Oh my gosh, that’s so sad to hear. We’re going in March and now I’m torn by what to do. Do I not even bother with following the Touring Plan? And I dont’ want to spend the extra $ on Genie+ if it’s not even accurate.
Funny you should mention WDW. This popped into my inbox this morning. It says that people were only getting a couple of “good” selections per day. 
But an ILL from each park is moving to Genie+!
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When you start looking at 7am, then the next up to 4 hours, then 2 hours later, your into the afternoon and everything good should be gone by then. Its possible to get more but it’s like rolling dice.
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This is a really sad report! I am very sorry for your experience. To be perfectly honest (IMHO), even before the pandemic and Genie+, TP were only good as a guideline at best and at worst a wishlist. Don’t get me wrong, I almost always made a TP for each of my trips, but usually got scrapped two hours in. Disneyland is a very different animal than WDW. At DLR there is a fraction of the data to create accurate TP and prior to the reservation system, the crowd levels could change on a whim.
Since DL reopened, it has been super busy. People are busy making up for lost time and given that the parks here were closed for over a year, that is a lot of lost time! I hope that if the stars align and you are in the area again, you might consider going back to our little park. What you experienced is not the norm.
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I am really sorry it was so sad for you. I do totally get that it’s left a bad taste. I have been there on busy, rainy days that were miserable and if my worst of the busiest and rainiest days that we’d been there had been our first and only day and then I sat down to look at all the costs and per ride, I would be so disheartened and frustrated too.
I am also in the club of making a touring plans but only as a VERY loose guide that turns into a checklist. I still plan (and love to use TP because their format is a great one even if it lacks the data points to be as great as it could be) because it’s nice to know what priorities I planned for and helps me to much easier pivot on the ground when all the plans are not quite working out.
I am also so surprised about your experience with SR lines. As our 2 older kids get older, we use that way more than regular lines and a rider switch to get through the thrill rides faster so that we can all go back to doing things as a family that our two littles can do with all of us. It’s definitely not the norm for all of them to be closed to level you saw.
Then most definitely it’s out of the norm for a 70 min. wait for anything let alone Space using the LL/PP. INSANE.
Even though I totally understand why you wouldn’t, I do so hope and agree 100% with the below sentiment:
Again, so sorry the original wasn’t even close to its A-game.
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Definitely truly sorry for you. Understand why you’d be angry and frustrated.
Not to invalidate your experience, but I can say for others reading this was not my experience when visiting on high CL days of Jan. 1-3 of this year. TP, RD and G+ were life savers. (I create my own TPs though, never use optimize feature.) in fact, we were WAY ahead of TP projections on our DLR RD day. I think I posted that we knocked out 8+ rides in no time at all.
One day to do two parks is def ambitious, especially with the goal of getting all major headliners in during post covid visitor highs. Wondering if folks in this forum even think a 1 day, 2 park, all headliners is feasible.
We rope dropped DCA one day and hopped to DLR, then reversed and rope dropped DLR the next and hopped to DCA. The combination of G+, ILL and RD worked really well, with little to no waits (snd IJ was in the 120 min range and Rise reached 220 min wait). but no question we would NOT have been able to get in ALL headliners with no wait trying to smush it into one day. Not sure how the math would work.
Our last day was just to re-ride favorites so it wasn’t essential.
It does totally stink when a well planned vacay goes of the rails. We have a family term for that: we call it a ‘vacation from hel*”. Only years later can we say - hey, remember our vacation from hel*? Otherwise too painful if too soon afterwards.
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I do think it is feasible for someone like me who visits often and has pretty good knowledge of the parks, however I have my doubts for a first time visitor.
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I’ve had a trip planned to DLR since 2019. I’ve studied my plans and even “tested” them by watching the DLR & TP Apps nonstop on days I made “virtual” plans and followed along at home. Almost every plan for 2+ years has not been effective by lunchtime. I do understand that COVID protocols AND G+ have made predictions harder…
However, in all this time “studying” DLR I had time to see how TP handled MaxPass before COVID. To be 100% candid…TP did a horrible job incorporating MaxPass into their planning software. It was habitually incorrect and wholly unreliable. (MaxPass is so similar to Genie+ that TP should’ve been better prepared when G+ rolled out, but they’ve ignored MaxPass for years.)
