I got to the Fastpass station at about 4pm on Saturday, and I got a Fastpass for the 11:15pm show in the yellow section. I also ended up getting a picnic meal, so I also had a ticket in the blue section for the 10:15pm show.
I do think it's a huge mistake to have no Fastpasses available for Grizzly River, considering it's a water ride, during the peak of the summer months. They could keep just one machine for GRR and use the others for World of Color, but I don't know if there's a programming issue that wouldn't allow one machine to be separated from the others. They had signs out telling people about the World of Color Fastpasses, but there were no signs about not having Fastpasses for GRR. There were a number of people who got in line for a GRR Fastpass, not knowing they weren't available. If they stick with having them not available for the majority of the day, they really need signs for that as well. When I went by again around 6pm, the machines were giving out GRR Fastpasses, so the World of Color ones must have run out by that point.
I will disagree with seemingly most other people that you have to get in the Fastpass return line really early and wait for a long time for the show. Having seen the show 3 times on Saturday from different angles, I really don't think the sight lines are any worse than they are for Fantasmic. Yes, there are some small water effects that are pretty low that you might miss, but I don't really think it's a big deal. More than anything, the major effects, and the most spectacular ones, are done very high up. Given a choice, I think the higher sections are better, partly because you avoid the spray, partly because of the higher elevation, but mostly because there are fewer people up there (at least in my experience) so there are fewer tall people to be stuck behind.
For the 10:15 show, I got in line at about 9:45, after I'd seen the 9pm show, and for the 11:15 show, the line had already been let into the viewing area by the time I was ready to join it at 11pm, so I just showed my Fastpass to the CM guarding one of the entrances, and they let me through.
Bookmarks