FP+ and Daily Plans
About 2 weeks ago, I was able to stay up until midnight to try to schedule our FP+ for our trip. It seemed straightforward. But as life tends to do, there was a bit of a background story to all of it.
I knew that our plans would be heavy on things DD would be able to and want to do. So I had no illusions of planning tons of FP+ for the rides I enjoy… you know the ones with a 40”+ height requirement. I figured we might get one FP for BTMRR and one for Space and do the whole rider swap thing. But a couple of weeks before we could schedule our FP+, DW started feeling kind of odd. Nothing bad really, but she felt sure she was pregnant.
She took a test… negative.
Ok, false alarm. But the feeling remained.
The tests came in a 2 pack, so she tried the other one a few days later.
Negative.
Well, ok. Life goes on.
We really weren’t trying to get pregnant. We’d talked about it, but we never really decided for sure if or when we’d want to have another baby.
About a week later, she still just wasn’t feeling right so she bought another test.
This one was most definitely positive.
Apparently nature decided for us. We were going to have 3 kids. This positive test was conveniently the same day as her annual OB appointment and so she was able to confirm the home test and was scheduled for an ultrasound about a week later. Conveniently, it was the day before I could schedule our FP+
Basically, I’m just giving you a little bit of background as to why I did what I did when I scheduled FP+. It was really just a matter of throwing some things together so we had something booked. We had a couple of priorities that we really wanted, such as TSMM and the Frozen M&G. Otherwise, I just wasn’t really feeling it.
I wasn’t sure how DW would be feeling by the time the trip rolled around. I wasn’t sure if we’d even go. We had talked about just canceling because the logistics of everything were going to change and we were waiting on my annual bonus, which has been promised to us by Oct 15, and still hadn’t shown up a month later.
Thankfully, it came last week and the trip is now paid in full, but I was worried. This money was earmarked to pay for this trip!
So basically, my FP+ experience was more of a chore than something that was exciting, if that makes sense. I mean I had to stay up until midnight to book FP+ for a trip that I just hoped would still happen. And I wasn’t even really getting FP+ for things that I really wanted to do.
I’ve never really been crazy about the whole scheduling FP at 60 days out to begin with. I mean, I love planning our trips. And I like being able to find specific windows that fit our plans to schedule certain attractions. I just don’t think I like doing it at 60 days out.
I still have kind of a love/hate relationship with this new system. There are things I love, but there are plenty of things I hate. I’m having a hard time totally buying into and embracing the whole thing.
So I guess I should probably get to the point. Here’s a rundown of what we currently have schedule for our FP+ and a little explanation of what will most likely change.
Wednesday
9:00 – 10:00 Peter Pan
10:20 – 11:20 Enchanted Tales with Belle
12:35 – 1:35 Seven Dwarfs Mine Train
Ok… our plan is to make it to the park in time for Rope Drop and ride Peter Pan standby so that we can see the new queue that we always miss because we use FP. But we’re going to be coming from the I Drive area so I’ve made that FP as a fallback. If we miss RD and there’s a line, we can use the FP. If we’re going to be there in time and we’re standing next to the train station waiting on the park to open, I’ll use a few moments of that time to get on my phone and change that PP FP+ to something else in Fantasyland.
ETwB was an obvious choice for DD. She enjoyed it last time and this is a trip about princesses, after all. We’ll do this right before we move on to our lunch ADR in the Beast’s castle. 7DMT is scheduled for right after lunch.
Whether we ride or not, I don’t know. DD is close on the height… I don’t know if she’ll make it or not. If she can ride, she and I will likely ride and then I might change DW’s FP+ and borrow her band to ride Space or something… or we’ll just change hers to something else and DD and I will get our 4th and we’ll move on.
If DD isn’t tall enough to ride, we’ll likely just cancel all of our 7DMT FP+ and use those slots to skip lines on the “lesser” attractions that DD likes to ride.
Thursday
Just a reminder that we’re planning to start our day in EPCOT. Where Soarin’ is closed. So we’re just going to skip FP+ in that park. Our afternoon will be in DHS so our FP+ are as follows.
