Sunday, 5:45 AM
You know what I find really interesting? When my alarm goes off on a work day—REGARDLESS OF THE TIME or how much sleep I’ve had, I immediately and automatically hit the snooze button. I seem physically incapable of getting right out of bed.
But when the alarm goes off on vacation (or for vacation related insanity like Fast Pass scheduling….) BAM, I jump right out of bed like it’s full of snakes or spiders or something. I’m sure that says something very troubling about me and my brain, but I’m not in the mood for deep psychological analysis this morning, so we’ll move on.
At any rate, the alarm went off and I headed straight down to the computer. I immediately logged into My Disney Experience, and headed straight to the Fast Pass Plus reservation area, selected my “Group”—my husband Frank and myself—and tried to choose my dates. It was still only 5:55 AM, so you guessed it…no luck. They are not kidding with that window. All that was available were reservation dates up to 30 days out. It looks at your hotel reservation and does not open that 60-day window until 7:00 AM (Eastern) the 60th day our from the first night of your reservation.
Tried again at exactly 6:00 AM and magically, the window now showed all the days between now and the last day of our vacation. (The sixty-day window is for day 1 of your vacation—or really the first night in a Disney hotel…but the window then opens for every night you’ve booked in Disney hotel for the duration of that reservation, and will include the day after the last night. They’re assuming you get up, check out and go to a park on your last day. For those of you that like to resort hop: The window will open for the duration of that first reservation. So, if you are staying two nights at All Star Movies and then heading to the Grand Floridian for four nights, ONLY the first two nights will show up in your initial 60-day window. You’ll have to go back in two days later and book your fast passes for that second reservation.)
My plan of attack was to try and get the most difficult Fast Pass Plus (FPP) reservations out of the way first. I had planned our Epcot day as November 17, day 2 of our trip, and I really want to check out Frozen Ever After; it is new since our last trip. After you select your “group”, choose the date for the first FPP you are booking and then the system asks which park you want to visit.
By default, the system will automatically offer FPPs in the morning first. Epcot, Animal Kingdom and Hollywood Studios all feature a tiered system. They group the most in-demand attractions in one tier, only allowing you to choose one from that tier, and the rest of the FPP attractions in the other tier, allowing you to choose two. If you want times in the afternoon or evening, you can select those windows.
I chose November 17 and Epcot and the two tiers popped up. It defaults to morning first, and will show the earliest available FPP slot for each attraction. **Note: If the attraction you want is not listed, it means there are NO available FPP left for that attraction for that day. This means you will either have to wait in regular lines for the attraction or try to get a FPP for a different day of your trip. For Frozen Ever After, the earliest available slot that day was 2:20 PM. I immediately grabbed it. It takes you to the next screen, which is a confirm screen. Take a quick look and make sure all the members of your party are listed and that you have the attraction and time slot you selected on the previous page. Once you confirm, it will ask if you want another FPP, and offer the option to continue on the same day or select a different day.
For my purposes, I wanted to work on my next most difficult attraction: Flights of Passage at Animal Kingdom. I grabbed the date and the earliest time offered was already 4:30 pm. I then booked FPP for Expedition Everest and Kilimanjaro Safari for the same day. Yay. And then I realized I was booking the reservations ON THE WRONG DAY. I was supposed to be booking on Monday, November 20 and instead I’d grabbed Sunday, November 19. I blame the early hour and the lack of caffeine. CHECK YOUR DATES PEOPLE!!! I immediate chose to book a new FPP on a different (and correct) day, went to Animal Kingdom and found the earliest Flight of Passage FPP available on THAT day, which was 2 PM. Grabbed it, and then proceeded to book the other two I wanted for AK for that day.
I then went back to November 19 and selected Hollywood Studios. It immediately tells me I already have FPP booked for that day and to book new ones, I will be cancelling the old ones. I knew that already, but it’s good to note that Disney TRIES to stop you from accidentally canceling something you DON’T WANT to cancel. It will ask you to make the choice for each member of your party individually. (See screen shot below.)
You will also see an error like this if you are trying to book a FPP in a window that overlaps another FPP. I kept trying to overlap by a few minutes for attractions that were close together but it caught me every time.
For Hollywood Studios, the most important attraction for us is Toy Story Mania. We LOVE that ride. Sunday has Extra Magic Hours, so we will be heading straight to Toy Story Mania as soon as we are allowed into the park but I wanted to have a FPP for later so we can ride it again. I booked one for 10:45 AM. We’ll end up using it toward the end of the window as we have lunch reservation at Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater at 11:55 AM. The other two FPP I booked for that day are Star Tours, 9:50 AM and Tower of Terror, right after lunch.
After HS FPP were booked, I went to Saturday and booked our FPP for Magic Kingdom. I wasn’t as worried about these because I knew we were going to the Christmas Party on our first night and would likely be able to ride everything we wanted at least once that night…The toughest one to get at MK is Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, so I did that first and got a 2 pm window. The other two I grabbed were Peter Pan’s Flight and Haunted Mansion.
I then went back to Friday and booked the remaining two FPP I had for Epcot. Spaceship Earth and Mission Space. I’m not too worried about either of these, and may end up cancelling or choosing alternate times or attractions as I get closer to the trip and have a better idea of how we will be touring the park.
Finally, I booked a few FPP for Tuesday morning, our final day. I suspect we won’t end up going to the park on this day; I’m leaning more towards stopping at Disney Springs on our way to the airport but just in case we DO decide to go to the park, I booked a couple at MK (walking distance from our resort and our favorite park). Once we decide whether we will use these, I will update and/or release these FPP.
Here’s a different error message you might see. I didn’t run into this when I was actually booking, but I did run into it later when I was trying to book additional FPP to help me with this article. I basically logged out and logged back in to fix this issue. I know errors are super annoying, but you have to admit, this error message is awfully cute!
Once you’re finished, Disney will show you all the FPP reservations you’ve made. I highly suggest printing or saving these pages to PDF so you have a copy of what you booked. I’ve never had a problem, but I have heard a few stories of FPP being dropped from the system somehow…I’m not sure having a printout will help in the conversation with Disney about any missing FPP, but it sure couldn’t hurt. Hopefully those bugs were worked out in the beginning and that is NEVER an issue anymore, but ya never know.
Note: If you are visiting Magic Kingdom on a date where there is a special event, for example, Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party, or Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party, the software stops issuing FPPs at 5:30. The park closes to non-party guests at 7:00 pm. (Note these parties are special ticketed events and require separate purchase of a ticket. I will be talking specifically about this in a separate post.) If you have a ticket to the party, you can enter the park any time after 4pm using your party ticket, even though the party doesn’t start until 7 pm. So, you can reserve FPP between 4pm and 5:30pm. The system won’t let you overlap passes by even five minutes, though, so you may want to try and book a 3:30 or 3:45 FPP as your first one, even though you won’t be in the park until 4 pm. You’ll have until 4:30 or 4:45 to use the FPP, based on the 1-hour reservation window.
The Bottom Line
My early morning mission was successful. I was able to book Fast Pass Plus reservations for each attraction I’d planned to, and generally, the windows that I booked work for what I have planned for each day of our vacation. I didn’t run into any technical challenges at all, and the only glitch was one I created myself by choosing an incorrect date. I’ve still got a few things to figure out, so I may make a couple minor changes on the less popular attractions as we get a little closer to vacation, but overall, I’m pretty happy with how it went. I was even happier when I went back to bed for an hour before getting up and heading to work! 😉
Happy Dreaming!
Brooke