Success in booking 4th fastpass

Always Dream

Mouseketeer
Joined
Aug 31, 2008
Hi! I've been to the parks many times and I generally do rope drop, spend a few hours in the afternoon at the resort, and then hop to another park in the evening. My overall strategy has been to use fastpasses in the second park - that way I get to do some of my favourites in the evening.

I'm wondering how successful people are in getting fourth fastpasses? Are you able to get them for attractions with very long lines?
 
We tend to do the same....RD, break, 2nd park. We do not wait for FP's though and instead use them early and often. During the break you can get your first evening FP lined up.
 
Are you able to get them for attractions with very long lines?

This past trip (ending 8/9), I did 3 days w/ no FP booked. I wasn't sure how much of parks I wanted to do. I had no problems getting FP at MK even with long lines. As soon as I scan my band in at a ride, I am in the app refreshing for rides I want to do next. I got one for Splash Mountain, went to scan in and the standby line was 95 minutes. Another time, grabbed one for Space Mountain, went up to ride it and saw that standby was showing 125 minutes! If I do book FP in advance, my plan is to always book in the a.m. so I can start looking for 4th FP at that park or the next I want to park hop to. I was able to get "4th" FP for things I couldn't even get at 60 days out, like Slinky Dog at DHS.
 


Hi! I've been to the parks many times and I generally do rope drop, spend a few hours in the afternoon at the resort, and then hop to another park in the evening. My overall strategy has been to use fastpasses in the second park - that way I get to do some of my favourites in the evening.

I'm wondering how successful people are in getting fourth fastpasses? Are you able to get them for attractions with very long lines?

There are very few fastpasses you will have trouble finding day of.
 
Each day we do RD, take a midday break and then back to the parks at night too. We use our first 3 FP's in the morning though... and then we make a FP for the park we are going to go to at night and we do one at a time and it's worked out really well.
 
It isn’t hard to get them this week, but it is not too crowded. We were not able to get for any hard to get though. We kept refreshing for better tunes but these rides never came up (Pandora, SDD 7dmt splash)
 


We were there 3 weeks ago and although we did get 4th, 5th, amd 6th fastpass, most of the time they weren't for the best rides. We were never able to get SDD, FOP, Toy Story Mania, SDMT, or Splash Mountain. I did see some for Space Mtn and Everest. We did pickup Big Thunder, Navi, Peter Pan and some others as additional fastpasses.
 
We've had success in getting popular attractions for our fourth FP+ and beyond. Like others, I schedule our initial three for earlier times and will then refresh until an attraction we're hoping for appears. Sometimes the most popular ones aren't available but I've successfully booked Navi, FEA, 7DMT, Pan, KS, etc.
 
You shouldn't have any issues booking additional passes at all. The only problem we had was with spotty wi-fi when the parks got crowded, which meant we couldn't refresh the app as often as we would have liked. When we ducked into restaurants, ride queues or stores, the reception got much better. We did a last minute trip a while back, with our inital 3 FPs booked at 20 days out. At MK on a fairly busy day (an '8' on Touring Plan's crowd calendar), the only ride we didn't get passes for was 7DMT. Everything else we either rode with less than a 15 min wait in the first 2 hours of the morning or we got fastpasses for. I lost count at 12.
 
It isn’t hard to get them this week, but it is not too crowded. We were not able to get for any hard to get though. We kept refreshing for better tunes but these rides never came up (Pandora, SDD 7dmt splash)

We are here this week and have not been able to get a tier one ride yet although I have constantly checked.

I dont know how others do it but sure hasnt worked for our group.

There are plenty of tier 2 rides available but the lines arent very long for those rides anyway

NGTOD
 
As others have noted it depends what you are looking for. You'll usually find FPs for Its A Small World and other lower tier rides pretty easily unless its like Christmas or 4th of July. Many days those will still save you 10-20 minutes a piece! If you get 6 or 7 of them you've saved a couple hours that you can now afford to spend in line on Splash Mountain or some of the other rides that are harder to find day of.

