Yep, we've never rope dropped....

[CampbellzSoup]

God bless you....Vacation is my one time I can actually sleep past 6 am

 

[Delirium]

Question those that refresh constantly, Say you just get done riding Peter Pan. Small World is a 20 minute wait in standby but you can grab a FP for Pirates. Which are you doing?

Also, keep in mind that refresh works better with smaller parties. Once you get to 4-5 it becomes tougher.

And, finally. As a family, we enjoy the time spent between attractions. We can talk about what we just did or what we're going to do. That does not work as well when one of us (or more) has our head buried in our phone.

We take advantage of both rope drop and late nights. We go once every 2-3 years. We are able to do everything we want in a 7-8 day trip. I guess since we don't go all the time, we enjoy absorbing all the little details. We don't ever wait more than 20-25 minutes to ride something, but we're not going to walk halfway across the park either just to grab a 4th FP. If we grab an extra FP, it's usually done on the bus/monorail/boat while we are park-hopping.

 

[Babe the Blue Ox]

I agree. They admitted that to us last year when we hopped in the Flight of Passage line about 5 minutes prior to park close. We'd not been able to get a fast pass and this was our last chance. The posted wait was something ridiculous like 150 minutes and I bet we waited no more than 40. When we were standing at the bottom of that ramp to go up to the rooms, I mentioned to the CM that it went way faster than we thought it would and she nicely admitted "ya we do that hoping that some people won't bother"

We first read about Disney’s “Line Stacking” process in the 1999 Unofficial Guide so it’s been going on for a while.

For FOP, our best result was a 17 minute actual wait with a 110 minute posted wait shortly before closing recently.

 

[Klayfish]

God bless you....Vacation is my one time I can actually sleep past 6 am

Yep. We get up at 4am

Question those that refresh constantly, Say you just get done riding Peter Pan. Small World is a 20 minute wait in standby but you can grab a FP for Pirates. Which are you doing?

Also, keep in mind that refresh works better with smaller parties. Once you get to 4-5 it becomes tougher.

And, finally. As a family, we enjoy the time spent between attractions. We can talk about what we just did or what we're going to do. That does not work as well when one of us (or more) has our head buried in our phone.

Whichever we feel like doing. Small World is super easy to get a FP+ for, so if they want to ride it, I'd grab that for "right now" since it's right across from PP.

We're a party of 5 and have pretty good success.

Everyone says that "We don't want to have our head buried in a phone, we want to talk". Reality is that refreshing is such an easy and mindless activity that it doesn't require your face to be buried in the phone. I am a full participant in family conversations while refreshing. Plus, our kids actually like to watch the refresh process...it's a fun game. Almost like pulling the slot machine handle....c'mon lucky 7s!!!!!

 

[chris benton]

Plus, our kids actually like to watch the refresh process...it's a fun game. Almost like pulling the slot machine handle....c'mon lucky 7s!!!!!

FP hunting can be an absolute blast. You can watch for other people doing it, and seeing the fistpumps.
I want to get the kids involved when they know how to employ ALL of the tricks, and just give them the reigns. Wife 1.0 got on board last trip so I wasn't the only one doing the hunting. I showed her a few tricks, like splitting the party up and just gunning for overlapping times, grabbing first, then modifying, figuring out which way was faster for HER (She has the Iphone Lemming or whatever, I'm a Droid guy,) and she picked it up super fast. I want the kids to be able to just log in, and then just say "follow me" and lead us to the next FP surprise. I think we'd have a blast just taking turns hunting and burning through FP, trying to one up each other.

Most of the time, being buried in your phone -not so much. Some of the good ones will take 5 or 10 concentrated minutes if you are hardcore ONLY looking for a specific one, like FOP. But finding decent fp shouldn't take more than a few sec of refreshing. I usually schedule low wait attractions or shows after hardcore early am "touring," specifically to give me time to hunt for high demand attractions while waiting for a show to start.

Also, to reply to Delirium:
"Say you just get done riding Peter Pan. Small World is a 20 minute wait in standby but you can grab a FP for Pirates. Which are you doing?"

Well, for sure I'm simply skipping IASW like a normal human being would. That thing is an absolute freakshow.

 

[Babe the Blue Ox]

Question those that refresh constantly, Say you just get done riding Peter Pan. Small World is a 20 minute wait in standby but you can grab a FP for Pirates. Which are you doing?

Also, keep in mind that refresh works better with smaller parties. Once you get to 4-5 it becomes tougher.

We would take the Pirates FP. Why wait 20 minutes for Small World when I know it will be a walk-on later in the day.

We’re a family of 5 and I find it very easy to score multiple FPs. And it’s much easier for me to get all 5 at once vs trying to split up the group. That’s just too hard.

