I booked free dining in August but will be arriving a day early. For a couple of extra dollars I can get a 9th day in the park. I know I have to go to guest relations for the first-day park entry since I won’t be checked in yet. Does this mean I can’t get fastpasses for that first day?
If you have a 9 day ticket on the my Disney experience app Starting on that day then you can book fast passes in the app now. You might have to move the start date on your ticket depending your ticket.
If you have a package booked with tickets (which I assume is the case, since you have free dining), you cannot activate the tickets early.
I’m not sure from your question is whether you are looking to use your ticket the day before your package starts. If so, then technically the answer is no. You would be relying on some pixie dust from Guest Services to allow you to do that. This is a change that happened with the new date-based tickets, and it’s a big change in that many people were used to being able to do that in person when they arrived.
But when you say you’ll have to to go to Guest Services, that’s confusing me. If you have a package, you’re good to go to the parks on Day 1 of your package. Which is why I’m not sure whether you are wanting to start your ticket before your package starts.
To extend the length of your package ticket by a day, I think you will either have to extend the package or add a single day ticket to MDE.
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Sorry I should have been more clear 
Package (free dining, room, tickets) booked for Aug 29. We arrive Aug 28. I can not extend my pkg to the 28th as free dining wasn’t offered for that date. I read somewhere that I can go to Guest Services at the park on the 28th and they will give us paper tickets since we won’t have magic bands or be checked in yet. Is this not true anymore?
So you want to extend your tickets by a day, correct?
As far as I understand it, since they introduced date-based tickets, you cannot activate package tickets early. That was s a big change that was communicated to travel agents and was a major talking point for a while. (That was back in October 2018).
It may be that you can do so, by doing as you said. I haven’t heard of people being able to on here or elsewhere, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done.
As far as magic bands go, if you have old ones you could use those. Otherwise you will get a plastic RFID card, not paper tickets.
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I think you are correct. I do not believe you can activate package-based tickets earlier than the start date of the package.
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