Fastpass + and magic band review

[ckaranassos]

Hi everyone. We just returned from a week of using magic bands and fastpass +. I have to say we loved both aspects. We never had any glitches and were given cards as well just in case there was problems with the band. Now my opinion may change when everyone is using the new system. The magic bands were great. We found them easy and convenient to use for parks and dining plan. We travel with 5 kids and it was always a big pain having to hand out and collect cards from everyone. This trip everyone had their bands on and it was a breeze entering the parks. Plus, they were sufficient for entry into Stormalong Bay. Fastpass + worked great for us. We had two breakfast reservations on our trip so it was easy to plan those fastpass selections in advance. Time choices were great for our favorite attractions. Several days we were at dinner and decided on a park for the next day and I went to my app and picked our fastpass+ selections right at the table. As been stated by others you get 3 choices with a bonus at magic kingdom. Once you choose your fastpass attractions and times you can go back and individually change time choices. For example, we arrived at Disney World earlier than we thought so, I went on my app and moved our time choices up. This was done an hour before we entered the park. We always got our times and attraction choices. (That may change when everyone is using it) The old system was available to us as well during this testing phase. My only complaint/suggestion would be that when you have used your 3 fast passes it would be great if you could add 3 more. For example, at DHS we rode RR, TOT and toy story mania by 12:00 noon, without the old system we would be done with fastpasses for that day. However, having a fast pass for toy story mania before you even enter the park was super duper. So, that may be the trade off. Hope this helps with any questions concerns.

[Aurora]

Thanks for your review! I hope you don't mind me asking a couple of questions:

How crowded would you say the parks were, in your opinion?

For which attractions did you get FP+?

[ckaranassos]

The last couple of times we have been going this time of year due to everyone's schedules and we all agreed this was the most crowded it has ever been for us. It certainly was less crowded than our November trips and slightly more crowded than our early December trip. Our fast pass selections were as follow:

DHS: RR, ToT and Toy Story (did this 2 days)

MK: space, splash and big thunder (2days) Bonus were pirates one day and little mermaid the other- Buzz was 10 minute waits so we didn't fast pass that ride.

AK: Everest, rapids and safari

Epcot: soaring, test track and maelstrom

I used the app to check wait times and adjusted fastpass times accordingly.

[ckaranassos]

We were able to ride basically every attraction at each park using fastpass + and stand by entrance. We only used the old fastpass system to double up on Space, RR, and ToT. Our kids are older youngest being 9 so we did return to MK after dinner and stay to 11 2 nights.

[disneymom15]

Thanks for the review. Sounds great to me, wish we would be selected to test the new system. 12 days til we're there, fingers crossed we get selected.

[cather74]

Can you pick the same ride? Like doing soarin at 3 different times in one day?

[BuddyL4]

We are here at WDW now and are using the Magic Bands as well as FP+. For us so far it's been OK with only 1 complaint, when Test track broke down on Monday and we had FP+ for it the system went a little screwy. The system rebooked us for other FP+'s that we had no desire to use. We tried to change them and it completely messed up our other FP+'s for the rest of the day. After me and my 2 adult sons were about to throw the bands in the bottom of the lagoon I received an email detailing how to handle the situation. Basically we should have done nothing, just pick one of the many attractions listed in the email and go during the time we would have done test track, no adjusting anything on our part. Well it was to little to late as we completely goofed up our FP+'s for the rest of that day. Other than that so far no other major issues.

[faline]

We were just there and did not have access to the fastpass + system.

A couple of things we noted - attendance was up significantly for this time of year. The Fastpass + system testing was a real pain for someone like us who was unable to use the system. We found that the standby lines were incredibly long. Using the regular fastpass system put us in different lines though faster than standby, for sure. From what I observed, I'm not even sure how they can get an accurate measure of how the fastpass+ system is working?

[Kenny1113]

We were just there and did not have access to the fastpass + system.

A couple of things we noted - attendance was up significantly for this time of year. The Fastpass + system testing was a real pain for someone like us who was unable to use the system. We found that the standby lines were incredibly long. Using the regular fastpass system put us in different lines though faster than standby, for sure. From what I observed, I'm not even sure how they can get an accurate measure of how the fastpass+ system is working?

Maybe this is why the testing is extended??????

[Tekneek]

I get the impression that a lot of the testing is still for the infrastructure (web services/backend systems, RFID stations, etc) rather than impact on crowd flow. It would seem a bit of a challenge to understand the real overall impact from the tests done so far.

Maybe that is part of the next phase in October/November, as that testing group seems to be larger.

[Tekneek]

Today was the first day I could book FP+ and it has already failed. I booked three FP+ for a party of 5, and everything looked right when I confirmed. When I went back later to review, they had been changed to party of 4 and left my wife off of all 3 reservations.

Initial review: FP+ gets an F-

So, I tell the app that I want to cancel those existing reservations and make new ones (that actually include the entire family). It then tells me that we all have the previously existing reservations and now shows all 5 of us booked for them (unlike when it was only showing a party of 4 minutes earlier). Already it is appearing to be the cluster of trouble I expected it to be.

[Butters]

I just signed up to take part in the fastpass+ testing in 2 weeks. I've linked our AP's to our magic bands and chose our fastpass+ attractions.

I've read that some people can still use their APs/Park tickets to get the traditional paper fast passes along with Fastpass+ is this true?