Getting More FASTPASSES Faster at Walt Disney World

OVERVIEW: GETTING MORE FASTPASSES FASTER AT WALT DISNEY WORLD

(This page is one of a series explicating Walt Disney World lingo, abbreviations, and FAQ for first time family visitors to Walt Disney World.)

Walt Disney World’s FASTPASS program permits your family to skip a lot of waiting in line for some of Walt Disney World’s most loved—and hence crowded—attractions, for free.

I have posted details on this program elsewhere. This page is meant to help you—at some real cost—overcome some of the key limitations of the FASTPASS program:

• You can only get a FASTPASS every two hours
• Some FASTPASSES are completely distributed early in the day
• Other FASTPASSES quickly build to a return time very late in the day

Walt Disney World currently has no program similar the “Universal Express Program” for Universal resort guests.

This remarkable Universal program allows Universal hotel guests to move to the front of almost every ride’s waiting line as many times as they wish, whenever they wish, beginning as soon as the parks open. (See this for details.)

However, you can buy your way into a roughly similar situation at Walt Disney World—simply by buying and using more than one theme park admission ticket per person!

Two theme park tickets used for admission allow twice as many FASTPASSES, on average granting you a FASTPASS every hour rather than every two.

DETAILS ON GETTING MORE FASTPASSES FASTER AT WALT DISNEY WORLD

As noted above and here, after you have gotten one FASTPASS, limits on how soon you can get another FASTPASS restrict how many high-demand rides you can see quickly and without long waits.

You can buy your way out of this problem by buying and using a second set of theme park admission tickets.

As a result, you can hold twice as many FASTPASSES as you otherwise could, and typically see twice as many FASTPASS rides more quickly and with lower waits.

FASTPASSES only are distributed for theme park tickets that have been used for admission that day.

The way this strategy works is that you get a second ticket for each person in your party. Your group then enters the park through the turnstiles using one of their tickets. It then exits the park and re-enters again using the second ticket. Each person will then have two tickets they can use to get FASTPASSES with.

Ways you could use this FASTPASS strategy at the Walt Disney World theme parks include the following:

• At the Magic Kingdom, enter, re-enter, and head towards Big Thunder Mountain, FASTPASSING the Jungle Cruise and Splash Mountain on the way.  Ride these, then head towards Buzz Lightyear, FASTPASSING Peter Pan and Space Mountain on the way…etc.
• At Epcot, enter, re-enter, FASTPASS Soarin and Test Track, then ride Mission Space.
• At Disney’s Hollywood Studios, enter, re-enter, then FASTPASS Toy Story Mania and Rock N’ Roller Coaster, then ride the Tower of Terror.
• At Disney’s Animal Kingdom, enter, re-enter, FASTPASS Dinosaur and Expedition Everest, and then ride Kilimanjaro Safaris.

SOME COMMON SENSE ADVICE ON USING THIS STRATEGY FOR GETTING MORE FASTPASSES FASTER

For many, this will be an extraordinarily expensive solution to a problem they may just not have.  Your second tickets will be at the highest per-day rate Disney sells at. (See this for Walt Disney World theme park admission ticket prices.)

During many parts of the year, Walt Disney World crowds will not justify the expenditure.  Getting up early and being at the gates 30 minutes before the parks open will work just fine.

At other times, you’ll find value to this expenditure only at the Magic Kingdom.

Given that, families contemplating using this strategy should hold on buying extra tickets until they are actually in the parks themselves, so that they have an exact sense of the crowd and FASTPASS situation that they are in!

Each Walt Disney World theme park has ticket kiosks or guest services areas you can use to buy your extra tickets, should you need them.  Moreover, you can buy one-day tickets to start.  If you later decide you want to follow this strategy in additional parks,  you can pay to add on extra days, at no penalty compared to buying these days all at once.

So don’t try this strategy until it’s been proven you need it, and take it one day at a time!

(Note that because of the way Disney theme park admission tickets and fastpasses work, you can’t simply use another “day” of a single multi-day ticket to get the same opportunity for two fastpasses, nor can you use tickets (e.g. those of your sleeping-in spouse or kids) which have not yet been used that day for admission to get fastpasses.)

Note: the crew at TouringPlans.com has published another way to get more than one FASTPASS at the same time, which is MUCH cheaper than my approach, but also much more complicated.  You can find it here.

RELATED STUFF

• i. Itineraries for Walt Disney World
• s. FAQ and Glossary