We have been to Disney for Christmas many times and know it will be hectic. In the past, we used the advice in the Unofficial Guide to help us through the parks, but I thought I’d try out the touring plans here and see what we got.
My question is this. I optimized our plans, and we are surprised to see advice is different than what we have always followed per the book. For example, on Christmas Day, it recommends at rope drop (we will use the Extra Magic Hours and historically arrive maybe 1.5 hrs before the park opens), it has us going on Navi River, then looping Everest twice, and not doing FOP until 3pm (I plan to try to get a fastpass for FOP then as the predicted line was crazy at 148 mins), but it seems odd to me to not go straight on to FOP at rope drop.
Can anyone confirm that this proposed strategy from TP is the best strategy?
So, the plan has a hard time giving really accurate times for rope drop. Part of this is because for things that open before the official hours start it does not count those times. It does better if you start your day with a one minute break and then put your RD ride.
Also, optimize always messes my plan up. It has me walking back and forth so much that anytime I may save standing in line I spend walking. Play around with the order of things and evaluate.
First, I would saying that “optimizing” over a year out really serves no purpose. Truth be told, I don’t really “trust” any TP unless I have optimized 2 weeks (or less) before arrival day (and even then it’s more of a recommendation than a required plan). At this point in time, no one knows what park hours will be, any special events, how new attractions will affect things, etc.
A TP is designed to minimize your TOTAL wait time for a day. If one particular ride will build a line almost immediately and hold constant for the day, the TP will guide you toward other rides that might have short wait times at RD, but will get longer as the day progresses. In some cases a particular ride may have a longer wait, but the trade-off is saving even more time on others. That’s the theory anyway.
Thank you. That helps me understand how the TP works. (We’re going in 2019. I mistyped. :))
I think these plans will give me enough info to plan FPs and then I’ll reoptimize when we are a week out. I have been there for many Christmases and know they often have extended hours then that don’t get posted until much closer.
Another thing I notice is that the software assumes you start walking from the gate at open time. If you are the sort to be through bag check & tapstiles early and will actually arrive at something FoP at the front of the pack, the estimates from the software won’t be great. If you feel confident on that but still want to see what optimize recommends, you could instead start your touring plan 45 minutes after open (or whenever you predict you will be done your first ride) and see what the software says.
But generally people agree (including me) that optimize is much less useful than evaluate. Especially if you don’t want to be going from Asia to Pandora and back again all day long.
So when you rope drop it assumes you get there at rope drop and arent at the front of the pack. The main goal is not to minimize your wait for one ride, its to minimize the overall wait for the day. If you get there early enough, rope dropping FOP would save time, but you can force that in the plan.