I have read Becky’s article in the TPBlog about Stacking which was very helpful. Has anyone does this for most of their trip? If we follow through with our May plans, I am going to have to try a different strategy for park touring because my kids (college age) will be looking for a more relaxed approach to the vacation. Here are my questions/concerns about “Stacking”:
When inclement weather arrives, it usually comes later in the day. (Uncontrollable)
Parks are generally more crowded later in the day than they are in the early AM. (Also uncontrollable)
When you “stack” at a park where you have your APR, how much time do you spend monitoring your phone for the later times to pop up? (If the idea is to do other enjoyable activities in the AM, will I be glued to my phone scrolling through return times?)
Did you feel that you were able to stack all of the attractions that you wanted without the continuous “Tap-in” turnover?
I am interested in hearing about your experiences. Thanks!
Typically, stacking is done at the park you plan to hop to, rather than the park you start at with an APR. (Not that it CAN’T be done…but it is harder to take advantage of stacking when you are talking about the same park.)
Yes, I thought about booking my APR’s at different parks than I intended to visit, in order to “push” the Genie+ return times out past 2PM. But then I would have to enter (tap into) the 1st park before I could enter the second park, right?
Oh, I see. You weren’t really planning to hop, then, it sounds like!
I have trouble wrapping my head around how you can effectively stack if you are staying in the same park. Rather, I would find it easier (were I to use G+) to just focus on getting the rides you want at times that most make sense for you. In fact, if you can get rides with a time that is VERY soon, it might be more effective than stacking because you can obtain a LL, tap in, and then immediately get another LL, without having to wait the requisite 2 hours otherwise. Frankly, it is a bit of a crap shoot!
But with stacking when you are planning to hop, it becomes easier to just get another LL in the SECOND park of the day every two hours, and have as many as 4 or 5 LLs ready to go by the time you get there.
I agree with you, and that’s what I am fighting with myself over. My touring style has always been to start early and visit as many attractions with a FP+ as possible by the end of the day. But that is getting old with my adult kids, and they are not interested in getting dragged around the parks from AM to PM in my quest to accumulate as many LL’s as possible.
They do enjoy WDW, but not my “commando” approach to touring.
Kids: “Mom, we’ve ridden WtP 500 times over the years, do we really need to ride it twice today?”
Me: “But… there is a LL available for it in 10 minutes!”
Our strategy with G+ was to always get the most in-demand LL, which almost always ended up being early afternoon even when trying at 7 am on the dot. When making the 2nd selection 2 hours later, I’d go for another upper-tier LL which would almost always be mid to late afternoon. The third selection 2 hours later would usually be a mid- to low-tier, as all the better ones were gone by that time, and inevitably that would be mid- to late afternoon as well. They just kinda stacked naturally towards the afternoon.
This all worked out fine, because the parks were manageable in the mornings, riding everything standby. By the time the crowds picked up, we had 3-4 LL stacked up.
eta: this was totally opposite our strategy with FPP, where we’d stack all the FPP at 9,10, 11 and then pick up more and more throughout the day. G+ didn’t allow for this.
Right, thank you!
In a reply to Becky’s Blog article, someone asked about a “LIFO” approach to stacking. This makes a lot of sense to me, especially with your comments above. Get the first LL for as late as possible, then continue to “stack” earlier and earlier, so that when you get to the park, you might be able to get more with tap-ins. Not really sure about availability in the later hours though.
And the only way to really do this starting at 7 am was to go for the very top-tier selections (like PP, JC), because even things like btmrr and space mountain would still be giving times around 11 am at 7. If your goal is to start stacking right at 7 am for a mid-afternoon arrival, I found that I had to choose the most sought-after ones. Space and btmrr were still available at the 11:00 hour for the second selection, usually around 6-7 pm.
I didn’t read her article, but this is copied from my TR in March over spring break. Stacking worked well and the parks were crowded.
So here’s the timeline.
At 7 am I bought ILL for FOP with a return time of 1:30 to 2:30. I then waited about five minutes for the return times for the safari to change to when we were planning on arriving. Booked 11:40 to 12:40 (which we totally missed but the fabulous CM at AK fixed for us).
Because I booked an AK LL first I was eligible to book my next LL at 9:30 (two hours after AK opened). I booked JC for 7-8 which was actually the earliest available then.
At 11:30 I booked a LL for Space from 8-9.
At 1:30 I booked a LL for BTMRR from 7:50-8:50.
At 3:30 I booked HM for 9:30-10.
At 5:30 I booked Buzz for 8:05-9:05.
At 7:30 I checked availability and there wasn’t much. So I didn’t book anything. I checked again just after 8 and a PP came up for 9:05 to 10.
So a total of 7 LLs. I think it was totally worth it.
Your experience is similar to what I was seeing. The main issue for us is that the kids (and I, for that matter) couldn’t last to the 9-10 pm hour when the 4th-7th (or so) LL return times would be for. I think that’s the reason we were only getting 4-5 in. I do miss the days of FPP.
Definitely harder with younger kids or my lazy kids. I let them sleep in on the trip in hopes they could stay awake late, but somehow I seemed to still have more energy than they did in the evening.
If inclement weather happens and you have an ILL for an outdoor ride, awesome. Depending on what and when, It turns into an ILL that you can use for any ride (with exceptions). At the very end of the night, they turn into ILL you can use the next day.
I think parks are more crowded earlier in the day and midday. Personally, I don’t want to wake up early, then wait an hour or more waiting to rope drop in a large crowd to save time on a ride that I could have waited an hour or more for later in the day after a good rest.
If you stack, you can only book every two hours so you aren’t looking at your phone that often.
YMMV, but from 3-11 on a 5 CL day we got : FOP, ratatouille, TT, JC, soarin on our original stack and also added on Frozen, BTMRR, and Buzz (plus waited for MS and TS).
