4. Try to score last minute Fastpasses and dining reservations

Before we moved to Florida, the idea of trying to get Fastpasses or dining reservations at the last minute sounded unfathomable to me—even visiting in the off-season, it just seemed like to much of a gamble to even try. What are you supposed to do if you miss the ultra-early window for Fastpass and dining reservations though?

Do what the locals do— benefit from cancellations to score last minute reservations.

The key is to check My Disney Experience regularly the day of your trip to see if any last minute Fastpass or dining reservations pop up. Especially with Fastpass+, people cancel reservations all the time that they made months earlier but end up not using. The trick is to refresh the app back and forth between times to try to catch when someone cancels. You can do this either in the “New Fastpass” window or by using the “Modify” or “Change Times” feature for an existing Fastpass (this isn’t as easy as it used to be due to changes in the app, but it still works for the most part). This trick may not get you into Be Our Guest, but it has gotten us onto Flight of Passage before. Often reservations pop up pretty close to the time you’ll need to arrive, so this trick works best if you are already in the park in question.

5. Come up with a new game plan

If you planned your whole visit around getting onto an attraction like Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance, a backup boarding group may be the best you can do to get onto that ride. However, that doesn’t mean the rest of your day has to be busted. The same thing goes for if you can’t get Fastpasses for hot ticket attractions—you’ll probably need a new plan.

If you’re used to doing Disney vacations a specific way, you’ll have to think outside of the box. Prioritize which attractions you absolutely want to visit and make some decisions on how long you’re willing to stand in line for them. Some attractions have better queues than others: Millennium Falcon- Smuggler’s Run, for example, has a pretty fun game you can play on the Play Disney app to pass the time. Utilize information from sites like TouringPlans.com (and of course, Theme Park Tourist!) to come up with a reasonable game plan to hit key experiences for the rest of the day. You can also substitute some similar experiences to make up for busted dining plans—for example, if you can’t get into Be Our Guest, Jungle Navigation Co. Skipper Canteen is a different but still very fun alternative for table service dining. At Galaxy’s Edge, you may not be able to get into Oga’s Cantina, but you can still experience blue milk at the Milk Stand and eat a pretty great meal at Docking Bay 7.

If you have the option to park hop, it may be worth choosing a different park to experience for the day. Magic Kingdom tends to be the most crowded park—lately, Disney’s Hollywood Studios falls into that category too, but it does a little better job dispersing crowds. If you have the option to park hop, take a look at wait times on My Disney Experience to see if one of the other parks has shorter waits. If you have the option, change course and go enjoy that park instead. Even if you need to stay in the same park, try not to follow the same trends everyone else is doing—ride rides during parades and fireworks, for example, to catch slightly lowered queues.