Of the many controversial elements of the Lightning Lane Multi-Pass line-skipping system, the no re-ride rule easily makes the top 25. (It’s a long list of complaints.) Thankfully, there are ways to bypass long lines and experience attractions repeatedly, including one advanced-level hack that’ll allow you to use paid FastPass on the same ride more than once.
This is especially relevant now. After all, ’tis the season…of crazy crowds at Walt Disney World and Disneyland. As attendance increases, so too does “competition” for Lightning Lanes due to more guests buying the Multi Pass option. Despite surge pricing that can cause the paid FastPass service to cost $40+ on busy days, demand is highest when attendance and wait times are at their worst.
Accordingly, you might want to have advanced-level Lightning Lane strategy during the busiest dates when lines are longest and there’s the most competition for the best LLMP selections. You’ll want to leverage ride reservation refills, have a strong refresh game, and more. Even then, if you’re visiting during the peak weeks of Thanksgiving, Christmas, or New Year’s Eve, there’s a very good chance you’re not scoring Lightning Lanes for every headliner, even with all of the best tricks up your sleeve.
In that spirit, this is a Lightning Lane Multi-Pass advanced strategy and post. Which is to say that advanced strategy isn’t sufficient (especially the one covered here), so you’ll also want to leverage the other, regular savvy standby strategies. This is a matter of practicality. You should never put all of your eggs in one basket, and overreliance on Lightning Lanes is a common recipe for disappointment.
That’s doubly true when it comes to Lightning Lane Multi-Pass advanced strategy, none of which is foolproof or guaranteed. You can play the refresh game aggressively or know all the ins and outs, but if you visit on a peak season day and Disney opts to throttle ride reservation refills or availability is otherwise limited, you’re out of luck.
While we’re on the topic, it’s worth a ‘warning’ up front that Lightning Lane advanced strategy can be confusing and overwhelming. If you take ~30 minutes to learn the ins and outs, you won’t just be above average–you’ll be a top 5% LLMP power user. However, this also means it isn’t easy. If it were, everyone would do it, and you wouldn’t be a top 5% power user!
Just mentioning this because whenever we do a hacks post like this, there are inevitably readers who are confused and become upset that you “have to” do a ton of homework just to understand Lightning Lanes. You absolutely do not. This is not the baseline for average guests. If you find all of this overwhelming, simply opt out. You’ll still be fine. This is advanced-level and beyond what 95% of guests will do or even need. In other words, these are not the basics of Lightning Lanes at Walt Disney World.
With that in mind, let’s start with the savvy supplemental standby strategies that you should be employing alongside Lightning Lane Multi-Pass if you want to re-ride favorite attractions. Or if you’re simply visiting during a busy timeframe when it won’t be possible to score every ride reservation via LLMP. If you’re already familiar with these, skip to the last entry for another advanced Lightning Lane hack…
Early Entry – Before each of the Disney theme parks officially open for the day, there’s Early Entry, which is offers 30-minute access to guests staying in on-site hotels. (See our Guide to Early Entry at Walt Disney World or our Guide to Early Entry at Disneyland for more info & strategy.)
Early Entry starts 30 minutes before each of the parks open. For example, if Magic Kingdom officially opens at 9 am, that puts Early Entry at 8:30 am. Magic Kingdom is the most popular park at Walt Disney World, and this 8:30 start time does not present a ‘barrier to entry’ for most people. This means MK has the biggest crowds for Early Entry, rendering the perk practically useless for the most popular ride, Seven Dwarfs Mine Train.
At both of the castle parks, Early Entry is also limited to only Tomorrowland and Fantasyland. At the other three Walt Disney World theme parks, it encompasses the entirety of the park and all headliners. Consequently, Early Entry is most useful at Animal Kingdom, Disney’s Hollywood Studios, and EPCOT–in that order. You can usually do popular rides via standby with 15-20 minute waits. Sometimes less.
Rope Drop – Otherwise known as official park opening time, when a rope is dropped allowing regular guests to access all the lands of park. It should go without saying, but rope drop occurs after Early Entry.
