We are scheduled to be in MK on 12/31 - crowed is forecasted to be 10/10 which is an obvious yet …
the wait time in the plan are extremely short, 11, 7, 7 8, 8, 5 min … this just doesn’t make any sense to me. In looking at wait times (real time - as in today) I can see the lines being much longer then the forecasted and today is not a 10/10 day.
Only two attractions are more than 20 min and they are 42 min for haunted house at 830pm and Seven Dwarfs at 730 for 52 min wait.
looking at the lines now , Seven Dwarfs is 63min
Am getting worried these plans are not realistic … Do they make sense ? Am I doing anything wrong?
What are the attractions/arrival times for those short waits? 7DMT will be more than 30min by a few minutes past opening. HM seems high considering it’ll open at 8am whilst Fantasyland/Tomorrowland opens at 7 (assuming extra magic am that day, given your 7:30am (?) time for 7DMT) . But, hard to put thought to it without seeing the plan. You can also crosscheck wait times with other level 10 days at the times your current TP sends you to various attractions. For example, how high was the actual (not predicted) HM wait at 8:30 on 12/31/13 (assuming am EMH in 2013 as well)?
Thank everybody …
Not sure how I can share a plan. I saved it as published but don’t know if it will work or not.
Take a look and let me know if you have access to it AND … does it look right?
I tried to look at your plan but it says that I don’t have access to it. I’ve never shared a plan so I can’t offer assistance on that end. @SallyEppcot, you shared your plan with me. Maybe you can offer some guidance on how to do that.
When you go into the top portion of the plan, it allows you to edit the name, start time, etc for the plan. There is a box you can check there to make your plan “public.” That’s what you have to do. Then you use the URL it gives you to share it.
What doesn’t make sense to me is 2 hours+ of free time in the middle of the morning.
I think you need to readjust your times and then optimize it a couple of times.
Of course, Peter Pan is only going to have a 10 minute wait at 1 in the morning, but if I had been there since 7 that morning, I would be looking for a swift death and not a quick way on to another attraction.
True, we wont be there past 12:00 (new year fireworks) - I just placed the rides we are interested in and let the system optimize itself. What ever is left (not fitting by the firework shows) will be spilled over to an extra day on Sunday.
Till then, we let the system do as much as it can.
So if you look at the morning sessions, do any of these looks right? The estimates as pure estimates feels very wrong.
You have to put in accurate times in order for the TP to work for you. Otherwise it is going to put you at attractions early in the morning and then very late at night (the times with the lowest lines) and give you weird breaks throughout the day, like 2 hours in the middle of the morning and then another hour and a half at 12:30 and then another hour at 2:30.
Q: What was the trickiest problem to solve during the creation of Touring Plans?
A: The concept of “free time,” where you may have 15 or 20 minutes with nothing to do before your next attraction, was a little hard to code and definitely hard to communicate to users. An example of free time is when you tell the engine you’re going to be in the Magic Kingdom for 13 hours, perhaps staying to see the nighttime fireworks, and the engine thinks it’ll only take 8 hours to see all the rides and shows you’ve selected.
If you’re busy for 8 hours in a 13-hour day, you’re going to have 5 hours of free time. The engine has to put those 5 hours of free time somewhere in the schedule. And it chooses where to place the free time so that the overall amount of time you spend waiting in line is minimized. In practice, what happens often is that the engine will put the free time in early afternoon, say between 1 pm and 4 pm, since that’s when the parks are most crowded and lines are longest. And it’ll put you on rides and in shows during the morning and evening, when lines are lowest.
Some folks will write us to say that the engine must be malfunctioning, because it has this huge chunk of free time scheduled in the middle of their day. Most folks think that the free time should come in the evening but whenever we’ve looked at the plan, it’s always optimal for the free time to come in the mid-afternoon. So we’ll encourage people to move steps around in their plan and use the ‘Evaluate’ button (which doesn’t re-arrange their steps) to see how much longer their version takes, and it’s usually a significant difference.
