“Refresh” is my new favorite strategy

[shanew21]

True right now. But unlike other strategies, this one is very visible to the casual user. We were at Disney 2016 in May a few weeks after making your 4th FP on your phone went live. Even then (when there wasn't nearly the level of volitility there is now) it was obvious to me by the end of the trip that I could keep checking back and find new FPs. Anytime someone checks and happens to get a good FP that wasn't there when they checked a few minutes ago the lightbulb is likely to go off. Admittedly that's not the same as knowing to keep doing it over and over again or splitting your party but it's not much of a leap.

I fear this is the golden age for FPs and it won't be long before even casual Disney visitors will be refreshing with the best of them. Then either it just won't work as well or Disney will have to make changes. But for now I'm going to enjoy it for all it's worth.

You'd be very surprised at how little the average Disney World guest knows about Fastpasses. I helped a family plan a Disneyland trip and emphasized probably 10 different times the value of Fastpasses. I checked in with them after day 2 and they hadn't even made a single one.

 

[Babe the Blue Ox]

We had a really nice family ask us what our Magic Bands were for while on the ferry leaving the park Saturday.

 

[Klayfish]

Think of it this way. How many people do you see in the parks just staring at a park map with an utterly confused look on their faces? Sometimes I'll see them in a queue and you can hear them talking, they don't even know what the ride is. You can bet they likely don't know much, if anything, about FP+. Or what about people who just walk up to the FP+ tap point and try to walk through only to have to have the CM explain to them what FP+ is...I think some of those people are just pretending and hoping CMs let them in, but many seem to truly not understand. I do think that right now, this is still a bit of a "secret". But I do have concerns that word will spread and/or WDW will notice more people doing it and change the system.

However, that's out of my control and it'll be what it'll be. In the meantime, I'm hitting RnR next week at least 6 or 7 times!!!!! I honestly don't think I've ever done the standby line for that ride...

 

[scard192]

Anecdotally it is "easier" to move up a FP than to get a whole new FP. So, if you want to ride something specific, snag a time and try to move it up vs. trying to snag that time without the ride already in hand.

very true. If I was trying to get a 4,5,6th FP for one of the headliners at say 2PM and all I was able to get was 6-7PM or later I would grab that and most of the time was able to refresh until I got a time several hours sooner.

 

[twodogs]

How useful is this strategy to get preferred times for hard-to-get FP's *before* going to the park? For example, let's say I can get SDD at 60+1 but not until 9 pm and I really want earlier in the day. Is it worth spending time trying for two months before the actual park day?

I think your best luck is to modify the time in the one or two days before or night before. People change parks the night before and dump pre-booked FPs so you can often get much earlier times. Keep checking even when you enter the park. People wake up later than planned and modify theirs to later in the day, opening up earlier FPs for the rope droppers who are out there refreshing! We got FOP three times in two hours using refresh for a party of 4 in the third week of December (so big crowds). So it can be done. We then got Navi right after that with refresh. We couldn’t get FEA but didn’t try that hard because my kids are 10 and 12 and they like the bigger rides.

 

[ultimatefans]

So if I have 7 people in my family, would I have better luck if I search in groups of 3 at a time?

I’m curious about this too and didn’t see any replies. We’re a party of 10, should we search for 5 and when we get it search for the other 5? Sounds like a pain, but not sure refreshing would work for a larger party.

 

[twodogs]

I had to break our party up into smaller groups for the big rides at times. If the times overlap at all, you can all ride together during the overlap. So if two get 1-2pm and the others get 2-3pm, you can all scan in at 2pm and ride together.

 

[twodogs]

Get any time for each group and keep modifying the times until the groups overlap.

 

[KelNChrisKYDis]

I’m curious about this too and didn’t see any replies. We’re a party of 10, should we search for 5 and when we get it search for the other 5? Sounds like a pain, but not sure refreshing would work for a larger party.

I'm sure others have different experiences, but I had a hard time finding anything for 6. I had far more luck with a party of 4 even. however, I don't know how lucky you can get to find two groups of 5 with overlapping times. Hard to say.

 

[twodogs]

Refreshing can work for larger parties but if it’s not working, break it up.

 

[twodogs]

You can even do 4, 3 and 3. Just overlap the times

 

[Klayfish]

I’m curious about this too and didn’t see any replies. We’re a party of 10, should we search for 5 and when we get it search for the other 5? Sounds like a pain, but not sure refreshing would work for a larger party.

Depends on the ride and the time of year. At Xmas, forget it. You'd have to break up into groups, even of 2 perhaps. During summer, for slower rides like HM or SE you can probably get it in a group of 10. Otherwise, try 5 and 5. We're a family of 5 and it's quite rare that I have to split us up.

 

[Kalea]

I'm definitely going to try this in October! We'll have 4 some days and as many as 7 in our party other days. Good news/bad news on the days we have more people, I expect not everyone will want to ride the same things.

 

[ultimatefans]

Not sure what happened here, duplicate post

 

[JETSDAD]

With a larger group I would first try to refresh a bit with the entire group but it's very likely that you will need to break it up into groups and find overlapping FP's. I'll be doing a trip with 7 people in December so am kind of dreading it and kind of excited about the challenge.

 

[Tk0021]

You'd be very surprised at how little the average Disney World guest knows about Fastpasses. I helped a family plan a Disneyland trip and emphasized probably 10 different times the value of Fastpasses. I checked in with them after day 2 and they hadn't even made a single one.

We were on the bus to MK and there was a dad and his son on their first trip and he asked me how fast passes worked.

 

[OhhBother]

I love refreshing. It's just two of us, and we grab FPs all day long. We love Buzz Lightyear, and it's amazing how many FPs you can get back to back to back. The CMs just laugh at us. As soon as we tap in, I go grab another one before we even get on the ride. And then we hop right back in the FP line. Over and over and over...

 

[woody5]

Refreshing worked great last week for our party of three. At MK we used 13 fast passes. The only thing I could not get was 7 dwarfs. Worked well at all of the other parks too. Even got another FP for FOP and Navi. At EPCOT we scheduled Frozen as tier 1. Throughout the day we got 2 more Frozen, two Soaring, test track, and Illuminations.

 

[rentayenta]

This refresh strategy is fascinating!

 

[peteykirch]

I can't help but laugh at people in the standby line as I'm refreshing my Disney App, pull up a FP+ nearly instantly can skip a 30-45 minute wait.