The Parks —› Fast Pass

A few years ago, Disney came out with an ingenious way to manage the long waits at the more popular rides, and the FastPass system was born. With the FastPass system, you must first go to the desired ride, and find your way to the FastPass distribution machines. The digital readout overhead will indicate the return time window (generally an hour window). If that time works for you, feed each of your Disney Park Passes into the distribution machine and you'll get your FastPasses issued (and don't forget to get your Park Passes back).

When you return to the attraction with your FastPass during the allotted time window, you enter in the FastPass return line, and bypass the long waits.

You can't stockpile FastPasses. On the bottom of your FastPass you'll see that you're limited to a certain time you can have another FastPass issued (from any of the FastPass attractions). This is generally 5 minutes after the start of the return time, or two hours after the last FastPass was issued, whichever comes first.

What this means to your schedule is that you'll be planning ahead so that you're standing in line for one attraction while holding a FastPass ticket for the next attraction. If you're smart and energetic, you can power walk to the next attraction and collect FastPasses five minutes after your current FastPasses are active.

Take a look at the FastPass return times as well as the Stand By Wait times before blindly receiving your FastPasses. The return times may cut into your lunch reservations or parade schedule. Also, sometimes the Stand By Wait times are quite short, and you'll do best to receive a FastPass from an alternate attraction.