Review of Fast Pass Plus System

There has been a lot written about the fast pass plus system, not all positive, and most of the negative is from people who haven't used it. Now that we have used Fast Pass Plus for 32 days of Disney, I will provide my review.

I love the fast pass plus system. I highly recommend getting the app for your smart phone. Then, on your way to the park you can select your first three rides and get fast pass times.

The very popular rides (seven dwarfs, soarin, toy story) might fill up, so, you want to get those a few days in advance. Otherwise, same day reservation worked fine.

Fast Pass provides very flexible times - usually the ride pass is good for an hour. So, it will say, for example, Pirates of the Caribbean 3pm-4pm. You can show up anytime between 3pm-4pm and get right on the ride. And we were able to get on even fifteen minutes past our expiration times.

The system might give you, for example, Pirates 3pm-4pm, Jungle Cruise 4pm-5pm. The gap between the rides provides enough time to walk to the next ride. But there is enough flexibility where you could shop, eat, or catch another ride with a short line if you wanted to. You can schedule up to three rides for your day. When you finish your three scheduled rides? You can go get another. And at anytime you can change your schedule around. So, if you decide at the last minute you don't want to do Pirates, you can change it for something else that is available.

The system does have some bugs and problems and I would bet Disney is going to fix these.

First problem? You can schedule the initial three rides in your smart phone, but not the additional rides (the ones after the first three). The option to get more rides was announced after the phone app was made and the phone app hasn't been updated to reflect the new policy. To get the additional rides you must go to a kiosk.

The kiosks are distributed around each park and they often have long lines. It is funny: you must stand in line to avoid standing in line. But I think this problem will go away once the phone app is updated.

Next, there aren't as many kiosk locations as Disney would want you to believe. Chances are? You will need to hike to a kiosk. Again, once the phone app is updated, no one will care.

Next, there is a kiosk attendant for every kiosk and they are not happy with their jobs and they are too eager to just press all the buttons for you and shuv you along. After being assisted once, we knew what we were doing and just told the attendant to back off.

There must be a lot of confusion with the system because I saw many people get denied the fast pass lane. They try to use their bands and for whatever reason they can't get on. I don't know what causes the confusion, but I saw this happen several times every day.

Finally, the kiosks can be buggy in that several times the fast pass wasn't applied to everyone in our group. That is really annoying because the ride attendants are not forgiving nor understanding when that happens. The ride might be on my magic band but the rest of the family didn't get it and therefore can't ride.

Problems aside (which will mostly be fixed with a phone app update) the fast pass program was wonderful.