...whatever.

In any case, the point is to free up the FP+/hotel/tix account from ADRs as much as possible to open up more timeslots for day 60, and for making any changes after that.

You are probably right. We only made one ADR for our last trip and I just worked the FP+ reservations around it because it wasn't inconvenient. I didn't try anything fancy; I just liked having everything in one account.

It just seems that for someone to have his or her park tickets linked to your account, then that person might have to have a second account to make ADRs that would be separate. Otherwise, although that person's tickets and reservations might appear on your account so that you could view them, you may not have the authority to change them. I know that with one of my daughters who had her own MDE account from a prior trip that I wasn't on, she had to give me some authority to make and change FP+ reservations for both of us together.

 

[garjanjones]

OP: Those were our thoughts exactly (except minus the hopping).

We buy hoppers, but wait until late to decide what park to do, often finishing anything that was broken or rained out from the previous day.

We only go in the summer because I am a teacher, so planning is a must. We have our ADRs booked, have jotted down what we hope to get as our FP+ times, and planned our characters in the mornings.

Since most characters do not have FP option, we will do those first generally, then mix in our FP+s and ride standby on some rides, mixed in with our ADR. This is particularly true at AK and DHS which are character heave for us. DS is 6 and a social butterfly. He wants to meet everyone.

 

[LucyBC80]

For non-hoppers that like to take a break during the afternoon the plan is almost the same

For us, what I know will work is we'll hit rope drop, do everything tha can be done and leave the park around 1pm for a resort break, coming back to the park around 5 or 6pm (depending when the park closes) and use our FP+ on other headliners we didn't do on the morning or to ride it a second or even third time (the perk of going during slow times!) and then ride other attractions based on waiting time.

 

[Laketravis]

For non-hoppers that like to take a break during the afternoon the plan is almost the same

For us, what I know will work is we'll hit rope drop, do everything tha can be done and leave the park around 1pm for a resort break, coming back to the park around 5 or 6pm (depending when the park closes) and use our FP+ on other headliners we didn't do on the morning or to ride it a second or even third time (the perk of going during slow times!) and then ride other attractions based on waiting time.

Yes - as I'm working thru a plan for non-hoppers, this is becoming more and more true. You can follow essentially the same strategy I've posted, you just wouldn't change parks.

This would give you an opportunity to enjoy your favorites in one park multiple times; either Rope Drop and EMH or sleep late and FP+ in the afternoon or early evening on an evening EMH day.

It's especially significant for the two tiered parks (HS and EP) since you can only FP one of the majors.

In regards to ADR's, I never had an issue reserving FP's and ADR's on the same account. I could overlap them if I wanted to. Of course, you NEVER want to stick with the original FP "suggestions" that MDE offers you, accept the one that has the attractions in the order you want (predominately important by location and park flow) and then edit them.

For example, the app may initially present your three choices scattered throughout the day. Edit the times for them all by "compressing" them into a three hour period - that's more than enough time in any of the parks to complete your three FP's. In fact, you can go to your first one in the last 15 minutes, go to your second one any time in it's one hour window, then go to your third one in the first 15 minutes of it's window and you've burned up your FP's in 90 minutes.

For the afternoons, I would typically schedule FP's from 1-2, 2-3, and 3-4.

Since I did my ADR's first, I was usually able to get decent times at popular spots. Like Cape May or Chef Mickey's at 6pm.

I would rarely schedule FP's for in the evening after dinner because the mornings and afternoons were "attraction" times so we'd take advantage of the evenings to slow down and see parades/fireworks and then kick back into attraction gear during EMH.

Without hoppers, you would want to pick a park with EMH that you would use and schedule your FP's in the afternoon/early evening.

 

[eeyoreland]

Thank you OP for this thread. You've laid out a strategy I hadn't given any thought to. I do have a question. Do you think there's any hope for people that are spoiled (guilty) and were able to ride their favorite headliners 2-3 times in a day because of the old FP system? Is that just going to be a thing of the past?

 

[Laketravis]

Thank you OP for this thread. You've laid out a strategy I hadn't given any thought to. I do have a question. Do you think there's any hope for people that are spoiled (guilty) and were able to ride their favorite headliners 2-3 times in a day because of the old FP system? Is that just going to be a thing of the past?

That was me on some days when I was only in the park for headliners. No parades, no character meets, no Dumbo or Figment. Headliners over and over.

