My plan was to get as much done as possible in the one day, and have a day with more freedom of movement and later arrival on Thursday. This also allows us to eliminate attractions and push them to Thursday if the plan starts going South. A big lunch will be eaten during the 4 hour midday break, and then backpack snacks when time permits in the evening, probably in Anna & Elsa line. I would have liked to make 7DMT earlier, but Disney doesn’t care for non-Disney resort guests ;).
Oops, link
It is not allowing me to see your plan. Can you change the settings to allow us to see?
Weird, it’s published…
You need to share the link that is displayed below “This plan is published” - that is the one that everyone can see.
http://touringplans.com/plans/print?id=1791474
I see, it’s a url to only the uneditable print format. Thanks!
It seems really reasonable and realistic. Will you be leaving or staying for parade and Woshes?
My Tuesday TP starts with the 3:00 Festival Parade and focuses on the parades and Wishes with other stuff we didn’t do Sunday. Plan is to show up around 1 and have the leisurely day we didn’t have at MK on Sunday or Epcot on Monday.
1 Like
So to directly answer your question, no parades on Sunday.
1 Like
Looks like a great plan with a lot of natural flow. A couple things:
- What if you tried for your Big Thunder Mountain FPP in the morning so you could do it right after Splash, while you’re still in that area, to avoid having to criss-cross back to it later? (Alternatively, it might be nearly a walk-on if you do it right before Splash.) This also saves you from the 16 minute gap you have between Country Bears and the start of your Peter Pan FPP. (Other option: do BTMRR right before Splash and try to get a FPP for Splash starting at 9:50 am approx.)
- I’d re-run the plan with meeting Ariel before Anna and Elsa at the end of the day. Ariel’s Grotto is right next to Under the Sea and it’s a very natural segue from the Ariel ride to meeting Ariel. And by the time of day, a 5 or 6 minute walk doesn’t sound like much… except that it is.
Change the BTM to 9:15, good idea.
I did go ahead and move Ariel right after the ride. I once had it there but moved it to reduce wait time. Putting them together saves 4 minutes walking, but at the expense of 4 minutes waiting.
Oh, and the line-up for the Grotto is serene and quiet.
My only comment would be regarding your allocation of FPP. I think you (and everyone) would be best served using your first 3 asap. Peter Pan 9-10, BTMR 10-11, SDMT 11-12… something like that. Using your 3rd FPP at 5:45pm leaves a lot of time savings on the table.
I disagree with the “use FPP early” strategy,as it tends to make use of FPPs at a time when you don’t get the greatest benefit from them. I realize that some people like to do this in order to try and get a 4th FPP, but many times the FPPs that are available really aren’t all that beneficial, and even with a 4th FPP in the mix the overall time savings really isn’t that great.
Instead, I prefer to make Personalized TPs and utilize the Optimizer to help me find the best FPP options based on what I want to do on that day. For some plans this may result in using FPPs early in the day, but for the most part you end up using them at times when the lines are longest, giving you a significant time savings.
2 Likes
This is a false dichotomy, reducing the issue to binary thinking. The point of scheduling FPP early is not to enjoy small time savings when lines are short at the expense of longer lines later in the day. Rather, the goal is to get BOTH. If it was simple as “why save a 15 minute wait at 9:30am when you can save a 90 minute wait at 1pm” then you would be correct. However that’s simply not the case. And it’s not like lining up an “early” FPP necessarily means small time savings… I’m not advocating using FPP on Small World at 9am. Anyone who’s seen the lines for SDMT (or Test Track, or the Mountains, or A&E) at 9:55am (within your first hour window) knows that the line has already become intense and is already worthy of a FPP.
Perhaps at the height of summer, or Christmas… but in general, I respectfully disagree with all of that. In general, if you use your 3rd FPP as quickly as possible, you’ll then have the pick of whatever you want for your 4th (and 5th, and 6th), save only for A&E, SDMT, and POSSIBLY one of the mountains. And any rides you suspect will be wiped out for your 4th/5th/6th FPP, you simply do those with your first 3. I mean, we’re not planning on doing nothing but SDMT all day, are we?
