One big hassle with FastPass+ at Walt Disney World is that until this month, guests were only allowed to make three FP+ reservations on their own — you had to visit an in-park kiosk once you used those first three if you wanted to schedule additional FP+ experiences.
Well, Disney has just enhanced their iPhone and Android apps to allow guests to make their own fourth (and more) FastPass+ selections using a mobile device, rather than visiting an in-park kiosk. You have to make the additional reservations one at a time — and only after using your first three — but for those who end up using this feature, it holds some hope of cutting down on the hassle we saw in my previous post with insane lines at the FastPass+ kiosks during spring break.
I downloaded the new version of the app to my iPhone and gave the feature a whirl last Monday, April 11th. Before I begin, I will note that the week of April 11th saw much lower crowds than the week before, as the “Easter rush” had sort of died down a bit by then.
Rope Drop at the Magic Kingdom, March 22, 2016. This view never gets old. 😉
This post is part one of my visit to the Magic Kingdom this past Tuesday, March 22nd, during the busiest period of spring break. Like the RideMax Roulette visits I’ve done previously, I took along a RideMax plan to see how well things would hold up on such a busy day.
Before I get started, I should warn you that I got a bit carried away with this recap of my visit, so I split it into two separate posts. The recap contains northward of 250 images total. Even split in two, it’s still a very large download for each half.
I just warn you about the post size especially if you’re on a cellular data plan with limited data — you may want to read this someplace you have a fast (and free) wifi connection. 🙂
It’s spring break, and with it comes very large crowds at both Disneyland and Walt Disney World. Here are five tips for beating the crowds and making sure your family has a great vacation during this busy season of the year:
Tip #1: Arrive Early!
This may seem obvious, but it’s listed first because I really can’t emphasize it enough. There are certain attractions in each of the Disney theme parks which get very busy very quickly (sometimes within SECONDS of the park opening), so arriving early is key to beating the crowds.
The above picture, taken during another spring break season at Walt Disney World, shows the low crowds first thing in the morning.
Here is the same scene just two hours later.
Although these picture are a few years old now (you can tell by the FastPass machines on the left in the top image, which are no longer in use at Walt Disney World), the pattern remains the same. Lower crowds first thing in the morning, with very crowded walkways and busy attraction lines as the day progresses.
Another often-overlooked bonus of arriving early is that it helps you maximize your use of Disney’s FastPass system (or FastPass+ at Walt Disney World).
The image above shows FastPass+ (FP+) in use at Walt Disney World. Arriving early allows you to use your first three FP+ reservations earlier in the day, which opens up the possibility of obtaining more FP+ slots once you’ve used your first three. If you arrive much later in the day, it’s more likely that “good” FP+ slots will be sold out, leaving you at a disadvantage to those who arrived early.
If you’re visiting Disneyland, arriving early is especially key. Consider the FastPass (FP) ticket above, which is for the most in-demand FP attraction at the Disneyland resort, Radiator Springs Racers. This image was taken last year before spring break began in earnest, near the end of February. Even so, the time stamp on the FP ticket shows it was obtained just before 11:00am, and the “return time” on the FP ticket is already 4:25pm. Had I attempted to obtain that FP ticket much later, they would have been sold out for the entire day, leaving me with little choice but to wait in a very long line.
The other huge advantage of arriving early related to FastPass is that early in the day, the return time on many FP tickets is just 40 minutes away, and once your first FP is valid, you can also obtain another FP ticket.
Contrast this with later in the day, when you might have to wait two hours before obtaining your next FP ticket. This puts you at a really big disadvantage compared to someone who arrived early!
Tip #2: Have a Plan!
Since I’m the main software developer behind RideMax, I’m sure you saw this one coming, and I’m also sure I’m biased in favor of using an optimized “game plan” to visit the attractions you want to see on any given day. But really, in this day and age when a computer can do the work of figuring out an optimized, customized itinerary for you, why would you NOT take advantage of this?
I know there are free “wait time” apps out there as well, but how much good does it really do you to pull up that wait time app in the middle of the day, only to be told that the wait for Space Mountain is now 90 minutes? I don’t know about you, but whether the wait is 90 minutes or 120 minutes, I don’t want to be waiting in that line. And to AVOID that long line, it helps to make your “touring order” decisions before you even step foot in the park.
Remember, you’re likely spending THOUSANDS of dollars on this trip to Disneyland or Walt Disney World. Debating whether to spend another $15-$20 to help you make the most of your precious time in the parks seems almost silly.
In addition to the itinerary itself, RideMax also includes some in-plan tips to help you navigate that plan. So, for example, if you’re facing a pre-opening crowd like the one shown in the image above, but you’re trying to visit Seven Dwarfs Mine Train or Radiator Springs Racers first thing in the morning, those tips can help you know where to line up and how to navigate that brisk walk to the attraction entrance in such a way as to boost your advantage over those crowds.
