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I'm curious about your FastPass strategies.
Do you like to power through all the standby lines first thing in the morning and save your FastPasses for mid-day when wait times are longer?
or
Do you schedule your FastPasses all before noon so you can start adding more FastPasses (one by one) once you've used up your first three?
or
Is there another strategy you like?
Please share! Thanks!
The tiers have taken away some of the strategy of the prior system, but both of the strategies you list above are valid ones.
I've tended to try to do a combination of both. Do stand-by in the morning when crowds tend to be less, then pick three back-to-back-back in early afternoon to get to the rolling fourth selection by at least late afternoon.
i'm going next month and am doing mainly mornings, with the hope of getting Fast Passes later in the day. It has changed my overall vacation strategy somewhat - we used to do full days, with days "off" in between, but now we are doing more half days. I'm hitting Animal Kingdom and Magic Kingdom twice each to make sure I can do all the essentials with fastpasses.
We always do mornings so we can add to them once they are used. We are not rope drop people, so it does help to have them scheduled starting when we arrive around 10ish.
We usually do stand-by for the first couple of hours that the park is open, and then schedule our FP late-morning/early afternoon.
Although, we've also enjoyed the freedom of doing something else in the morning, and love arriving at the park in the afternoon with our three favourite attractions all queued and ready to go. :)
I have heard chatter about (but have not had the opportunity to try) a strategy, that involves constantly checking the MDE app to try and get earlier FP times. For example if your first FP is at 11 and it is currently 10:15, going into the app and trying to find FPs for 10:20. I hear mixed reviews, some people say it works great and they are getting 6 or 7 fastpasses in a day, others are saying they felt like all they did was look at their phone and didn't feel like they got any value out of it.
I am a firm believer in constantly checking for earlier FastPasses. It's true that you are constantly looking down at your phone (usually while I am in my current FastPass line) perfecting your next FastPass, but I often have a FP waiting for me before I even load onto the attraction of my current FP. It stinks to have to use my phone so much, but it is VERY effective at keeping your FastPasses close together. I have had entire evening/nights where I rode nothing standby.Quote:
Originally Posted by Speedy1998
I have successfully secured 12 FastPasses each in one day for my party of 4 at MK, and have on many other occasions used 6-8 FastPasses in a day, including days with 2 day-of FastPasses for Frozen and 3 for Soarin'.
This is the strategy we use. Yes I use my phone more than I did before FP+, but I don't obsess about it and I certainly don't stay glued to my phone all day.Quote:
Originally Posted by Speedy1998
Let's just say I have a 10:00 FP for RNRC and an 11:00 FP for ToT. As soon as I scan my 10 RNRC, I jump on the app and try to move ToT up as close as possible. If lucky I can move ToT up to a 10:20 slot and go straight there when we exit RNRC. Then at ToT I do the same thing for my next FP once I scan ToT. I do the same thing for all other FPs. As soon as we scan one we pick up the next. It usually doesn't take more than a few minutes because I'll only hit refresh a few times. Definitely not going to spend all my time refreshing. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But we have had luck with this method more often than not.
I get them when I can, preferably earlier the better as long as the distance fits. I'm not sprinting through wdw. I modify my trip plan as needed. I miss the old way. : (
Wow. The strategy of always checking for earlier FPs is very intriguing! We need to try this!
And I'm with Texas211, I really miss the old way!
At times I miss the old way as well. What I don't miss is having to backtrack all over the park. You had to go to the attraction to get the FP then back when it was time to ride.
I also like that we can now choose to go into a park later in the day and have our must dos secured. The old way pretty much meant not getting FP for the main attractions if you came into the park later, the good ones would all be gone for the day already. Since we are not morning (rope drop) people, this new way works well for us when we know we will want to sleep in.
Both ways have their advantages and disadvantages, depending on how going out the parks.