The New Elite Commandos

Greenfield1984

DIS Veteran
Joined
Jan 27, 2007
So here's the thing,

Disney World has had a dramatic transformation in the last decade.
Not only have they provides us with so much more to experience but they have changed the way we engage in this experience.

This has made us Disney vets struggle to keep up with the times.

I'm an old school commando park tourer...ok the real old school may take umbrage with that. I started learning the ins and outs of the park about 15 years ago on a large multi-generational family trip.

I was 17. Had cousins, aunts, uncles, parents, grand parents and all of us showed up at the park with absolutely no plan.

The adults did, what I now consider so shameful, the thing where they got to the middle of the park, opened up their maps and asked the question: so what do we do now?

I quickly realized then that Disney is not the park to oh so casually engage with.

I took the younger broods and as the dashing call to action leader, some would say hero, that I was, I rallied us youngins and quickly learned about and mastered the paper fast pass system.

Some would say I saved that trip. That without my valiant efforts that trip would have been unsalvageable.

I don't know about that.
I just did what any person would have done in such a dire situation.

But I decided, after that fateful trip, that never again would I ever embark on a trip to the Kingdom so unprepared.

I then downloaded the first ever podcast that I listened to and discovered both the dis podcast and boards and became an uber plan for subsequent trips.

All this unnecessarily long preamble aside.....

Disney is now a new beast.
The old tricks are not nearly as useful.

My goal is to experience the parks with as little crowds and wait times as possible.

I accomplished this by :
1. Researching quietest time of the year and then pulling my kids out of school to visit then.
2. Researching crowd calendars to visit the quietest park each day of the week.
3. Arriving early before rope drop to beat the lazy people who have the audacity to attempt to relax and sleep in on their vacation.
4. Creating a good tour plan of the park to best efficiently ride each ride and in what order on each day.
5. Mastering Fast Pass.

This worked wonders and I was able to scoff all those mere peasants waiting in their long lines.
But I fear that I too may becoming that same lowly plebian :(.

Disney has managed to make much of those earlier tricks no longer nearly as useful as they once were.

1. They have managed to evenly disperse the crowds throughout the year that there very well may no longer be a quiet time of the year. They have done this with discounts, promotions, and ever increasingly longer events (how is the halloween party going on during my early sept trip?).
2. Crowd Calendars are becoming so unreliable that some experts have given up even offering them.
3. Arriving early is probably still the best trick but the rides are getting extended waits earlier and earlier in the day now.
4 and 5. A good touring plan is also still going to be effective but again not nearly as much as it once was. Since all the amateurs and their mothers seem to be tech savvy everyone seems to know how fast pass works and therefore all of the stand by times of attractions have increased significantly. It used to be easy. Get 3 fast passes for high demand rides, then in morning ride the other popular rides you dont have fast passes for, spend the afternoon and evening using those 3 fast passes and riding the less popular rides.
But the less popular rides now have hour waits at times when it used to have none! I'm looking at you Pirates and Small World.

So what are we to do?

Are we going to just accept this new normal where Disney allows for all of its park guests to have the same equal experience?

I've read many a thread now a days where people just say to take it easy. Be less commando and just enjoy your trip.

I have one thing to say to these people:

When was it that your will to live died?

When did you decide to just lay down and give up?

And shame on you!

Darnit WE ARE DISERS!
We are the elite Disney vacationers that will not settle for a trip that does not absolutely include Le Cellulier, Royal Table, and Fast Passes to Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, Frozen, and both Pandora attractions. And darnit I expect to have all of that on the same day! Otherwise yes my trip will be ruined!
I can rest and sleep when i'm dead darnit!

So I now implore you fellow Disers. What are the tricks of the trade of the new Elites to better tour the parks?

Got a good firework spot? I want to know it.
Got a good touring plan. Stop being greedy. Share this.
Is there a quiet time?

Whatever you got lets start sharing and claim the parks as our own once again.
 
For me I think the mastery of the fast pass system may be one trick.
Right now everybody seems to use fast pass. But are they really maximizing the system?
I suspect many people just take the recommended fast passes that the app offers and do very little tinkering.

It used to be 3 fast passes would suffice.
Now i'm thinking that we use up the 3 fast passes by early afternoon and then try to get as many additional fast passes as possible.
Pirates didn't used to need one but we should be able to get a 4th fast pass for it and other rides of its nature like, small world, haunted mansion etc. The more fast passes we can find after the 3rd use the better off and more time we should be able to save.