 

[SMRT-1]

I think that the point trying to be made is that lines aren't the only place that you can waste time in the parks. Getting whatever FP+ is currently available doesn't save you as much time if you have to walk half a mile to the other side of the park to get to it. If you end up crisscrossing back and forth across the park to get to all your FP+, then you're wasting time in walking, not to mention the extra toll it takes on your feet and legs. That's why I prefer rope drop (or late night when available), since it gives you the flexibility to do attractions in way that is efficient from both a wait time and a walking perspective.

 

[YesterDark]

I'll have to disagree with you here. We find the early mornings to be way too crowded and stressful. Fortunately, the rope droppers will eventually tire and head out, leaving the parks wide open in the evenings.

Here's an example from a recent visit to MK from 8 pm to midnight. 16 rides in 4 hours without any FPs. I can give you several more examples from the other parks if you're interested.

Big Thunder 3x
Splash Mtn 2x
Space Mtn 2x
Mine Train
Pirates
Jungle Cruise
Haunted Mansion
Pooh
Peter Pan
Speedway
Barnstormer 2x

We also watched the fireworks and had a couple of Dole Whips.

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I was there in august with EMH at night from 8ish to 12am and I maybe did 3-4 rides because the park was crowded. More crowded nearly than any time that week.

 

[KingLlama]

Yea, we're generally able to get somewhere between 10-15 FPs each day. My record as a solo was 19 in one day last year, not including 3 rides on RnR and 3 rides on TOT in the first hour without FP that morning, that was a great day!
We're generally able to get at least 3-4 rides done in the first 1-1.5 hours of park open, usually more, but after that I don't ride anything without a FP.

WHAT IS THIS SORCERY?

 

[Babe the Blue Ox]

I was there in august with EMH at night from 8ish to 12am and I maybe did 3-4 rides because the park was crowded. More crowded nearly than any time that week.

Evening EMH does add another element to the crowd level.

We like to hop into a park that had morning EMH. Most of those guests are long gone by night time.

 

[Babe the Blue Ox]

WHAT IS THIS SORCERY?

The known record is 21 FPs in a single day for a party of 2. The most we’ve ever done is 13, but we rarely arrive much before 11 am.

 

[YesterDark]

WHAT IS THIS SORCERY?

Refreshing. It's pretty easy. When I go, I never do stand by lines.

 

[Klayfish]

I think that the point trying to be made is that lines aren't the only place that you can waste time in the parks. Getting whatever FP+ is currently available doesn't save you as much time if you have to walk half a mile to the other side of the park to get to it. If you end up crisscrossing back and forth across the park to get to all your FP+, then you're wasting time in walking, not to mention the extra toll it takes on your feet and legs. That's why I prefer rope drop (or late night when available), since it gives you the flexibility to do attractions in way that is efficient from both a wait time and a walking perspective.

Sure, totally agree. But there's no reason to criss cross the park. Just refresh for the nearby ride you want to get on and go ride. Pretty easy to do. For example, when we ride Splash, our next FP+ we find is for BTMRR.

 

[KingLlama]

One time we got to MK at rope drop and I let my (then) six-year-old choose our first attraction and she picked Philharmagic and I've never felt like more of a parenting failure.

We were the only ones in the entire theatre. Even the CM was like "are you sure this is what you wanna do NOW?".

 

[Unvoiced_Apollo]

One time we got to MK at rope drop and I let my (then) six-year-old choose our first attraction and she picked Philharmagic and I've never felt like more of a parenting failure.

We were the only ones in the entire theatre. Even the CM was like "are you sure this is what you wanna do NOW?".

It's never a failure if your kid is happy (and not spoiled).

 

[SMRT-1]

Just refresh for the nearby ride you want to get on and go ride.

That's great if there are FP+ available. What if there are no FP+ available for a nearby ride, though?

 

[Unvoiced_Apollo]

That's great if there are FP+ available. What if there are no FP+ available for a nearby ride, though?

Keep refreshing, or get an FP for the "soonest" ride (earliest FP) time.

 

[SMRT-1]

One time we got to MK at rope drop and I let my (then) six-year-old choose our first attraction and she picked Philharmagic and I've never felt like more of a parenting failure.

We were the only ones in the entire theatre. Even the CM was like "are you sure this is what you wanna do NOW?".

This makes me think of a video that Touring Plans did to demonstrate the effect a few minutes have on wait times at rope drop for 7DMT. On his way back to 7DMT, Len saw that there were people on the teacups at park open, and then, after a bit of a disapproving sigh, said, "You go, Mad Tea Partiers. Live your best life."

 

[disneycountrygirl]

If you are a party of 9 like we were this last trip, getting FPs same day is no easy feat, which made rope drop pretty important to us. I can see using the heck out of the MDE FP refresh when you are a party of 2.

 

[Klayfish]

That's great if there are FP+ available. What if there are no FP+ available for a nearby ride, though?

Dunno...honestly it's never been much of an issue for us. It takes a few minutes sometimes, but we always get something nearby. You'd be amazed how well it works.