Tip #3: Have a Daily Rhythm that Helps You Stick to Tips #1 and #2!
If you’re visiting the Disney theme parks over multiple days, it’s easy to underestimate how much physical stamina this will require. If you’re not careful, it’s easy to wipe yourself out the very first day of your visit, making it nearly impossible to stick to Tip #1 (arriving early) the next day. And if you’re not following Tip #1, it’s easy to assume that Tip #2 (having a carefully-created game plan) has gone out the window as well.
Early mornings, full days, and late nights. Something’s gotta give!
OK, I know what you might be thinking. “But I’m so excited about this trip that I’ve been planning for months, there’s NO WAY I’ll get worn out being in those Disney theme parks. The thrill of being there will get me through the day, and I’ll be excited and ready to go the next day too!”
My advice: Just STOP! Realistically think about this for a minute, especially if you’re taking young children to the park. Even doing something as fun as a Disney visit, none of us is super-human. Just with all of the walking involved alone, you WILL get worn out if you’re not careful.
So, what is the best daily rhythm to help avoid burnout?
One key to having a relaxing visit to is purposefully include some “down time” in your plans. And since the crowds are at their peak (and you’re the least productive) during the afternoon hours, my recommendation is to arrive early in the day, but take an afternoon break back at the hotel during the busy afternoon hours.
If you create a RideMax plan which begins when the park opens and runs late into the evening, you’ll often find that it includes a large block of “free time” on the plan in the afternoon. This “free time” is the time left over after all of your attractions have been scheduled for the day. And the afternoon is also an ideal time to get out of the park and take a rest, whether you’re using a RideMax plan or not. Taking an afternoon break will allow you to return later in the evening re-energized, PLUS make it more likely you’ll be able to repeat the early arrival process the next morning as well.
Along with the afternoon break, if your schedule allows, I also recommend a two-day-on, one-day-off schedule for visiting the parks. That is, you’d visit the parks for two days, then take the third day off completely, before returning to the parks on days four and five. Taking this “day off” further increases your chances of having an enjoyable vacation, rather than something that feels like the Forced Death March to Dumbo.
Tip #4: Buy Your Park Tickets in Advance!
This tip applies especially to Walt Disney World visitors, because you need to actually have your tickets in-hand before you can go online and schedule your FP+ reservations. And since Disney hotel guests can set up their FP+ reservations up to 60 days in advance, it puts you at a huge disadvantage if you’re waiting until just a few days before your vacation to make your own FP+ reservations, since reservations for very popular attractions “sell out” early. It’s even worse if you purchase your tickets at the park gates, since many of the “good” FP+ reservations will be long gone by the day of your actual visit.
So, buy your tickets in advance and get a nice jump on those FP+ reservations. Waiting until you’re actually at the park to buy them is a very costly mistake in terms of making the most of your time in the parks.
Tip #5: Avoid Early Entry!
Disneyland hosts an early entry program for its hotel guests and special ticket-holders called “Magic Morning,” which is available on certain days of the week. At Disney California Adventure and Walt Disney World, the similar program is called “Extra Magic Hours,” or “EMH,” for short. Regardless of the name, these programs allow these special-access guests to enter the park one hour before the official opening time on selected days of the week.
Although Disney sells this early access as a “bonus,” the reality is that the program draws thousands of extra visitors into the park hosting early entry on any given date. So while I may not *always* recommend against visiting a given park on its early entry day, as a general rule of thumb, it’s a good practice to simply avoid it. This is especially true if you don’t have access to early entry yourself, since it can negate much of the advantage of following Tip #1, arriving early. You can’t get a jump on the crowds by arriving early if thousands of guests are already in the park by the time you’re allowed entry.
Note that Disneyland normally hosts Magic Morning on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, with DCA hosting EMH the other days of the week. Again, I recommend visiting these parks on the days of the week when the OTHER park is hosting early entry. Walt Disney World’s EMH schedule (that is, which park is hosting EMH on any given date) can change from month to month or even from week to week, so I recommend checking the Walt Disney World website for the daily schedule during the date(s) of your visit.
Have Fun!
I hope you’ve found these five tips helpful in making the most of your spring break vacation to Disneyland or Walt Disney World.
As always, be sure to check out RideMax to help you create optimized and customized game plans for visiting the parks.
If you have further ideas or suggestions for beating those spring break crowds, please share them in the comments below!
For those who follow this blog, you know that I like to play a little game I call “RideMax Roulette.” I select a list of attractions at random, plug them into RideMax, then take the resulting RideMax touring plan to the park.