I haven’t had a chance to look at last year’s results for NYE but I would speculate that the park will not be crowded at 8am that day as most people will want to be there in the evening for the fireworks. That would make for an extremely long day. But what really seems off to me is the 7DMT wait without a FP, as well as, the other wait times for that evening. Hopefully you’ll get more responses to help you figure this out.
Have a great trip! Spending NYE at WDW is on my bucket list.
Ok. I’ve looked at the plan. My suggestion is to really think about when you want to be at MK and make separate plans for those consecutive hours. Lines will be shortest from rope drop until lunch and late at night, so if you are up for that sort of split, that would be the most efficient. I know I wouldn’t be able to do 15+ hours!
I know you can put breaks in, but I find the optimizing works much better if you fill the time. So if you can do rope drop, make your plan for 8 am to 1 or 2pm and keep adding attractions and meals until you don’t have any huge gaps. You can always skip an attraction if you need shopping or break time, but it’s nice to have options already in the plan.
Then make another plan for the evening hours, and do the same thing for the hours you plan to be there. You’ll run into fewer glitches if you do 2 plans instead of one long TP. Also, I highly recommend doing a personalized plan. They’re more flexible than the pre-made ones.
The wait times look accurate for the time of day, but they will change dramatically from hour to hour. If you know you won’t arrive until 11 am, then you’ll want to see how that translates to longer lines.
Your only headliner before noon is Splash which I can see as not being too crazy at 9am as many don’t want to ride a water attraction when it’s still chilly out (upper 50’s to low 60’s perhaps). Thinking reasonable predictions before noon; others like Carosel could be added with low waits. 7DMT looks too low; I’d RD (aggressively meaning I’d make sure I was with the rope at opening) it for the shortest standby waits of the day. Buzz and Space FPP could be earlier (if possible make them sequential following Big Thunder) to allow for a 4th, 5th, etc (in long kiosk lines). Seems you could get some awesome attractions done late at night: I’d stick around if at all possible until closing. Leaving with the crowds after the NYEve fireworks will be painful and is ill-advised. You’ll be in a swarm of people and will no doubt end up in still more long transportation lines and would be leaving shorter lines back in the MK (because most will leave after the fireworks) and some of the best touring of the day. Would normally suggest a really long afternoon break while the crowds are highest especially because your day is long but worry you wouldn’t be able to return. I’d just suck it up and commit fully. New Year’s Eve Wasn’t So Magical for Some Guests at the Magic Kingdom
Rather than two plans I would go with one plan with a scheduled break in the early afternoon. This way you can let the Optimizee determine the best placement of attractions in terms of the pre and post break portions of the plan and you will get an overall better plan. If the Optimizer has significant amounts of free time, you are not doing enough to fill up the two portions of your day - either add more attractions or make the afternoon break longer.
I’ve asked @fred to look at 7DMT’s wait times. They do look a little low.
For what it’s worth, actual wait times on NYE 2013 seem to have been running about 1/3rd of the posted wait, during the middle part of the day. So a 95-minute posted wait at Pirates of the Caribbean ended up being a 33-minute actual wait. I suspect you’ll see something similar with all the headliners.
Actual wait times dropped significantly after midnight. While Peter Pan still had a 60-minute posted wait, actuals were under 10.
@brklinck and @Sam2071 know way more than I do about Touring Plans, so you should probably follow their advice. I tend to compartmentalize my days, so if I planned to take a long break, I would do two plans. I also tend to prefer splitting Magic Kingdom in half and not criss-crossing the park, so doing two plans helps me do that. It’s not the most efficient use of the Optimizer, but it is the way I like to use the tool. Have fun planning! I’m sure you’ll have a great day no matter how you do it.
Yeah, TPs seem a bit hinky recently. I re-optimized my Epcot day, and it won’t use any of my FPPs, including Soarin, but has me waiting in line for 54 minutes for Soarin. Scratching my head over this.
ETA: Re-optimized, and Soarin FPP came back. Repeat, it went away. Repeat again, FPP now being used. Sigh.
