What time of day to start booking FP+

Deanie1

DIS Veteran
Joined
May 3, 2012
Messages
881
We were in WDW end of Nov and beginning of DEc 2017. I would start booking my FP+ starting around 11am, leaving the first 2 hrs to rope drop as much as we could. This strategy worked in some parks but not so well in others. When do you guys suggest starting to book FP+ if you aren’t park hopping?
 
I start at 10 because then you can get your 4th, 5th, etc fast passes earlier when you need them the most.
 
There are lots of different ways to do it. It's all about what you want. For us, we start FP+ the moment we step in the gate...in fact we set our first one to start before we even arrive. Doesn't matter if it's 9:15am, 11:00am or 5pm...as soon as we step foot in the park, we're using FP+. We see no reason to "save" them for later.
 

I always schedule ours for as close to 10 as possible. So our FPs usually are at 10, 11, and 12. But for our MK day we have FPs at 10, 12, and 1 because I fit a lunch adr in there.
 
I scheduled my days starting around 11am for most parks but them realized that I had messed up when I tried to do a plan with Touring Plans. I had no idea that it gives you FP suggestion times. The biggest problem was at Epcot as we tried to be in world showcase shortly after 11am. We just ended up rope dropping Soarin’ both days. I purposely booked AK a bit later as I knew we wanted to rope drop NRJ (rode it back to back both days then hustled over to KS. I like to ride KS twice per day, once in am and once a bit later on as we often see different animals. Things worked out OK but we had a fair amount of back tracking. I was glad that we only had 4 ADR’s for our 9 day trip.
 
I book 9, 10 and 11.
I RD rides and then use my 9 am FP just before it expires, followed immediately by my 10 am FP. Then I ride or relax/people watch until my 11 am FP. Then I can refresh my app and get FPs for whatever is available.
 
I book 9, 10 and 11.
I RD rides and then use my 9 am FP just before it expires, followed immediately by my 10 am FP. Then I ride or relax/people watch until my 11 am FP. Then I can refresh my app and get FPs for whatever is available.

This, as many rides at RD as we can before 10 when the 9 am FP expires then use them up. At MK we do SpaceMt, Buzz and People Mover at least before 10, usually more.

Bill From PA
 
I book 9, 10 and 11.
I RD rides and then use my 9 am FP just before it expires, followed immediately by my 10 am FP. Then I ride or relax/people watch until my 11 am FP. Then I can refresh my app and get FPs for whatever is available.
This is our strategy as well! I also try and move the 11 am FP earlier as soon as I scan in for the 10 am FP.
 
For Epcot especially, we do 9, 10, 11, even though we usually don't technically "need" the FP+ we have booked. But it gives us a much better chance of getting additional tier 1 FP+ later in the day. At MK I usually wait a bit later... maybe 10, 11, 12 since you can get a lot more done first thing in the morning, as long as you are there before rope drop.
 
While we were there, as soon as we had tapped in for our third FP+, I wasn’t able to book my 4th FP+. I tried again after the ride and sometimes I wasn’t able to book a 4th until after my FP+ window was over. Didn’t happen every day but did at least 3 of our days. Has anyone else encountered this? Could it just be that MDE was glitchy? This was our first trip with FP+ in full swing. It was a bit frustrating as we were great at fully maximizing our FP-.
 
I start mine at 10 for the MK since you can rope drop a few rides the other park 9am and I will do one ride for RD
 


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