Did you know that if you have a Disney FastPass for a ride that a young child can’t go on that you can use a feature that allows adult Guests to take turns waiting with youngsters or Guests unable to ride? It’s called a ‘Rider Switch’ and it is pretty awesome! Let’s take a look at how it works and an example.
Disney FastPass Rider Switch With Children
We are just coming off a fantastic Disney trip where we mastered the Disney FastPass system! I will write another post about maximizing FastPass and strategies later. In this post, I wanted to highlight what might be a little known feature of the FastPass system, the ‘Rider Switch.’
What is Rider Switch?
At select attractions, you can also take advantage of our Rider Switch option,which enables one adult to wait with children while another adult experiences the attraction. Then, the adults can switch so the other adult can experience the attraction—without having to wait in line a second time. You do not need to use FastPass+ service to use the Rider Switch option.
Here’s a example and how it worked out perfectly for us. We are a family of 4. One child is tall enough for the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train ride at the Magic Kingdom (Child A) and the other child is not. So, in our example, we had a FastPass to ride for the 3 of us who are tall enough. But, someone has to stay back with the baby. So what to do? All we had to do was tell the host at the FastPass lane that we wanted to use the Rider Switch option and they handed us a badge. The first 2 of us went in with our FastPass (Adult A and Child A) and one adult (B) stayed back with the baby. Then we turned our badge in for a ticket (sounds complicated but, wasn’t at all.) The first 2 (Adult A and Child A) rode the ride and then met the 2nd adult (B) back at the FastPass line and Adult B was then able to take Child A back in and ride. So, essentially this worked out in our favor because we had 3 FastPasses for the ride and Child A was able to ride twice instead of only once because of the Rider Switch option. How awesome!
The rules state that you do not need to use FastPass+ service to use the Rider Switch option, however we did not try that option, as we didn’t wait in any long lines (more on that to come next!)
Bottom Line
If you aren’t up on Disney FastPass and Rider Switch, check out this post as well as the many more Disney tips and tricks that I will be posting in the coming days and weeks!
About The Weekly Flyer
The Weekly Flyer writes about travel from a business traveler perspective. He travels the world every week accumulating points and miles along the way.
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One trick you missed for your situation to make even better use of it (which works well for a family of 2 adults and 2 kids as long as the short child is still older enough to have a ticket). You didn’t need to get 3 fastpasses for Mine Train. You could have just gotten 2 of them (for Adult A and Child A). Adult B and Child B could have gotten a FP for a ride that the short child could ride. Since Adult B will be riding Mine Train with the Rider Swap pass, that Adult doesn’t need to have a FP for the ride. This also works if there are a more rides that you want to use swap for. You could have gotten 2 FP for Mine Train and 2 FP for Space Mountain for example and use Rider Swap twice using only 1 full set of FP. (The only think you’d need to do in that case is that the tall child would need to borrow the short child’s FP for that second ride). Another thing to note is that the ride swap passes don’t need to be used immediately so if the child that is doing all the waiting has been waiting too long – you can go off and do other things and come back later (or usually even another day) to use the pass when it’s more convenient.