The reason the software, after Optimization, plugs it’s FPP recommendations into the busiest points of the day isn’t because that’s what’s best. It’s because the software is only programmed to consider a 3 FPP allotment. If the software understood, and took into account, the possibility of additional FPP… if it understood that this wasn’t an either/or scenario of using 3 FPP early or late, but rather that one could have BOTH, does it honestly seem likely that you would still get the same results? That seems highly doubtful.
Now, with all that said, the opportunities for additional FPP may be undermined (along with my argument) since the OP’s plan appears to be during March break for at least some school systems. The Crowd Calendar lists that MK day as a 9. So the above applies more as a general philosophy re. when to schedule FPP. Honestly, all strategies go out the window when you begin to reach apocalypse-level crowds.
If I recall, the problem wasn’t a desire for a 5:45 FP to 7DMT, but that was all that was left at midnight of the 30 day mark.
I would suggest checking back periodically. People change their plans and earlier times come available sometimes. Also, try breaking FP requests into groups of 2, in case there are overlapping times available.
Yes, I see that now. Well, when you’re forced to make that call, what can you do?
As a park hopper I completely disagree with using any FPs in the morning. Overall, nothing with beat my time savings of rope drop, break and FPs on return. I will say that I do not care for 7DMT and will only ride it at night (using my hopping FPs) but as a rope dropper that usually will start with Space x3 cross the park to Big Thunder x3 and then hop onto Spalsh (yes- this is my crazy regular plan) I hav never waited more than 10-15 minutes for any of the mountains (done with Space by 9:30- finished with Big Thunder around 10 before Splash line builds).
1 Like
This is not correct at all. As far as I am aware, the Optimizer does not take into account the number of FPP reservations you can make - it simply takes the attractions that you have selected and any FPP reservations that you have told it about and tries to make the most efficient plan (@len - please correct me if I am wrong). This is evidenced by the fact that it will give you more than 3 FPP recommendations after you run it, You can also put in more than 3 FPP reservations if you want to see how good a “4th FPP” plan will work. In fact, the last time I tried this, a 3 FPP plan made using my strategy easily beat my best plan made using a “4th FPP” strategy.
1 Like
If that is the case, and I’m sure you’re right… that’s even worse. It’s making a plan not even considering multiple FPP, even when you’ve data-entered multiple FPP. It makes the most efficient plan “sans FPP”, then an extra routine is run through the internal logic identifying which attractions within that plan would a) qualify for a FPP; and b) most benefit from a FPP. In a sense, no matter how many FPP you have (or plan to have), the software is running assuming you have none, and then almost as an afterthought and the plan is already structured, is giving you multiple suggestions on where to use FPP… embedded limited utility.
To truly maximize your gains, it would need to account not just for all of that, but factor in exactly how many FPP you can get, which attractions will be available (and for when) once acquiring additional FPP (i.e. #4, #5, etc.)… things it can’t possibly know ahead of time. The software is just not that sophisticated. That’s not a knock, there’s only so much you can expect a piece of predictive software to know, it’s not omniscient. So if it’s not factoring all that in, and isn’t accounting for the missed opportunity costs of FPPs not used early in favour of a few big line-bypasses late… to me, it’s pretty straightforward.
Forgetting additional (#4 and on) FPP for a moment… to truly get a “best result” with your starting 3, what would be really helpful is this: to be able to indicate to the software “no matter what time of day, assume that SDMT, Space and Splash (as a for instance) all have a 1-3 minute wait. NOW run your Optimize routine.” I guarantee that you’d get a different result within those parameters.
A thought… it feels a bit like this has gone off-topic and is hijacking the OPs thread. If you want to continue this, could we perhaps do so in a new thread built for the purpose?