Home Disney World A change to Epcot Fastpass+ Tier system

A change to Epcot Fastpass+ Tier system

By
kennythepirate
-
25
Changes to Disney World Fastpass+ system


A change to Epcot Fastpass+ Tier system

Epcot and Hollywood Studios are the only parks that offer “Tiers” where a guest must choose one Tier 1 and two Tier 2 attractions to complete their initial daily allotment of 3 Fastpass+. Disney made a change that affects Epcot.
Effective immediately Living with the Land will no longer be offered as a Tier 1 Fastpass+. It has been moved to Tier 2 status.
The ride offers a huge capacity and rarely faces a wait of more than 20 minutes. It was the only Tier 1 ride Fastpass that had no height limit (Illuminations is a fireworks show).

I don’t see this having a huge impact on the Fastpass system, but could increase the regular wait time at Living with the Land a little, if guests use it as a 4th or 5th FP+ in the afternoon or evening.

I would rank it as 6th in order of Tier 2 Fastpasses to acquire after these:

  1. Mission: Space
  2. Spaceship Earth
  3. Epcot Character Spot
  4. Journey into Imagination
  5. Seas with Nemo and Friends

Overall the new Tier structure is





The Tier 1 attractions include: (Choose one)

  • Frozen Ever After
  • Test Track
  • Soarin’
  • IllumiNations: Reflections of Earth

Tier 2 attractions include: (Choose two)

  • Epcot Character Spot
  • Disney & Pixar Short Film Festival
  • Journey Into Imagination with Figment
  • Living with the Land
  • Mission: SPACE
  • Spaceship Earth
  • The Seas with Nemo & Friends
  • Turtle Talk with Crush

25 COMMENTS

  1. Sorry if was asked before, but with all the changes with FP+, am I allowed to visit one park in the am without FP+, and then visit a different park in the evening with FP+ (which would be done from 60 day mark). TIA!

    • You can’t split FP by park when initially reserving. You can get 4th or subsequent in another park from what’s left

    • If you have the park hopper option on your ticket – yes you can go to a park in the morning (example Magic Kingdom to take in extra magic hours) with no FP+ and then hop to another park later in the day (for instance Animal Kingdom) with your initial up to 3 FP+ reserved at 60 day mark for Disney Resort Guests. Then once you have used those 3 FP+ then you can see if other FP+ are available via My Disney Experience on your phone (those are reservable one at a time).

  2. I have been to Epcot 8 times since 2013, and never been there on a day when the “tier 2” attractions had any queue at all. (At Hollywood studios, the only tier2 attraction that ever needed fastpass was the Tower of Terror.) I’ve always felt the tiered fastpass system at Epcot and DHS was a bit of a scam. You’re basically just limited to one fastpass in Epcot, because only Frozen Ever After, Soarin’, & Test Track ever have a significant wait. (Actually the character spot isn’t a bad use of a fastpass, I’ll admit.) DHS is similar. Rock & Roller Coaster, Toy Story Midway Mania, and occasionally the Tower of Terror (with a tiny line at Star Tours) has ever been with fast passing.

    • I’ve been many days when Spaceship Earth, Journey into Imagination, Mission: Space, Tower of Terror have lines. Some days some exceed 60 to 90 minutes. Slow days equal low waits.

  3. Thanks for the update. Really appreciate the info you provide on your website. Never needed a FP for Living with the Land. At most we’ve waited 7 minutes without any FASTPASSes. We did Pixar shorts and Figment in May and it was a 10 and 8 minutes wait (respectively) – again without any FASTPASSes. Spaceship Earth and Mission Space (green) were both at least 15 minutes wait. We did these all in the AM (in fact we did Spaceship Earth and Mission Space before we did Pixar shorts and Figment). Personally I think Spaceship Earth and Mission Space should be higher up in the list.

    • Thanks for your input. List is built upon experiences across the year, including times when the park is much busier and Fastpass is actually necessary.

  4. I wish they could find a way to get rid of the tiers at Epcot and HS. I would include more character meets like the Princesses in each country and Star Wars and Avengers more at HS. I feel like MK and AK are ran well while not having Tiers…

  5. Thanks for the head’s up, Kenny! Back when Living with the Land was a Tier 2 previously, I remember the stand-by line getting surprisingly long at times. For our upcoming trip, I just changed one of our FPs from Spaceship Earth (which we already had booked for another day, so it was a duplicate) to LwtL. It’s the old fogey ride my husband and I will go on while our teens do Mission Space :)

  7. Doing fast passes now at 60 day mark and frozen and sourin are the two main things for my 5 year old granddaughters first time so scheduled 2 days to ensure she does both

  8. This makes sense. I feel like the person who picks LWTL as their Tier 1 has been duped. Question – three Epcot days, not doing FEA, should I repeat FP for Soarin or TT?

      • However, something to remember is that Test Track has a single rider line. If you are an adult or party of adults, I would suggest taking advantage of that – we did on our last trip and it worked wonderfully could use FP+ for Soarin’.

      • Every year we FastPass Test Track and it’s closed!! This year we scheduled it for our last park day at 1:00pm and it was down……..we went to our lunch reservation and came back, 10min into the park and they were calling for rain and closed it again!! We literally WASTED a park ticket and rode absolutely NOTHING that day!! So frustrating!

  10. That is not good for me we are going in Sept and my daughter only want 2 that are on tier 1 how should I do that she wants test track and frozen

    • We were there a couple weeks ago and it went very smoothly. I got fast passes for Frozen (30 days ahead- 2:05 was the earliest option). We went straight to Soarin as the park opened and it looked like the majority of the crowd was running toward Frozen. We walked right on Soarin and then headed over to Test Track for only a 5 minute wait.

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