We have decided to wing it, not going to use FP+

[Harlie]

So our travelling group of 9 Canadians that are going for 2 weeks in February have decided screw FP+ we are going to wing it. The other family we are traveling with decided they would save $200 total from not pre-purchasing the tickets with their credit adds Incurring the additional charges from American/Canadian dollar transfers. This makes it difficult to pick fast passes not knowing if they can be added later or not. My issue with FP+ is that I don't want to plan every last detail. I know what parks we are doing what days ect but I have no desire to pick what ride we want to ride at what time.

So we are winging it. If we don't get to ride everything we want and see everything we like so be it.

Has anyone had success with just winging it? Any tips and/or thing to keep in mind?

 

[dkrauss]

So our travelling group of 9 Canadians that are going for 2 weeks in February have decided screw FP+ we are going to wing it. The other family we are traveling with decided they would save $200 total from not pre-purchasing the tickets with their credit adds Incurring the additional charges from American/Canadian dollar transfers. This makes it difficult to pick fast passes not knowing if they can be added later or not. My issue with FP+ is that I don't want to plan every last detail. I know what parks we are doing what days ect but I have no desire to pick what ride we want to ride at what time.

So we are winging it. If we don't get to ride everything we want and see everything we like so be it.

Has anyone had success with just winging it? Any tips and/or thing to keep in mind?

Interesting premise and given you'll be there for 2 weeks you have some time to change your mind I'm wondering if the other family your traveling with didn't switch things up with tickets if you'd have done FP+ prior to your trip?

When you say "winging it" do you mean completely.....as in no direction or outline to your days in the parks? I do appreciate how some feel about FP+ (as you might tell I'm a fan ). However, winging it (completely), to me, could leave you very frustrated if you don't at least have an outline of how you'll proceed. If you do "rope drop" many of the prime rides can be had without terrible lines. Just this past Sept we did not FP+ Toy Story Mania..... We waited about 30 mins which was fine because it was 92 degrees outside. It was also a less crowded time of year. So..... alot will depend on when in Feb you'll be traveling and the crowds at that time.

Hope you trip is full of fun and magic!!

Doug

 

[lroger01]

I would at least pick some fast passes the day before (or for the week if you know which parks which days). Nothing says you have to use them, but if someone in your group REALLY likes something, it will help guarantee a second ride during the busy afternoon. Many attractions have day of or day before availability.

Wing it for sure if that's what you want, but don't toss out FP completely if you can make it work for you.

 

[gofordrew]

Not sure why you wouldn't want to use FP+ for the most popular attractions...I mean you get to skip the line and it's free.

 

[ChicagoMom]

I would at least pick some fast passes the day before (or for the week if you know which parks which days). Nothing says you have to use them, but if someone in your group REALLY likes something, it will help guarantee a second ride during the busy afternoon. Many attractions have day of or day before availability.

Wing it for sure if that's what you want, but don't toss out FP completely if you can make it work for you.

This. We switched our FP around a few times during our trip and the only rides that were not available to FP the next day were TSMM, 7DMT, A&E and Soarin (Soarin was available 2 days in advance just not the next day).

 

[wisblue]

Because of entering the parks with CM Main Gate Passes we did several days in the parks this year with no advance FPs, and we did just fine. Some days at MK and DHS after doing a few rides with no waits we stopped at a kiosk to get 3 FPs for late morning and early afternoon for things like BTMRR, Space Mountain, HM,and JC. But, it was nothing remotely close to "planning every minute of every day".

