How to Book FastPasses for a Large Traveling Party
Are you traveling to Walt Disney World with others? Whether you’re taking your children, meeting friends, or vacationing with other family members, you need to book multiple FastPasses at once. And I’m here to tell you that it’s not easy. I’ve spent a lot of time at Disney lately over the past few years, yet I still struggle with it. Here’s a guide on how to book FastPasses for a large traveling party.
Step One: Create a My Disney Experience Account
I’m starting with the basics since I can’t assume that you’ve done this before. My Disney Experience is both a website and a smartphone app. You need an active account on this service before you may schedule FastPasses.
Creating an account works similarly to any other website or app. Thankfully, it’s easy to do. One of the most important steps is to add a Disney avatar to your account. It’s that tiny picture of your favorite Disney character. I’ll explain in a second why it’s so important.
Once you’ve started a My Disney Experience account, you’re ready to proceed.
Step Two: Connect Your My Disney Experience Account with Others
The next step is to connect your account to the others of the friends who will vacation with you. It’s similar to friending someone on Facebook, but it’s a crucial step.
The way that My Disney Experience works, you cannot add reservations for other members of your party unless you’re connected to them. In other words, you can’t even start the FastPass process for others until this is done. It’s a deal-breaker.
On the main My Disney Experience page, look for a menu option entitled My Family & Friends. I’ll presume that you’re not connected yet for the purpose of this guide. As such, you should scroll down on the next page to the + sign that says Add a Guest.
The system provides three different options for adding a guest. The choices are:
- Find through my connected Guests.
- Import from a Walt Disney World Resort hotel reservation.
- I’ll enter the name and age.
Over time, the first option will become the most likely selection. At first, you’ll need to select the second or third menu option. And you can only use the second one if you have the reservation number of your traveling partner(s). The third one leads to a basic data entry screen.
You’re most likely to choose the Import option. For this reason, you will need to ask people for their reservation numbers. Once you have the information, the system will give you a list of hotel room guests. You may send an invite to each one. Technically, it’s an invitation to connect, but you can think of it as a friend request.
Once the party accepts, you’ll have the ability to book FastPasses for them. Similarly, when you enter the name and age of your traveling party, you’ll get to schedule FastPasses for them. It’s the most straightforward method, but it doesn’t work well for large groups staying in different hotels/hotel rooms.
Step Three: Verify That Everyone Has Valid Tickets and a Hotel Room
This step is the one that’s most likely to cause you nightmares. The My Disney Experience system will NOT allow you to book FastPasses unless you have valid tickets to the park for the day in question.
Similarly, FastPass booking windows open in phases. At 90 days before a Disney hotel stay, guests staying on the concierge floor of certain resorts can book them. For many travelers, the 60-day window is when you’ll get to schedule FastPasses. It’s the date for guests at official Disney resorts. For everyone else, the booking window opens at 30 days.
The one rule that’s the same for everyone is the time. Whether you’re able to book at 30, 60, or 90 days, the window opens at 7 a.m. EST. You should access My Disney Experience a few minutes before this time. Then, reload until you receive the okay to start booking FastPasses!
Again, you cannot take care of the needs of others unless you’ve followed the previous steps, though. You must be connected on My Disney Experience, and everyone must have valid park admission for the day in question.
If someone is staying at a non-Disney resort, you won’t be able to book for them for another 30 days, which will be too late to match FastPasses. It’s one of many reasons why I’m emphatic that guests should stay at official Disney resorts. It saves soooo much potential aggravation.
Step Four: Pick the Names of Your Traveling Partners
Here’s the step that could trip you up if you forget to do it. Once you’re ready to book FastPasses, the system will allow you to select the members of your party. You should do this immediately!
Once you have a party set up in the system, My Disney Experience will presume that you’re traveling together throughout the trip. You won’t need to add the same members for each FastPass. I mean it when I say that this will save you a tremendous amount of aggravation.
You’re scheduling as many as three daily FastPasses. And you’re doing this for each day of your trip. For parties of five or more, you’d spend most of your time adding the names of your travel party.
However, this step does circle back to a previous suggestion. Remember when I stressed the importance of the avatar? You’ll learn to recognize your My Disney Experience friends by their pictures. Ask everyone to select different avatars! It’ll save you the aggravation of figuring out who’s who during those intense few minutes when you’re making the actual FastPass bookings!
Step Five: Book Your FastPasses
I’ve previously written a couple of FastPass guides. This one is the most recent, although I should probably update it soon. The basics are still the same, though.
You should always have a plan for your FastPass booking window. I fully understand and appreciate that not everyone likes to plan for a vacation. However, Walt Disney World works differently than your average family trip. Scheduling the right FastPasses can be the difference between a great visit and the vacation of a lifetime.
The one tip that’s important when booking for a group is to maintain consistency. Sometimes, members of large traveling parties will go off on their own. When that happens, these guests can always cancel individual FastPasses. It won’t impact the overall party.
Unfortunately, the reverse isn’t true. Should you exclude anyone from the original booking, you’re unlikely to add the individual later. The best that you may hope for is to have FastPasses within an hour of one another.
For this reason, one person should be in charge of all FastPass bookings. You may always figure out the rest later. When several different people try to line up FastPasses, it’s just a mess and almost self-defeating as a process.
The Ultimate Pro Tip
All of this sounds challenging, right? Honestly, it still can be. I’ve vacationed at Walt Disney World more than 60 days during the Magic Bands era. On two out of the last three occasions that I attempted to book Fastpasses, something went wrong. And I mean something that could have ruined our vacation if we hadn’t gotten it fixed.
To avoid this sort of drama, there’s one simple step you can take. You can hire a Disney travel agent to take care of everything for you. The professionals at MickeyTravels do not charge for their services. You literally pay nothing and get to skip all of this aggravation!
Since these experts book FastPasses all the time, they know what to expect. They’ll guarantee you the best possible vacation while saving you the tremendous stress of booking FastPasses.