Thursday, January 26, 2012

Disneyland Tips & Tricks Thursday - All YOUR Questions, All Day Long...

Last week we teased a new segment we're going to be trying out on Thursdays, so today we're officially rolling out said segment and we couldn't be more excited to see how they go!

One of the funnest parts of running our blog (as mentioned last week) is not only knowing that people are reading what we write, but researching exactly how they found us to begin with.  One of the ways we can do that is by looking at what exactly people typed into a search engine to wind up on our page.  We see some real crazy ones, but interspersed with those are some really great questions, that we think would make good question/answer articles on the blog.  So each and every week, at least for the foreseeable future as there is certainly no shortage of questions being asked, we're going to be picking one question from our searches to answer right here on the blog!

This week's question was a real good one, we thought, so without further ado...


"Can fast passes be used past their posted time?"

We know that there are still a lot of people who may not be familiar with Disney's FASTPASS System, who may be wondering just what the deal is.  At its simplest, each ticket into Disneyland is entitled to utilize the FASTPASS system.  Only certain attractions at Disneyland Park and Disney California Adventure Park have them*, but where it's available, if you insert your Park ticket into the FASTPASS machine at said attraction, it will spit out a little ticket for you to bring back later in the day, at an allotted time as noted on your FASTPASS, which will let you bypass the standby line and walk pretty much straight onto the attraction.   We know a lot of people that aren't all that fond of FASTPASS, but we've never really understood the arguments against it, and we use it constantly ourselves and think that it can be a great asset in planning out your day and making sure you get on the more popular attractions without waiting in line for possibly hours, especially during the summer, to do so.  And you can continue to get them throughout the day for multiple attractions; your FASTPASS will always tell you when you are eligible for another, so if you plan it just right, you might not have to stand in line for any of those more popular attractions.

But what happens if you have a FASTPASS for Star Tours: The Adventures Continue that tells you to return between 11:55AM and 12:55PM and, due to one reason or another, you miss your hour window?  Will you lose your right to ride?  Will you be laughed at and mocked by Cast Members for your inability to read the clocks which are literally all over The Park?  Will you spontaneously burst into flames as you speed toward the attraction entrance?  Amazingly enough, none of the above will happen.  Simply put, you can use your FASTPASS anytime after your allotted time begins, even up to Park closing.  Sometimes things just get in the way, and Disneyland knows this better than anyone, so if you have a FASTPASS, and it's the same day (it won't work the next day), you are able to ride your attraction any time you'd like.  We don't do it often, we're too goody-goody not to at least try to get to our attraction on time, but it's nice to know that if we do miss for some reason, we can still ride whenever we get a chance to.  And, horror of horrors and shame on us, sometimes it's a lot of fun just to let them stack up throughout the entire day so we can ride them all in an hour window right before The Park closes.  Gasp!

We have no way of knowing just who submitted the question, but we think it was a great one!  In fact, up until a few years ago, Chad didn't know the policy and thought you had to be there at the right time or you lost your FASTPASS.  After his fellow Annual Passholders stopped laughing at him, it's a lesson he never forgot, and we never miss a chance to pass the information on to other Park Guests who might be wondering the same thing, and can ask in an open environment free from ridicule.

We hope that today's article has been a good one!  We'll be back next week with another brand new question (or comment) that we'll be dealing with from our Google Searches so in the meantime, keep searching and keep asking questions.  You never know what we're going to come across next!

*The entire list of FASTPASS attractions at the Disneyland Resort was a little out of the scope of this article, but you can find the complete list here at the Disneyland Resort's official website

4 comments:

Mouse Fan Diane said...

That is really good to know, I thought the same thing burst into flames, mocked by the cast members. We would probably never even ask them just sheepishly walk by the attraction and laugh at ourselves. lol

But really I didn't know that and now I will be passing that on

Unknown said...

I'm glad you learned something new, Diane! That's what the segment is all about. Yay! :)

P.T. said...

This is a good one! I'm an AP too and didn't know you could still use them after that hour. I always did my test to stick to what was printed on my FP! Thanks for the tip!

Unknown said...

Thanks P.T. - a lot of people still don't know about it, so we think it was a good kick-off to our segment :) Glad it's been helpful to so many people :)