 

[Harlie]

Interesting premise and given you'll be there for 2 weeks you have some time to change your mind I'm wondering if the other family your traveling with didn't switch things up with tickets if you'd have done FP+ prior to your trip? When you say "winging it" do you mean completely.....as in no direction or outline to your days in the parks? I do appreciate how some feel about FP+ (as you might tell I'm a fan ). However, winging it (completely), to me, could leave you very frustrated if you don't at least have an outline of how you'll proceed. If you do "rope drop" many of the prime rides can be had without terrible lines. Just this past Sept we did not FP+ Toy Story Mania..... We waited about 30 mins which was fine because it was 92 degrees outside. It was also a less crowded time of year. So..... alot will depend on when in Feb you'll be traveling and the crowds at that time. Hope you trip is full of fun and magic!! Doug

Oh I by winging I mean just being flexible. We just aren't going to prepick the FP+ 30 days in advance. We will get what we can while at the park for FP+. I know trying to get 9 FP+ For eac if us For most rides will be difficult but I'm not going to let it be the "ruining" of our trip. We will just make the best of what we can when we can. The ultimate flexibility. If we can't get them for our favourite rides no worries will will go with plan 2. We will be starting the parks and at rope drop. And I have touring plans.

 

[SCDisneyfanatic]

Even before FP- you had to "Plan" your days if you wanted to make sure you made it to all the parks and saw the headliners. You at least need some sort of "idea" of where to go and when. We have a group of 10...all the couples pick one ADR (earliest is 7:15pm at Jiko, most after 8:00pm)...we have FP+ for later in the days (noon - 5:00pm)...we can mostly "Wing it" but still have the luxury of knowing we have some FPs ready if needed. Beauty is, you don't have to use them, so can still wing it even with FP. I find FP+ and ADRs make life easier (little waiting in line for major attractions or top restaurants).

 

[Donald - my hero]

So our travelling group of 9 Canadians that are going for 2 weeks in February have decided screw FP+ we are going to wing it. The other family we are traveling with decided they would save $200 total from not pre-purchasing the tickets with their credit adds Incurring the additional charges from American/Canadian dollar transfers. This makes it difficult to pick fast passes not knowing if they can be added later or not. My issue with FP+ is that I don't want to plan every last detail. I know what parks we are doing what days ect but I have no desire to pick what ride we want to ride at what time.

So we are winging it. If we don't get to ride everything we want and see everything we like so be it.

Has anyone had success with just winging it? Any tips and/or thing to keep in mind?

Fellow Canuck here! Mighty curious here as to how they think they will be saving $200.00 by not pre-purchasing tickets? If you use UnderCover Tourist for your tickets you can get a discount and they will ship them to you. If we hadn't gone with a package last month i would have gone this route. Not sure which credit card they will be using but a warning if it's Master Card .. when i gave them a head's up about our trip i was told we would not only get dinged with the exchange rate (D'UH of course!) but a service charge each time we used it )

As far as the FP+ planning ... i looked at it this way. We are not rope drop people so i was able to schedule them later in the day. Since i had already made my choices for ADR's i had a general idea of which park we would be in. I made sure i "clumped" them together within the general park areas and after that, yup, major winging! Since hubby has a blackberry the MDE app didn't work so we went old school & had all of our ADR's & FP+ times on a piece of paper.

We also were there for 2 weeks and loved the fact that if we encountered a crowd we could either leave or hop to another park. As someone else mentioned a really good idea is to ask everyone what their 1 or 2 absolute MUST-DO's are and at least get FP+ for those since we did notice this visit that certain rides had lines that amazed us! Even saw Small World with a stand-by of 35 minutes once I've heard that President's Day weekend sees huge crowds so make sure you take that into account if it falls during your visit(feb 16th) ... would hate to read later that you didn't get to experience "XYZ" due to long lines

 

[nkereina]

Not sure why you wouldn't want to use FP+ for the most popular attractions...I mean you get to skip the line and it's free.

This. There's really no downside to at least booking FP+. I get that some people don't like the extreme planning, but you should at least book them to give yourself a chance. If your plans change or you're busy and miss the FP+, then that's fine. But to not have any from the get go seems silly and a waste to me.

 

[amg35]

This. There's really no downside to at least booking FP+. I get that some people don't like the extreme planning, but you should at least book them to give yourself a chance. If your plans change or you're busy and miss the FP+, then that's fine. But to not have any from the get go seems silly and a waste to me.

Agreed.

