Fast Past+ Rider Swap Large Group

[KBStraw]

Hey guys, traveling in July 2021 with a family of 15! I know fast pass isn’t available currently, but hoping by then it will be.
Any recommendations for best way to utilize fast passes and rider swap to get the most out of it?

There will be 15 people, 8 adults, 7 kids, 2 kids who will be 1 & 2.
2 of the adults don’t actually have kids of their own.

Thank you!!!

 

[holden]

If FP+ is available, book your FP+ in order of importance, not chronologically. For example, don't book Day 1 FP+, day 2... Instead, book the most important FP+ first and so on (Flight of Passage, Slinky Dog, etc.). The popular FP+ go fast. If you book chronologically you might miss them.

 

[MNDisneyMommy]

I'm not up to date on this since our kids are old enough to ride with us now, but it used to be that for some rides you could get FP for part of the group for one ride, and use rider swap to get 3 more on the ride with short lines without FP. For the real big hitters like FOP or 7DMT there were reports of them requiring FP for all party members regardless.

I will say in practice, I don't think we ended up doing that particular trick once even though we had trips with little kids and anywhere from 4-8 adults. Downsides of rider swap -

1. It sucks a lot of time, because even if you're skipping lines there is still time spent getting to the CM, getting everything scanned into magic bands, a wait to get on the ride, plus ride time, plus "where are we meeting up" time.
2. If you rope drop and rush to a ride, it can be extremely frustrating to watch hundreds of people streaming past you to get on the ride while the line CMs call over someone to get you set up, you wait for them, then they get all the bands scanned... this happened to us a couple times
3. My groups almost always had some adult who didn't want to ride something, whether they just didn't like it because it made them kinda sick or was too rough (or once we tried it, they were just fine not riding it because of the time involved).
4. Rider swap also had an enforced return window of the current time + standby wait for re-entry. So if you got to Soarin and standby was 45 minutes and it was 10am, your Rider Swap re-entry window was... 10:45 to 11:45 or something like that. It showed up like another fastpass window. So, you couldn't scan for rider swap, ride Soarin with group A, hit up Living with the Land as a whole group, have lunch, and then come back later once the kids were napping or something to re-ride. That essentially forces you to re-ride immediately after the first ride, which in our case took up way too much time when lines were low in the morning. (Soarin was one of the few rides everyone wanted to go on, and while my daughter was happy to get to re-ride, it sucked up nearly our entire morning...ugh).
5. Trying to do this is complicated as heck. Herding a group of people through Disney is not for the faint of heart, and you're going to have enough to do with this person wanting a bathroom break or to shop or whatever than to keep everyone organized about who gets to ride when. If your plan includes kids waiting to ride, they're gonna explode. It's just... rough! Especially if not everyone is a disney expert.

For a group that big, after my personal experience trying to get creative, we just kept it simple.

 

[marcyleecorgan]

Group your parties into smaller groups and do your best to get them in the same time slot. Not everyone has to ride every ride in the exact same order at the same time! With that many adults, you should be able to trade off amongst yourselves the "minding of the littlest ones" for ride lines in the same way you will have to for feeding them, calming tantrums, and going to the washroom with them.

I agree with @MNDisneyMommy , I don't think Rider Swap is going to be any advantage in this instance.