I’m travelling to Disney for the first time in August - we’re a family of 5, (38, 37, 11 boy, 6 boy, 3 girl) Only 20 days to go! We’ve got 14 days and all park access.
Area for help; all the plans suggest obtaining FastPass for morning slots, but they have all gone. Should we just leave the early FP reservation? Book later day FP?
Also, if someone has a few touringplan recommendations would be awesome!
Thanks!!
Will (Devon, England)
I would do my best to book the passes they reccomend as early as possible in they day and then try to adjust. As you get closer to the trip.The days toward the end of your trip should have some earlier spots available even if it’s not quite ideal. I have been checking daily and have been able to adjust a few of mine as times have popped up.
You can make your own touring plans on this site. If that’s a bit daunting, you could just take one of the preset plans, copy it, and alter that by taking out rides you don’t want and adding ones you do. Then you can add the FPs that you actually get to it. If you optimise, it will put things in the order that gives you the shortest total wait time for the day. If you evaluate, it gives you the wait times in the order you’ve got. You can move stuff around, add meals and breaks etc.
I was going to say to get the earliest FPs that you can, but if you’re going to take afternoon breaks then you might have to get later ones. It just depends what is still available, you may be able to get mornings for some rides.
At the moment we’re just not booking any as they are all in the afternoon. What do you think about rope-dropping our preferred rides, and then booking as the other rides become available in the early AM? Is that too risky?
It seem booking later day FP reduces our ability to pick up the slots that will inevitably open on the day.
Thanks for the extra guidance.
Cheers!
It never occured to me to do that, that’s a great tip!
I think not booking any would be a huge mistake. If I were you, what I’d do quite literally right now is go and book all that you can, regardless of time, for the parks you want. Even if it is for rides you don’t want. You can always modify those to earlier in the day if something comes available or drop them altogether.
As for how to work those into your TP, that’s a bit trickier. Maybe do a TP based on the assumption that you have no FPs planned and then make adjustments when you find a same day FP that is one you don’t want to miss. Do you have the Lines app installed? If not, I recommend doing that now, too, and fiddling around with it to get familiar with how it works.
I would never go with none booked at all, that’s a very risky strategy.
You need to book fastpasses right now for whatever times you can get. You can always modify them as the date gets closer or on the day.
Cool. Thanks for the clarification. We’ll get stuff booked and try to improve as we go. Looks like Sunday is a Disney planning day! 
I would plan to RD the headliners and try to grab the best FPs you can for as early as you can in the day. 10, 11, 12 is what a lot of people aim for, but you will probably end up with some later windows. But with 14 park days, you can certainly spread out your RD headliner plans to still hit all the major rides even if you can’t FP any of them. Are you planning to take a mid-day break?
Personally, I would make a list of my top 6-8 rides in each park, and then look for those FP and see what I could get in the morning before we’re planning to take our break. Using them all in the morning will still give you the option to look for same day FP later in the day. (Although this strategy really only works well in MK and EP, so I’d be ok with booking some of my AK and HS FP later in the day if it meant I could secure the rides I really want to.)
I just looked at 20 days from today at MK (since that where my FPs are) and there is a 9.45 for Space (probably won’t last long), Splash has nothing, 7DMT has nothing, there are quite a few good rides left around 10-11 - Pirates, Haunted Mansion. But Space and BTMRR mainly have times starting around 2.30.
I think you’d still be able to book more even starting at that time though. Not for major rides, but a lot of other rides.
Have you tried looking for FP for just 1 person from your party and getting overlapping times? It can take a little bit longer to book everybody, but often you won’t see anything for a party of 5, but you can easily get 11:10-12:10 for 3 people and 11:30-12:30 for 2 people.
If you haven’t already read this topic, it was super helpful to me in understanding how to get the most out of fast passes:
And there’s also this one about the timing of the drops of same day fast passes, which might help you move your later-in-the-day FPPs to earlier, more in-demand rides.
I had to laugh at myself when I went to try your suggestion of copying a general plan and then personalizing it rather than starting a personalized plan from scratch…it suggests copying right at the top of each plan and I never noticed it before! 
Thanks you for the epic support I’ve got a list of priority rides booked, and then I’m going to us the same-day strategy. Ultimately, things may change but I’ll have 2 day plans ready.