Planning Those FP+ Passes..

King Fergus I understand not wanting to do Soarin at 8:15 am but after you save those FP selections you can go in and change them and that is when I find more time slots are available. So have you done that?

Now I'am really scratching my head..Unless I've picked you up wrong...At previous rope drops at Epcot..We have just walked, well ok, sprinted straight to Soarin, while myself and my DS walked up the long corridor, my DW joins us after getting our FP for later,on...Now to what you've just said about changing them..We only get one FP + per day at one park...Therefore if we book a FP +! for Soarin at let's say 10.00 am, that gives us plenty of time to do other stuff, after our early morning walk on slot..What advantage is changing them...Remember that it's only one tier 1.per day..

sorry maybe it is me that confused. I thought that if you had a FP+ for Soarin (making that at 60 days out) and you got 8:15 you didn't like that. So that is why I said you could go back in after saving that and make a change to a better time. Sorry if I misunderstood.

Fergus what she means is that once you make your selections, you can modify them. Say you got a 8am-9am Soarin' fastpass but you get there and you walk right on the ride. You can modify your fastpass to something else or make it later.

I think His Majesty was saying that since he can walk onto Soarin' at rope drop, there's no need to make a FastPass+ reservation.

As for how I would handle it...

I don't make any FastPass+ reservations for the earliest hours after rope drop because, if I do arrive that early, I can head straight for whichever headliner attraction is most important to me, ride it with a minimal wait, and then maybe make it to a second headliner and also ride it with a minimal wait.

So, if I could handle Soarin' (can't do it, motion sickness problems), I might plan on hitting it right at rope drop, but also make an afternoon FP+ reservation in case something came up to prevent my getting there early enough to miss the long line. Then if I did arrive before rope drop, I'd have the option of either riding it twice or switching the FP+ to something else.

Ah..Get you now...Hey that's a great idea..Cheers Kathy and Mandy..Can you modify it with your band or co you need to take your eye phone in the parks with you.?

I was, but as Kathy and Mandy says..Let's say I arrive at Epcot at 8.00 am rope drop..I walk straight onto Soarin with virtually no wait..I come back around 10.40 for my FP + reservation and find out that there's only a 10 min wait..So I quickly cancel that FP + reservation and make it for a PM one...Hopefully this can be done with your wrist band but I'am beginning to doubt it..

King Fergus you will need a smartphone or laptop with you to do that. So that you can get to your "My Disney Experience".

One thing, if you do make a FP at say 8 to 9 am and you get there and it is walk on, make sure you DO NOT scan your band or go through the FP line. If you do, you just blew that FP and you can't change it, you used it.

Or if you don't have your phone with you, you can visit a FP+ kiosk. With day guests now being allowed to pre-book their FP selections, hopefully the hysteria about the long lines at FP+ kiosks will be dialed down substantially prior to your visit.

And did you all read this about the changes? http://www.wdwmagic.com/other/mymagicplus/news/02apr2014-disney-to-increase-the-number-of-fastpass-entitlements-per-day-and-include-park-hopping.htm
I don't think it will be in time for my trip but this is all good news.

So, I can only talk from my experiences with October in the past and what I know about FP+ but my understanding is book all your selections for later in the day.

We are early risers and always at rope drop and in park for early breakfast if possible, we have always headed around magic kingdom starting at adventure land, and missing out all the shows like tiki room and hall of presidents by 10-11am we are at fantasy land, we bypass it and go to tomorrowland. After 1pm we have lunch and watch the shows in the hottest part of the day On one magic kingdom day we miss the parade at 3 and head to fantasyland while the kids are watching the parade. We have never waited for anything or used fast pass.

Buttttttttt..... I have heard of long lines and rides that never had lines before like figment, so our new touring plan would be to get to rope drop and ride the fast pass plus rides than don't need a fast pass like haunted Manson, pirates. Jungle cruise, and make our selections for the e tickets for late afternoon when the crowds are big and we have done what we wanna do.

As you all know I hate the idea of the new system, but you have to play the game.

Similar to what Phil said, the biggest piece of advice I've heard is to make your Fastpass+ reservations for afternoon/early evening because that is when the parks are the busiest. Early morning and late evening the crowds are a bit lower so you should use that time to hit attractions you don't have FP+ for. If you're park hopping, make your reservations for the second park of the day.

Now that being said, I have opted to not stress out yet over figuring out which attractions/times I will be aiming for on my FP+ reservations for my Sept trip because you just never know what will have changed by then. Disney is still in the testing phase and lots of changes are still rumored to be coming. I don't want to waste a bunch of time figuring out what to do reserve and when, when it is entirely possible there will be updates that will change that plan by then (more FP+ reservation allotments, changes in tiering, park hopper enabled, etc.).

