“Magic Bands” FastPass+ Support Now in RideMax!

Magic Bands at Disney World
As most recent Disney World guests are aware, Disney has been rolling out a new program called “FastPass+” (note the plus sign – very important)!

This new system allows guests to reserve ride times in advance — before leaving home — for up to three attractions per day. Advance ride reservations can also be made using Disney’s own app, called “My Disney Experience” (MDE). Guests participating in the new system receive special wrist bracelets containing an RFID chip.

These bracelets are called “Magic Bands,” and they allow these guests entrance to the park, as well as admission to the attractions where they’ve made FP+ reservations. Guests touch the Magic Band to the RFID readers, located at the special FP+ entrances, to access these attractions. (Note the reader, emblazoned with a light-up Mickey head, lights up “green” when a valid reservation-holding guest holds his or her Magic Band up to the reader, a shown in the image below.)

Magic Bands at Disney World Attraction Entrance

Eventually, this new system will replace the traditional paper-ticket-based FastPass system, which has been in use for more than a decade now at both Walt Disney World and Disneyland. (It’s important to note that the new FP+ system is not being implemented at Disneyland, at least for now.)

Officially FP+ is still just in testing mode, so most guests using the new system will also have use of the traditional, paper-based FastPass system, at least for the next few weeks. (For brevity, I’ll refer to the traditional FastPass system as “FP-” from here on out — note the “minus” sign).

I say “most” guests will still have access to FP-, but there are some guests who have already been moved exclusively to FP+, and who can’t use FP- now. The move to “exclusively” using FP+ appears to be moving from resort to resort, beginning with guests staying at Pop Century.

So for now, there are three categories of guests:

1. Those who don’t have access to the new FP+ system, but who can still use the old, paper-based FP- system.

2. Those who can use BOTH the new FP+ system as well as the old FP- system.

3. Those who have access to the new FP+ system, but not FP-.

So, what does this mean for RideMax?

We’ve added a new option in the web- and mobile web-based versions of RideMax to allow you to tell RideMax if you are using the new FP+ system, as well as which specific attractions you wish to use the FP+ system for. You can also tell RideMax to either include or not include use of “traditional” FP- when it creates your itinerary.

So, what do plans using these various options look like? I thought you’d never ask!  🙂

Just for fun, I’ve created four Magic Kingdom plans for use TODAY — a busy fall Saturday in November — each with the same set of attractions, but with different FastPass settings. The list of 13 attractions I’ve chosen to visit are:

  • Barnstormer
  • Enchanted Tales with Belle
  • it’s a small world
  • Jungle Cruise
  • People Mover
  • Peter Pan’s Flight (twice)
  • Pirates of the Caribbean (twice)
  • Splash Mountain
  • Tomorrowland Speedway (twice)
  • Winnie the Pooh

And, here is the screen shot showing my list of plans, taken from RideMax:

RideMax for Disney World - Sample Plans with FastPass Plus Options

Let’s now take a look at each of these plans in detail, starting at the bottom and working our way up!

First, here’s the plan at the bottom, which just has us visiting EVERYTHING standby. No FP+, no FP-. No FastPass at all, of any kind:

RideMax Sample Plan - No FastPass

And sure enough, with NO FASTPASS at all, this plan looks pretty lousy. There is one really long wait — for Enchanted Tales with Belle, as well as some painful waits at the Tomorrowland Speedway. Our total estimated wait is 193 minutes, or just under 15 minutes per attraction, on average. (This average may not seem too bad, but we can do MUCH better, as you’ll soon see.)

Next, let’s take a look at the plan which ONLY uses the new FP+ system. I told RideMax I wanted to use FP+ to visit Peter Pan, Enchanted Tales with Belle, and the Tomorrowland Speedway. (Note that I’m restricted from using FP+ to visit the same attraction twice, so I can use FP+ for one of the visits to Peter Pan and the Speedway, but not for both visits to each of these rides. Since my plan includes each of these attractions twice, RideMax will use FP+ for one ride, and standby for the other, for each of them.)

RideMax Sample Plan with Only FP+

As you can see, just using FP+ has cut down our estimated wait almost in half, to 100 minutes total. There is still a long-ish wait for Jungle Cruise on the plan, but we’ve eliminated that long wait for Enchanted Tales with Belle by using FP+ to visit it. Note also that the plan has us strategically visiting both Peter Pan and the Tomorrowland Speedway using the standby line early in the morning, but using FP+ for our second visit later in the early afternoon, while still respecting the fact that Disney won’t typically let us use FP+ for two attractions during the same hour of the day.

Our average estimated wait, using just FP+ for these three attractions, is now down to just under 8 minutes for each attraction in the plan.

Now, let’s take a look at the plan which ONLY uses the “traditional” FP- system, but with “aggressive” use of FastPass. In other words, we’re using the “FastPass Runner” setting in RideMax, as well as the setting that tells RideMax that our FastPass runner is willing to skip *any* attraction while off gathering FastPasses for our group. (For those unfamiliar with RideMax, we could have also told it which specific subset of attractions the runner was willing to skip, if any. For this test, we’re being aggressive and telling RideMax that our runner can skip anything if it might help our overall wait.)

