Walt Disney World Disney's Animal Kingdom Discussion Thread

[Ape"Excuse me, miss, may I pound my large rooster into your donkey?"]

This system of Fast Pass got us on a ton of extra rides pretty much walking on at Magic Kingdom from 3 to close. I don't understand the complaints about it.

[Ape"Excuse me, miss, may I pound my large rooster into your donkey?"]

I wonder if the people that bash Disney have kids. I used to only care about parks with a bunch of big coasters and theme didn't matter much. Having kids and seeing their reaction to Disney I find it hard to believe people could still dislike it.

We regularly hit Kings Island and I do not get any where near the reaction we did at Disney. It doesn't matter if the park is expensive or crowded when your kids are smiling ear to ear just looking at everything.

[A.J.Counts I305 as 32 credits...]

The app is great. The process to reserve / search for a FastPass to [insert attraction here] from anywhere, on or off the resort property, is smooth and easy. I would never want to go backward from that.

I feel like some of the complaints come from the now apparent inability to get FastPass for some of the newer / "hotter" attractions. I just checked FastPass Plus for 30 days from now (April 14th), and I can't get Flight of Passage, Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, or Toy Story Mania. Now, I bet that I'd be able to scoop one up for the 15th if I was at my phone at 7:00 AM tomorrow. As an annual passholder who really only needs to "catch up" by experiencing the Pandora attractions, I'm okay with that. I'll just go some weekend, no worries there!

But unless that sort of process has now become the accepted norm (which it very well may have) for doing a Walt Disney World vacation, I could see why that would frustrate some people when planning. Maybe it's like trying to buy / pre-order a Nintendo Switch during the time when retailers were under-stocked. You would have either had to have your finger on the refresh button, or hoped that you'd get lucky at your local retail store.

Not complaining myself, just speculating / trying to understand.

[Hilltopper39Why do I still have a donkey title???]

What if your friend is picking up their Florida Resident ticket at Will Call? They literally can't make reservations until they have the ticket number.
.

That's not true, I bought a 4 day FL Resident ticket earlier this year and you can book fast passes 30 days out after you purchase it online just like any other ticket, you do have to pick the tickets up at will call but once you do the Fastpass+ you reserved ahead of time are synced to the ticket you receive.

[coasterbillWhy do I still have a donkey title???]

I never used the old system, but I love the current system.

I feel like I'm getting slightly better, but when it comes to Disney (at least going into the trip) we're complete novices. That said, I was able to bang out Fast Pass after Fast Pass simply by refreshing the app. Every time I scanned in I immediately went back to the app and started doing it again and 99% of the time I had a good one by the time we boarded the ride we were in line for.

Yeah, I guess the old system might be better for you if you're going to one park and staying there all day long but it was awesome to be able to stand in Epcot, pull up the phone and decide which park we wanted to hit next based on what we could reserve. You could also walk up to less popular rides that were still posting 20-30 minute wait times, get in line and then 2 minutes later snag a Fastpass, leave the line and walk right on. We did this at Living with the Land and Spaceship Earth. It was great.

In fact, to add on to what I said above, not only is it better for locals, but also better for non-locals. It was amazing watching a non-local like Coasterbill, who had never used the system before, crank out FP+ after FP+ on the app using it to it's full potential. I think we were in line for Big Thunder Mountain around 10:00pm and he cranked out yet ANOTHER FP+ for Space Mountain for an hour later. And this was after he already had a bunch that day. He was able to immediately see what was available, no running around, and we got in so much MORE that evening at the park using FP+ than if we had to run around the park playing the guessing game of what rides may or may not have still had a paper FP. And this was all on a weekend night, too! (A Saturday was it, Bill?)

Great example.

