My trip is coming up in 19 short days. I have plans made up for all of my 8 days in the parks. When should I do my final optimize/evaluate for my plans? I know about the optimize in the parks but I want to get the best idea before we go of what kind of waits we should expect.
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Personally, I tend to optimize 3 days before and then do my last one in the morning while I’m waiting for the bus or while at the parks waiting for rope drop to get the most current projections.
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Thanks. That sounds like a good plan.
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Personally, I am not a fan of in-park re-optimization. I find having my entire day potentially reshuffled after each attraction too disorienting, and on more than one occasion the result was a garbled mess that was unusable (granted this was right after the feature was added and still had a lot of glitches).
When first creating a TP I’ll use the optimize button to get a very rough draft, but then I typically do a lot of manual fine tuning to get things in an order I like better, add breaks, etc; I use “evaluate” after each change to make sure I’m not doing anything too crazy. I usually do this at the 60 day point, right after I have my FPPs selected. Then, about once a week I’ll hit evaluate to see if there are any significant changes. I’ll still do an evaluate every morning before getting to the parks so I can readjust my expectations if needed, but once my plans are “set”, I never use optimize again.
But I should probably add that although I make full day plans, in reality I only follow the first 4 or 5 steps closely, use my FPPs, go to my ADRs, and just fit other things in between. I’ve been enough times that I no longer have the “must ride everything every trip” attitude…
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Is this your first trip?
Because if it is not, I am with @bswan26 I like to get things in order and just evaluate. I don’t want all my steps changed around.
I most likely will not be using the in park optimize, just an evaluate before we head into the park of choice. I want to have printed hard copies and I was mainly wanting to know how many days in advance I should print. I don’t want to have to worry about major changes in wait times etc.
Folks -
Please remember that things can happen. Be prepared to be flexible. Print hard copies if you want, but be prepared to be flexible in case something odd happens. I had to re-optimize on the fly 4 or 5 times touring during our stay last week. Attractions might not be running, wait times might be WAAAAY off, or perhaps one of the kids changes their minds on what they want to do. Just be prepared for a change of plans, that’s all. Some of the changes might be good, some might throw you off. The beauty is that the TP software allows you to re-optimize in just a few seconds.
I am going to be in the minority here and say that re-optimizing in the park after every ride made my trip incredible. You should definitely get a plan before you head out for the day, but I literally just hit optimize after every ride and never waited more than 20 minutes the entire week I was in the parks. I realize this may not work for everyone, but for my husband, three sons and myself, we were more than happy to change plans on the fly if it meant less waiting.