The fast pass app offers alot of tinkering and modifying. So while waiting in line for say winnie the pooh you might have a 4th fast pass ready for haunted mansion in a couple of hours. While in line you can keep modifying and searching to see if an earlier fast pass opens up. If you can get that next fast pass as earlier as possible then bingo u now have a 5th fast pass opportunity even sooner. Other people are constantly changing their fast passes so it seems that there are constantly new ones opening up. So if you are just waiting in line anyway might as well keep searchin.

Always forget what the link rules are but here is a video of people using this strategy.
 
Getting in line for headliners just before closing time worked beautifully for us on our last trip (10/22-11/02). We didn't make any rope drops, so we needed it, in order to do headliners multiple times. The best one was at DHS; thanks to the multiple nighttime events, we were able to ride TSMM three times in the last hour of park operation.

Speaking of rope drop, O.P. states in his post that it has lost some of its usefulness. But lots of other Disers still swear by rope drop. So I would be curious to hear other's opinions on this. How long is rope drop usually good for short waits (aside from some headliners, which get mobbed immediately)?
 
Speaking of rope drop, O.P. states in his post that it has lost some of its usefulness. But lots of other Disers still swear by rope drop. So I would be curious to hear other's opinions on this. How long is rope drop usually good for short waits (aside from some headliners, which get mobbed immediately)?

I think RD is still very useful (based on a trip last month...visiting all parks except HS...not on MLK but on a very busy weekend that should have been "slow"). Still had a RD plan...still had FP for headliners starting around 10. The park is less crowded at RD making it so much more efficient just to travel from one ride to the next. Walk-ons to most rides in the first hour as long as they were not headliners.

We are going on a family multi-gen trip in May and I keep reading about how the last hour is not crowded in the parks. With 4 little ones under the age of 6, they will long be in bed by the time the parks close but that might work for their parents to go back for a bit while grandparents babysit. I try to soak up any advice to make the days go smoother. My DIL has never been and the only stories she has heard involve lines...lines...lines. So I guess she'll be pleasantly surprised if we have a different experience.
 


I'm no expert (I've only been to the world once!). But I can say, thanks to these boards, I can talk like I'm a Florida resident with an AP (well maybe not, but you get where I'm going). I know much more than the average Joe, and that's because of this board. So Disers definitely are still rocking it with their plans of attack and for that I'm humbled and so grateful.
 
I love your writing style, OP. Thank you for putting a smile on my face on this boring Tues am at work. :flower1:

I find that I always have to re-evaluate my FP strategy each trip. Things seem to subtly change over time with the system as Disney tweaks it. Don’t think of rides like IASW as former walk ons now lost, think of them as easy FP opportunities. I also am taking a look at how to more strategically get FPs. Right now I plan for EE to be our last AK FP (here’s hoping I can get a morning FOP). My DD9 won’t ride it. So in years past I would have gotten 3 EE FPs and 2 PW FPs (DD9 loves that ride). But wait. If I get everyone EE FPs DD7 or DS5 can go with DH again. And if they both want to go, they can wrestle for it in the middle of the pathway. No. Kidding. Although that might make some passers by feel better about the meltdowns their kids have had. No, I try to get a 4th FP for DS because it’s much easier to get a 4th FP at the time you want for 1 person than 3. Then we get enough PW FPs for DD9 to ride until she hurls because PW FPs are readily available. In other words, I am starting to work my FPs based on what’s easiest to get as a 4th, not what people most want to go on (because DD9 and DH would be lobbying for People Mover FPs if they were offered - speaking of shameful).

I still swear by RD but I try to avoid the RDs crowds by making sure I have Fantasyland FPs so we can hit walk ons in Adventureland, Frontierland, and Tomorrowland. Then I don’t worry about FPing the mountains unless we get a 4th FP. Not so easy to avoid going to RD popular rides in the Tiered parks but definitely possible in MK.

As pps mentioned, if you aren’t hitting the night time shows that’s a good option for more popular rides too.

But I really think that maximizing FPs is the new Elite Commando strategy.

Good luck. Happy Hunting. Remember - you can always sleep at home. :faint:
 


OP - if I come up with anything not already included here - I will share!

I still create personalized Touring Plans (touringplans.com) and then optimize frequently throughout the day...And I bring 2 phones and a lipstick charger to make sure we have enough juice to keep checking FP.
 
I think there are 2 main things or tricks that an uber planner/commando type needs; first is manipulating the fastpass system to your advantage. I would guess that the majority of people in the parks aren't moving up their 2nd and 3rd fastpass times once the previous one is used to allow them to complete their first 3 in less than 3 hours, which gets them to being able to book the 4th+ fastpass sooner which will ultimately get you more fastpasses per day than the average guest. The second is flexibility. What I have learned the most from the obsessing over touring plans and planning and re-planning a trip is that the biggest advantage/outcome of that is not an iron clad plan, it's the knowledge and ability to be able to change a plan up on the fly without missing beat so that you can overcome unpredictable things that crop up (like an hour wait for Small World). You need to be agile and able to shuffle plans around without wasting time trying to figure it out.
 
