I’ve seen a bunch of posts lately with people doubting the accuracy of their Touring Plan.
I have never had a Touring Plan not work out for me. I swear by them! So my question is this…
Have you ever NOT been happy with the results of your Touring Plan? If so, why?
Nope. The only time I was unhappy is when I didn’t follow what it said.
Len - we have a problem in Sector 3 - problem in Sector 3.
So I don’t put 100% credence in the touring plans (meaning if the lines are not exactly what TP said they would be - I am not too upset). I realize this is statistical and there are unforseen items that may occur.
However as previously stated - I still feel that following the plans to a large part HELP significantly. If I get there and TP notes the lines should be 20 minutes and they are 30 I don’t go crazy - it happens - I then determine what my next step is.
We also (don’t tell anyone) deviate from them. If we get off the ride and the line seems reasonable - we (dare I say) ride it again - knowing that it may mess things up a bit. I use it as a GUIDE - not a MANIFESTO.
I tell everyone that goes - USE THIS - It is $13 bucks worth spending. If it only saves you 15 minutes a day - for a family of 4 that is a combined hour of time - 7 hours for a week - that is worth it even at that rate.
What I always end up doing, is making approximately 7000 customized touring plans before the trip. It’s my hobby. And then we get there and I don’t use any of them, but I know which rides to hit first thing in the morning, and which can wait until later.
We used customized plans for our last trip. Were the wait times accurate? Sometimes. Some days we were way ahead of our plan, sometimes we deviated due to an extra attraction/ character we hadn’t planned, sometimes the crowds were larger than TP predicted… The plans were great for making an outline for the trip and give us a good idea what we could fit in. We had a great trip and did more attractions than I thought possible with 3 younger children. We plan on using TP again on our next trip, but as more of a good outline for our day. So no, I have not been unhappy and we just rolled with the punches.
Historically they have worked very well for me. Not so much on my last trip (mid Nov 2014). Every predicted CL was at least 2 lower than the actual, and the wait times were as much as 100% off (e.g. Predicted 20,actual 40). For my next trip (whenever that might be) I’ll do TPs, but I’ll be skeptical until I see them working…
I don’t quite understand how anyone could really NOT be happy with the results of the tp software unless the crowd level predictions were way off which is out of the site’s control. The tp software itself is fantastic. It takes a few seconds to calculate what SHOULD be your best plan of attack no matter what attractions, fastpasses, show times, break times, meal times you throw at it, and then, it lets you recalculate, add, delete on the fly in only a few seconds. I was about two days into mapping out a path for my first day of our 5 day trip, when I said to myself, “Self, buy the membership for 12 dollars, and see.” In about 20 minutes, I had my first two days DONE. Utter amazement. TP CRUSHED 4 out of our 5 days. The one day we got hosed was because we arrived 20 minutes after rope drop, and the CL prediction was off.
Anyone ever see the TP “magic?”
Something like this happened 3 times during our trip, but this one was jaw dropping:
We were ahead of schedule for our fastpass at PP in MK. Figured we’d hop on Small World. I looked at the posted wait time for Small World on MDE - 30 minutes. I added it to our tp, and tp said 15 minutes. I almost started to get everyone to walk over to the teacups, or carousel, but something told me to get into the Small World line. The posted time outside was also 30 minutes. We waited in line for about 2 minutes, and for whatever reason, the mde wait time dropped to 10 minutes. We were on in 10 minutes.
I always tell people it is the best $12 you’ll ever spend! And after spending thousands for the Disney trip, what’s another $12!??!
AMEN bother