Rope drop is most useful at Disneyland and Magic Kingdom, precisely because Early Entry is less useful at those parks. In both castle parks as well as Disney California Adventure, there are major attractions and entire lands that aren’t open until rope drop. In the other parks, there are second-tier popular attractions that are also great. Here’s a partial list of the best rope drop rides:
- TRON Lightcycle Run (Magic Kingdom)
- Jungle Cruise (MK)
- Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance (Disneyland)
- Indiana Jones Adventure (DL)
- Big Thunder Mountain Railroad (MK/DL)
- Tower of Terror (Disney’s Hollywood Studios)
- Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster (DHS)
- Radiator Springs Racers (Disney California Adventure)
- Frozen Ever After (EPCOT)
- Soarin’ (EPCOT/DCA)
- Kilimanjaro Safaris (Disney’s Animal Kingdom)
- Expedition Everest (DAK)
Since Animal Kingdom opens so early and is less popular than the other parks, most rides are good options at regular rope drop. Even those in Pandora – World of Avatar. Likewise, Early Entry eligibility is so limited at Disneyland Resort that even Fantasyland or Avengers Campus attractions tend to ‘reset’ and have low waits again at regular rope drop. The most borderline entry on the above list is Frozen Ever After at EPCOT, which does have lower waits than midday, but you could still wait ~30 minutes at rope drop.
Buzzer Beater – Similarly, there’s the tried and true approach for any headliner attraction: 1 minute before park closing. This is like the reverse rope drop, or ‘rope rise’ option. We like to think of it as the “buzzer beater” approach, since all you’ve gotta do is jump in line before the clock strikes park closing.
Disney doesn’t stop lines for attractions until park closing, which means you can queue up right until the clock strikes midnight (or whenever the parks close–usually much earlier at Walt Disney World than Disneyland). This effectively extends your day and is when the actual wait time is lowest for all headliners on both coasts.
Ignore the posted wait time. Disney deliberately inflates wait times at the end of the night to discourage guests from getting in one last ride. The more people who jump in line for the buzz beater approach, the longer it takes to clear the park, which means more $$$ for Disney in staffing.
We have done the ‘buzzer-beater’ approach to Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, TRON Lightcycle Run, Indiana Jones Adventure, Space Mountain, Radiator Springs Racers, Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance, and other top-tier attractions on both coasts dozens and dozens of times. Almost every single night, in fact. The overwhelming majority of the time, our actual wait time for any of these attractions has been between 10 and 15 minutes. There have been times when they’ve been walk-ons!
Extended Evening Hours – This one is exclusive to Walt Disney World, to certain nights, specific parks, and a small pool of guests. Suffice to say, there are many limiting factors on Extended Evening Hours (ExEH). If you’re unfamiliar with the ins and outs, learn more in our Guide to Extended Evening Hours at Walt Disney World.
Extended Evening Hours is really useful at Magic Kingdom, where you can do pretty much any attraction–including Seven Dwarfs Mine Train and TRON Lightcycle Run–towards the end of the evening with minimal waits. It’s not quite as advantageous at EPCOT, in part due to the more limited ride roster and in part because everything’s so spread out.
There’s really not much difference with Extended Evening Hours and regular park closing. Prioritize the second-tier attractions earlier during ExEH and the top-tier ones at the very end. Jump into line for Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure, TRON, or SDMT at the very end, and everything else before that to maximize your time saved.
Multiple Experience Pass (MEP) – This is called a bunch of different things, both officially and unofficially. Disney used to be so good about consistent branding and naming convention, but that really went off the rails when retiring FastPass, Extra Magic Hours, and so forth. (Is it actually called Early Entry? Is it capitalized? Depends on where you look!) But I digress.
Disney and fans mostly refer to this as the Multiple Experience Pass or MEP. That’s a bit confusing now that Lightning Lane Multi Pass has been introduced, but whatever. We’ll roll with it.
Multiple Experience Passes are what you receive an attraction for which you have an upcoming ride reservation is experiencing downtime. You’ll receive a notification about a modification to your plans, along with an explanation that the attraction is temporarily unavailable or something like that. Here are examples from Magic Kingdom:
This Multiple Experiences Pass can then be used at the Lightning Lane entrance of your choice, with a number of caveats. These passes have multiple tiers, and the exclusions on yours will vary based on the ride you had booked via Lightning Lane Multi-Pass. Phew. That’s a lot of multiples!
The salient point here is that the Multiple Experiences Pass does not count against the re-ride rule. Meaning that these floating ride reservations don’t have the restriction of only being valid for each attraction once per day–you can use MEPs to experience your favorite rides again and again. This is essentially a wildcard or ‘get out of jail free’ card or whatever you want to call it. The MEP exists in a parallel universe, largely unencumbered by the rules of the Lightning Lane system.
If you look at the screenshot above, you’ll see that I received that Multiple Experiences Pass for Space Mountain. Once I received that, Space Mountain was back on the table as an attraction I could reserve again (subject to availability) via Lightning Lane Multi-Pass. So I did. But since it was still broken down, this immediately converted to another MEP. This, in turn, allowed me to book a ride reservation for Space Mountain again. And guess what I did?