Our first day at Disney was a busy Saturday with beautiful weather. We had booked Frozen Ever After, Mission Space and Nemo 30 days prior. We started our day at Epcot, knocked out Test Track and Soarin early, Fastpassed Mission Space and Frozen, walked over to the Land and decided to wait it out, saw the line, cancelled Nemo and (after a few refreshes) got a Land fastpass, left the line, got right on, then went to Spaceship Earth and did the same thing.

We left Epcot, and in the parking lot (around 1pm on a busy Saturday) I got Navi River Journey which was posting a 200 minute wait so we went to Animal Kingdom, rode that, took a restroom break and got Everest in the process (multitasking, lol), then kept refreshing later on and got Dinosaur and Primeval Whirl.

Then we went to meet up with Robb and the crew at Magic Kingdom for a midnight close. I saw he got Space Mountain and Thunder Mountain and I was able to get an overlapping Fastpass for Thunder Mountain while waiting for the monorail at the TTC and then I got one for Space Mountain as soon as we got off just because I kept refreshing.

So on a busy Saturday I got

Frozen Ever After (in advance)
Mission Space (in advance)
Nemo (in advance, but we cancelled it since we decided we didn't really care)
Living with the Land
Spaceship Earth
Expedition Everest
Navi River Journey
Dinosaur
Primevil Whirl
Thunder Mountain
Space Mountain

Keep in mind that this was a 2 person Fastpass party also because I got them for me and Brit. Magic Kingdom was busy that night too, they were using an overflow queue for the Peoplemover.

I loved the system and I loved that I didn't have to get to the park at rope drop and run to collect tickets. I could easily book awesome fastpasses while taking a crap. That's Disney magic for you.

Good to know. Their ticket apparently didn't have that option, as they had bought through a reseller as an exchange certificate.

So you're blaming the app for your friends sketchy ticket purchase??? Yep, most certainly category A!

[coasterbillWhy do I still have a donkey title???]

Good to know. Their ticket apparently didn't have that option, as they had bought through a reseller as an exchange certificate.

Yeah but they're also getting a super discounted ticket and even then they could have probably reserved at least one Tier 1 at Epcot if they refreshed enough plus anything else in the park they wanted. They could have probably reserved anything at Animal Kingdom except Flight of Passage. They could have probably reserved anything at Magic Kingdom except maybe Seven Dwarfs and Peter Pan. In all of these cases, you could rope drop one E ticket ride, get in line for another E ticket ride at park close and skip tons of lines that day even with a cheap a** ticket unless you have a huge group.

[Canobie CoasterWhy do I still have a donkey title???]

Chiming in on the benefit of Fastpass Plus. Last weekend, we walked into Hollywood Studios at 7:30 for a 9 pm close. With paper Fastpasses, there's almost no chance one of the major rides would have been available.

But we went to one of the kiosks, repeatedly refreshed for 5 minutes, one person at a time, and then we each had Tower of Terror Fastpasses for 8:20. If we had searched for both of us at once or only checked once, we probably would have ended up queuing for an hour.

[coasterbillWhy do I still have a donkey title???]

I visit for full days, with a bunch of people, all of whom are getting in with Fl Resident, Annual Pass, Cast member maingates, Multi-Day stays, Cast members themselves...etc. Coordinating advance reservations with all of those people is a nightmare, especially if there's anyone who doesn't understand the system.

I'm confused. Why does everyone have to understand the system? Only one person per group needs to understand the system. They can add to their fastpass party and then just make all of the reservations for everyone. All anyone else has to know how to do is hold a plastic card up to a light. That seems like it would be easier for everyone than making sure everyone gets there at park opening so they can run around the park collecting paper tickets.

Brit didn't log into the app once while we were at the parks. Not once. If you had Annual Pass members and Cast members in your group why couldn't they have just done everything?

[jray21Why do I still have a donkey title???]

I absolutely love WDW's FP system. I'm glad Disneyland is slowing making their FP system better, but WDW's system is so much better than anything out there. Last time I was there, we had a pretty large group and it was so easy to get FP's and change them and split groups and everything.