Master the FP and even on busy days you'll be fine. Even on here many people comment that they choose not to do so...those not as Disney savvy often have no idea how to use FP outside of booking their 3 prebooked FP's.

And thanks for this post...it was a fun read! lol
 
We eat more now and budget it in. No joke! Seems like the one good thing I can count on is getting up early enough to get great ADRs, or use the res finder on Touring Plans to get fun ADRs. We see the meals more as entertainment than we used to. So if we're short on attractions, we're well-fed and happy and spending time together in a good way. Makes for a fun and less frustrating day.
 
OP, great post. I think where I land is the advantage goes to someone who stays onsite and:

1. Makes ADRs at the 6 month point
2. Makes FP+ reservations at the 60+x day point at 7AM eastern
3. Makes FP+ reservations that fit their style - if they still are a commando at heart like you, that means 3 morning FPs so you can get a 4th FP as early in the day as possible.
4. Learns every FP+ trick imagineable by the sticky threads here

:wizard:
 
We consider ourselves WDW experts. I've been visiting since the 1970s. We do all the FP+ tricks, ADRs 180 days in advance, etc. While I do some commando days, I am incorporating more relaxed days into our trips. It's made our visits so much more enjoyable. We commando in the morning and sip drinks poolside in the afternoon. Some mornings we sleep in, swim and hit the parks at night. We mix it up all the time. Because we've visited so many times, we don't feel the need to kill ourselves to see and do everything.
 
The huge FP+ dilemma.

On my August 2015 trip I did all PM FP+ since we hop to a PM park after our midday pool break. It worked out great since late August had lower crowds. Next trip we are going during a busier Jersey Week. I want to optimize our FP+ usage so I'm debating on doing AM FP's so we can keep getting more.

Decisions, decisions!
 
I'm an uber-planner myself. I use RideMax, which handles steps 2, 3, 4, 5 in your plan. It's always been spot-on in estimating wait times for different times of the day. We've never waited more than 15-20 minutes for any ride, even in summer (although I don't go between Xmas and NYE). Any trip 4 days or more, it's well worth the $20 price. Since it easily saves us 2 hours a day waiting in line (and that 2 hours is used for more rides), at $3-5 a day it's minuscule compared to the $75-90 per day ticket price (times the number of people in your party).
 
Ah, but your call to action is self-defeating. Because the DIS is part of the reason everyone and their mother knows all the tricks. If you have a good strategy, and you share it here, you'll have thousands of copy-cats using it by the time you go back.
 
"Quiet" time: Last two weeks in August through the first two weeks in September. If you can take the heat, that seems to still be a decent time to go. Schools are back in session. F&W and MNSSHP haven't yet started (unless they move these up to start even earlier). You also have to factor in possible hurricanes during this time frame though.

We are going in mid-May this year. I'm hoping it will be quieter this year than it was last year. Hopefully people will delay their trips by a couple of months so they can get in on the opening of TSL!
 
My approach is from a senior way of visiting Disney World. Because Disney is trying to even out the crowds, the popular attractions will be busy no matter what. I missed out on seeing the fireworks at MK last Nov. because I didn't want to deal with the crowds. This next trip I plan to sign up for dessert and view. The extra charge is worth it to me.

I really wanted to see Flight of Passage. I realized I needed to get there at least 1 hr. prior to opening to be ahead of the crowd waiting for stand by. And even then there were a lot of ppl.
If you are staying onsite, I suggest you go early on the morning EMH. You won't be competing with FP till the park opens for everyone.. The 2 times I went, the turnstiles opened 45 prior to opening, waited at the bridge till 15 minutes prior then walked on to ride. If you're 10-15 minutes later than that, then you could be waiting 1 hour or more. This has not changed since Pandora opened. FoP is an wonderful ride that you will want to do again. I have read at night right before the park closes is a good time to ride, but I'm happily tucked into my resort by then.

I was up before 4am to get my FP's, live is Seattle. I started them at around 10am and on. I was able to reserve 14 days worth as I was onsite for that amount of time.
I tried out the checking for 4th fastpasses at the parks when I was in line with my 3rd FP. I bought a smart phone especially so I could do that. It worked great. ( Still trying to figure out the rest of the phone stuff).

I could go on, but most of the time I get that Deer in Headlights Look from ppl.

Have a great time! Your post made me laugh.
 

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