I've heard that you can use Fastpasses to skip long lines. How do they work and do they have them for every ride?
In my opinion, Fastpasses are one of the best ideas Disney has come up with in ages. You can indeed use them to minimize the time you wait in line for popular rides.
It works like this: You enter the gate at 10 a.m. and head toward a popular attraction like the Rock 'n' Roller Coaster at MGM. Uh-oh, trouble. There's already an hour-long line. You could just queue up or you could get smart and use the Fastpass system. The kiosks with the Fastpass machines are well-marked. Insert your theme park tickets into the Fastpass machine and you'll get the original ticket back along with another smaller ticket, called a Fastpass. It will give you a time frame of approximately an hour--in this case, let's say between 11:30 and 12:30--during which time you can return to Rock'n Roller Coaster and be admitted into the Fastpass line.
Just as the name implies, the Fastpass line is much shorter and moves much faster than the regular line. Once you enter the Fastpass line, wait times average between 5 and 15 minutes. Way better! So if you want to see as many attractions as possible without spending half your day waiting in long lines, the Fastpass is an invaluable tool.
Here are some tips to make sure you get the most out of Fastpass:
1. To let as many park guests as possible take advantage of the system, Disney has decided you can only have one Fastpass at a time. Once you have used your Fastpass to board the ride or the time frame printed on your Fastpass ticket has elapsed, you can get another.
2. Fastpasses are only available for the most popular attractions, so make sure you use them judiciously. For example, Fastpasses are always offered on big-deal rides like Test Track and Space Mountain, where long lines are the norm. During busy seasons like summer and holidays, they are also offered on slightly less popular attractions, such as the Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular, which may become swamped as theme park attendance swells. Check the tip board that shows the approximate wait time for rides as you enter and get your Fastpass for the ride showing the longest wait time. For example, if you enter Animal Kingdom and find there is a 50-minute wait for Kilimanjaro Safaris and only a 10-minute wait for Kali River Rapids, it makes sense to get a Fastpass for the Safari. As a rule of thumb it makes more sense to use your Fastpasses for rides, which always have lines, than shows, which seat large numbers of people at once.
3. Rides offering Fastpass are indicated on both your theme park map and the tip boards in each park.
4.Four family members will need four Fastpasses in order to get into the line. Make sure that you hang on to them, because an attendant will take them up before you're allowed to enter the Fastpass line. It usually makes sense to dub one person the Fastpass Diva and let them be responsible for hanging on to everyone's theme park tickets and Fastpass tickets. That way you won't find that Tyler has somehow lost his Fastpass just as you're set to board Splash Mountain.
5. Although Fastpasses were designed for big-deal attractions like coasters, they can cut down on waittimes for families with young kids too. Get Fastpasses for popular kiddie rides like the The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh and Peter Pan's Flight, which draw long lines in the afternoon.
6. In order to keep the line moving, a finite number of Fastpasses are issued for each five-minute interval. Therefore, if a lot of park guests use the Fastpass system for a popular ride, the time lag between when the Fastpass is issued and when you can return keeps getting longer. For example, if you get a Fastpass for Tower of Terror on a relatively uncrowded day it may tell you to return in about an hour. On a crowded day when lots of people have already visited the Fastpass machine, you might visit the Fastpass kiosk at noon and be told to return at 4:30. And if you wait until late afternoon, you might not get a Fastpass at all. The moral is, get a Fastpass for the most popular ride you plan to visit as soon as you enter the park in the morning.
Updated February 2006.
