FASTPASS SYSTEM

All the main Disney parks we visited operated the FASTPASS system – a system that allows you to go straight to the front of the queue on all the popular rides and attractions.

Given that going straight to the front of the queue is much better than waiting for 45 minutes or more (and using the system is free to everybody in the park) we assumed that every visitor would be using FASTPASSes. However – this is clearly not the case as we saw 100s of people queuing up on all the big attractions as we bypassed the lot of them time after time.

This so bemused us that we decided to give FASTPASS its own page on this website – here’s our advice – USE THE FASTPASS TICKETS AT ALL THE MAIN DISNEY PARKS AND YOU WILL SPEND HARDLY ANY TIME QUEUEING, YOU WILL DO MORE IN YOUR DAY AND YOU WILL HAVE A MUCH BETTER TIME!

Here’s how it works. You have an entry ticket to get into the park that you keep with you once you have got through the entry gate. This entry ticket has a magnetic strip on it and once inside you use it to obtain your FASTPASS tickets.

Obviously some rides and attractions at the various Disney parks are more popular than others and also some have a slower throughput of people per hour – either way these rides have longer queues than others. We were not there during peak season but still some of the rides had queues of 45 minutes or even one hour.

These rides and attractions with the long queues are designated as FASTPASS attractions - you know which ones are FASTPASS ones as they are shown on the park maps with a red ‘FP’ symbol.

On each of these rides there are 3 things you need to know about – the FASTPASS Distribution point (where you get the fast pass tickets for that ride), the FASTPASS Return point (where you go to when it is your time to go on the ride) and the Standby Entry point (you don’t actually need to know about this – it is the place where all the mad people who are happy to waste an hour of their valuable time at Disney go to queue up!!)

At the FASTPASS distribution point there are a number of ticket machines with the current time slot (which is an hour long) shown above. You put your park ticket into the kiosk – it is returned to you and then a ticket with the ride’s name and the times between which you need to return comes out. It seemed vary but generally the time slots for returning were an hour or so ahead of when we got our FASTPASS tickets. The gap between getting the FASTPASS ticket and the time slot for return seemed to grow as the day went on (as more people came into the park). We guess that at very busy time and on very popular rides the wait time for the next FASTPASS slot will get pretty long –possibly several hours.

Note that the park ticket’s holder does not have to be present to get a FASTPASS ticket – therefore one of us was able to head to a FASTPASS ride with all of our park tickets, get the FASTPASS tickets and then go back to meet up again and do something else.

Once the time slot arrives you can go at any time between the start and end of your time slot to the FASTPASS Return point for that ride – your ticket is checked and then you go into a separate walkway which generally goes straight to the head of the queue – typically we waited 5 minutes to actually start the ride or attraction!

The system is very clever as it is set up so you are not supposed to have more than one FASTPASS ticket at any time. However, we had read about a small way around this which we found very useful. The system doesn’t actually know if you have used your FATPASS ticket for a ride or not. So it is set up so that you cannot get a FASTPASS ticket until the time slot for your previous ticket starts – this means, with a bit of planning you can overlap your FASTPASS tickets and fit a little more in.

All sounds a bit complicated, and it took us a while to get it properly worked out in our heads, but here is roughly how we played it one day at Magic Kingdom for the first few rides (we have made up the times but it proves the point!):

• Arrived at 9am at park entrance
• One of us went straight to Splash Mountain FASTPASS Distribution and got 4 FASTPASS tickets - the time slot allocated was 9.40 - 10.40
• Met up at entrance to Big Thunder Mountain Railroad - queued in the Stand By queue (quite short queue at that point as it was early) - did the ride at 9.20
• Killed 20 minutes at Frontierland Shooting Arcade
• One of us headed over to Mickey's
PhilharMagic FASTPASS Distribution point - at 9.45 got FASTPASS tickets for a time slot of 10.30-11.30
• Returned to meet up at Splash Mountain - went to Splash Mountain FASTPASS Return point at 9.50 and did ride at 9.55
• Went to Ariel's Grotto and then did the Cinderella's Golden Carousel
• One of us went to the Peter Pan's Flight FASTPASS Distribution point at 10.40 and got FASTPASS tickets for 11.40-12.40
• All went to Mickey's PhilharMagic FASTPASS Return at 10.45