Any last minute fp day advice

[TammyLynn33]

I posted this in regular boards but let’s be honest I just You guys more and trust yous all more
Anyone have any last minute fastpass day advice . I’m so nervous I’ll screw up somehow ha ha
I see all my little symbols on my app for hotel ADRs etc and it says you can make your fast pass selections starting on feb 17 @7 am so that’s all set right?
I have TSL EMM and Mk EMM and a PPO at Epcot to help with those rides..
Any thoughts would be wonderful ...
Thanks guys

 

[ottawamom]

Rank your fastpasses. Go for the hardest to get ones first. You will be bouncing around the website a bit but this is a good way to get those must do, hard to get ones. Then go back and lock up the others. Don't get really fixed on a particular time, you will be able to move most of them around at a later date.

I'm thinking of FOP in particular, a time came up when I first logged on. I wanted a different time than that and while I was searching for it my first time was gone.

Practice navigating the FP system. Unless you go every year it can take a little refresher to get used to where everything is. Do your selections using a computer not your phone and be ready to go (papers spread out over the dining room table, pen in hand) at 6:55am.

I find I go into a zone for about 30 minutes while I make a first run through the reservations. Then I take a breath and sit back and tweek my plans. I find the whole thing very stressful but I have a real sense of accomplishment when it is done. We don't go to Disney every year so I want to make sure I get all the new things done.

 

[FigmentSpark]

Make sure to go for the FP that's hardest to get first.

Be signed in and ready to go just before 7amEST. Actually, I found my clock was 2 minutes slow and I got in when it said 6:58am, so try a few minutes before your clock says 7am, just in case.

If you don't get what you want, move on to the next hardest to get and try to modify.

Oh yeah, to modify, you have to go through your plans, update, then hit "view details" on your FP listing, then modify. DON'T CLICK Cancel at this point. Use the X to get out of that popup, if you need.

Read carefully what you are doing. I almost modified at SDMT to a Barnstormer by accident, because I wasn't looking at the name of the ride, only the FP times. Luckily, I caught myself in time. So be careful.

 

[TammyLynn33]

I agree and as it’s prob our last trip as a family as big kid is turning 17 and .. littles are much littler but as a family..
And like I previously posted this is my first huge expenditure since the D and I don’t want to screw it up..
I think I’ll do FOp, then FEA and then safaris ( our priority as a family dd wants to be a zoologist ) and then go back to our first day in the parks as they should be harder as those dates have been out there longer??

Thank you so much

Rank your fastpasses. Go for the hardest to get ones first. You will be bouncing around the website a bit but this is a good way to get those must do, hard to get ones. Then go back and lock up the others. Don't get really fixed on a particular time, you will be able to move most of them around at a later date.

I'm thinking of FOP in particular, a time came up when I first logged on. I wanted a different time than that and while I was searching for it my first time was gone.

Practice navigating the FP system. Unless you go every year it can take a little refresher to get used to where everything is. Do your selections using a computer not your phone and be ready to go (papers spread out over the dining room table, pen in hand) at 6:55am.

I find I go into a zone for about 30 minutes while I make a first run through the reservations. Then I take a breath and sit back and tweek my plans. I find the whole thing very stressful but I have a real sense of accomplishment when it is done. We don't go to Disney every year so I want to make sure I get all the new things done.

 

[starvenger]

Epcot is probably the last FP you need to do. Really it's just a matter of deciding whether you want to do Frozen, Test Track or Soarin'. Frozen's probably the toughest, but if you're staying the whole day then you can probably get on in the early evening. Spaceship Earth can get crowded, but it's not hard to get a time.

So I'd recommend booking a FP for Test Track or Soarin' for about 45 minutes after rope drop, and heading to the one you didn't FP. By the time you're done, you'll be within the other FP window. You might actually be done early enough that you can do Mission: SPACE (green) or Living With the Land before that FP window is up.
---
When you're actually in the park:

I learned this the hard way. IF you are doing a FP and one person opts out, have them scan for the FP anyway. If you don't, your group won't be considered to have completed all FPs and you won't be able to get more once you've done your first 3.

If this does happen, then find a CM manning a FP and have them adjust that for you.

 

[Silvermist999]

Have a backup plan. For example, my backup plan had alternate days that we could possibly go to AK, if my 1st choice of day didn’t have any availability for FOP/NRJ FP+s. I did up several different scenarios actually so I wasn’t scrambling around reworking my plan at the last minute.

 

[TammyLynn33]

I’ve switched park days a couple times now around EMM and that PPO Epcot breskfast that hopefully will get us a head start to soaring .
I think I’m ok it’s just scary it’s a lot of money to mess up

 

[Donald - my hero]

Don't let yourself get upset if you don't find what you want on your exact day -- you have 60 days to continue to check, tweak and make it all "perfect" I'm not sure if the rumours are true or not but apparently Disney is working towards closing the loopholes people have created by having throw-away reservations that they use to get access to ADRs and then FP+ before they are supposed to and then cancelling before final payment is due. ALSO, check when you're on-site, while you're waiting in line for other rides, the bus/monorail, having a meal if there's something you absolutely want to do and haven't managed to snag it yet. As soon as you scan into your 3rd ride see if you can add another.

