Having organized my dining reservations at 180 days out from my trip, my itinerary is taking shape. I'm going to try to fit the rides around the dining reservations.
It's spreadsheet time! Here is a snapshot of one day of my plan and how I choose my FastPass+ (FP) reservations.
| Breakfast | Be our Guest QS |
| AM | Magic Kingdom |
| Lunch | snacks |
| PM | Magic Kingdom |
| Dinner | 1900 Park Fare TS |
| Evening | hotel |
| FP 1 | Peter Pan |
| FP 2 | Big Thunder Mountain |
| FP 3 | Splash Mountain |
| other | Jungle Cruise |
| other | Pirates of the Caribbean |
I've added any dining reservations or other meal plans and then the park that we will be in for that morning and afternoon. I've then written my top 3 FP choices and 1 or 2 others that I'd like to do that day.
The QS and TS code is just to help me to tally the number of each type of meal (quick service or table service) for the dining plan.
I've been researching which attractions run out of FPs and which are more likely to be available on the day. I know that a ride such as Seven Dwarfs Mine Train will run out of FP very quickly so this is one I need to try to get in advance, others such as Jungle Cruise tend to be available on a same day basis so I can save this for my 'extras' on the day.
I like to write down some ideas of rides that are in the same general area of the park. One mistake I made in the past is arranging attractions in an order than had us zig-zagging all over the parks, which was too stressful. I really try to avoid this now.
I am planning to use Dining Packages to get reserved seating at Fantasmic and Rivers of Light instead of using a FP. As I'm on the Dining Plan, this just makes sense as a good use of a credit. I'm not sure I'd pay the extra.
Having just read my plans, this image from my calendar sprung to mind. Typo sell this design on a notebook, which seems like the perfect book for Disney planning! Click here to see it. Planning a trip to Walt Disney World does come with it's own language. I'll try to explain it below incase you aren't fluent!
FastPass+
Disney have created a system to book fast passes for attractions in advance via the app or website.
This is great, but it also means that I have to decide what time I want to go on what ride 60 days in advance. (60 days because I am staying in a Disney hotel - 30 days if staying at a non-Disney hotel.......although at the time of writing this there are exceptions to this rule).
Many attractions are available for FP+ bookings, there are some that are walk up only.
Some attractions have long standby queues (no FP, just walk up and wait your turn) so these are the rides I want to get the FP for. My aim is to not queue for more than 20 minutes per ride. I feel like this is the tolerance level of my child and therefore my sanity.
You can book 3 per day, each gets an hour timeslot and can't overlap. All 3 must be in the same park. So in one day you can't choose 2 in the morning in Magic Kingdom and 1 in the afternoon in EPCOT. I'll come back to this later though.
Top of my list at Magic Kingdom are Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, Peter Pan, Big Thunder and Splash Mountain. In EPCOT it's Frozen Ever After (because I'm bitter that I had a FastPass for this on a previous trip and it broke down just before I could get on and didn't come back up). In Hollywood Studios I guess it will be for the new Toy Story Land ride(s) and Animal Kingdom - and this might be shocking - its Kilimanjaro Safari and Kali River Rapids - the Pandora rides just don't appeal to my family.
Let's get a bit more in detail. I have listed for each day any dining reservations for breakfast, lunch or dinner. This shows me where we will be on any given day. So for example, on the Magic Kingdom day, we have plans for Be our Guest for breakfast at 8:05am so I don't want any FastPasses before 9am. I think we might want something gently first too, so lets start with Peter Pan's Flight. After that, we can head to Big Thunder and then Splash Mountain (when it will be around noon and perfect quick drying weather - hopefully).
Without breakfast reservations and getting there for park opening (rope drop) the queues for the first hour or so aren't too bad so it might not be worth using a FP so early.
Now, once we have used our daily allowance of 3, we can use the app or kiosks around the Parks to select an extra FP for the same day. We often have really good luck getting something we want for almost straight away. Sometimes, we will get a FP for something immediately and see that the standby line is an hour long so this really saves a lot of time.
Once that FP is used, another can be booked, and so on until either the park closes for the night or the system runs out of availability. There are some rides which usually have availability late in the day and some which almost certainly don't - I'm looking at you Seven Dwarfs and Flight of Passage!
Remember when I said they all had to be in the same park on the same day - this is where that changes.....after you have used up your selections for the day. The extra ones can be made for a different park if there is availability. Once that is used up, the next one could be for a different park again.....but that's a whole lot of travel!!
Something to remember is that you can only move onto the 4th, 5th. 6th etc once the previous ones have been used, so if you book one for something late in the day, you won't get this chance. For this reason I don't book FP for evening shows.
