Fast Pass Plus Review Revisited

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Last November I spent a few days at the Walt Disney World Resort and experienced my first Fast Pass Plus weekend.? I had mixed feelings about it.? Here’s the link with my previous experience.? I had another go at the Fast Pass/Magic Band process with a trip to the Princess Half Marathon in February.?? Due to staying at multiple resorts I ended up with quite a collection of Magic Bands.

All mine.

And it’s growing. We’re going back to Walt Disney World this spring for Star Wars Weekend.

We aren’t padawans when it comes to this particular event weekend.? We first visited in May 2006 and again in May 2010.? There’s a pattern developing, right?? It looks like every 4 years is going to be our Star Wars Weekend.? But this time we are going with the aid of Fast Pass Plus.? Will the Force Be With Us?

A side note: let me tell you what convinced me to put money into this completely last minute and un-budgeted trip.? They almost had me when Disney announced Mark Hamill would attend one of the weekends.? My kid’s name isn’t Luke by accident, y’all.

But the truth is I wasn’t breaking out the credit card until we had the option of Star Wars Character Meals.?? Eating with Darth Vader and Jedi Mickey actually trumped meeting Luke Skywalker.

Yes, I planned an entire cross country trip during the school year because I get to eat at the Sci-Fi Diner watching Star Wars movie clips as Storm Troopers patrol my sector.

I’m not sure what that says about me, but I know I’m not alone.

Dear Disney,? Please make this a permanent dining option.? Oh, and add that Star Wars (Half?) Marathon at Disneyland too, will ya? ? Smooches!

Back to the Magic Bands.? Today I finally sat down, linked our passes, and set to work choosing my FP (Fast Pass) selections.? I had a small, ok, HUGE fear that there wouldn’t be anything worth pre-selecting. I’m a planner and would typically be making these choices at my earliest window to ensure my best choices.? Not this time.? This trip was planned on the fly.? It was getting late- surely I’d be stuck with FP for the Carousel of Progress and the People Mover, right?? (I love these rides, but they are not worth spending one of only THREE precious FP that Walt Disney World allots!)

What I discovered was a pleasant surprise.? I found Fast Pass options for every E-Ticket I desired.? Shut the front door!? A small caveat:? I didn’t try for Elsa and Anna and I’m not a lover of the parades or fireworks, so I did not hope for or look for those experiences.

I did find the three mountains in Magic Kingdom, Haunted Mansion, Peter Pan, and It’s a Small World to name a few.? Not only that, I was able to book them at decent times.? Huzzah!

The time options My Disney Experience gave me were spaced out a lot farther than I preferred.? This is where I got frustrated last fall.? I spent a lot of time trying to change times and line my experiences up in a way that works for me.? Not today!? Today was so simple I couldn’t believe it.? Here’s a few screen shots to show you how easy it is to make changes to your Fast Pass.

First I changed the time of the experience.
Then I decided to change the experience altogether.

 

Not only was it more intuitive, it was also running faster for me than it was last fall.? I was seamlessly clicking through the pages without any major hang ups or hick ups.

The streamlined steps to choosing and then modifying your Fast Pass selections is a great improvement over the last time I selected Fast Passes.? It’s still not perfect, but it was a lot better.

 

My biggest problem was user error.? Hey- no one’s perfect!? I had Friends listed in my Family section and Family listed in the Friends section.? I also had multiple accounts for some of my friends from way back when I eagerly dove into the My Disney Experience and they had not quite set up their accounts.? When they did set up their own accounts and we were linked properly with each other, I couldn’t figure out how to safely remove the “fake” accounts that had been set up.? So I left them there.

With so many Friends in the wrong places, I accidentally added my pal Sarah to one day of rides rather than my youngest son, Seth.? Oops!? Sorry little dude.? I thought it would be simple to drop Sarah and add Seth, but it wasn’t.? Ah, FP, we were doing so well together, too!? No fear- Sarah actually lives near Walt Disney World and mentioned that she had Magic Bands to spare and would just bring him one if I couldn’t get the system to add Seth.? She was joking, Disney.? I promise.

While this problem languished on my Saturday Fast Pass page, I went ahead and moved on to Sunday.? We planned to hit Animal Kingdom that? morning.? And here’s where I made another mistake.? We have some thrill seekers who want to ride Everest as soon as we enter the park, and then we have #OhLucy and her not as adventuresome brother #OhSeth

In Animal Kingdom I decided to book the 3 thrill seekers on their rides, and then separately go in and book the rest of us on tamer experiences.? It was easy enough to book Rob, Luke and Claire on their high adrenalin rides. ? And then issue number two happened:? I couldn’t figure out how to book Seth and I at all.? My goal was to have all 6 of us ride the Safari first thing together, then I’d take the younger kids and head to watch Nemo or ride Triceratops Spin.? But FP wasn’t having any of it.? I was stuck.

At this point I broke down and admitted defeat.? I settled in for a long call to Disney IT to help me figure out where I had gone wrong.

 

Our hero, Mayling, from the IT Helpline solved all my problems.? Not only did she fix the hotmess of? My Disney Experience, but she talked me through how she was fixing it.? Lesson here:? if you need help, don’t hesitate to call IT!

Have you noticed the changes to the Fast Pass Plus booking processes?? What are your thoughts?? Are you slowly growing to like all the planning? ? Or are you still unimpressed?