Going forward I think it is going to depend more and more on how long we are willing to stand in SB line. I certainly don't think it will be possible on crowd level days of 6 or more, because WDW is encouraging everyone to use FP+ on a scale we've never seen before with the paper based system. By the time you've ridden any headliner twice you might see extended SB waits and no more FP availability.

It would certainly be possible to ride ONE headliner two or three times, but anything beyond that is going to require substantial waits in standby. Look at yesterday and today, for example, where EasyWDW has both days at 8's and MK wasn't recommended on either day. The reports coming back so far about MK sound and look disastrous.

Crowd levels of 5 or less? There will still be opportunities throughout the day (RD, EMH, during parades) when you could ride multiple headliners multiple times. Although before we could pull multiple FP's, now it's going to be multiple SB's.

Days when crowd levels are 3 or less are going to be the only days left where people like us will be able to ride EE 5 or 6 times while the Standby line was still 10 minutes, then head to another park and still be able to do ToT or RnRC several times, then maybe even head to MK and do two mountains in the evening.

Disney is pushing everyone out in equal force to all attractions; what that means is we will have increased opportunity to experience more attractions but less opportunity to experience the same ones multiple times.

 

[VikingInMouseEars]

That's a great plan. My only minor disagreement would be your statement about Animal Kingdom. We've always found that there were more active animals on the safari first thing in the morning. Since it gets very hot in AK by lunch, we always choose to do AK first thing in the morning. YMMV.

This

 

[heybravo626]

Thanks for the info. We've come to the same conclusion not to use FP+ in morning and save it for afternoon/evening in same park or other park on a hop. We also decided to ignore the crowd calendars and use early emh park for standby only riding prior to a hop to another park.

An additional thing we have come up with is that we aren't going to ever use FP+ at EPCOT or AK. We think we can get through headliners in both parks using early emh and rope drop. That will save more FP+ for MK where there are large quantities of rides and DHS where the tier 2 rides have greater potential to have longer standby line than EPCOT tier 2 rides IMO.

 

[Aliceacc]

An additional thing we have come up with is that we aren't going to ever use FP+ at EPCOT or AK. We think we can get through headliners in both parks using early emh and rope drop. That will save more FP+ for MK where there are large quantities of rides and DHS where the tier 2 rides have greater potential to have longer standby line than EPCOT tier 2 rides IMO.

Wow, another great piece of advice!

Many thanks to those of you who have spent time reasoning this all out. Things are a little (???) crazy at school these days, and even when I do have the time, my brain is kind of fried. I reallly do appreciate all of you who have spent the time and energy to reason it all out, and the generosity to share your thoughts here!!

Your hard work will make MY vacation better.... many, many thanks!!!

 

[eeyoreland]

That was me on some days when I was only in the park for headliners. No parades, no character meets, no Dumbo or Figment. Headliners over and over.

Going forward I think it is going to depend more and more on how long we are willing to stand in SB line. I certainly don't think it will be possible on crowd level days of 6 or more, because WDW is encouraging everyone to use FP+ on a scale we've never seen before with the paper based system. By the time you've ridden any headliner twice you might see extended SB waits and no more FP availability.

It would certainly be possible to ride ONE headliner two or three times, but anything beyond that is going to require substantial waits in standby. Look at yesterday and today, for example, where EasyWDW has both days at 8's and MK wasn't recommended on either day. The reports coming back so far about MK sound and look disastrous.

Crowd levels of 5 or less? There will still be opportunities throughout the day (RD, EMH, during parades) when you could ride multiple headliners multiple times. Although before we could pull multiple FP's, now it's going to be multiple SB's.

Days when crowd levels are 3 or less are going to be the only days left where people like us will be able to ride EE 5 or 6 times while the Standby line was still 10 minutes, then head to another park and still be able to do ToT or RnRC several times, then maybe even head to MK and do two mountains in the evening.

Disney is pushing everyone out in equal force to all attractions; what that means is we will have increased opportunity to experience more attractions but less opportunity to experience the same ones multiple times.

Thank you for confirming what I have been thinking. Glad I ran across this thread. It's caused me to rethink what I have scheduled and will likely revamp the whole thing. We are there the last week of February and crowd levels look pretty good (low) so hopefully I'll be able to do the switching around I want with success.