If you read my Disneyland Recap from my most recent trip, you’ll see I mentioned MaxPass a few times and that is was amazing. Well in this post I am going to go into a more in-depth review and also a how-to so you can utilize its features to the most benefit.
So here is how it works. MaxPass is an additional $10 per ticket for your trip. With MaxPass you get the ability to reserve FastPasses on your phone through the Disneyland app as well as the full PhotoPass service.
Once you officially enter the park and have your ticket scanned at the gate, you can start reserving FastPasses. You will create your ticket party, choose your park, and get a list of rides with FastPass available for that park (as seen on the right here). You’ll choose the ride you want to reserve and complete the confirmation and you have your FastPass. It’s that simple and convenient.
When your time arrives for your FastPass, the barcode for the pass will pop up on your phone in the app and you’ll scan it at the FastPass entrance for the attraction. And that’s it! You’re officially cutting the line for your favorite ride now.
Honestly, MaxPass was the best addition to our trip and I would definitely use it again. It made it possible to ride a lot of rides, especially very popular rides, multiple times. A prime example is Haunted Mansion Holiday, which easily has an hour or more wait time because it is a special edition of the ride. We rope dropped it and then got a FastPass later in the day thanks to MaxPass. Using MaxPass cut down all of our wait times, so the longest wait we had the entire day was 30 minutes for Peter Pan’s Flight which didn’t have a FastPass.
We already used FastPasses for rides so that concept isn’t new, but being able to reserve them on my phone anywhere in the park was so convenient. I didn’t have to trek to Tomorrowland from New Orleans Square to get a Space Mountain FastPass. That convenience alone made the money worth it.
You can only have one FastPass reserved at a time, which was fine for us because as soon as the start time hits for an existing pass you can reserve another one. I ended up not reserving a new one until I redeemed the previous one, cause then I could just make the new reservation while in the FastPass line.
You also get PhotoPass with MaxPass, which was handy for snagging those hilarious ride photos and saving them into my Disney account and in the Disneyland app. Anywhere PhotoPass is done you can use it, as it works as a normal PhotoPass service just attached with the FastPass service.
Here is how you can make the best of your MaxPass service:
- Have a plan of what rides you want to FastPass. Some rides are impossible to get on quickly without a FastPass (Radiator Springs Racers is a prime example).
- Have a battery pack to keep your phone charged. We actually had three battery packs with us, but I only used one to keep my phone charged all day.
- It’s ok to not back to back FastPass and slow down your trip a bit. Remember you may also want to shop or get a sit-down dinner, so you don’t want to FastPass too much and have it prevent you from a full Disney experience.
- If you feel like you’re running out of things to do early in your trip, check the FastPasses and see what rides have close to the current time passes available. That’s how we rode quite a few rides multiple times, cause we spontaneously added a FastPass to jump on a ride real quick.
As I said earlier I would absolutely use MaxPass again! It was so convenient and really made our trip that much better because we got to ride more rides and do more in our short trip. Plus it’s fun to have the ride photos saved in my Disney account for future memories and nostalgia.
Did you read my recap on my trip? You should to see more of what I did because it was a lot thanks to MaxPass. And check out my next post where I share more tips and tricks for planning a Disneyland visit.
You said it was $10 for your trip – is that per day, or did it cover multiple days?
$10 per ticket. So with our two tickets that were one park per day 2 days it was $20 additional