Tips for FastPass

tubaluba

Earning My Ears
Joined
Feb 10, 2013
I’m going to take my 6 year old son to a Disney for his first trip MLK week. I haven’t been back in 6 years and need tips on how you manage the FastPass reservation system for rides. Pre-booking rides a month ahead and trying to schedule high demand rides for a particular time frame is giving me serious anxiety. I’ve always gone and just walked around (mostly in order) riding things as I got to them. Yes I’ve used fast passes but got them there as needed. I don’t want to run back and forth all over the parks to get to ride popular rides, but how do you know what time you’ll get to that particular location at a particular time when you pre-book?! 🤦🏻‍♀️ Need all the help I can get for a smooth experience where we can ride most rides my son can at least get on without much running back and forth. Thanks ahead! (P.S. Also the idea of getting to the park an hour early and running to popular rides with a 6 year old is giving me anxiety too, I’d like for him to make it through the entire day to see firework shows 😭🤦🏻‍♀️).
 
I’m going to take my 6 year old son to a Disney for his first trip MLK week. I haven’t been back in 6 years and need tips on how you manage the FastPass reservation system for rides. Pre-booking rides a month ahead and trying to schedule high demand rides for a particular time frame is giving me serious anxiety. I’ve always gone and just walked around (mostly in order) riding things as I got to them. Yes I’ve used fast passes but got them there as needed. I don’t want to run back and forth all over the parks to get to ride popular rides, but how do you know what time you’ll get to that particular location at a particular time when you pre-book?! 🤦🏻‍♀️ Need all the help I can get for a smooth experience where we can ride most rides my son can at least get on without much running back and forth. Thanks ahead! (P.S. Also the idea of getting to the park an hour early and running to popular rides with a 6 year old is giving me anxiety too, I’d like for him to make it through the entire day to see firework shows 😭🤦🏻‍♀️).

What the general rule of thumb is try to follow a path and as soon as you tap in the first fastpass, open the app & try to modify the time (or attraction) of the next or even third fp. If you can't, fill some time either with characters or an attraction that's relatively short wait.
 
We only book one FP at a time, the first one for around park opening, then while in line for that ride, we look for then next one and check wait times. It is rare, we book more than one or two FPs in a day, We don't like being tied down to a schedule and are the rare people who actually don't mind standing in line if we want to ride a ride.
 
I’m going to take my 6 year old son to a Disney for his first trip MLK week. I haven’t been back in 6 years and need tips on how you manage the FastPass reservation system for rides. Pre-booking rides a month ahead and trying to schedule high demand rides for a particular time frame is giving me serious anxiety. I’ve always gone and just walked around (mostly in order) riding things as I got to them. Yes I’ve used fast passes but got them there as needed. I don’t want to run back and forth all over the parks to get to ride popular rides, but how do you know what time you’ll get to that particular location at a particular time when you pre-book?! 🤦🏻‍♀️ Need all the help I can get for a smooth experience where we can ride most rides my son can at least get on without much running back and forth. Thanks ahead! (P.S. Also the idea of getting to the park an hour early and running to popular rides with a 6 year old is giving me anxiety too, I’d like for him to make it through the entire day to see firework shows 😭🤦🏻‍♀️).

In a nutshell, I think your issues would be addressed pretty smoothly by a touring plans subscription. Just plug wdw touring plans into your favorite search engine. I'd suggest spending the money on a subscription. If you sniff around, there are ways to get a discount. No idea how much it costs this year, but I'd guess somewhere around 15 bucks - probably less. The touring plans software is pretty slick. It's not perfect, but I think it's a pretty fantastic tool for developing a gameplan.
 


Agree with PP-I think the personalized touring plans you can create in Touring Plans software is worth the subscription price-you can elect to minimize walking and/or waiting-it suggests which fast passes you should try to get, and will optimize your plan to save you the most time. You can't guarantee your touring will go exactly as the plan they generated, but it's always been pretty darn close for me after multiple uses through the years. I swear by it much more than I do their crowd calendar. They have good YouTube videos on how to make a personalized plan. And nearly everyone on these boards will agree you need a touring plan, having already decided what you want to see and having already become familiar with the park layouts. This is especially true with a 6 year old boy-YouTube videos are also great ways to preview what you may want to ride/see. Have fun!
 

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