I have been trying to figure out a reply - lanejudy wrote some of the things I was trying to say.
Fastpass Plus
- When booking Fastpass Plus, people make their best guess of times that will work for them. Sometimes they guess wrong or things don't work out.
- People miss their Fastpass Plus all the time for various reasons and is not a problem.
- Not using the Fastpass Plus that was booked doesn't 'deprive' anyone of getting into that attraction.
- If a guest knows ahead of time that they will 'waste' their Fastpass Plus, they can cancel it and may be able to schedule another one instead.
- If a Fastpass Plus is cancelled far enough in advance, another person might be able to get a Fastpass they would not get otherwise.
- Even if it's not cancelled, that's not a bad thing. Less people in the Fastpass line for a time period means those in the Standby (regular) line will get in faster.
- CMs at attraction might be able to give a little wiggle room at times if a guest is a few minutes late. There is no guarantee and there are so many variables that they are not going to promise it. They are more likely to allow a little wiggle room for things like shows that won't be filled or attractions that have a short wait in the regular line. The reason is that the guest would be getting in anyway, even if they didn't have a Fastpass.
DAS
- The person whose name is on the DAS doesn't need to be present to get a DAS Return Time. Someone else in their party can go to get the Return Time.
- The DAS Return Time is based on the current wait time, so knowing the current wait gives a good idea of when the DAS Return Time will be before you get it.
- The DAS Return Time doesn't have an end time - it can be used any time that day after the Return Time has arrived.
My family has been to WDW twice on long trips (more than 12 days) since the changeover to DAS. The first time was the end of October and early November 2013. Our last trip was late March, early April 2014 when it was very busy during Spring break. During the Spring vid it, our daughter was 6 weeks post a major surgery, so not fully recovered yet.
Our youngest daughter has multiple disabilities. Without going into a lot of detail, it is difficult (and some days impossible) for us to keep to any kind of schedule because things can happen without warning that mean our day needs to start later or we may be done because she is non-functional a few hours after our day started.
We also have to schedule in stretching time, medications 3 times a day which could take as little as 5 minutes or as long as 30 and feed her meals to her since she can't feed herself for a full meal.
And, we had to do a urinary catheter treatment every 3.5 to 4 hours round the clock (we are now 'spread out' to 6 hours during the night, but are still 3.5 to 4 hours during the day).
I got very good at the catheter 'thing' by the end of the trip and was able to do it in less than 15 minutes (but, we needed a bathroom with a sink; sometimes our wait for the Companion Restroom or handicapped stall was as much as 20 minutes).
It would have been very easy to say DAS and Fastpass Plus would not work for us, but we made it work and actually found it worked better for our family than the now-discontinued GAC (Guest Assistance Card). So, what did we do?
Planning which Day to do which park
We used
www.touringplans.com and
www.easywdw.com to figure out which was the green or red park for each day (green = best; red = busiest park).
Because our daughter has some needs that are impacted by weather, we soldo checked the long range and short range weather. AK is the hottest park and we wanted to avoid that on the hottest day (overcast was nice).
Fastpass Plus
We had used Fastpass from the time it first came out and used it as much as possible with GAC. The biggest issue we had was we never knew when we got to the park which attractions would have Fastpass available and what time they would be for and whether we would even be in the park at that point.
With Fastpass Plus, we were able to choose the times we thought would work - our best guess. We changed some the day of our visit because they just would not work that day.
Sometimes, our daughter was having a bad time, so other members of our group split up and went without her, then the people who had stayed with her went.
We used our Fastpass Plus times as kind of a 'framework schedule' and then worked in DAS Return Times and shorter attractions in between.
Since Fastpass Plus has a required time window for use and DAS just has a start time, we used the Fastpass Plus and then the DAS if we were close on time.
My Disney Experience
This was very helpful because we could see what around us had short waits (yes, some did, even during Spring break) and do those things instead of running all over the park.
We also used it to see the current wait times to help us decide which attraction to use her DAS for.
Now, with all that, we used Fastpass Plus more times each day than we used DAS. It worked well for us and helped us to at least have a schedule that we could try to work our sometimes unpredictable day into.