Love the site (thats why i’m here)…But my family can only travel on vacation/holiday weeks…If we have 1 day in each park and risk missing the top rides at HS b we dont wake up early it negates the reason we go…
So if we wake up at 9:30 on a HS day and miss the 7am, then we miss SDD, ROTR and likely miss ToT b thats gone by my 120 min rule…Thats a non starter for us…If i’m paying all that money to go stay in a DIsney hotel, i want guarantees i can get on the rides without waiting 2+ hours
I loved original fastpass! I was the designated “runner” until DD got faster and i got slower. We would ride each mountain at least twice sometimes more! Touring plans were amazing back then particularly in MK. They would tell you when the FP would run out for the day and when the return time you wanted would be. I hated fast pass plus. I learned to make the best of it, but it was a bummer.
We all have to find what works for our family.
For me, I calculate what it costs per hour. Any hour the park is open and I’m not in it, I am throwing away money. It has been established on these boards that mine is not at all the typical method to determine ROI. Thankfully, as homeschoolers, we were usually able to go down 10-14 days and spread out our park days and minimizing back to back. We saved money by staying off property and buying longer tickets.
We all measure vacation “success” differently.
(Cruises by far deliver the best ROI for my crew.)
You’re not alone in missing the original FP. And can I just say that I love RD, so am thankful that so many folks don’t like to get there early!
Also, I was able to use Genie+ to stack for later in the day, but it was at the cost of studying ThrillData daily for weeks prior to our trip.
Waking up an hour after park open on a holiday and wanting to ride RotR with minimal wait is a tough one. Best hack is ask someone back home to book the $ILL for you at 7AM. BIL’s exist for this sort of thing 
I’d do it for my wife’s brother but I might make him crisscross the park a bit 
Didn’t the clock above the FP distribution kiosk have the return time posted so if it didn’t work for you, you wouldn’t grab the FP?
Yes it did. But if you didn’t get it, you had run over there for nothing and wasted that time.
Yes…there was the clock…but if I was in Tomorrowland, and I ran to Fantasyland to grab a FP, I could arrive and find out that the time is wrong for what we needed it to be. So, all that running was often for naught.
If we waited until we arrived in Fantasyland, the time would be much further in the day, so we could GET a FP, but we’d end up moving on to, say, Adventureland, and then have to backtrack to Fantasyland to use our FP…at which point, we often would be too tired and end up skipping it.
So, there were times it worked, but often times it was just a lot of running around needlessly. I despised the entire system.
original FP was the most inefficient and useless system they’ve ever had
I really don’t like the current system either (especially the 7:00 am part), but I don’t think it as a dire as you make it out. When we went to HS DW and I woke up at 6:50 am to book SDD and Rise, but we let the kids sleep in. We arrived at HS around 11:15 am and were able to get LL/ILL for SDD, Rise, MMRR, TSM, A2S and Star Tours. We also could have also had a LL for MFSR in addition to the others, but decided to skip it this time. We were not able to get a LL for ToT, but could have had it instead of MMRR. It was not a holiday week so I don’t know how much tougher it would have been to get those during a holiday week.
Ultimately, there is too much demand for the top tier rides (especially at HS) so no matter how the available seats are allocated, most guests are not going to be able to to ride all the top tier attractions without some long lines.
Based on the fact that lines for the top tier rides are usually at or near their peak within 30 minutes of official opening (and the top ride at each park hits peak right at official opening) I’d say more than 10% of guests are rope dropping. They may not all be getting there 30 minutes before anyone can get in, but they’re definitely not showing up late, for the most part.
The biggest problem with pre-selection of times (once you get past the fact that they’d have to go back to allowing pre-purchase of G+) is that the top tier G+ rides would certainly be sold out in pre-selection (just like FPP was consistently in the 60 days+stay range for some rides), meaning that there’s no reason for offsite guests to ever buy G+. When it was a free perk Disney wasn’t losing anything by offsite guests being shut out of FPP for those rides, but now they would be losing big. If they held back a significant number of reservations for day-of booking then you’d be gaining very little, because you’d be exacerbating the pre-selection limitation issue so most everyone would end up getting up at 7am to try again (only for a smaller pool of reservations) at least some days anyway.
Were you using a TP? I was not in charge of our one and only WDW visit during the FP days, but I recall my brother knowing exactly when to get which FP and what the return time would be (generally speaking). Seemed like it was spot on too, at least from my perspective.
You’ll never get that. That’s simply asking too much, unless they go to a system like UXP at Universal and offer it free to deluxe resort guests, which they clearly are not willing to do. Even if they wanted to, I honestly don’t think they could offer it to all deluxe resort guests, even if nobody else was able to buy it… they just have too much deluxe resort capacity, and it’s always full lately. They’d have to limit it to only club level or something.
I had that with FP+
With FPP you could only choose 1 ride in the top tier, so you had to wait in line for everything else in that tier. You were absolutely not guaranteed to not wait for any rides. If they had FPP at Epcot right now you’d be choosing between Remy, Frozen, and Test Track… their waits today, on a day that’s just CL6, are 90-110 minutes, 75-95 minutes, and 60-75 minutes. On a high CL day it’s very likely they’ll all be in the 2 hour range… on Friday, which was a CL9, Test Track had an average wait of 110 minutes.
With G+, on the other hand, if you’d gotten up at 7 on Friday to make that first LL for Remy then you’d have been able to make your next selection at 10:30, and there were still times left for both Frozen and Test Track, so you’d have been able to save the wait on 2 top tier rides instead of just one.
Not every park had tiers…also, not if you had club level or a 3 br villa…no tiers and no time restrictions
A caveat to my next point, I volunteered as tribute for my family and woke up at 7:00am everyday. I also stalked Genie to get the feel of the LL distribution over Thanksgiving and knew possible drops. By the time I traveled, I had an advanced degree in Genie+
Last Christmas my family was there from 12-26 to 12-31. We were able to make LL work very well for us for arrival times after 2:00. The benefit of holiday hours being the late nights. This new system can work during busy times if one person is willing to wake up. BG1 now takes out a lot of the guesswork, so you don’t have to have the full advanced degree.
I see a benefit to being able to book one ahead of time so you don’t have to wake up at least until park opening. But even this gets tricky - does the book ahead start at 7:00am the week before? Does the booking window open for the whole trip? I would hate to have to carve out time on a work week to do day by day, and I hate when the system disadvantages short or split stays. I really think somebody loses almost anyway they do it at WDW unfortunately.
It would be 7 days prior to your first day and for your entire trip. That way, you can wake up early once, book just your first ride for entire trip instead of waking up every morning…
I dont see any issues with it…
Oooh, this us an excellent point. As someone who stays went in this orde: 2015 - offsite, 2017 -scheduled after 60 days, 2018 - short stay, 2019 - short split stay I never would have gotten a FPP for SDD, 7DMT, or FOP if it weren’t for the drops and that site that notfied you if a FPP was available.
I was fine with that (and always enjoy learning hacks) but I would not be happy if I paid for it.