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16 Comments

  1. Thanks for sharing your experience! I look forward to hearing how they fixed your problems. On another note, is the shirt you’re wearing in the Tinkerbell half marathon picture a tech shirt? Love your outfits!

  2. I’m a planner, big time…but Disney has taken it to a new level of planning stress and I’m still unsure if I like it. I don’t think I’ll ever get over only having 3 FP’s but the tiering is my big problem. Luckily I go at non-busy times and I’m a rope dropper, so we enjoyed our trip with even the limited FP’s and it was nice to have some of them scheduled. I LOVED the MB’s though. LOVE them. I didn’t think I would, but they are so convenient!

  3. I am resistant to change! I had the paper FP system DOWN. But there is advantage in knowing you have your faves already set without setting foot in the park. I also have a huge problem with about 5,000 people’s accounts being linked in my MDE account!

  4. I haven’t used FP since their ‘updates’ but I am glad to hear it is getting easier to use. There was a lot of things I hated about it honestly – mostly because you only get 3 FP’s per day, and they reserve 75% of the Fantasmic viewing area for FP people so if you don’t get one for Fantasmic, you are SOL. Luckily, we were able to snag good seats last time we were there, but still, it’s the principle! The bandwidth in the parks is terrible, too. It’s like you have to plan every.single.minute before you get there, or yet again, you are SOL because of how long it takes to get the system to run in the parks.

    Yikes, rant over.

    There are good things, too! I love that they are used for the door keys and you can charge things to it for your credit card (even though I’m a cash girl at Disney so I can monitor my spending)!

  5. My Magic Band collection looks pretty similar to yours-thanks multiple hotel stays!

    I have to say, I haven’t run into any huge problems with FP+ and am loving the new system. As an obsessive planner I love being able to book in advance.

    The one change I haven’t loved is the “A” list and “B” list options at Hollywood Studios, I would like to pick and choose whichever attractions I’d like and not one from this list and two from that one.

  6. Yeah I was in MDE yesterday linking up Andy….. I am buying our park tickets tomorrow so good to know we got options. I need to fix my “family” and friends too. There was a bug I recall and EVERYONE had to be family or you couldn’t link up, but it appears that is fixed hooray! Um the parade thing has us too! And I HAVE to eat at SciFi with Darth…..

  7. It’s helpful to know that it’s better than princess! It was so frustrating! Good to hear there are some improvements, we will have to give it another chance!

  8. So for the family trips I really like them. It just works well for us, so far. The weekends we will be at Hollywood Studios, all day. During the week will be when we do most of our hopping. I’ve intentionally left a few days unplanned because I’m waiting for Mine Train to show up as an option and then I will finish up everything from there.I tend to overplan, so having the options of knowing in advance where we need to be has made me a little less neurotic. I cannot wait for all the fun new additions for Star Wars weekends this year. The character meals were a great surprise, and then the Feel the Force addition was pretty great also.

  9. What are people supposed to do with the bands after their trips? I’m afraid to trash mine because of the credit card information embedded in the chip. Can some enterprising cyber thief access that? Even if it’s okay to trash it, is it technically e-waste to be disposed of like a computer or cell phone? It would be nice if Disney gave some guidance in that direction. I couldn’t find anything about getting rid of it in the information they sent about it in January.

  10. I totally agree with you. the new upgrades (changing times and experiences) is so much easier than it was before even in Feb. I think it helps to do it on the computer and not on a phone.

    it just takes a lot of planning especially because I always park hop. I have found it helps to go somewhere early-ride whatever then switch to another park in the afternoon (with lunch and FP+) then switch to a third park at night and ride things with smaller waits. it will be much easier once they let you add more than one park and additional ones after your 3 are up.

    and i also have random accounts for past room keys I cant delete. i hope they eventually go away because it’s confusing! at least you have the family and friends option because in the past it was all family and everyone could see everything. glad you can just show shared plans now.

  11. Thanks for the screen shots! Yes, it seems like improvements are being made to MyMagic+ in general, which is good news for everyone!

    Hey, Bob Hitchcock! I thought you told me something about a Star Wars race 😉

  12. I’ll probably never get over the loss of the chase for paper fastpasses because my system worked, darn it. But, the FP+ seems to be improving steadily. If they do expand past the 3 per day and add park hopping options, I might even be sold. I do love the magic bands though. Although I spend way too easily with one of those puppies on my wrist.

    I also thought the Star Wars Dining at Sci Fi might sway my husband into deciding to renew our AP. I mean…eating…with Boba Fett…while watching Star Wars clips….at Disney….!!! But no, apparently he’s totally bought into this “pay off our credit cards” thing. Sigh. I’ll be stalking, I mean following, your page to vicariously live the experience through you!

  13. We had to call for help, too! Three times. Our park tickets would not link up properly no matter what we did, but the IT folks were nice – even if they had to struggle to resolve the issues. One call took more than an hour. Like you, we did not plan any FP+ for parades or princesses on our upcoming trip, but stuck to our favorite e-ticket attractions instead. We, sadly, won’t have time for a Star Wars meal, but I’ll certainly be interested in hearing about your experience. Great post…Lisa

  14. Great post! Thank you for linking it up at Travel Tip Thursday. I am featuring it in this week’s link up. Hope you will come link up again!

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