You have your dates, your hotel, your tickets, and your dining reservations. What next?
Fastpasses.
First things first: What are Fastpasses?
Fastpasses are first and foremost FREE! Don't let anyone trick you into buying them. These fastpasses allow you to enter a special, shorter line for rides. All guests with a ticket are allowed to have 3 initial passes per day. Babies 2 and under do not need a ticket, and therefore do not need a fastpass.
Once you buy your ticket, you can log into mydisneyexperience.com and start selecting your fastpasses. You can select up to 3 passes for a day, but these first 3 must all be at the same park. You select the time frame that you wish to ride that ride. Most time frames are an hour. There is a 5-min leeway at the end, but that is left up to the castmember and not all will let you ride if you miss your window. The 3 fastpasses cannot be in the same time frame. For example, you will have the following:
9-10am Space Mountain
10-11am Seven Dwarfs Mine Train
11am-12pm Thunder Mountain
*Note: they do not have to be back-to-back. This is just an example.
If you are staying on-site, you can start booking your fastpasses 60 days out from the first day of your hotel stay. You can then book 10 days after that.
Confused?
Here's an example. Let's say your check in date is June 1st. You can start booking fastpasses April 2nd. If you are staying at that hotel for 3 days (checking out on June 4th), you can book fastpasses for all those days starting April 2nd. You don't have to wait until April 3rd to book fastpasses for June 2nd. However, if you are staying for 2 weeks, you can only book the first 10 days of your stay. You will have to wait until the rest of the days open up. Get it? Good.
If you are NOT staying onsite, you can book fastpasses at the 30 day mark.
Keep in mind for both of these, you must have your tickets linked to your Disney account in order to book fastpasses. For hotel guests, you must have your resort reservation AND tickets linked to your account to book the fastpasses at 60 days out. If you are missing the hotel reservation, you will have to wait until 30 days out.
Once you use up all your fastpasses, you can add one more if there are any left for the day. Once you use this 4th one, then you can add another. And so on and so forth.
The other option for getting fastpasses is you can wait until you get in the park and head to a kiosk to get your fastpasses for the day. The problem with this is that by the time you get there, there may not be any passes left that you were hoping to get.
Now I'm sure you're asking yourself, "Is this all really necessary? Do I have to book Fastpasses? Can't I just wing it?"
The truth is.....you can.....if you want to wait in ridiculously long lines for the most popular rides.
You don't have to do all this, if you plan on taking it slow or if you have circumstances where you can't plan your day even if you wanted to (i.e., babies, last minute trip, etc.).
But if you would like to get the most out of your trip, I would highly recommend it.
Each park has "hot" attractions, in which the fastpasses tend to disappear very quickly.
Magic Kingdom:
Seven Dwarf's Mine Train
Peter Pan
Space Mountain
Thunder Mountain
Hollywood Studios:
Toy Story Mania
Tower of Terror
Rockin Rollercoaster
Star Tours
Slinky Dog
Flying Saucers
Animal Kingdom:
Flight of Passage
Naavi River Journey
Expedition Everest
Kilimanjaro Safaris
EPCOT:
Soarin
Frozen
Test Track
Next up: Which rides to choose?