FastPass restrictions for split stays

[CarolMN]

This has just became much more important for me. I'll be at BWV from 9/8 to 9/12, but that is the end of a multi split stay, starting on 8/31. And they just announced Galaxy Edge will be open during my stay. Hopefully everything will be fixed bh then so I'll be able to book my FP+ for the DHS 70 days in advance.

And SWGE FP+ is exactly why the split stay issue needs quick resolution.

Maybe it's not an issue for the first few months, but it will definitely will be one once FP+ begins for the SW attractions, especially if the FP+ supply is reduced due to the rumored pay option.

If there continues to be separate windows for split stays (or passholders are limited to 7 days with split stays), I will never do another split stay. If enough Members feel as I do, 7 month availability will decrease dramatically. Another reason to buy where you want to stay!

 

[guerns17]

Pass holders better not be limited to 7 days fastpasses...that would really mess things up considering I’m the only one in my fam that will have one!

 

[DaveNan]

Pass holders better not be limited to 7 days fastpasses...that would really mess things up considering I’m the only one in my fam that will have one!

I booked for my upcoming stay in May a few days ago. One of my DD has a stay in late March before staying with us in early May. I never quite figured out the exact issue, but she kept getting hit with a "maximum number of days" with a FP" restriction. Split stays were working fine and it looked like 12 days for the May trip and 5 for the March should be available, but after I had only booked FP's for her on 10 days I was getting hit with the limit? I had to get to the second part of the split stay to actually be able to book 14 days. So, I was able to get more than 7 days, and split stays did automatically open for me this time. But there still seems to be a bug around how the two rules (split stays and 14 days get applied). For the rest of us without the intermediate stay, we could book all 12 days at 60 days from the start of the May trip.

 

[jenjersnap]

Pass holders better not be limited to 7 days fastpasses...that would really mess things up considering I’m the only one in my fam that will have one!

Ditto.

It hasn’t been a banner couple of weeks on the Disney news front for us. I had JUST pulled trigger on AP for me and UCT tix for rest of the family when the split stay FP stuff happened. I chose our split stay dates specifically to avoid SWGE even though it meant dealing with surface of the sun heat...surprise!

Sigh.

 

[guerns17]

I booked for my upcoming stay in May a few days ago. One of my DD has a stay in late March before staying with us in early May. I never quite figured out the exact issue, but she kept getting hit with a "maximum number of days" with a FP" restriction. Split stays were working fine and it looked like 12 days for the May trip and 5 for the March should be available, but after I had only booked FP's for her on 10 days I was getting hit with the limit? I had to get to the second part of the split stay to actually be able to book 14 days. So, I was able to get more than 7 days, and split stays did automatically open for me this time. But there still seems to be a bug around how the two rules (split stays and 14 days get applied). For the rest of us without the intermediate stay, we could book all 12 days at 60 days from the start of the May trip.

Did you have an AP or just your daughter?

 

[Tinkerbear03]

So I wanted to chip in and give my experience with our split stay coming up in April/May.

My husband and I both have APs and my mother in law is coming on this trip with an 8 day magic your way date base ticket but is only with us the first part of our trip and leaves May 2 but we plan to park hop some hence the extra days even though she will only be there 5 of the 8 days.

Some of our plans changed last minute due to family canceling so we actually had a 4 part split stay checking in on April 27-28 into PORS, April 28-May 2 OKW, May 2-3 Poly-lake view(waitlisted standard), May 3-6 Poly standard. Our FastPass day was Feb 26, and on Feb 21 our waitlist for Poly came through so it ended in a 3 part split stay but the May 2nd check in had not merged with the rest of the Poly stay.

The morning of the 26th(60days from
First part of stay) I was only able to book Apr 27&28 (unfortunate surprise), once I figured this out I called to make sure my 2 Poly stays were merged so I wouldn’t have 4 FP days. I was told at that point even though I had a continuous reservation I had to wait until March 3 to book fastpasses that stay. I woke up on the 27 and our FPs for April 29(since 28 was already open)-May 2 opened. But I couldn’t get the 3-6 for the Poly stay.

