Thanks to the miracle of my throwaway room — boo! hiss! bad person! — my 60 day window has now opened for the first day of my trip. Because it’s only a one-night stay, I’ll have to book each day separately, one day at a time.
So today was the FPPs for arrival day. Here’s what I learnt:
They’re not joking about the window opening at 7am EST. It opened at exactly that time. Not a second before or after.
I preferred using the app on my phone than the website, having done some trial runs earlier in the week.
It was more stressful than I thought. None of the specific times I wanted were available — for BTMR, Splash and Space — but I got close and then modified them all once I’d at least got something locked in.
The old modify trick does work. I don’t know how the FPP system is coded, but you seem to get a random selection every time you force it to refresh the times.
I’m slightly surprised that even at Day 60 there was (very slightly) limited availability.
But I ended up with what I wanted to within 5 minutes of what I’d planned.
This is the easy day. Later in the week I’ve got AK and DHS (TSL) bookings to try to make. It’s going to be a rocky ride.
The experts were right. I thought I’d been clever and I actually booked the throwaway room for 14 days before TSL opening day, thinking I’d get 60+14 on TSL. Nope. It’s length of stay, not length of ticket. Boo.
The experts were also right. Once I’d qualified for 60 days (last week some time) the 60 day window then advanced by one day each day.
I can never remember - if your stay is long enough, is it limited by the length of tickets (in this case 14 days as you are using the “special” Brit tickets), or is there a hard “+10” limit like for ADRs?
I think the real question will be if your plan will remain in place, such that you still require the 6:30 and not, in actuality, the 6:25 you have. Take another look, you may see I’m right.
I think you get a full 14 days, limited by ticket length. So, if you had 14 days of park tickets attached to your MDE account and had a 14 night stay, you would be able to make all 14 days at once.
But what if you have a 20 night stay, and 2 sets of 10 day tickets? Do the tickets combine to give you availability up to 20 days out? Or is there a hard limit out there?
I’ve actually done TPs for my MK days. I adjusted the FPP times to the ugly ones and it made no difference. My scheduled arrivals at each ride were in the middle of the windows. So all is well.
It’s interesting (to me!) what times I think are ugly. 7:30pm is better than 7:25pm, but 7:25pm is better than 7:35pm. 9:05pm is just horrific!
I’d guess that this isn’t all that uncommon. Mathematicians have a concept of the “elegance” of a solution — and some forms are certainly more elegant than others.
Technical example Ask a mathematician what the sine of 45 degrees is, and what the sine of 60 degrees is. Then ask them if they’ve been consistent in the way they’ve answered these two questions. My guess is that they will not have been. Their answer to sine 45 degrees will have an irrational denominator, whereas for sine 60 degrees they’ll give an answer whose denominator has been rationalised. The reason? The rationalised version of sine 45 degrees is “ugly” compared with the unrationalised version.
What’s the scoop on transfering your booking info and fast passes from your “throw away” hotel over to whatever hotel your actually staying at?
Can you do it anytime?
Only when your 30 days out?
Presumably it hangs onto all your fastpass bookings?
I’m not planning on doing this or anything, but if my hotel comes out with a cheaper price right before my trip (as they sometimes do depending how booked up they are) just curious what my options are.
Then, in line with how we think of ADRs, we could say that FPP reservations are “60+13”:
Like ADRs, they are subject to a length of stay limit - this determines how far out you can book
Like ADRs, days beyond +13 (provided that they are still within your stay) are booked on a rolling basis, e.g. +14 is booked on Day 59, +15 is booked on Day 58, etc.
Unlike ADRs, they are also subject to a number of tickets limit (note that this limits the number of days of FPPs that you can book, but not how far out you can book)
I have a “real” hotel booking for my last night, which qualifies me for 60 day FPPs for my last two days. My throwaway booking is intended to give me 60 days for each day of my holiday up to my last day. Both of these bookings are in my MDE. My understanding is that once I’ve qualified for 60 days for my “real” booking, my FPPs are safe and I can cancel my throwaway booking. Unlike in the US, I will lose some money when I cancel the booking. And to anyone judging me, I’ll be cancelling the booking about seven weeks in advance of my arrival date, giving plenty of time for someone else to book it.
Be careful. We had one day booked last year and I wasn’t able to book any of the days before that in the 60 day window. Are you SURE you’ll be able to keep the others once your window opens?