I would also recommend paying for the subscription to Touring Plans, you can find codes to bring it down to about $10, so that you can use their Lines APP. Forget trying to use their touring plans (or wasting time creating your own!!) but using the app in the park was a godsend for us when i was trying to wrangle our 4 adult children!! It works on user input and shows ACTUAL wait times as well as the posted times, shows you what FP+ are available at which times. You can then open the MDE app and snag them. They also have a fairly good Dining section that let's you know which locations participate in the dining plan and has menus that are also user provided. If you have anyone who gets antsy standing in line they can also use the app to time your wait and then submit it, the more you submit lets you earn "badges"

OOH one last thought -- you might find it easier to look for 1 or 2 people instead of your entire group. Do this multiple times and so long as they are all within the same hour time frame you can still ride together (this came in handy for trying to get the last minute decision to ride Peter Pan!!)

AND final thought -- pay attention to last minute changes in park hours. When we were there they changed the hours at MK from closing at 9 till midnight and that left a ton of FP+ up for grabs that weren't there moments before.

 

[ottawamom]

Final thought, don't stress if you don't get the FP you want. You're going to Disney and your family will have a wonderful time even if they don't get to ride xxx with a 10 minute wait. For any must do's that you can't get a fastpass for you can always try rope drop on an early entry morning.

 

[starvenger]

Final thought, don't stress if you don't get the FP you want. You're going to Disney and your family will have a wonderful time even if they don't get to ride xxx with a 10 minute wait. For any must do's that you can't get a fastpass for you can always try rope drop on an early entry morning.

I think this is where staying offsite is actually a good thing. I can reasonably assume that things like FoP or SlinkyDog or the Mine Train will be near-fully booked, so I can plan based around that, and not stress about trying to get on those rides. There have almost always been availability for everything else, so I just see what's available and draw up my gameplan from there.

And then change it about 20 times (exception: Epcot) before we actually set foot in a park.

 

[kuhltiffany]

Honestly, don't take it too seriously. I ended up changing almost all of ours from what I originally booked! I would check them the day before, the night before even. People constantly change plans, dining reservations, etc. so you can play with them a lot. If you can't get the time you want, grab it anyway. It's easier to move it up than it is to get some of the harder ones...

 

[samsteele]

This may have been mentioned but always try to schedule the hard FP later in your vacation. eg if arriving on a Monday and staying until the following Monday, try to first book those hard to get FPs for the Fri thru Sun. Don't waste your time when your FP booking window opens looking for Flight of Passage or Seven Dwarfs Mine Train for the first few days of your trip as most of those FPs will have already been taken by guests arriving in the days before you. Since you have likely already booked your ADRs months ahead, and this may dictate which park you are visiting each day based on where you are eating, slotting in those FPs makes life more complicated. WDW doesn't make it easy for us.

 

[ilovetotravel1977]

This may have been mentioned but always try to schedule the hard FP later in your vacation.

This is very important advice! Flight of Passage was #1 on our list, so we did AK on day 6 of 7 and I got 10 FP+ for it at 9:10am! Now, this was in early February, so crowds might have been lower.

But this advice is very consistent throughout the regular boards and seems to be a good strategy.

 

[Marv_barr]

Be sure to use the refresh strategy on MDE. We just left the parks last week and it works. We got several fast passes that I thought we couldn't get

 

[Tinks#2Fan]

And, if you are in the park at the end of the night and have a bit of energy left, they don’t continue to update the wait time but you can still enter the lines right up to official park close time. If you’re open to a bit of a gamble because you don’t really know how long it will be ... we succeeded in getting FoP, entering Standby at about 7:55 With a posted 180 wait time and it took 20 minutes to boarding. And you see a whole new very interesting view on the standby side. And you must see Pandora at night.

 

[Tinks#2Fan]

So with the strategies of establishing your priority list, working backwards over the dates of your trip, knowing you and others can and will make further tweaks and changes, refresh on the fly in the park to see what’s available and ... have a great time!

 

[momof2gr8kids]

So how did you do on your FP selection day? Were you able to get some of your must do's?

 

[damo]

We had really bad luck getting FPs to the most popular rides. We had a party of 8 and didn't get any of the headliners. However, we got most of these rides the day of by refreshing the ap over and over and over and collecting FPs and then moving them around so we were all riding close to the same time. It actually worked really well and if we had realized that, we wouldn't have been to stressed about not getting the good FPs in the first place.

 

[TammyLynn33]

Sorry I didn’t post yesterday I picked up extra shifts over the weekend to help pay for extras..
I did really well. I got FOP and everything else we wanted ( didn’t need TSL or 7 dwarfs bc of EMMs we booked both )
It’s starting to feel real finally ..
Thanks to all of you for all your help