After trying unsuccessfully to get my husband and my FPs to open up and researching a few things on disboards over the next few days on Mar 2 I decided to see what would happen if I added my MIL to our Poly reservation and see if I could get her FPs bc it seemed it all was determined by the type of ticket you had. As soon I added her to the reservation I was able to secure her 3 remaining days of FPs. Once I got hers done I was able to go in and add guest (my husband and I) to her FPs via online. I was stressing bc I was trying to get SDD on May 3rd which would have put us at 60+1. Once our Window opened on the March 3 for our Poly stay on May 2 I went in and modified and canceled my MILs FPs bc I didn’t want to take up FPs we weren’t going to use. My husband and my fastpasses stayed intact.

I will say when I went in on the 60 day window of our Poly stay that there were still FPs for SDD at the 60+1 and was able to get 7DMT at 60+3 & 60+4. And FOP was open for 60+4 of our OKW stay.

Sorry this is so long and detailed but I figured if I could help anyone I would and who knows which details are important with the new restrictions. Hopefully they will at least get this fixed for DVC.

 

[guerns17]

Ohh my goodness!! Seriously..this stuff drives me crazy! Lol! I wish there was a way to call and get all
Split stays put under 1 reservation number so it didn’t glitch the fastpasses. They obviously need to figure out how to fix the AP issue too. Hopefully they will get some complaints and it will get fixed before SWGE. I swear, I’m going to have an overlapping reservation ready to book on my fastpass day in case my fastpasses aren’t available across my split stays!

 

[JETSDAD]

So I wanted to chip in and give my experience with our split stay coming up in April/May.

My husband and I both have APs and my mother in law is coming on this trip with an 8 day magic your way date base ticket but is only with us the first part of our trip and leaves May 2 but we plan to park hop some hence the extra days even though she will only be there 5 of the 8 days.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding but are you planning to use an 8 day base ticket to use a few of the days for hopping?

 

[Tinkerbear03]

Maybe I'm misunderstanding but are you planning to use an 8 day base ticket to use a few of the days for hopping?

Yes for my MIL we bought through undercover tourist for her and so is was $15 more for the 8 day over the 5 day so we decided to do that incase we wanted to go to multiple parks while she was there so we only used 5 days of fastpasses for her stay so still had 3 left over.

 

[JETSDAD]

Yes for my MIL we bought through undercover tourist for her and so is was $15 more for the 8 day over the 5 day so we decided to do that incase we wanted to go to multiple parks while she was there so we only used 5 days of fastpasses for her stay so still had 3 left over.

I don't believe you can use those extra 3 days to hop....if that were the case everybody would just buy more days and ignore hoppers because it is cheaper that way. From the UT page where the 8 day base ticket is sold
"Visiting more than one theme park on the same day requires the Park Hopper® Option (which is not included in the Disney Ticket)."

 

[Tinkerbear03]

I don't believe you can use those extra 3 days to hop....if that were the case everybody would just buy more days and ignore hoppers because it is cheaper that way. From the UT page where the 8 day base ticket is sold
"Visiting more than one theme park on the same day requires the Park Hopper® Option (which is not included in the Disney Ticket)."

Oh that’s good to know I may have missed that. We may not do it but we also didn’t know all the details of her trip when we bought it. It’s no big deal if we can’t it was $15 extra and I’ll take that since it let us get out fastpasses

 

[DaveNan]

Did you have an AP or just your daughter?

all of us

 

[ljmiii]

So I wanted to chip in and give my experience with our split stay coming up in April/May....

First... thank you for posting such a detailed description.

Second...all this is making my head spin. We currently have a DVC split stay that (schedules willing) will be immediately preceded by a cash stay. I bought AP vouchers for my family just before this all started and I've been fretting ever since. Will DVC split stay FP+ work? Will cash stay FP+ work? Will all of this theoretically work...except it won't because I have APs?

And now it sounds like we might be saved because umbrella FP+ still seems to work...and we are taking two of our kids friends who will be staying in our rooms with length of stay tickets. Here's hoping...

