Hi Nichole! Welcome back to the Disney Parks Moms Panel! How to best plan your
FastPass+ selections is one of those topics where if you ask 5 people you'll get 37 different responses of how to best strategize.
Each selection you make has a one hour window, and you cannot make another selection within that time frame. And because you cannot select more FastPass+ reservations until you've used your initial three, many people like to stack their selections back to back as early as they can get them, to have a better chance of scoring more passes later in the day. An example schedule might be Spaceship Earth at 9 a.m., Soarin' at 10 a.m. and Living with the Land at 11 a.m.
Or if you're planning on park hopping for the day, it's not unheard of to make your three selections for the park where you'll end your day. That way you are sure to experience certain attractions later, but will use the standby lines at the first park.
Let's talk strategy. Remember that each FastPass+ selection has a one-hour experience window. So once you're in the parks, you may enter each attractions queue right at it's scheduled time of 10 a.m. or you can enter at 10:15 or 10:37 or 10:53. Whatever works with your schedule. We like to wait until later of one window, so by the time we're exiting said attraction, our next window is either just now opening or has already started. (So enter Soarin' at 10:45, finish riding by 11:15, head over to our 11 a.m. attraction and just walk right on.) On the flip side, if we board right at 10 a.m. and are done by 10:20, but don't board our next attraction until closer to the end of it's window, like 11:50, we'll have a cool hour and a half between the two attractions to squeeze in a standby line, or maybe leisurely eat a meal.
I hope you're having fun planning your dream vacation, Nichole, and we'll see you real soon!
~Kristen