RideMax Sample Plan using Traditional FastPass Only

As you can see, this plan isn’t quite as good as the FP+ plan, with our overall estimated wait bumping back up to 125 minutes, or just under ten minutes per attraction. This is mostly due to the fact that we’re back to being stuck in the long standby line for Enchanted Tales with Belle, which doesn’t offer FP-.

And as a side note, you may be wondering why RideMax didn’t just have us visit Enchanted Tales with Belle first thing, rather than waiting for later in the day when the line is so long? It’s simple, really. If we had visited Enchanted Tales with Belle right when the park opened, we’d have spent our first 30-35 minutes on just that one attraction. And while the wait there certainly would have been shorter, we’d have sacrificed some of the other Fantasyland attractions and the Speedway, which also doesn’t offer FP-, but which takes less time to ride. We’re essentially trading one long wait for several really short ones. If I were using these plans “for real,” of course, I may make some adjustments to the plan to see if I could reduce this crazy-long wait. Maybe by visiting the Tomorrowland Speedway and Peter Pan only once each for example, the software might have me visiting Belle earlier in the day, and reducing the estimated wait as a result. Experimenting is key to arriving at a good game plan!

OK, finally let’s use BOTH FP+ and the traditional FastPass system — still very aggressively — and see what RideMax comes up with:

RideMax Sample Plan Using Both FP+ and Traditional FastPass

As you can see, we’ve really cleaned up here, with a total overall estimated wait of just 66 minutes, or just five minutes per attraction! This is basically one-third of our estimated wait using NO FastPasses at all, which is pretty amazing.

I guess the bottom line for me is that as long as you have access to at least ONE or BOTH of the FastPass systems during the FP+ rollout, you should be able to do pretty well.

If you’re using the new FP+ system, my suggestion is to experiment with the various settings in RideMax until you arrive at a plan you’re happy with.

Happy Planning!

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12 thoughts on ““Magic Bands” FastPass+ Support Now in RideMax!”

  1. I went about a month ago to Disney World and I thought that the magic bands were just for hotel guests and I did not sleep in a Disney World hotel, so I didn’t get a magic band. Is there any way to get them if you don’t stay in a hotel? Because it would be really awful, when they eventually make it so the paper FP don’t exist anymore, so FP+ is the only way.

  2. Yes, Matthew, the Magic Bands are currently only for Disney Hotel guests, but they’ve already announced they’ll eventually make them available to annual passholders as well.

    Hopefully ALL ticket holders will have at least some options, though I could see options being limited for those who wait to buy tickets at the parks. FP+ options could be gone or at least limited that late in the game…

  3. When making these plans, do you make the plan and then schedule your FP+ based on your plan or do you schedule FP+ and add it into the plan?

  4. Michelle, with what’s implemented so far, you would first make your RideMax plan, then use Disney’s MDE to schedule your FP+ based on that plan. We figured this was the most important aspect of FP+ to have working first, since there is at least a workaround if you want to do it the other way (using a scheduled break in RideMax at a specific park location, for example).

  5. Donna, I would suggest calling Disney — just call your hotel directly. Let them know your travel dates, and ask them if they know whether you’ll have access to FP- or not on your specific dates. If they’re unable to give you a firm answer, I’d recommend creating TWO sets of RideMax plans. One set using ONLY FP+, and the other using both FP+ and FP-. That way you’d be covered either way.

    Your question reminds me that it will be nice when Disney is finished with this “testing” phase on FP+, so that guests won’t be visiting with as much uncertainty surrounding their FP options.

    I hope this helps… Have a GREAT trip!

  6. Have you heard anything about Disney rolling out testing on FP+ for guests not staying on property for AK in December?

  7. I heard DisneyWorld is removing all the FP- kiosks and going with only FP+ starting January 14, 2014. Those of us staying off site will not be able to make FP+ reservations in advance but will only be able to make reservations from a kiosk in the park on the day we are touring that park. I can’t imagine how standing in a line at a kiosk to make a res will fit into my schedule…does ridemax have a solution for this yet? I have used ridemax for the past seven years with great success…not looking forward to only having 3 or 4 fastpasses.

  8. Yes, Kelly, AK is doing this now, and as of today, so is the Magic Kingdom. I actually have tested RideMax plans both at AK and today at MK using FP+ from the kiosks (I have an annual pass), and things went well. I was able in both cases to get the reservation times suggested by the RideMax plans.

  9. Yes, Joanne, the Magic Kingdom is FP+ only as of today. I actually went today and tested a RideMax plan that began when the park opened and finished shortly after lunch. I was successful in obtaining all three of the FP+ reservation times suggested by the RideMax plan, though I was the first customer in line at the kiosk outside PhilharMagic, which may have helped. The park also wasn’t very busy at all today. I just made my way there as soon as the park opened so I didn’t have to wait in line, and it really didn’t harm the schedule at all — I still made it to my first attraction on the plan shortly after 9:00am.

  10. Hi,
    We have an upcoming trip to Disney with fast pass plus rides already chosen for each day via my Disney experience. Is it possible to purchase Ride Max and make plans around the Fast Passes that have already been reserved? We have purchased Ride Max several times and have been very pleased. Please advise as we would like to use Ride Max for our next trip.
    Thank you!

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