 

[guerns17]

First... thank you for posting such a detailed description.

Second...all this is making my head spin. We currently have a DVC split stay that (schedules willing) will be immediately preceded by a cash stay. I bought AP vouchers for my family just before this all started and I've been fretting ever since. Will DVC split stay FP+ work? Will cash stay FP+ work? Will all of this theoretically work...except it won't because I have APs?

And now it sounds like we might be saved because umbrella FP+ still seems to work...and we are taking two of our kids friends who will be staying in our rooms with length of stay tickets. Here's hoping...

Agreed. It’s a big mess and needs to be fixed.

 

[MB333]

It sounds like Disney had to do something because of the number of people booking stays in WDW and off campus at the same time. Once they got their 60 day FastPasses they would cancel they WDW room but Disney didn’t have a way of removing their FastPasses. People will try to work the system anyway they can.

 

[Marionnette]

It sounds like Disney had to do something because of the number of people booking stays in WDW and off campus at the same time. Once they got their 60 day FastPasses they would cancel they WDW room but Disney didn’t have a way of removing their FastPasses. People will try to work the system anyway they can.

If that was their intent, they blew it big time. So far, that has not been corrected. People can book an onsite stay, get their Fastpasses at 60 days and then cancel the onsite stay. The fastpasses are not being cancelled. They just can’t be modified until the guest is 30 days away from the FastPass day. That’s the same way it has always been.

The only thing that has been corrected is the rolling 60-day FastPass window that followed a 1-night reservation. Now, guests who book “throwaway rooms” only get to make FPs for Days 60 and 61. After that, they must wait until the 30-day window opens for each day of their offsite stay.

In the process, Disney IT broke the 60-day advantage for continuous onsite reservations. So now anyone with a split stay has 2 or more FastPass windows: one for each reservation.

 

[Madame]

If that was their intent, they blew it big time. So far, that has not been corrected. People can book an onsite stay, get their Fastpasses at 60 days and then cancel the onsite stay. The fastpasses are not being cancelled. They just can’t be modified until the guest is 30 days away from the FastPass day. That’s the same way it has always been.

The only thing that has been corrected is the rolling 60-day FastPass window that followed a 1-night reservation. Now, guests who book “throwaway rooms” only get to make FPs for Days 60 and 61. After that, they must wait until the 30-day window opens for each day of their offsite stay.

In the process, Disney IT broke the 60-day advantage for continuous onsite reservations. So now anyone with a split stay has 2 or more FastPass windows: one for each reservation.

And some people are getting a jump on FPs with a rolling 75 day window. What a typical Disney IT crapshow.

 

[qv09vvp]

I hope they get this fixed before my onto DVC window opens up otherwise we won’t be doing a split stay At all.

 

[jenjersnap]

I hope they get this fixed before my onto DVC window opens up otherwise we won’t be doing a split stay At all.

I am with you, but we had a family vote last night and my kids voted to keep our split even if it isn’t fixed (but please let it be fixed!).

 

[MaryAnne220]

I called DVC about this. While on the cash side I confirmed (through dummy reservation and with MDE technical support) split stays are now considered two separate reservations and have their own fastpass booking window, MS claims this is not the case for DVC. They say DVC resort stays (and stays made through MS) will register as a continuous stay for making fastpasses. Unfortunately this is much harder to test short term needing rooms and points. But MS and their support staff claim back to back reservations have one booking period for fastpasses just like DVC has that for ADR too. Though they said we shouldn't have to call like we do with ADR. Maybe someone with a split stay setup soon can confirm what MS told me today.

I have been conversing with Disney regarding fastpass loopholes and the changes today closed many of them and I think split stays if effected were not the target. They were the unfortunate side-effect of killing leading reservation, throwaway rooms, and other fastpass loopholes. Many of which are done now.

Interesting, as I had the same conversation with MS and they said that it will not register as a continuous stay(it didn't on my dining weeks ago, and since I am close to FP day, I wanted to make sure my ducks were in a row...). I cancelled my split stay as there was room at my original resort for my whole stay. I find it very annoying that MS gives everyone different answers!