Hi Laura,
Thank you for dropping by planDisney with a question! I am always happy to greet a fellow North Carolinian!
I hear you! It sounds like you miss the days of FastPass+ when guests could pre-book a few attractions in advance of their trips. I remember the excitement in my family as we made those selections. There are currently no updates about returning to that system. I can say, our girls have mastered the art of
Disney Genie+ so we use it to its full potential when we purchase it!
I actually find that, with Disney Genie+, we have a better balance between being planned and just going with the flow while visiting. While I hesitate to say there will ever come a time when we would not make any advanced plans, on our most recent trip, we felt like we had just enough plans and we had some solid time for relaxing at the resort or, taking advantage of unexpected opportunities. So, we park hopped one day just because we felt like it (without any prior planning) from Magic Kingdom to EPCOT and enjoyed a few attractions there.
In the meantime, if you are a person who likes to have those attractions booked, you may want to considered purchasing
Individual Lightning Lane Entry. Even though you will have to wait until the day of your visit to do so, you could plan to experience select attractions in a certain time window. For example, if you are like me and create a planning chart for the trip, my chart is divided by morning, afternoon, and evening. If we want to experience TRON, I might go ahead and put it on our plans in the afternoon time slot and then, we we arrive and are able to purchase Individual Lightning Lane Entry, I would try to do so for an afternoon time. Of course, keep in mind, that availability for Individual Lightning Lane Entry may be limited.
Laura, I know this is not the same as advanced booking for attractions! But I hope it gives you some ideas to help. Keep in mind that there a host of other experiences that you can pre-book in the
Enchanting Extras Collection! I just did the
Behind the Seeds tour at EPCOT and it was so interesting. There are also a number of experiences at Disney's Animal Kingdom theme park that my family enjoyed including the
Caring for Giants tour.
Continue to plan what you can and, in the spirit of Tiana, start counting down the days until you are
almost there!
Magic and memories,
Donyell