Here's a list someone compiled on another (less friendly) board that I sometimes lurk on, listing the priority attractions that will save you the most amount of time (Level 1 being the attractions that are most beneficial to use FP+ on, level 3 being the least). Things to keep in mind with this list, though: 1) In each level, attractions are listed in alphabetical order, not by their benefit...the levels are the only things that are ranked, not attractions within each level 2) There are multiple items from a tier included in each level (ex. both RnRC and TSMM are both listed as level one and they are both tier one attractions so you'd have to pick only one) so that's something to keep in mind 3) This is just a collection of opinions and experiences, it's not based on anything scientific that I'm aware of and isn't issued/confirmed/approved by Disney. Other people may have a different opinion and you have to decide for yourself what attractions would be most advantageous according to your schedule and preferences.

Again, this is not my list and in no way will take credit for it, I just had copied it to reference when I eventually make my reservations.

Magic Kingdom
Level 1
Big Thunder Mountain
Enchanted Tales with Belle
Meet Anna and Elsa
Meet Cinderella and Rapunzel
Peter Pan's Flight
Seven Dwarves Mine Train
Space Mountain
Splash Mountain
Level 2
Buzz Lightyear
Festival of Fantasy Parade
Haunted Mansion
Jungle Cruise
Main Street Electrical Parade
Meet Ariel
Meet Mickey
Pirates of the Caribbean
Barnstormer
Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
Tomorrowland Speedway
Under the Sea
Level 3
Dumbo
It's a Small World
Mad Tea Party
PhilharMagic
Monsters Inc Laugh Floor
Magic Carpets of Aladdin
Wishes

Epcot
Level 1
Soarin
Test Track
Level 2
Maelstrom
Mission: Space
Turtle Talk With Crush
Level 3
Captain EO
Illuminations
Journey Into Imagination
Living With the Land
Epcot Character Spot
Spaceship Earth
Seas With Nemo and Friends

Hollywood Studios
Level 1
Rock 'n Roller Coaster
Tower of Terror
Toy Story Midway Mania
Level 2
Star Tours
Great Movie Ride
Level 3
American Idol Experience
Beauty and the Beast
Disney Junior
Fantasmic
Indiana Jones
Lights, Motors, Action!
Muppet Vision 3D
Voyage of the Little Mermaid

Animal Kingdom
Level 1
Expedition Everest
Kali River Rapids
Kilimanjaro Safaris
Level 2
Dinosaur
Festival of the Lion King
Finding Nemo
Primeval Whirl
Level 3
It's Tough to Be a Bug
Adventurers Outpost Meet & Greet

Oops..You got there first..I've just put a snippet on a new thread about this...

King Fergus...we are all on the same team so as long as the information gets out there it doesn't matter who gets there first.

True..The park hopper thing seems a great idea..It's something I do quite a lot in our second week..That means I can FP + a morning slot I'm MK then a afternoon slot at Epcot... ( I think that's right )

No, the levels have nothing to do with tiers and it's nothing Disney setup or endorses. It's just a collection of opinions on which rides/attractions will save you the most amount of time if you use FP+ on them. Level 1 are the most beneficial, Level 2 are medium, and Level 3 are the least beneficial (in this person's opinion). It's simply a guide to help you decide where you should use your FP+. For example, Enchanted Tales With Belle is under Level 1 so it might make more sense to use a FP+ on it then say, Dumbo which is under Level 3.

Cheers Allie..I've now enrolled in a university course called " FP + course for dummies" ... If you pass it you get a years supply of migraine tablets..LOL..

Ha!

With MK, my personal plan of attack is figure out what rides I want to do MOST and schedule FP for those so I know no matter what, I'll get on those main three. I'll switch them around if I need to, of course. Same with DHS, really! EPCOT's where I start to lose it a little because I'm not really planning on being in Future World in the middle of the afternoon, but that's when it makes more sense to use fastpasses so I have to kind of... reconfigure? I'm sure I'll get it figured out, though! And then I'm not planning on doing FP with anything at Animal Kingdom as I'll be there in the morning, and I'd rather use those FP's for Hollywood Studios which I'm hitting up later that day, so that's an easy decision.

It will be interesting how I'll get to change this if they get FP hopping and additions worked out by the time I go!

As it stands now, here is how I did it:
MK:
BTMR
Splash Mountain
Space Mountain
Alternate:
Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger Spin (has been running long for some reason, even before FP+ )
Peter Pan's Flight

All others you can hit without a FP if you do it right. For instance, if you hit Fantasyland more in the evening, the waits will be shorter.

Epcot:
Tier 1: Soarin' OR Test Track (depending on which one you want to hit at rope drop/closing
Tier 2: Mission Space and...one other. Doesn't really matter...

DHS:
Tier 1: RnrC OR TSM, depending on which you'd like to hit at rope drop/singles line for RnRC/hit at closing
Tier 2: TofT and Star Tours

AK:
EE
Dinosaur
Safari

AK worked the best with Fastpass+ because there weren't many people there, so we were just hopping back on stuff over and over.

