In the olden days, you went to Disneyland and bought a ticket for anything you wanted to do. Those tickets evolved into ticket books, ranged from A to E for corresponding attractions, with a certain number of each, to spread people around. The point was, the park had X number of E-ticket attractions, and you were given X-Y number of E tickets. Crowd control was built in, and on the guest side of things, you hadn’t even gotten through the door and you were already faced with choices. I was lucky when I was little to be traveling with adults who were happy to pass along their Es to build up my supply, so I didn’t have to miss anything, aside from the pressures of time and lines and whatnot working against the average park-goer.
Eventually the park was general admission with all attractions included. Which meant that going to WDW was a matter of engineering the best course through a given park, minimizing the amount of time spent on lines. Rule number one for this, which you would think would be obvious to everyone capable of breathing, is to get there at park opening. But you’d be surprised how hard this is for some people. For whatever reason, they are unable to gather their forces for the firing of the opening shots, and they miss out on the first hour or two when you pretty much walk on to anything you want without waiting. If you get the (now virtual) E tickets out of the way early, you breeze into the less busy attractions for the rest of the day without having to give it too much thought, provided it’s not one of the busiest days of the year. The DisAd, in mid- to late-August, is only a moderately busy time, so that won’t be a problem for us.
Rule number two is to use the Unofficial Guide, which I have sworn by since its earliest days. For all practical purposes, the Guide is the aggregate of untold numbers of line engineers processing the best paths for speedy touring and passing along the results. For years I was a dedicated follower of the book. Whoever was with us, they trusted me and I trusted the Guide, and even though we were occasionally caroming all over creation, we were seldom waiting on a line. Life was good. In fact, even during busy times, and we did occasionally visit during such times, the Guide was a lifesaver. Plus showing up early. I think one of the big reasons people come home dissatisfied from a Disney trip is poor planning on their parts. Granted one might not want to attack an amusement park with the diligence of Eisenhower contemplating the invasion of Europe, but for me planning has become part of the whole fun of the trip. And the satisfaction of a good trip as a result is more than enough payback.
A while back, Disney introduced the FastPass. This was a reservation for a ride that you picked up in advance. You could get one of these for an E ticket a couple of hours hence, and after a certain interval, you could get another one, etc., etc. Adding the FassPass tickets to good tour management allowed things like repeat rides on one’s favorite attractions. You can ride Star Tours, if you’re O’C, maybe 20 times in a row. The old FastPass would help you on at least a couple of those trips.
Now Disney has what they call FastPass+. These are reservations made not while you’re in the park (for the most part, although you can make them in the park, and augment the ones you’ve already gotten after you’ve used them), but up to two months in advance. In other words, the park commando now plans his touring in general, plus when and which of a handful of FastPass+ reservations, 100 days before the trip, and remains poised to enter them the moment they become available (60 days in advance if you’re staying on property). I’ll be able to solicit passes for the entire DisAd, once everyone has ceded to me their reservation rights, which they have mostly all done.
Add to this the fact that the Unofficial Guide, which I still swear by, is now an app that you can adjust to your heart’s content, moving things this way and that way, augmenting with FastPasses, etc. I’ve already got MK and Epcot planned out. I started working on AK today, but hit up against a server problem, so I’ve postponed until tomorrow, but obviously, no soon is too soon for me!
If anyone needs help planning their Disney trip, let me know. I’ll plan everything for you, including breakfast, lunch, afternoon snacks, bathroom breaks, rides, shows, catnaps, family arguments, snakebite first aid, parking assignments, gas-passing and general albeit scheduled serendipity—gratis. It’s like playing a computer game, Sim Disney. Except real people get to be the sims.
Hey! Vaughan! Get over here! It’s 11:38. There is no scheduled bathroom break now. You’re supposed to be in the India section of “it’s a small world” at this very moment. You want to spend the rest of the day in the guard house? Suck it in, bub! You’ll pee when the Unofficial Guide says you can pee, and not a minute before.
Jeesh!
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