It has been announced that from 7th March 2012 the FASTPASS timing rules are going to become much stricter. At the moment Disney do not allow you to enter the FASTPASS queue anytime before your ticketed window but the unwritten rule is that guest can return anytime from the the beginning time on their ticket through to the end of the day! By people ignoring the end time on their tickets it can allow them to tour the park more efficiently rather then having to make a dash across the park or avoid rushing a meal so that they don’t miss out on their time. Personally unless you are stuck on another ride or the ride you have the ticket for has broken down then you should abide by the rules otherwise it causes chaos especially with rides like Toy Story Midway Mania when a lot of extra people not scheduled to be there turn up it makes the wait longer for everyone.
So to pave the way for the stricter control that will be required for next gen FASTPASS initiatives in the pipeline Disney are putting the following rules in place to acclimatise their guests:
“Guests can now arrive 5 minutes before their scheduled start time and up to 15 minutes after their scheduled end time. Guests arriving after this time will not be permitted to ride”
I think this rule is fair and will help to instill the mindset required for future next gen FASTPASS mobile technologies and hopefully help the guest flow issues experienced on some of the rides.