Now changes are coming to the FP+ system. My understanding is the top three complaints about this are limiting selections to 3 per day, no park hopping, and a lack of purple MBs. So Disney will be rolling out some changes in the next couple of months, which includes park hopping and selecting additional FP+ attractions once you've used up your three for the day.

http://www.wdwmagic.com/other/mymagicplus/news/02apr2014-disney-to-increase-the-number-of-fastpass-entitlements-per-day-and-include-park-hopping.htm

Here is my two cents on Fastpass+. We used it for our trip 3 weeks ago and really liked it-it worked well for us (4 adults-parents with adult age son and daughter). I know some people don't like how you are limited to 3 Fastpass+ choices per park, but I liked not having to decide who runs to get Fastpass tickets like old days. I started off by creating a My Disney Experience account naturally. Even though we stayed offsite, I was still allowed to pre-scheduled our Fastpass+ choices. I used touringplans.com to create plans for each park and noted which attractions we had selected for Fastpass+. I selected our Fastpass+ choices based on what the projected wait times were for each attraction. Any attraction where the projected wait was 45 minutes to an hour or more, I would use those as my starting point for selecting Fastpass+ options. I also added line wait times app from touringplans.com to my tablet which I took into the parks. I would check each morning what the wait times were for the attractions and used that information to tweek our plans on the fly if necessary. There were times where I used my tablet to change what Fastpass+ choice we made or change to a different time or to alter what attraction we saw next based on line wait times (the app information was usually spot on, too). The tablet was great for doing this right in the parks without having to use the kiosks as the lines could be very long. Since we stayed offsite and relied on hotel shuttle transportation to get to the parks, arriving before rope drop was not an option for us so sometimes our Fastpass+ choice was the first attraction of the day we visited. A great example of this was Toy Story Mania. By the time we got into the park, it had already been open for a little while. The standby line time for Toy Story Mania was already at 70 minutes but with our Fastpass+ we got in and out in about 20 minutes! That was great! So I have no complaints whatsoever about Fastpass+. The longest we waited for any attraction that wasn't Fastpass+ was about 40 minutes and most ended up being 30 minutes or less thanks to the line wait times app. I will definitely be using this same strategy on our next visit which will hopefully be in 2016. Hope this helps some of you out with your decision making.

Glad you had a good experience with it, jay! Thanks for sharing!

Just make sure that you have set up all of your fastpass+ times before you get to the park or have a smartphone. I can tell you that when were were at EPCOT on Saturday the longest lines we saw were for the fastpass+ kiosks, and EPCOT had plenty of them spread around future world.

We thought the new system had its plusses and minuses.

Plus - I loved not having to rush to DHS for rope drop to get a TSM FastPass. We were even able to get one for a day we started out at MK. Ditto getting a Splash Mountain FP on a day we started at Epcot without having to wait two or three hours between getting the pass and actually riding. Basically, ditto for every ride that always fills up fast.

Minus - not knowing which rides actually required FP+. We got them for Enchanted Tales with Belle and Under the Sea because I'd never seen either attraction and definitely didn't want to miss out. But we were able to walk onto Under the Sea on arrival night, and then had trouble changing that pass because we don't have smart phones (gotta get those when our contract finally expires). We also nearly walked onto Enchanted Tales arrival night, but they were having technical difficulties, so we did use that pass the next day. For flexibility and being able to decide where to use FP based on actual wait times, I think the old paper FP system was better.

Things I learned from this trip: (1) If you want to ride Peter Pan's Flight and don't want to wait over an hour, use FP+ for it - we never did get on PPF this trip thanks to the long lines and our unnecessary Under the Sea FP+. Ditto for Splash Mountain, Toy Story Mania, and Kilimanjaro Safaris. Soarin' is probably also in that list. Tower of Terror might be. And I was absolutely amazed by the long standby waits at the Great Movie Ride and happy we had FP+ for that one. (2) Any ride with a single rider line does not absolutely require FP+ if you don't mind splitting up. Hubby found that the single rider line at Expedition Everest was actually shorter than the FP+ line. That was not the case for Test Track, but the single-rider wait still wasn't horrendously long. (3) FP+ for shows is hit or miss. It definitely helped at Finding Nemo: The Musical because it got us first dibs on seats and we got a fantastic spot at the front of the rear section, right where several characters run through the audience. At Muppet 3D and American Idol I can't see that FP+ would've been any advantage at all, at least while we were there. And at the Indiana Jones stunt show, we didn't have FP+ while alicemouse and her family did, but we walked in at almost the same time and were able to sit together. I think alicemouse and her family didn't even bother using their FP+ to get in.

By the time we take our next trip, I hope they've instituted the new plan to allow people to get additional FP+ reservations after they've used the first three. I think that will improve the situation to some degree.

Edited to add: Fantasmic FP+ was not necessary for us. The 8:30 show filled to capacity, but we waited for the 10:00 show and found plenty of good seats still available. We would've done that regardless of crowd estimates or FP availability. And just our dumb luck rain started right at 10:00 and cancelled the show just a few minutes in.

I have not even thought about this daunting task yet, but I figure with 10 days to fit it all in we will get everything we want done eventually, so I am not gonna stress about it

So where are the "tiers list" since that is the one that determines how many of each. I do understand that once you have used up your three and after one-ish, if there are FP remaining they will allow you to pick up one more at a time at a kiosk. So we are NOT FP the evening shows.

I had to search for the tier list..can't remember where I found it..But I've got it..It keeps changing as you now can top up your FP + as you use them up....It's the FP + park hopping I'am waiting to see if it comes...