DAS - rides planning strategy

[AhoyShipmates]

We’re going in Feb 23 and will be using DAS for the first time. I’d really appreciate any advice on how to combine our prebooked rides and on the day bookings so we’re not crisscrossing MK in particular and tiring everyone out.

On our last trip in 2018 we rope dropped in the first week as we were awake so early, and left around 1pm, then did afternoons/early evenings in the second week. This trip for MK I’m hoping to prebook Big Thunder and Splash Mountains, with Pirates as a third option, so we’ll be in roughly the same area. We would then (fingers crossed) book a return time for SDMT on the app and head to Fantasyland next. But are the prebooked ride timings going to be close together or might we be offered 9am for the first then 12 for the second, which would mean hanging round or crisscrossing?

Molly on AllEars recommends rope dropping Splash and BTM - has everyone caught on to this? Is there a better strategy anyone would recommend? I promised DH this trip would be relaxed so I want to be like a swan, gliding serenely while concealing all the military planning/paddling/fiddlefaddling underneath :-)

[gismo1554]

Unless they change the system, I would try and do the prebooking of rides in a sensible order to help with this. If you preregister for DAS from UK before you go you can prebook 2 rides. I would look at what is most busiest and try and book that and one nearby maybe. For this you give them a time of day rather than a specific time and they book the nearest to that. For ours most were together as I said "afternoon" for all of them.

[Ohanaa]

I picked mine last week and the timings they offered me were all really similar for each day. I haven’t been before so if I’m honest I have 0 clue on what’s close together and what’s at the other end of the park. I was more worried about booking the actual rides we wanted.

Here’s an example of what I have booked.

Day 1 - MK -
Big thunder - 9am
Jungle cruise at 1.30pm

Day 2 - AK
Tough to be a bug - 10.30
Dinosaur - 2pm

Day 3 - Epcot
Mission space 11.30am
The seas with nemo 5pm

Day 4 - HS
Twilight zone - 9am
Slinky - 11am

Day 5 - MK
Peter Pan - 5.30pm
Pirates - 6.30
^ they could only offer evening for this day for some reason.

Day 6-
Alien saucer - 10am
Slinky - 11am


I said which ride I wanted and then they offered me 2 or 3 time slots for if. Normally 1-2 in the morning and 1 in the evening.

A couple of days I asked for rides after 6pm and they couldn’t give me anything.

[alkel2730]

We did all morning ones nearby so like Peter Pan and Ariel as we found that we could then get a few done have a break and go back in the evening. If we didn’t want to go we just didn’t. There’s a leeway on them too, we got there 30 mins late (not through choice! ) and it was fine.
We found with this we could walk on some rides, DAS some and then chill in between. One MK morning we did 10 rides by 12. We then went swimming and let my son rest and sleep and went back out in the evening. That was an exception though usually it was maybe 5 in a morning. In the evening we just used DAs. The downtime turned out to be really vital for him. We went to AK late last night got there at 6:30 and did dinosaur twice (walk in) , triceratops (walk on), Everest twice (walk on), and DAs passed flight of passage. By 8:30. Evenings are great for walk ons.

[AhoyShipmates]

Thank you everyone, that’s really helpful to know about the time gaps between the prebooked rides. Hopefully we’ll be able to stay in one area at a time and chill out between rides. Thanks again Dibbers.

[SLTh]

One thing that we found useful a few weeks ago was to have the two DAS pre-booked rides close in time to one another. This meant that we could then book an 'on the day' DAS pass ride for one of the attractions with massive queues (7DMT in MK, FOP in AK, ROTR in HS and Ratatouille in Epcot) and while we were in the virtual queue for it, complete the two pre-booked rides. This worked for my daughter as there was less waiting around in between rides and it meant 4/5 hours in the park was sufficient for lots of rides while still doing the major ones. I will say though that lots of the timings I asked for weren't available so there were a fair few occasions I had to take what was offered.