I think you can stagger them in such a way that you can basically go from line to line with little to no wait. So its not specifically “see a line, jump into line” but "we are going to be in Fantasyland at x time, lets reserve Peter Pan, Snow White, Dumbo, and Alice in Wonderland, back to back to back to back, and then you dont hit any lines. And while in the small wait at Alice in the Fastpast line, you schedule a bunch of reservations for the next section youre going to.
They had a similar set up when we went to Disneyland in 2019, and it takes some work, but it REALLY reduced wait times. I think the most we waited was 30 minutes at Radiator Springs (fun ride and quite technically advanced, but wayyyyyyyy overrated and nowhere near worth the 2+ hour average wait it has held since opening.)
It’s more complicated than that, and you won’t get instant availability, but that’s close. It revolves around the fact that Disney’s fastpass system is constantly reloading inventory into the system. There are set “drop times” that people have studied and discovered. These drop times are a somewhat guarded secret on the forums, but you can find them if you look hard enough. In addition, people constantly cancel and change their plans releasing passes back into inventory. If you constantly refresh, you can grab these. For most rides they seem to release every 10 minutes on the 7, but some other rides are different.
Another tip when doing the “refresh” method (for dynamic drops instead of set drops) is that you will likely not have fast enough fingers to grab a dropped fastpass before someone else does. However, there is a trick for this as well. Get to the last screen when it tells you the ride is no longer available, then go tot he previous screen, then go to the last screen again. Keep doing this. This puts you a few screens ahead of everyone else. Next time there is a drop (usually within 10 minutes), you will get it because you will be the furthest along, provided your phone doesn’t suck.
Stacking is the advanced strategy. Grabbing passes from inventory at the set drop times and/or by refresh/releasing is the pro strategy. You combine both for the optimal strategy.
I don’t know the specific drop times for Disneyland, but you can probably find them if you look hard enough on the Disney forums. The strategy is to stack your genie+ reservations, and use the refresh method to try to grab any you can’t get because they are sold out or the next reservation is too far in the future. If you know the drop times, you can time getting your next reservation around that to basically get whatever you want.
That’s one of the other secrets. They don’t publicize it but there is a “cooldown” timer. At DisneyWorld you can make a second reservation when either condition has been achieved:
You have used your most recently booked fastpass or;
2 hours has elapsed since you last booked a fastpass.
I believe the cooldown timer at Disneyland may be 90 minutes instead of 2 hours.
In addition you can make your first fastpass reservation at 7 am and your second one 2 hours after park open (or 2 hours after you use the first one, whichever comes sooner). Hanging out at the hotel pool in the morning and stacking everything in the afternoon/ evening is a good strategy for HS & AK. MK has enough inventory that you don’t really need to stack. Epcot you only really need FP for Frozen/Test Track/Remy, the other rides all have no lines once you get into the late afternoon / early evening.
There’s another really advanced tip involving ride breakdowns. This one I discovered myself, I don’t think it’s well known, and I have not shared it on the Disney forums because I’m worried Disney will shut it down if it becomes too well known. If a ride breaks down during your fastpass window (defined as during the window itself or within 20 minutes of the window start), your fastpass converts to an “any ride any time” fastpass for the day. In addition, it no longer counts against your fastpass limit, and, it ends your “2 hour cooldown” immediately. This can be really exploited if there is a ride that has broken down but has relatively soon fastpass availability. For example:
On this last trip, I noticed one morning that Big Thunder Mountain Railroad was “temporarily closed” at 10 am, but had fastpass availability as soon as 10:30 am. I immediately grabbed a fastpass. At 10:10 am it turned into an “anytime” pass and my window restarted. BTMRR was still “temporarily closed” and still was only booking out about 40 minutes. I immediately grabbed another fp, and 20 minutes later it too turned into an “anytime any ride” fastpass. I was able to repeat this a total of 4 times before the ride came back online, and then had 4 any time any ride fastpasses for the rest of the day. So if you see a broken down ride with close in time fastpass availability, grab it immediately. Even if it comes back online and you don’t want to ride it, you can always just cancel the fastpass to restart your window.
been lucky to enjoy disneyland most of my life as a fun local thing to do every now and then, so I never really had to min max every moment there, sad it’s gotten that way
me and the ex used to just go to eat dinner and ride splash mountain and maybe another ride and go home, it’s fun to enjoy it that way, but I guess you cant really anymore
Everything is so expensive now. We recently did a weeklong vacation split between San Fran and Seattle for 3 of us and our damage was just shy of $10k including airfare, hotels, food and entertainment. I estimated $5-6k when budgeting, but I guess I need to recalibrate those estimates in the future.
My dad’s company (So. Cal Edison, the “Gas Company”) used to rent Disneyland on a night in Feb. every year. I think it was only like 6 hours, but almost all rides were walk-ons and there was basically no cost unless you wanted to eat or buy merch. I haven’t been in like 25 years, and a lot has changed, but I got plenty of “dismal land” as a kid.
Also, grew up middle class but had at least one ten kid birthday party at Disneyland my mom could afford to pay for, but that was the early 80s.