Above is my collection of Multiple Experiences Passes from Space Mountain being broken down on this particular day. I also booked a Lightning Lane Multi-Pass for Space Mountain that actually “stuck,” meaning that I ended up with 4 LLMPs flowing from Space Mountain on this particular day. I could use these to ride anything, except the higher-status headliners in Magic Kingdom.
It won’t always work, and honestly, I’m surprised the system let me keep booking Space Mountain. Much of the time, a ride breaking down will ‘freeze’ its Lightning Lane availability, thereby avoiding this result where the system is spitting out Multiple Experiences Passes like candy. For whatever reason, that wasn’t the case on this particular day.
Rather than relying on a glitch or anomaly like this, there’s a more tried and true way of scoring the coveted Multiple Experiences Pass. You can troll or fish for them. There are certain attractions that are more prone to breakdowns or the dreaded delayed opening.
Disneyland diehards routinely work the system with Indiana Jones Adventure and Space Mountain, along with the Pixar Pier headliners, Soarin’ and Grizzly River Run. If you reservation one of these as your first Lightning Lane of the day, there’s a decent chance you’ll be rewarded with a Multiple Experiences Pass because the ride is unable to open with the park. If not, you can either ride or play the modify game and keep fishing.
Other attractions at Disneyland and Disney California Adventure where this frequently works throughout the day are Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, Matterhorn, Monsters, Inc. Mike & Sulley to the Rescue, and Goofy’s Sky School. At Disneyland, it also seems easier to score upcoming LLMPs for rides that are currently experiencing downtime.
At Walt Disney World, it’s a bit trickier. This is in large part because the majority of rides that are most likely to experience the dreaded delayed opening are also the most difficult and coveted Lightning Lanes. Nevertheless, here’s a list of attractions to target:
- The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
- Pirates of the Caribbean
- Haunted Mansion
- Big Thunder Mountain Railroad
- Tiana’s Bayou Adventure
- Slinky Dog Dash
- Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster
- Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure
- Spaceship Earth
- Expedition Everest
Obviously, some of these are going to be more useful when trolling for a Multiple Experiences Pass than others. It also should go without saying, but ride reliability is unpredictable and subject to change. There was a time not too long ago when Pirates of the Caribbean and Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster were reliably experiencing unreliability. You could book one of these for the earliest morning time slot and have a 50/50 chance they’d be down. As of right now, even the most breakdown-prone rides are only having delayed openings under 20% of the time. Good news for the Walt Disney World guest experience as a whole; bad news for MEP fishers.
There are other more advanced-level hacks with Multiple Experience Passes, or rather, there were. This included ways to accelerate Lightning Lane return times, receive bonus MEPs, and more. I believe most, if not all, of these became obsolete with the switch from Genie+ to Lightning Lane Multi Pass. It’s nevertheless worth reiterating that MEP exists in a parallel universe of sorts, like the Upside Down or Twilight Zone (depending upon your age) versions of Walt Disney World and Disneyland.
What this means in practice is that Multiple Experience Passes can interface with the Lightning Lane Multi Pass system in odd and unexpected ways. I know this is going to shock every diehard fan, but sometimes Disney IT can be glitchy, and that’s evident from time to time with MEP. Things like priority rules for which ride reservation to pull, errors resulting in unlimited Lightning Lanes, and more have happened on occasion.
The screenshot above shows a day when I received one valid MEP for a ride breakdown…and then kept getting more every 5 minutes for reasons unknown. That was over 2 years ago, it’s never happened again, and I still have no clue why it occurred in the first place. Perhaps a Festivus miracle? Hard to say. The point I’m trying to make is that sometimes the unexpected happens with Multiple Experience Passes, and other times the rules change in less favorable ways. Don’t count on any of the above applying long-term, as Disney often tweaks its systems to close loopholes…which sometimes creates other loopholes in the process. It’s like Whac-A-Mole.
Planning a Walt Disney World trip? Learn about hotels on our Walt Disney World Hotels Reviews page. For where to eat, read our Walt Disney World Restaurant Reviews. To save money on tickets or determine which type to buy, read our Tips for Saving Money on Walt Disney World Tickets post. Our What to Pack for Disney Trips post takes a unique look at clever items to take. For what to do and when to do it, our Walt Disney World Ride Guides will help. For comprehensive advice, the best place to start is our Walt Disney World Trip Planning Guide for everything you need to know!
YOUR THOUGHTS
Have you ever had success fishing for Multiple Experience Passes? Any other tips or advice to add based on your experiences? Received a MEP by complete accident due to breakdowns? What’s your optimal approach and time of day to do ‘supplemental’ standby rides on favorite attractions? What would you recommend to Walt Disney World or Disneyland first-timers? Do you agree or disagree with any of our strategy? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!
