Just wanted to thank everyone here who has shared info and experiences when it came to booking our FPPs. It helped immensely this morning as my oldest daughter and I frantically tried to get everything we had planned to grab when our fast pass reservation time opened up.
The only thing we couldn’t get was SDD, which we didn’t really think was possible with our schedule on visiting HS (60+2). So right now TP has us waiting a long time for SDD but the rest of the day looks like basically walk on.
That’s interesting, I’m doing FP tomorrow and I’m doing HS on 60+2. I’ve been tracking availability for SDD for a party of 4 and it hasn’t been available till +3, so I’ve planned without it, but today I checked at about 7.30 EST and it was showing availability at +2. Though no way of knowing what time. I’m now scrambling to put together an alternative plan so that I can check for it first just in case! If it’s not available till 8pm at night though, I won’t bother.
@missoverexcited To be honest, theoretically we could have grabbed a 6:40pm FastPass for SDD but I didn’t want to try to modify that into a better time (and my husband and I have a reservation for CG that evening that I’m not missing to ride SDD)…and when my daughter overruled me (she was grabbing for HS) she was booted out of the Disney system and then that reservation was gone when she was able to re-enter. (We are a party of 5 if that gives helpful info). She had a bit of a mini-meltdown on how to re-enter the system (the FastPass pages aren’t exactly intuitive if there is a problem)…while I was saying, “I’ve got to get FoP, I’ll help you in just a minute!!”
@OBNurseNH I have to admit I set up our strategy for grabbing fast passes based basically on what you shared in a post from last year (I think) which recommended doing your high-value target FPPs first. I started on our AK day (60+5) and were able to get FoP, Everest and KRR exactly when we wanted. Oldest was simultaneously doing HS (you already heard our SDD issues, lol) but was able to grab TSM, ToT and Star Tours.
We then were able to pick/choose for the remaining days in a more relaxed manner…EP and MK had plenty of what we were looking to book fairly early in the day.
I have already started modifying our FPPs so that I can fine tune the efficiency of our touring plans…and of course my husband and my children have been laughing at me throughout this whole experience because they don’t understand why I have been obsessing over getting the first 3 fast passes of the day as early as possible so we can continue to grab and go the rest of the day. What they don’t yet appreciate is how much our TS reservations and our FPPs have been chosen to give us the optimum blend of efficiency through the parks and ample time to rest and recharge.
If only they could appreciate Disney planning the way I do…thanks again to everyone in this community that helped make this so much less stressful than it would have been had I not found this site!
I’d have skipped the 6.40 too. We have an ADR at that exact time. My plan right now is to get the others early and try for a same day one but I’ll see what pops up tomorrow - I’m going to look for SDD then FOP, nothing else should be challenging.
This makes me feel better because I will admit I was second guessing the ‘discussion’ my daughter and I had about SDD…especially since I kept thinking, “I probably could have modified that” but I was worried about basically locking us into a 3rd FPP that we wouldn’t use and then having trouble park hopping that day if we chose to do so.
We have reservations for a PPO breakfast at H&V with F! FP included (we were able to get free dining for this trip, so the package seemed like a no-brainer for the extra FastPass and not having to wait in the heat for rope drop from 8-8:45 or so - our reservation is for 8:05am), so I think our kids will watch F! plus SW that evening but my husband and I have a romantic reservation for 2 at CG that night (woot!).
This is the first time we are going to Disney with ‘big kids’ who can roam the parks without us. Sweet, sweet freedom!
Other than the fact that the system glitched, this is comforting, because I also have my HS on 60+2, but I’m planning on doing TSL in the evening so in my touring plans I have SDD at 630. I only have 2 people to book for, so I’m hoping I luck out. That will be my first try, then I’ll go for FOP at 60+7, SDMT at 60+5, and FEE at 60+3. Then hopefully the rest will just fall into place!
We chose park hoppers so we could run around in the evening to see stuff that we have heard is better at night (Pandora, TSL) and/or see evening fireworks at different park than the one we did during the day but I am not sure we will actually get a chance to see everything at night we hope to.
Two of our kids are doing DAH Villains one night we are there (which two is still up in the air), and then we also purchased 2 tickets to DAH AK but those are not allocated to anyone specific as of yet. Either it will be another evening for husband and I, or two of the kids can run around eating all the ice cream available while riding Everest over and over. I won’t know if those DAH tickets are brilliant or crazy until we get there, I guess.
I’m planning very similar, most evenings/nights are free so if we want to hop, we can. That 60+2 day at HS is really the only one we’re locked in at, because that’s the only day we’re planning on going to HS. In my TP’s, all other FPP are down for first thing in the am to give us ability to grab SDFPP or park hop if we get bored. I struggled with planning TSL at night, but everything I’ve heard, the area has little shade and gets really hot, so I thought we might do better in the evening. I would love to do a DAH, but unfortunately it’s just not in the budget. It might be something to plan for for next time though!
If you have 2 people trying to make FPP reservations - are they both logged into the same account or 2 different acounts but part of friends and family? Wondering as im getting DH up to do this with me when our day arrives… any help would be appreciated
We were logged into same account (different computers, obvs), worked just fine…for everything except the attempted SDD FastPass. But I think that was just a glitch because the rest was super smooth.
It took about 20 minutes from start to finish for a 10 day trip. And don’t forget you can modify the fast passes after grabbing, so do your best to quickly grab what looks pretty good and then you can spend time finessing the FastPass times after you have grabbed what you wanted.
