First trip to Disney - Touring Plan question

Walt Disney World
1

Hi all,
I am planning our first trip to disney, 10 days in late April/early May. Should I wait until my Fastpasses are confirmed before creating my TouringPlan?

I already have an idea what attractions we want to see.

Thanks!

2

I created my touring plan before just to see what rides I could possibly rope drop and which ones absolutely would need the FP. Obviously it’s only a suggestion and I still took what I could get for some of them but it put me at a bit peace.

3

Welcome!

I actually suggest you make a tentative touring plan without FPs, and use that to help decide which FPs make the most sense in terms of saving you the most time in line. It can also help you decide what times for those FPs make the most sense.

Of course, once you actually secure your FPs, you can then modify the plan if they don’t exactly match what you had hoped for.

Basically, my high-level process is something like this:

  1. Create a TP, putting in all the things I’d like to accomplish.
  2. For food, I don’t put specific eateries in, but just create a “Break” that is roughly the same time/length I would expect to eat. (I can replace these later.) If you already have ADRs, however, forget this and put in the meals that match.
  3. Change settings to minimize walking, and with walking speed set to Very Relaxed. This is so it gives me a plan that doesn’t have me walking all over the place just to get a shorter wait time.
  4. Optimize!
  5. If everything doesn’t work, I might have to remove some things and optimize again.
  6. Once I have a somewhat decent plan, I look at which rides have the longest waits, and decide which should be FPs.
  7. Put in the FPs one at a time, starting from the earliest and re-evaluate each time.
  8. Once this is done. I can then start playing around with moving things to my liking, re-evaluating each time (no more Optimize!).
  9. Finally, I replace my breaks with the actual places I want to eat, choosing based on location. I also change the walking speed from Very Relaxed to Relaxed and re-evaluate.
  10. After this, I just tweak things, insert breaks, see if there are places with extra free time, or opportunities to add in other things, etc.
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4

This is a great process!
Sometimes, between steps 4 and 5, I move things around, more to my liking. There are lots of reasons the optimized plan might not be YOUR best plan. I often do this before attempting to insert fastpasses because it might change what rides I want to FP.

Lots of folks on here are really good about getting 3 early FPs and then “going with the flow” for more FPs. I’m not as good at that. I’d rather pick a plan, pick the FPs that work for me, and stick with those. Even if that means I only get 3, or I get some less-than-necessary FPs.

For example, this March, I have a FP for Tomorrowland Speedway. Do I need it? Maybe not. But I don’t want to wait forever for that ride, I want to do it at a certain time, and I can rearrange some other things in the plan to not need a different FP.

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5

Ah. The point of steps 4 and 5 is really just to see if you have enough time in the day to get everything done. If Optimize can’t make it work, it is a sign that you won’t be able to do much better (most likely).

I rarely end up with a plan where I use what Optimize generated exactly. But I think step 7 can come after step 8 as well (and often does).

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Looks like you are my long lost TP twin brother! Question is which of us is the Evil Twin? Since you seem to have facial hair, it’s probably you! :crazy_face:

7

Yes, yes…but that just means I have an interesting backstory.

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8

Thanks for the info!