Last year I did optimise plans but this Septembers plan I’ve made them myself and done evaluate. Although I had it set to reduce walking, the optimise version was very zig zag
My current thinking is create my plans myself then have a copy that I can optimise and maybe make some tweaks from there? Then use both in parallel?
I need to update all my plans as CL changed for all days but off the top of my head, the pure optimise version was maybe half an hour quicker or so?
I’m not interested in how quickly I can just get around the parks if it means zig zagging around. I want to actually enjoy my day and have time to look and soak it in. So I create my plan and then Evaluate to set a reasonable expectation of how much of it I can do and still have down time in the plan.
Really it comes down to your style of touring, how long you have, what you absolutely must do and what is icing on the cake etc.
We have full 2 weeks in Disney so we def have time. But also have a 2yr old so avoiding long queues is a priority! Think I’ll keep working on my plans with evaluate and see where I end up. If only there was an option to optimise each land… ie select what you want to do in Fantasyland and it tells you best way to do that part of the park, then Tomorrowland…
I was optimizing only, then I started to tweak as I learned more and evaluate and I now I do a little of both. I have a bit of planning fatigue at the moment so if you ask me right now… I’d just optimize and deal with the repercussions. Animal Kingdom planning overwhelms me a bit so I just optimize, but Magic Kingdom and Epcot I’ve been arranging myself and evaluating.
I don’t optimize for the very reason you mentioned. No zig-zagging for me. I play around with the evaluate function quite a bit, testing different low-mileage plans that I might want to do, then testing them again at different crowd levels.
I also can find plenty of things to see and do while waiting around a bit, but we don’t get to WDW often so even the older stuff is interesting to us. I think TP is dedicated to riding rides, which is fine but I don’t mind stopping to smell the roses, or find the hidden Mickeys.
I only put in high priorities to keep things simple for us then arrange the order I want to do things, set at the lowest walking speed then evaluate. Add 30 minutes break in each area that I can’t input a “spending X minutes” to account for DD getting side tracked or us wanting to explore. This is our 2nd AK day: Disney and Universal Touring Plans
on a sorta different note…can you do 2 separate trips for same time period, rather than doing plan A, B, C etc. for the same date within same trip? I can’t figure out how to do this, so I have one trip with like 5 different plans on the same day (gets confusing)
Exactly. I was missing attractions in my TP that are not headliners but that I’d do if I were right there. I had forgotten about Voyage of the Little Mermaid, for instance, because it wasn’t in the TP I was using as a template. I didn’t really catch that error until I looked at the official WDW map. But it has a a cool queue, especially at night, so a little wait is ok with me.
So what I do now is take a look around using Disney’s map and see what’s nearby. Then I put those in to fill that time between FP and evaluate for that.
Also, because these are sort of “filler” attractions, you can jettison them if you get behind.
I only evaluate too. I do pretty much the same a @Pod. I was also wondering if the Little Mermaid was worth seeing (I have 3 boys and we have never done it.) It will work perfectly between a couple of my FPPs for this trip! Thanks for the info @Pod.
So when we have our TP set (far off for me because I scrapped mine this week, because like bethro23,
I too had so many for each day I would get confused. So I am going to start again once I have FPP and hopefully DAH scheduled.) But once we have them set and are using the Lines app in the park, do we evaluate or optimize? Or do we do both. I think I need to practice.
You’re welcome! I think they’ll be impressed if you go at night. For me it was a good filler between Space and 7DMT. There’s also a really neat 3-D hidden Mickey in the queue, I think it’s Steamboat Willy, so pretty special.
Animal Kingdom planning overwhelms me a bit so I just optimize, but Magic Kingdom and Epcot I’ve been arranging myself and evaluating.