Fast track to fastpasses..

Fast track to Fastpasses.

So today its Tuesday 26th May, so that can only mean one thing, for us it’s the opening of the 60 day Fastpass+ window. We don’t actually know yet what’s happening with our holiday, we’ve made numerous calls to Dial-a-Flight, Holiday Inn in Orlando and Virgin, BUT no one knows what’s happening as yet. It’s all a waiting game to see if a) the flights are still a go and b) whether the UK Government get rid of the 14 day quarantine rule for when we return… because that is not an option for us (28 days off work!!) so we are stuck. *sighs*

So! Enough of the pondering we set to booking our Fastpasses, on the basis that until we hear we’re NOT going, we’ll plough on as we had planned. So, on the kitchen table we had the laptop, the iPad Pro booted up and charging, pens, paper and the holiday spreadsheet. (Yes, a holiday spreadsheet so we can have a rough plan of attack as it were!). The window for booking opens at 7am Orlando (Eastern) time, which is 12 noon here, so we were primed and ready for the off!

We logged in at 1158, tried our luck…nothing doing. A quick Costa flat white via the Tassimo and try again…bang on 12 noon…BOSH!!! We are away with the races! Window opens up an the dates are available. We are travelling (maybe!) on July 25th and the whole 14 days are available to book, so from the beginning to the end of the 14 day holiday – result! Over the last few days we’ve been watching quite a few vids on how to book Fastpasses, and of course we were using the patented Molly from Allears “fiddle faddle” method. That’s where you keep opening and closing the “windows” and time slots till you get all the ones you want. And IT WORKED! Go Molly and Allears.

The booking of our Fastpasses could not be any easier. What a fabulous system and program it is! We discovered that the best method was to work backwards, so start on your last day of the holiday and work towards the beginning of the holiday. This is because most folks tend to book their Fastpasses starting their first week holiday day by day, and some don’t bother with the second week so much. Also our American cousins tend to vacation differently to us. They generally don’t have 2 weeks in one block like we do, they tend to have 4 or 5 days at most, so for UK bookers of Fastpasses starting at the second week gives you much more choice than the USA bookers who are looking at maybe only three or four days from the start of the 60 booking period.

So the actual process – we looked at our holiday spreadsheet and worked out the days we were in certain theme parks, and the times we were going to be there, and set to it. According to our spreadsheet, the “last day” was going to be a running around day, catching the best or our favourite rides, starting the day at Hollywood Studios. First Fast Pass booked, Millennium Falcon, Smugglers Run BAM! Followed by our favourite Tower of Terror. (Rob was VERY very happy at this… so an excellent start). One thing we have learned, whilst gathering information prior to our Fastpass adventure, is you can only book passes for ONE park. You can’t book 3 different passes for 3 different parks. Hey ho.. So basically you need to get started on the advance Fastpasses and then you are free to book another and another and so on. Again, great tips from Molly at Allears. If you watch her series of vids on getting as many Fastpasses as you can in any day, you’ll be able to see that she uses the first Fastpass and then while she’s either waiting to get on that attraction or in the line, or when she gets off, she’ll already be looking for the next one. We intend to employ those tactics when we get there.

So once we had the bit between our teeth we started clicking and #fiddlefaddling to get what we wanted. It’s quite good fun, and exciting when you find your time and the ride you want is available. Disney now have tier system in a couple of the parks so you can book a “big ticket ride” then two of the lesser ones. (Lesser rides??? They are all top tier in our eyes).

Some of the “top tier” rides are Mickey and Minnies Runaway Railway and Millennium Falcon, Smugglers Run and Slinky Dog Dash. Once you’ve got one of these you can pick 2 lower tier rides such as Tower of Terror and Aerosmith Rock n Roller coaster, they are not lesser rides, just a little older. The same applies in Animal Kingdom, Pandora Flight of Passage and the Navvi river journey are the top ones. (Well, Pandora Flight of Passage is, don’t think we’ll ever queue for the River Journey again…) less said about that the better eh and sorry for any fans out there, but definitely not worth a queue or Fast Pass even for us.

