Adding Friends who do not have hotel Reservation more than 60 days out

Walt Disney World
1

What is the rule for adding people to your FastPass party if everybody in the party does not have a Disney hotel reservation?

My family had been planning a trip for the Fourth of July holiday. We are not staying onsite. However, our friends just told us they were also planning to go to see the fireworks. They are staying at the Dolphin. We connected with them on the MDE app. Last night, when I went to book FastPasses for everybody, I saw that I could book on the 3rd and 4th, even those were 31 and 32 days out respectively. I’m assuming it let me do that because my friends are in the party and have a hotel reservation. However, today, I got an email saying action may be required on the Fastpasses and they may be canceled on the 4th. However, the 4th would put us in the 30 day window for both days anyways. Should I be concerned? I’m within the 30 days for the 3rd. Should I just update all of those Fastpasses so they’re saved? Is there a chance they’ll get canceled later in the day on the 4th? If its easier, I’d just cancel or update everything ASAP.

Thanks

2

I’m surprised you were able to book for everyone.

If your friends are the ones who are staying onsite, they could have booked FPs for you at their 60 day mark. But yours would likely not be modify-able until you were inside your 30 day mark. That seemed to have been the restriction put in place.

Now if the system let you book, that is odd. That sounds like a glitch to me. And would explain why you now have an email about them.

If I were you, I’d cancel and rebook within the 30 day mark. There have been reports of people losing FPs within the 30 days if they were booked beyond 30 days out.

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3

I booked because for whatever reason my son was not showing up for them to add. I texted my friend about it and she said the hotel reservation got unlinked and they got the notification too. She said she relinked the hotel, so hopefully we’re good to go now. If not, they’ll get canceled tomorrow and hopefully we can still re-snag everything.

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4

Your friends should have linked their Dolphin reservation first on MDE as they are eligible for 60 days FastPass. Hope it all works out either way though.

5

Thanks. They had it linked. They said it got unlinked after I made the bookings, which triggered the notification. It’s been relinked. I may just cancel and rebook the reservations for the 3rd as we’re in the 30 day window now. Do you know if I need to cancel and rebook or will modifying suffice?

6

I’d call if you like your FPP selections. I’m sure they can mark it as safe if you explain what is happening.

7

Thanks. I may do that if only to get clarification on the policy for when your whole group isn’t staying on site. I figured it was fine since it let me make bookings for 30+ days when they were in the party, but would not give me the extra days when they were not. I figured the policy would be as long as somebody in the party is staying on site, the whole party can be booked 60 days out.

8

I just wanted to give an update. After texting with my friend and playing around with it a little, I ended up not calling. When I played around with the FastPasses, I found that it would let me book on the last day of the trip if I included my friends in the party, but not if it was just my family. That made me feel pretty good about it just being the hotel getting unlinked. The email said the FastPasses would be canceled on the 4th if we didn’t correct whatever issue there was. Well this morning on the 5th, we still have all the FastPasses booked! It appears that the policy (or at least how the system works) is that as long as you have somebody in your party staying on-site, the party can be booked for FastPasses in the 60 day window. Thought that may be useful information for everybody. Cheers!

9

The two conditions of this “umbrella” system for friends and family are:

  1. All offsite guests must be in an FP group with at least one onsite guest. Previously you could get around this, now you can’t.

  2. You cannot modify the FPs for the offsite group, at least until the 30 day mark.
    And since the offsite group must be with an onsite guest, this means that the onsite guests in the group cannot modify either, unless they drop the offsite friends.

For anyone who alters plans a lot, these restrictions would be a huge PITA.

10

Thanks for the clarifications! That’s helpful to know. We were only one day out from the 30 day window and didn’t really choose any really tough to get FastPasses, so it wasn’t a huge deal for us.