Disney Fast-pass Tips
Before you go you can also personalise your band - this includes choosing the colour and choosing the name written on the back. (You'll need to be able to differentiate because of who the fast-passes will be linked to!) You can also buy bands in the shops there if you want something themed, they had all kinds of designs, but we were happy with the ones included. They are also adjustable (it took 3 days before a Cast Member pointed it out!) The grey bit on the outside of the straps peels off leaving a shorter band for those with thinner wrists (of the 3 of us, only my husband kept his full length) and it was a relief when the kids ones were shortened as they no longer had a huge strap flapping around that we never got around to cutting!
If you are staying on-site at Disney you can book your fast-passes 60 days before you arrive and if not, then 30 days before you arrive. The benefit of doing this is huge so please make sure you book them as early as possible. Plan before this though! Get a map online and look at where the rides are. When the parks first open you don’t need a fast-pass for most rides so it’s good to book your first fast-pass for around an hour after the park opens. Each fast pass gives you an hour window (unless it’s a show, then it’s usually a 15-minute window for arrival). You can’t overlap any fast-passes (even by 5 minutes). You can pre-book 3 fast-passes per person per day (each person in your party doesn’t have to do the same fast-passes). It’s best to do these early in the day because you can’t book any more until you’ve used them all. Try not to end up with 3 consecutive fast-passes at each end of the park, it’s better to get them closer together!
As soon as you’ve zapped into the last fast-pass with your Magic-band you can book the next one so if you then have a small wait before getting on the ride you can get on with booking the next one. Now that there is free wi-fi you can do this via the App or I just used the website on my phone. As much as I hated having my phone out all the time it was well worth it!
When booking fast-passes it will give you a selection of times but maybe not a time you want. There are buttons at the top of the page with different times of day (morning/afternoon etc) and then buttons with times (10.00/10.30 etc). Clicking these will give you different available times. What I found though was if you wanted 7pm for example, by clicking 7pm it gave you times much later or earlier but by clicking the earlier or later times e.g. 4pm or 10pm, you sometimes (and eventually if you pressed it enough times) got roughly the time you wanted. You just have to persevere. This won’t work for the very popular rides e.g. Avatar and it wasn’t always successful but many times it worked!
If you are having days off-site at other parks or shopping days then it’s great to use your fast-pass for the evening shows, most of them have these available and it meant we got good views with little queuing.
You can change your fast-passes if you want to on the day and it doesn’t matter if you don’t use them. Only thing to note is you can only have 3 per day so if you want to change to something else you can’t see what is available until you’ve cancelled one of your 3. You can’t have fast-passes booked for more than one park per day but once you’ve used your 3 in one park you can hop to another park and get fast-passes there (or again as soon as you’ve zapped in for your last one you can book your 4th for another park).
Everyone has a Magic-band (3yrs and above) and fast-passes are linked to the individual bands, so the kids had to zap themselves in – they loved this and there was no better feeling than seeing the Mickey Mouse light up green!
If a ride closes for any reason and you have a fast-pass booked, they email you to advise you, so you don’t trek all the way over and find out its closed. They then give you the options you have so you don’t lose the fast-pass.
We used the fast-passes alongside the queue times App which meant we never queued more than 45 minutes (partly through choice as we chose not to do the very long queues, partly through being smart with the fast-passes and queue times info).
Here is a list, by park, of the ones you really needed fast-pass for if you didn’t want to queue more than an hour…
HOLLYWOOD STUDIOS – Frozen Sing Along, Star Tours, Toy Story Mania, Rock n Roller Coaster (queue for this was nearly always 90 minutes+), Tower of Terror
EPCOT – Mission Space, Test Track (queue was generally 2 hours+), Epcot Character Spot, Soarin’, Frozen Ever After
MAGIC KINGDOM – Jungle Cruise, Pirates of the Caribbean, Splash Mountain (on sunny days, not so bad on overcast/rainy days!!), Thunder Mountain, Enchanted Tales with Belle, Seven Dwarfs Mine Train (queue for this was nearly always 2 hours+), Princess Fairytale Hall, Tomorrowland Speedway, Space Mountain
ANIMAL KINGDOM – Adventurer’s Outpost, Na’vi River Journey, Avatar (queue for this was nearly always 3 hours+!), Kilimanjaro Safari, Everest, Dinosaur
Please bear in mind this was based on the days we were there (May half term 2018) so it might not be the same availability of fast-passes at the time you travel but hopefully gives you an idea of the more beneficial ones to fast-pass! And of course, if you have any fans of any of the rides/shows then definitely fast-pass those so you know you won’t have any problems! Hope you found it useful and if you need help planning your Florida holiday please get in touch, I’d love to help – vicky.dyer@travelcounsellors.com or 01304 897810.