The FastPass+ Frenzy

We have finally made it to the final stages of our Disney countdown! Last week one of the last dates on the Disney checklist came and went: our FastPass+ day.

I was up before my alarm clock and ready to log in and make our selections. I had my clipboard beside me.  It was filled with our plans and the list of FastPasses I was aiming to set.

I had been hearing on Twitter and in Facebook groups that others had been experiencing issues with Disney’s system in the recent weeks. Honestly, this is nothing new. Similar to how everyone experienced cute doggie error messages on Amazon minutes after Prime Day deals launched last month it’s not abnormal to log into MyDisneyExperience and see images of Olaf losing, Goofy exclaiming “Gawrsh!,” or even Disney’s own cute dogs, Lady and the Tramp apologizing for the “paws” because the servers are simply overloaded in the early minutes of dining reservations or FastPasses opening for booking and on days when new discounts are released. Reports did seem to make it sound a little more glitchy than normal.

My phone was opened to the MyDisneyExperience, my computer was logged in, and I even had my son’s wi-fi only phone ready as a backup. One of these devices was going to have to work for me.

At 7:00AM, on the button, I was ready.

I tapped “Get FastPass+,” selected the whole family, and went to our first day at Hollywood Studios and then the inevitable happened: Slinky Dog Dash was not available for a FastPass+. I was not surprised at all by this. We’re planning to visit the park on our second day and I knew the likelihood of getting a FastPass+ was low to non-existent. So I quickly locked in a time for Alien Swirling Saucers and then changed dates to later in our trip and found the most perfectly timed FastPass+ to ride the new rollercoaster.

Next, I was onto Pandora FastPasses. Our Animal Kingdom FastPass+ selections are at the end of the trip so I found a Flight of Passage ride for me and Peanut and Na’vi River Journey for Grumpy and Diva. The times lined up right over one another so we can quickly move through the park to our next FastPass+ attractions.

After I finished the making the toughest (or so I thought) reservations I went on to set our arrival day selections at Magic Kingdom. On our past two visits, I’ve had us set to ride Seven Dwarfs Mine Train. I scrolled down the list of available options to find nothing available for the middle afternoon hours… not even for the later afternoon. I scrolled back up and refreshed the time. There was nothing until 6:45 p.m. One more refresh and the same result. This wasn’t going to work because we’ll be out of the park by that time and enjoying our dinner at Whispering Canyon.  Our plans afterward include a relaxing evening and not heading back to the park so taking the later options wasn’t really an option.

Now that my plans were all thrown off I had to regroup and figure something out. I scrambled to book the other two we intended for the day and then skipped along to the rest of the days of our trip. Generally, those were rather uncomplicated and I did find Mine Train without any issues on our later Magic Kingdom days. I did shift a few things around, but overall set everything else in line as I had laid it out in my preliminary plan.

By this time I had to start working at my job. So later in the day when I had a break I peaked at MyDisneyExperience again to see if maybe it was just being glitchy early and hoped to find Mine Train available. No such luck. Now they were booking after 8PM.

It’s not the end of the world, just a slight bummer. We’ll see what standby lines look like, but will probably just wait until our FastPass later in the week for a ride on our favorite rollercoaster.

Disney’s next dated deadline is to choose our Magic Band colors, but that’s long been set in our profile.

So next up for us: packing!