If you are looking for the newest headliners you need to get lucky. If you're looking for older headliners, you need to either get lucky or get to your 4th FP as early in the day as possible. Personally I'd rather spend the day clicking through 8 FPs one after another for lower tier rides than grab an 8:30PM FP for Space Mountain at 10:30 in the morning and be stuck in standby queues all day; the lines will be shorter for Space Mountain by then anyway.

At Epcot, assuming you planned your 3 correctly, grabbing a same day FP for anything that will actually save you time is much harder.

At DHS after the Tier 1 changes on 8/29 it will be incredibly easy to grab a Tier 1 FP for your 4th FP as there will roughly 2 Tier 1 FPs per park guest. Just don't expect to find Slinky Dog.
 
I’ve been “practicing” at home and have seen everything come up same day (I don’t check until closer to noon so it’s more realistic) except SDD and 7DMT. Test Track I’ve seen less often than FoP but that’s probably just luck. Party of 2 though.
 
Just a suggestion, if you don't mind riding TT with someone else, do the single rider line. Maybe after you have ridden with the person you are there with the first time as a FP. Three weeks ago my son and I rode it 4 times in 30 minutes mid day. We walked right up to where you were loaded into the cars each time except for the 4th time, we were maybe 15 deep in line. The single rider line was listed on the board as 30 minute wait but it was, in reality, 3 minutes.
 
After my last trip, depending on which rides, and how busy, I'd be pretty confident in getting anything except SDD. I didn't try for 7dmt, but pretty much everything else we wanted, it sometimes took a few minutes of crazy refreshing, but we scored everything, and yes, even FOP. You have to be ready to pounce while you are refreshing. Grab and modify, then keep refreshing. Sometimes, you have to split the party up and grab one or two ONLY, then work on the other people in the party to get overlapping fp times to tap in together. You gotta know how to work the system - grab, modify, split, refresh, refresh, refresh, grab, modify. Once you get the hang of it, you get almost cocky. It's pretty fun.
 
Just curious, how do you "practice" getting FP+ for day of? I'm only to look at FP+ available on the day we plan on being there in October.
 
Just curious, how do you "practice" getting FP+ for day of? I'm only to look at FP+ available on the day we plan on being there in October.

You used to be able to do it with all tickets attached (if you didn’t have FP booked yet) but I have an AP this time.
 
Does rope drop mean when the park opens in the morning at 9am? when should we leave hotel to get to the gate and do the security clearance etc.
 
Last time I went I was able to find a SDMT fastpass for two after about 10 min of checking. Everytime I hit "refresh" on the app there would be new rides showing up. You just have to keep refreshing, but I came across day-of fastpasses for all the big rides (even SDD) doing it that way.
 
In answer to the original question: It depends on which rides you want to do and how many people are in your party. As a solo traveler, I did about 15 rides and a meet and greet in one day on a busy Saturday in 2018, and I think all but two or three were done with FP+. If you've got more than two or three people in your party, though, pickings may be slimmer--you'll want to follow the advice of folks above re: splitting the party in MDE and snagging FP+ in smaller bunches. You may also have a harder time getting brand new headliners; I never managed to get FOP day-of on that trip...but I did get Frozen Ever After at the very last minute in the afternoon. My strategy is to book my must-do rides ahead of time for early in the morning, since you can't be certain what you'll be able to get. You'll almost always be able to get something, but don't count on a specific headliner to always pop up.

Does rope drop mean when the park opens in the morning at 9am? when should we leave hotel to get to the gate and do the security clearance etc.
Yes, but several (..all?? not sure) of the parks will let you in to a holding area within the park before the official opening time. At MK they let you into Main Street USA early but not into the rest of the park until the official opening time. How early to go depends on what exactly you want to get out of rope drop. If you want to rush straight for the newest, most popular ride, you're generally going to want to get there an hour ahead of opening time (I've gotten away with half an hour, but then I wasn't at the front of the pack and had a little longer wait). If you want to just take advantage of lower lines for non-headliners in the first hour or two of the park being open, it's fine to show up right before opening and be at the back of the pack, and that makes for a calmer morning. If you're taking Disney transportation, always allow at least an hour to get anywhere.
 

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