I decided to do this again last Thursday, February 25th, when the Magic Kingdom opened at 8am. These hour-earlier-than-normal openings are great, as they can really give you a jump on the crowds. (This advantage for 8am openings applies at both Disneyland and Walt Disney World, by the way.) Add to that the fact that Thursday was a “RideMax Recommended” day for the Magic Kingdom (even without the 8am opening) and it sounded like a great day to get out and take a RideMax plan for a spin.
The list of sixteen attractions I’ll be visiting — and which I plugged into RideMax — are the following, in no particular order:
Winnie the Pooh
Little Mermaid: Ariel’s Undersea Adventure
Barnstormer
Seven Dwarfs Mine Train
Buzz Lightyear
Haunted Mansion (twice)
Splash Mountain
Jungle Cruise
Tiki Room
Prince Charming Regal Carrousel
Mickey’s PhilharMagic
Liberty Belle Riverboat
Monsters, Inc. Laugh Floor
Tomorrowland Speedway (twice)
Just to show you something of the process I go through when I create a plan with RideMax, I first created the plan without selecting any attractions for FastPass+. Here is the initial plan RideMax created:
I’m not finished yet, though, because I’ll definitely want to use FP+ to see if I can reduce the amount of time I spend in line. Because it’s hard to know in advance which FP+ will be available for any given date and group size, you get to decide for yourself which specific attractions you want to use FP+ for when creating your RideMax plan (and the “Tips” inside RideMax itself can help you prioritize if you’re unsure).
In considering where to use FP+, I like to create a plan like the above which uses no FP+, then look at the following:
If the plan begins right when the park opens, which attraction is showing up first thing on the RideMax plan? Because the minutes right when the park opens are so valuable in terms of short wait times, if FP+ is available for that first attraction, it’s likely a good candidate to consider using FP+ for.
Which attractions in the list have the longest wait times? These are also good candidates for FP+, if available.
Using that first criterion above, Seven Dwarfs Mine Train would be a good candidate for FP+ because it’s the first thing on the list and is taking up that very valuable first time slot. Unfortunately, I’m creating this plan just two days in advance of my visit, and FP+ reservations for 7DMT are long gone by now. I’ll just have to bite the bullet and ride this one standby.
So, using the second criterion, I’d look at what are the attractions with the longest wait times, and are there FP+ reservations available for these? In the plan above, the two attractions that stand out the most are the Tomorrowland Speedway and the Jungle Cruise. I typically don’t like to use FP+ for a “show” attraction like PhilharMagic (with 14 minutes just being a conservative worst-case scenario estimate, and where FP+ likely wouldn’t make a bit of difference), so the next one I’d consider using FP+ for is Splash Mountain.
I check these three attractions off on the FastPass+ options screen in RideMax, and have it re-run the plan. I get the following, quite different touring order:
Note that in this plan with FP+, RideMax has knocked 53 minutes off the original overall wait estimate, and a couple of minutes off the estimated walking time as well, so this looks pretty decent.
FastPass+ reservations were still available for all of the time slots indicated on the plan, so I made those reservations, then took this plan to the park. (And if those time slots hadn’t been available, I could also have specified to RideMax the time at which I wanted to use the FP+ reservations, and it would have planned for these accordingly.)
I arrived in the parking lot a little later than I had hoped, but I was still on the resort monorail by 7:24am. (The express monorail wasn’t running yet.) As you can see, we were packed in pretty tight here without a lot of elbow room.
Above is the scene that awaited me after passing through the turnstiles (along with my first-ever metal detector security check. That extra lens in my jacket pocket must have looked scary lol). It’s now 7:35am, so I’ve made fairly good time getting here. (By the way, you can click on any image in this post for a larger view, then use your browser’s BACK button to return to the post.)
Even though the above scene may look fairly busy, this is really nothing compared to the crowds you’d see 25 minutes before a 9:00am opening. So again, these 8:00am openings are golden.
In the picture just above, I’ve made my way to the opposite side of the crowds shown in the previous picture, and I’m now standing over near the wheelchair rental area. Especially if I’m heading to Mine Train first thing, I like to get as close to the tunnel as possible, even if it’s off to the right-hand side a bit.
Here, I’ve moved into position in an empty spot of concrete nearer the entrance tunnel.
I’m later than normal getting this out, but Liesle and I stopped into the Magic Kingdom for a couple of hours on Friday, February 5th, mostly to take in some sunshine and so that Liesle could experience the new Skipper Canteen Restaurant. I had been there before myself with Josh from easyWDW, but thought it was time for a more serious — if brief — food review than what I had done previously, even though we’ll just be trying a few items from the menu this trip.