1:10 – 1:25 Disney Jr Live on Stage
1:55 – 2:55 Toy Story Midway Mania
2:55 – 3:55 Tower of Terror – me only
3:05 – 3:20 For the First Time in Forever Frozen Singalong – DW & DD
We’ll be in EPCOT until our late “breakfast” ADR at Akershus at 11. We’ll leave EPCOT through WS and then either take the boat (most likely) or walk from International Gateway to DHS.
Disney Jr is kind of a throwaway… if we make it in time, DD will enjoy it. If we don’t, no big deal. We definitely wanted to make sure we ride TSMM.
Afterwards we’ll split up. DW and DD will head to the Frozen Singalong and I’ll head to Sunset Blvd. I’ll be honest. I’ve seen the Singalong. It’s a good show. I enjoy it and I love watching DD have a good time there. I’ll admit, I would kind of like to see it with them.
That said, Rock n Rollercoaster will be calling my name. I’ll use the FP to ride Tower of Terror and then walk this way until I’m in the Single Rider line for the best ride in the park. And if the single rider line is closed, like it was all day during our last trip, this might just be where I have my meltdown and things get ugly.
After we re-unite we’ll either spend a little more time in DHS or head back to EPCOT. I like Star Wars, but DW doesn’t. I’m not big on character meets, myself or grabbing a bunch of merchandise, so I’m interested to see what the new Star Wars additions to the park will entail. If there’s a fireworks show or something, we might hang around the studios to see that. If there’s something that seems really interesting to me, we might check it out. I would like to ride Star Tours to hopefully catch the scene from the new movie, but we’ll see. My guess is that the new additions will be mostly character meets and merch so we will end up taking the boat back over to EPCOT to enjoy an evening in the WS and Illuminations.
Friday
9:00 – 10:00 Seven Dwarfs Mine Train
10:00 – 11:00 Pirates of the Caribbean
11:20 – 12:20 Anna & Elsa M&G – DW & DD
2:00 - 1:00 Anna & Elsa M&G – me
Today has the potential to be crazy. It is the Friday of MLK weekend and the crowd calendar seems to indicate an exponential increase in crowds over what we’ll see on Wednesday.
I grabbed another 7DMT in case we want another ride. That is, if we actually got to ride a first time. We should have knocked out Fantasyland on Wednesday, so we want to get over to Adventureland for Pirates, JC, Aladdin’s Carpets and the Tiki Room. Pirates seemed crazy when we were there last year, so we’ll use FP there.
Our last FP for the day will be to meet Anna and Elsa. I was unable to obtain FP+ for all of us at the same time, but I was able to find an overlapping window from 12:00 – 12:20. We’ll probably grab some lunch, meet the princesses and then use our 4th FP+ the rest of the day to do other attractions and likely take a break for a couple of hours.
Not knowing how this trip will go, I’m leaving a little more flexibility. I hinted earlier at a surprise. That has been canceled. I had booked a Wishes Dessert party for Wednesday night, but I’m sure that DW will want to see MSEP at some point. We'd miss it if we're in the Dessert Party and the first MSEP isn’t until 9 on Friday, which will likely be too late for DD. Not to mention that Friday is supposed to be more crowded.
So I figured it might be in our best interest to watch MSEP from Town Square Wednesday night, and then step out onto Main Street to see Wishes. At this point, I’m hoping that we can get out of the park ahead of the crowds, because I’d really like to take DW and DD to the room and return by myself to ride BTMRR and 7DMT after dark during EMH… although Wishes is at 8 and EMH is only until 10.
Odds of this working out are probably pretty slim.
If we don’t get an afternoon break to unpack, I’ll likely have to forget even thinking about returning to the park.
Friday night though, the park is scheduled to be open until 12. I know that DD and DW will not last that late, so hopefully between Wednesday and Friday, I’ll manage to find some time to get my mandatory night time ride on BTMRR and maybe even a night ride on 7DMT.
I think this post has been long enough, but I have one more thing to add. I finally booked my room for Jan 8 when I arrive in Orlando. I chose to stay at Pop. Based on maps I’ve seen, from past years, I don’t think road closures for the Half Marathon should have too much impact on me getting out of Pop and over to I-4 so that I can get to Universal. I like this because I’ll probably take a bus from Pop over to DTD and maybe make a quick stop in at Jock Lindsey’s before I head over to the Boardwalk. I could also consider doing this on the return trip instead… or do it both ways. We’ll see.