Especially since you said you already know which days you are going to which parks...why wouldn't you make the fast pass? You don't have to use it. We ended up going on rides earlier because the stand by wasn't long...

 

[Harlie]

I know I said we have the parks days planned out, but preplanning just won't work unless all 9 of us have our park tickets. For our group that won't happen so we have come to the conclusion to just wing it. Get what we ca get when were are there.

I have to say that once this was decided a huge weight was lifted off my shoulder. I just don't want to plan that much. I like to be able to zig when others zag and if I'm picking FP+ 30 days out I can't do that.

I like knowing what park what day, I like my adrs organized just right, but if we get to that park and everyone wants to ride space maintain and I can't get 9 FP+ for the group then we have to time it with the fireworks or park opening or closing, we will make it work.

 

[Lorajo]

We are a group of nine Canadians as well. We did basically pick our FP selections once everyone had their tickets.

This is only the second trip where I've had to choose in advance what I will do each day.

We usually travel in December/January and always liked to let the weather affect our choices. If it was sunny and hot - a water park or MK. For a cooler day shopping or Epcot. I definitely miss the flexibility.

I see all the FP+ benefits and love the magic bands but I sort of wish all FP selections had to be done at kiosks or on MDE that day.

Sent from my iPhone using DISBoards

 

[Mome Rath]

I know I said we have the parks days planned out, but preplanning just won't work unless all 9 of us have our park tickets. For our group that won't happen so we have come to the conclusion to just wing it. Get what we ca get when were are there.

I have to say that once this was decided a huge weight was lifted off my shoulder. I just don't want to plan that much. I like to be able to zig when others zag and if I'm picking FP+ 30 days out I can't do that.

I like knowing what park what day, I like my adrs organized just right, but if we get to that park and everyone wants to ride space maintain and I can't get 9 FP+ for the group then we have to time it with the fireworks or park opening or closing, we will make it work.

I think you'll do fine.

 

[Shaden]

This. There's really no downside to at least booking FP+. I get that some people don't like the extreme planning, but you should at least book them to give yourself a chance. If your plans change or you're busy and miss the FP+, then that's fine. But to not have any from the get go seems silly and a waste to me.

Agreed.

Especially since you said you already know which days you are going to which parks...why wouldn't you make the fast pass? You don't have to use it. We ended up going on rides earlier because the stand by wasn't long...

I don't like fp+ for the most part, but if its the system in place I have to agree with these folks ... no downside ... if you think of them as just maybes ... wont feel restricted but will have the option.

 

[NewRVLady]

You have to get one for Soarin....the lines got it are terrible even 15 min after rope drop

We walked right on with FP

 

[SarahKate]

I think you would be fine to not book FPs! We just got back a few weeks ago and found that we only used about half of our FPs because it got difficult to plan it all (and I am an planner by nature). And the app is not always that user friendly to change plans, in my opinion.

Since you're there for 2 weeks (JEALOUS!), you have so much time to just take the parks at a totally leisurely pace. If there are high priority rides, just get there at rope drop or take advantage of the evening magic hours (assuming that you're staying onsite).

 

[pigletto]

We are largely winging it also. We have 2 day tickets and did use them to to book fastpasses but we can't add days to them until we get there so our remaining 5 days will be on the fly. This isn't so much by choice, but it is what it is. We'll see what we can get the night before and not get too wrapped up in worrying about it. I just can't get worked up about 3 rides a day.
I plan to have a wonderful trip, and I hope you will as well.

 

[Grumpy92]

Please do a trip report when you return!!!

 

[dkrauss]

Oh I by winging I mean just being flexible. We just aren't going to prepick the FP+ 30 days in advance. We will get what we can while at the park for FP+. I know trying to get 9 FP+ For eac if us For most rides will be difficult but I'm not going to let it be the "ruining" of our trip. We will just make the best of what we can when we can. The ultimate flexibility. If we can't get them for our favourite rides no worries will will go with plan 2. We will be starting the parks and at rope drop. And I have touring plans.

Phew.........wishing you a magical visit and short lines at 7DMT !!!!

Doug