Along with booking Fastpasses we had already booked some dining and character meet and greets. Our first “ADR” or advanced dining reservation is at Oga’s Cantina for drinks, Yub Nub anyone? The second week of the adventure we have breakfast booked at the Garden Grill with Chip and Dale’s Harvest feast. This is the restaurant that slowly revolves in the Land Pavilion. This will be handy as once we finish our early breakfast we’re already in the park and a stones throw from our first attractions of the day. So we can hopefully stroll out and pop onto Soarin’ and then Test Track. (Fingers crossed). It’s always a bit of a bun fight early on in the day for rides in Epcot as the World Showcase doesn’t open till later, so we thought a good plan would be to combine grabbing a fabulous early character breakfast and then hit some of the bigger rides 1st thing in the day before the queues build up too much.

We know that we may have to change passes some days as we have based our selection on being able to park hop like we usually do. Of course we don’t know what attendance levels they will be allowing in each park, so maybe going into a park in the afternoon may not be possible if it’s already filled to capacity, and we also don’t even know if we will be going yet! But, we figured it’s better to book them than not to have booked them, worst case scenario we have had a good practice run! The last few visits we’ve been ‘off property’ so we could only book Fastpasses at 30 days. This was a bit more difficult as obviously a lot of the big ticket rides have all gone but that stage, so it was generally a wing and a prayer that we managed to get passes at all. Many an evening in Orlando is spent round the table or by the pool checking each other’s apps and trying to tally up if we could all get on as a group OR if we had to go 2x2x2 and queue together and trying to get the times available to slightly overlap so that we can all ride at the same time. I’m not saying we don’t like to queue, I mean we are British after all and it’s a National sport here! And the queues are sometimes as entertaining as the rides! At least having some plans in place we should be able to modify as and when required and then queue for some rides whilst having Fastpasses for others – it just frees you up a bit each day, leaving extra time for a long lunch or a late afternoon cocktail somewhere relaxing.

We have tried some days to keep to one park for the day, but we really want to park hop or dip in and out at our leisure for some of the days. One of the days we are at the Magic Kingdom we are planning to have lunch at the California Bar and Grill, then pop back into either Epcot or the Magic Kingdom, THEN go back to the California for a late drink and watch the fireworks. Doing this we are maximising our time out and about.

We don’t mind running around like crazy fools if we have to, lets be honest we’ve done it before and we’ll definitely be doing it again. One thing we did like about planning Fastpasses was the little reminders it gave you. For example we have a booking at Oga’s Cantina at 16.55 so when we were looking at passes for 1600 it was prompting us with a little reminder of our Oga’s booking, so you can see that you already have plans around that time and need to think about it. So in our case we ‘bookended’ the reservation at the Cantina with a Fastpass either side of it. Phew! Also when you have other Fastpass bookings it will highlight the times you CANNOT select a new pass for by placing a black square around the times, so you can’t actually clash with a previous Fastpass. This saves you getting stroppy with the booking system, not that we have. Much…

All in all it was a very easy thing to do. We actually enjoyed it as an experience and it will stand us in good stead for the next time. Some people have told us it was the most stressful thing they had done for the holiday, we can’t see why but maybe we were just lucky! All we did was make a plan of attack, write down what we wanted to achieve in a day, what we wanted to do and what parks we were going to visit – a wish list of rides basically day by day. Of course, we will also be visiting water parks, both Disney and Universal and the Universal theme parks as well. Plus our days trips to the coast and shopping. It’s always a lot to pack into 14 days. But with a plan, a pen and a couple of hours it was pretty easy. So did we get everything we wanted – yes we did, all of the rides that are difficult to get we managed to book a time slot for! At best we have nailed a fantastic holiday down with solid plans – at worst we have had a really good practice run for next year’s trip – and if we have to do it all again next year we will do exactly the same and book exactly the same rides and attractions.

In the coming weeks we will keep you updated as to what’s happening with our trip, and how we dealing with it. Hopefully there will be some leniency on travel etc in the coming weeks when levels of infection are continuing to reduce and everyone is a little safer. So here’s to that. In the meantime, stay safe, wash your hands and take some time for yourself. These are trying times for everyone, and we all need a little time to decompress and take stock. Bye for now!!