Here are some more thoughts on strategies for touring Disney World, including FastPass Plus, single rider, crowd levels, touring plans and navigating the parks.
FastPass Plus
At Disney World, the old FastPass system which is still in use in Disneyland has been replaced by FastPass Plus (FPP). Instead of going to a kiosk to get a paper FastPass, you book your FPPs online in advance (up to 60 days ahead if staying onsite, 30 days otherwise). You can book 3 FPPs per day in advance; once you have used those you can go to a kiosk to book more (for the additional FPPs, you have to use each one before you can book another).
I never booked any additional FPPs at the kiosk; 3 was enough to avoid the longest waits and I think I would have spent more time walking to the kiosk and booking another FPP than I would have saved in line. On a couple of occasions I did change my existing FPPs on my phone, though.
When I was working out my plans on touringplans.com, in some cases there were only 1 or 2 rides that it suggested a FPP for, but I always got 3 FPPs anyway, even if my touring plan told me it would only save me a couple of minutes. In the end, I was glad I did that, because some days were much more crowded than expected and the FPPs ended up saving me quite a bit of time. On the other hand, there were some times when I had booked a FPP but didn't need it - in some cases I was able to change the FPP to another attraction on my phone.
One option that is new with the FastPass Plus system is the ability to get FastPasses for fireworks and parades. I only did this once, getting a FPP for Illuminations. I was really glad we did - the view from the FPP area was amazing. In the future I would consider getting a FPP for Wishes too, especially on a busier day. I don't think I'd bother with a FPP for any of the parades though, since it was always easy to get a good spot for those.
Single Rider
There aren't nearly as many rides at Disney World with a single rider line as there are at Disneyland, which is a shame, because I found this feature really useful at Disneyland. Three rides at Disney World offer single rider lines - Test Track, Expedition Everest and Rock 'n' Roller Coaster. I never used these lines at Test Track or Expedition Everest because I used FPP instead, but I think for Test Track the single rider line actually would have saved me time over the FPP line. I did use the Rock 'n' Roller Coaster single rider line once during evening EMH but I don't think it saved me any time at all over just waiting in the regular standby line.
Crowd Levels
One of the reasons I went to Disney World in September was because crowd levels are supposed to be low at that time. However, although some of the crowd predictions from touringplans.com were spot on, some days the crowds were much higher than predicted, particularly at Magic Kingdom and Hollywood Studios.
For the most part, my touring plans still worked out. For example, on the morning of the 14th of September I visited Magic Kingdom. The predicted crowd level was 2; the actual crowd level was 7. We had a pre-RD Be Our Guest reservation, so we were able to walk on Seven Dwarfs, and we had FPPs for the three mountains (Space, Splash and Big Thunder). The only time we were affected by the crowd level was that there was a wait to get into Columbia Harbour House for lunch.
The crowd level had more of an effect when we went off schedule. I thought we could fit breakfast into our Hollywood Studios morning (predicted 4, actual 8) by shuffling things around a little and riding Star Tours standby instead of with FPP. But when we showed up at Star Tours 20 minutes after the end of our FPP window the standby line was 50 minutes long. Luckily they let us into the FPP line even though we were late, so everything worked out okay.
The only day that the crowd levels actually caused a problem was on the 19th of September when Magic Kingdom was predicted to be a 3, but was actually a 7. I thought that a 7:55pm reservation at Be Our Guest would give us enough time to get a reasonable spot for Wishes at 10pm, but by the time we got out of the restaurant at 9:30pm, Main Street was already full.
Overall, the crowd levels at Disney World turned out to be fairly similar to those I experienced at Disneyland. However, I found that Disney World felt a lot less crowded at the same crowd level, I think because there is more room in the walkways at Disney World.
As I said in my Disneyland post, having a good plan is far more important than what the crowd level ends up being, and this trip definitely showed that it's very hard to predict the crowd level in advance (this isn't a criticism of Touring Plans at all; I don't think anyone predicted how heavy crowds were going to be in September).
Touring Plans
I spent a lot of time creating and obsessively fiddling with my personalised touring plans on touringplans.com before my trip. As in Disneyland, my plans were generally manually ordered because I was never entirely happy with the order that optimisation gave me. Also as in Disneyland, I set my walking speed to the slowest setting possible (this may have also helped me deal with the higher than expected crowd levels).
Although the wait times at Disney World didn't end up being as accurate as those at Disneyland, it didn't really matter because I had planned to avoid any long waits anyway. Even if wait times were double what was predicted, that turned a predicted 5 minute wait into an actual wait of 10 minutes, which wasn't a big deal.
I had been looking forward to using the free wifi in the Disney World parks to be able to edit my plans on the fly, but in general I found that the wifi wasn't reliable enough, especially while I was waiting in queues, so for the most part I stuck to my original plans (in addition, I found that when I tried to change my plans I tended to run into trouble with longer than expected wait times). I was able to submit some wait times on Lines though.
Navigating the Parks
In general I found it easier to navigate around the parks in Disney World than I did in Disneyland. This was due to a combination of factors. I'm more familiar with the layout of the parks in Disney World. It was easier to get around crowds due to the wider walkways, and there also tended to be fewer paths blocked off due to parades. I also found that Disney World was much better sign posted; there were often signs pointed to nearby attractions and also to the nearest restrooms, which was one of my complaints about navigating Disneyland. I suspect there are more signs in Disney World because there tend to be fewer regular visitors than in Disneyland.
In my next post I will move on to talking about Universal Orlando.
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