What's Your Fastpass+ Strategy?

[Lizzie]

I have been reading the boards and there seem to be two Fastpass + strategies out there.


First one is to get them in the early afternoon and than you can get a 4th after they have been used.

Second get them for the park you plan to be at in the late afternoon and just wait stand bye in the mornings when the lines are usually less busy.

Would love to hear pros and cons of both.

[CleveSJM]

We basically did a 3rd option I think. We got them for when we wanted to ride the ride. So it was mixed up quite a bit. We don't go when it's very busy so doing standby never really is a problem for us. But we'd do our favorites early (Toy Story Mania, 7 Dwarfs) and then do the shows or rollercoasters in the afternoon evening when we like to do those. Probably didn't maximize our FP+'s but I think expecting a good 4th FP+ is probably not a good thing to expect.

[Hog]

We always book our fast passes for after 4:30. We park hop every day and plan our lunch and dinner based on what park we will be in. So we go to one park in the morning then a 2nd park with FP+ at night. We tried to get a 4th FP multiple times but there are never any good ones left or they are available to late in the evening when we will be heading back to the resort anyways.

[Disneylovescompany]

If you take advantage of EMHs, arent afraid to get up early, and save the FPs for a later day park, then youll save time. We go a ton and generally dont rush to do anything anymore. But, we have found the FP+ actually works better for us because we plan things and are very methodical about anything we want to do and now can spend other time doing other things we ordinarily wouldnt or just enjoy the people watching and walking around.

[John]

If you take advantage of EMHs, arent afraid to get up early, and save the FPs for a later day park, then youll save time. We go a ton and generally dont rush to do anything anymore. But, we have found the FP+ actually works better for us because we plan things and are very methodical about anything we want to do and now can spend other time doing other things we ordinarily wouldnt or just enjoy the people watching and walking around.

Think this is great advice. Get up early, ride some of the big rides before the rest of the world wakes up and schedule FP for late morning or early afternoon. If you are staying at a Disney resort, consider taking a 2-3 hour break around lunch or shortly after to enjoy the resort pool, then go back around dinner time and have energy to tackle the parks late night. In that case, I would schedule my FP for the evening.

[Hammer]

It is no secret that I am not an early riser on vacation, be it WDW or anywhere else. I am not fully awake on a normal work day until 10 AM . So the approach we take is we schedule our fast passes for early afternoon. We ride the rides with lower waits whenever we get there, nosh on some lunch, then use our FP+. Go back to our DVC villa, relax for a few hours, then go to dinner. Then we will usually go to the park with evening EMH or whichever park is open latest.

[cuteduck223]

We typically do around lunch time if we're staying in the same park or returning to the same park after a break. We go to rope drop do whatever we want early..then fl around 11,12,1 (going to the 1st at the end of the window, the 2nd at the start of its window--grab lunch and then do the 3rd --grab a 4th fp for the time we're returning after our break. OR we get them starting around 3 at our second park.

As has always been true-it depends on your touring style, which rides are important to your family, and how willing you are to spend your days planning around lots of things. Unless its Christmas/Easter week, the lines are never what I would consider crazy.

[manutd1]

As always..avoid era magic hour parks..they WILL be busier. Plan around EMH days. (IE, Magic Kingdom goto on tues,weds, friday) for a given 7 day trip. Those are weekday non EMH days and WILL be less crowded. GET your fast pass selections all done before 2pm. Then you have rest of the day to choose 4th and so on. I don't waste FP on parades....its just not needed. We just returned on the 9th. I got 6 FP total everyday we were in the M.K. Epcot and A.K. along with the studios we just used the first 3. Later in the day...lines were short.
My best advise is to book early fp selections. Make the 3rd done by 2pm or so. Stay until the park closes. All parks are usually very light crowds the last few hours before closing. Also, we used the single rider line for test track and rode it 4 times. We are a family of four. YES we did and you will get split up...sort of. We rode in different cars but always at the same time. In other words we only had to wait on each other to ride for no more than minute or so. Splitting up is not a big deal. It works great on Rock n Roller also. I don't recommend using FP for TT due to single rider moving very fast. Test Track, I recommend certainly getting a FP.
I love FP+ it is a fantastic tool if you use it to the max. There is nothing better than knowing you have 3 rides booked before 3 pm say and you arrive at the park at 11am when your first FP starts at say 1130. It just makes for a great planned day.
We love it.
Note: IMHO, the best spot for wishes is anywhere in fantasyland. Its right above you and thats awesome! No FP for that!!
One more thing...and I apologize for such a terrible paragraph of writing...Im in a hurry..,but use the 3rd and so on FP as soon as the window opens. That way, you can another that much sooner. We used the pool mid afternoon also for a couple hours...then back to the M.K. at 5pm till close. We got so much accomplished! Had a great time!

[tjstrike]

We're DVCers so we've been multiple times, don't do rope drop and we don't stay at the parks all day. If we have ADR's we plan the FP's with the ADR's for parks and times so we don't have to waste a lot of time traveling back and forth from the resort to the parks. If I plan a late night at MK (for example), then the next day my FP's won't be until after lunch.

[Maddie]

I find nothing "good" is available for the 4th fastpass so we generally don't schedule around picking that up. Last trip, we would do 2 of the fastpasses for morning around 10-11. First thing, we would go wait in line for all our favorites, and then we would get to ride them again with our fastpasses. The 3rd we would either get for after lunch or for nighttime when we came back in so we could ride a popular attraction again.

[Lizzie]

We are early risers. We like to get to parks for morning extra magic hours. We like to eat lunch at the park we are at and than head back to the hotel for a swim when the day starts getting hot.

If I was going to book passes for the morning when do lines start picking up? And how spread out do I need to book the passes.

I think we are planning on hitting every park in the morning at some point in our trip and than the night time park is where we have our dinner reservations.

So I imagine we will get up do all we can before the heat hits and the nighttime park see the shows and do what we can.

[MNNHFLTX]

Think this is great advice. Get up early, ride some of the big rides before the rest of the world wakes up and schedule FP for late morning or early afternoon.

This was our approach on our last trip. We never had any luck getting 4th Fastpasses for anything we wanted, so we would just use late afternoon to stroll around the shops or parks and eat an early supper. I'm not one for going back to the resort in the afternoon and then return to the parks in the evening, so this made for nice way to wind down the day.

[John]

This was our approach on our last trip. We never had any luck getting 4th Fastpasses for anything we wanted, so we would just use late afternoon to stroll around the shops or parks and eat an early supper. I'm not one for going back to the resort in the afternoon and then return to the parks in the evening, so this made for nice way to wind down the day.

I like your thinking...

[Jeff]

I definitely agree with the "get to parks early" folks and use fast passes late morning or early afternoon.

[AndrewJackson]

Some days, we sleep in, hit the pool, and then do dinner and three FP+s at a park. IMO, there is no point in trying to get a 4th FP at HS or EP. With tiering, there is nothing left that we want. I mean, who wants a 4th FP+ for Imagination? It's almost embarrassing to get in the FP+ queue there.

We are planning on getting to MK at 8:00 AM for BOG, then hit most of FL without FP+s. We then have an FP+ for Splash, BTM, and JC. Our plan is to then get a 4th FP for early evening, head back to the resort for a swim break, then come back to use the FP+ and get dinner.

[busterthebronco]

We book FP+ for afternoons/nights.
you simply dont need them if you get up early.