SO I never thought about this, but apparently there are different ways to create your personlized touring plan. What I did previously was simply select the attractions I wanted to visit, entered the FP I wanted at the time I wanted and hit “Optimize”. That’s the logical thing to me. But apparently, it gives a different result if you do it differently. For example, you could create it by the attractions you wanted to visit, then hit optimize. Then, add the one FP it recommends at the time it has you going to that attraction. Hit optimize again. Do that for all 3 Fast passes for the day.
My question is - how do YOU create a personlized touring plan? WHat do you put for the fastpasses you INTEND on using throughout the day? Does it give different results?
I haven’t used it for an actual trip yet, but I what I HAVE done so far is experiment with days of the week.
I take the same plan (list of desired rides, etc) and Optimize for a particular day. Then I change the date to another date as an option and try Optimize again to see if there are any obvious differences. I figure this is could be useful in choosing which day is better if you have a couple options
I’ve also played around with Evaluate when I want to try re-arranging a few things based on how I foresee our day (after an initial Optimize) and see how it impacts things.
I don’t bother putting in FPPs at this point since I don’t have any, and I’d like to have the day planned out as best I can WITHOUT any FPPs. Once it is time to schedule FPPs, I can use the suggestions as a starting point and then put in the FPPs once I actually obtained them.
I do it the way you do it, but inevitably there is always at least 1 the plan doesn’t use or a wait for something else I’m not willing to do, so at that point I change the FP if necessary, or change the order and evaluate, whatever makes it work.
I add all the attractions I want to visit and ADRs for the times I think we will want to eat. Then I pick out the FP’s I want, based on what we know to have the longest lines and what attractions we like best. I tend to pick FP times in the morning/early afternoon. Then I optimize. After that I move things around to make more sense geographically and evaluate. Then it is all tweaking and shifting things as ADRs and FPs are made. I also have not done touring plans for the entire day. Usually they are made for the first part of our day and then we kind of wing it based on extra FPs, whatever line is shorter or whatever looks fun at the time.
I add all my attractions, and first reorder them based on the path I want to take. Then hit evaluate and see what the plan looks like. Then I add first fastpass based on my first long wait, then evaluate again. Then I add seconf FP, then evaluate again. Then third FP, evaluate. Then I go in and add breaks and meals. I always add a few 20 minute breaks for things that come up. I move my meals and breaks where I want them, evaluate again, and then tweak fastpasses if an attraction has moved out of a fastpass window. Tweak tweak tweak. Used this method on a recent trip and it worked great. We did lots over 4 days in parks, longest wait was under 15 minutes.
Soooo… take what I’m about to say with a grain of salt, because this is the first time I’m using TP, I haven’t been to WDW in 20 years, and my trip hasn’t even happened yet (leaving in about 2 weeks). But here’s what I did.
Picked my days based on projected CL and how I wanted to split park days vs. resort days.
Made my ADRs at 180 days out.
Only then did I start playing with TP. Plugged in my ADRs and all of the attractions I wanted to fit in each day. Hit Optimize. Did nothing with FP at this point.
I found that I rarely liked what Optimize did for me. Even though I had it set to “minimize walking” it still had me criss-crossing the parks more than I like. So then I would re-order things and play around to be better geographically within the basic framework Optimize gave me at the start. Evaluate and tweak. Really never re-Optimized after this point.
Based on these plans, I knew which FP to shoot for at the 60-day mark. Once I got my 3 FP each day at the approximate times that I knew would work somehow, I added them to my plans and re-Evaluated. Tweaked and refined again and again.
As I’ve gotten new information, I’ve made minor changes and re-Evaluated. For example, thanks to the forum here I learned that I should have time to meet Chewie and BB8 and explore Launch Bay just before and during the SW dessert party. I had that as a separate step in my HS plan in the morning. So I took that out, which resulted in a slight reshuffle and moving a ST FP up a bit.
About 2 months ago I had a minor freak out about the Optimize vs. Evaluate issue. I mean, I haven’t been to WDW in 20 years!!! Who was I to think that I knew better than the TP Overlords? So I made copies of all of my plans and Optimized them all and really let the computer do all the work WITH the ADRs and WITH the FP and WITH all of the details I had since added. And in 4 / 5 touring plans, I still liked my version better. My version seemed to make more sense to me and for my goals. The only Optimized version I took over mine was EP- and I don’t even really remember why, now. I think it had to do with switching between Test Track and Soarin for FP/RD issues.
So anyway- that’s my story. This is a once in a lifetime trip, so I am hoping and praying I have made good choices. I guess I’ll know in a couple of weeks!
This is essentially the exact same method I’m using. I’ve only been once and used the old rip out TPs 11 years ago. I made notes and rearranged a couple things then, and it worked really well. Our trip is in 5 days, so I’ll let you know how it works this time around.
I also used a very similar method to bluengreenplaid, though a few major differences:
I made my TP’s before ADR day because I hadn’t been in 10 years and I wanted to know how much time to devote to each park and what days I was planning on being there. Food isn’t really my thing, so I ADR’s were never a destination and always just “what’s the closest character meal/dining package to maximize my DP.”
I inputted my target FP’s before I got them to see how they would affect other FP times. I basically had a bunch off contingency plans for “what FP’s should I also get if I get SDD at 9:30 and what should I get if I miss SDD at 9:30” etc.
Yes to all of this!! I rearranged and copied and edited so many different times! I finally had the “perfect” plan and they actually worked!!! I was delighted at how well… but so nervous about it beforehand. We did RD to close in each park 4 days in a row - crazy, but amazing! Our “rest” time was also our meal time… 45 minute QS and 90 minute character meal. It definitely rejuvenated us.
The only thing I would do differently next time is to skip the TS meals and stick with QS… for the sake of time and money. Depending on the park, we’d probably pack some food for a meal. I would also add in a 15 minute break every 2-3 hours. We needed time to take everything in and enjoy a specialty snack… I missed that part from my previous wandering trips.
I make a list of all attractions I want to visit. Then I put them in order as we would logically walk around the park - and we avoid criss-crossing or back tracking as much as possible. For example, at Magic Kingdom we have the best luck starting in AdventureLand, going clockwise from there, ending in TomorrowLand. I’ll then Evaluate and see which has the longest wait time and will try to get FPs for those with the longest waits. Add/subtract attractions as needed. Evaluate to keep them in order and follow our preferred walking path as much as possible without sacrificing time.