IME - DLR and Universal do not get equal treatment by the TP teams. 90% of the focus of the TP team is dedicated to WDW. (I get it… it’s why 95% of ppl buy a TP)
This really leaves people using TP for DLR and UO really unprepared. You really don’t “need” a TP at Universal as they have fewer attractions and lower capacity. Disneyland is still as busy as ever though and now using LL$
I still have a DLR trip planned. I’m going to use TP, but I sincerely doubt it’s going to be as effective as a TP for WDW. (Which still isn’t “perfect”. I typically have to cut at least 2 attractions, most days, from my WDW TPs)
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Yes. I am not the biggest DIS fan, but honestly their DLR board did FAR more to prepare me for my trip last week and using Genie+ than anything on here. That board (the DLR one) is small, and the people can be pretty negative about things at times, but they give a LOT of awesome information - including using the system for multiple experience passes and the fact that you’re not limited to only what the tip board says is available (as that is what you can BOOK - not what you’re limited to using passes on) and things like what are the exact same (anything in GE, Soarin) at both parks so you know you don’t have to waste time or energy (or LL paid or otherwise) on them.
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The only time I went to DLR I relied on the TP DL app chat liners (it was pre-forum I think). If
I was going to plan today I would ask for help both here and on DL chat.
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The Unofficial Guide for DLR has a good section on this. It compares each attraction that’s at both DLR and WDW and tells you what’s the same and what’s different.
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I prefer websites and forums with personal experience rather than guidebooks which I find useless for pretty much anything.
You do know the Unofficial Guides are produced by Touring Plans? IE, this website / forum?
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I don’t do guides of ANY company. I don’t like them and find them to have WAY too much useless information based on opinions. On forums I can pick and choose what to look at. Books you’re stuck having killed a LOT of poor trees for just a few things you might have actually needed.
Man, I love that thing. I get the Birnbaum’s too. Internets waste energy so both are probably somewhat negatively impactful to the environment but trees can be planted just for books or bamboo even. Until we have more ecofriendly renewable energy we’re probably powering these computer runs with coal and natural gas or something awful. But I just love a good book in my hand. You can skip around and do not have to read the whole thing with guidebooks. The Birnbaum’s guidebook is where I learned pre-pandemic about the paid for FP’s which I promptly switched rooms to club level for our DHS days back when they had tiers and everything there was Tier 1 except Star Tours. So, I’ve gotten useful info from them in an organized manner I don’t find online. But it’s personal of course. Just weird to hear someone say they don’t like books to me. LOL. Even my parents who read almost everything on their iPads prefer books; it’s just easier to travel with an iPad instead of multiple books.
I will say that with all the recent changes a lot of information is inaccurate or not up to date with how fast and often Disney is changing park procedures right now so the internet is definitely a better place to learn how to be successful with Genie+ for sure!!! The UG even has the wrong rides listed for ILL but that’s changing again too right? So how can the book keep up if Disney changes it back and forth every couple of months. Online is the way to go for stuff like that. But I do like reading the attraction, dining, hotel reviews in the books. And sometimes there are great tips. I will say that people often love places like Applebees on tripadvisor so I prefer a good balance of real people to critic reviews and find the ones they both like.
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Oh boy. I came to the forum to answer this question. I’ll be going in May and it will be our first time at any Disney. Doing my research I heard TP is awesome and the way to go (we will be getting Genie+ just to have it if needed), but after generating some plans I had BIG questions. When the plan says that ROTR can be done at 8:22 and only have a 16min wait, there is something wrong. I had to question a lot of others too when it would say only like a 20min wait for Slingers and RSR, or low waits for others. This would be for May 20-23 (Fri-Mon). I fear after reading this thread it confirms my fears that I won’t be able to trust TP. I am hoping that I will be able to trust the wait time app while we are there though.
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Welcome! TP is very helpful and is close in time for MOST rides. I would pad my plan with some extra breaks right now and set walking to a slower pace, just in case a ride throws the times off. We’re living in weird times right now. I don’t know if anyone can predict any waits (especially for the headliners) down to the minute right now. I’ll admit, I haven’t been watching DL as much but use a TP as a guide (with the built in breaks, maybe 20 mins every couple hours and a slower walking pace than you think you will actually walk).
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If you are at or near the very front of the rope drop crowd, you might be off ROTR by 8:30. Agreed that 8:22 sounds overly optimistic.
We were literally at the rope and have pictures at the Falcon with an 8:40 timestamp, so I’m guessing we finished ROTR at about 8:35.
My suggestion for using TPs at DL is to front load your plan with non-G+ attractions. Then if some wait times are inaccurate you make up for it by using the shorter lines.
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@m.a.crittenden - Welcome!!
I’ve seen too many “perfect” plans that go from ride-to-ride nonstop. You really need to put a 10 – 15 minute break in your plan every 1.5 – 2 hours. I’ve had more than one person tell me, “I’m on vacation. I don’t need to schedule when I pee.”
These breaks are a buffer for unexpected Magic / toilet / gift shops / drinks / etc.…
When putting in these breaks make sure to account for the walking time to your next attraction. Any time you insert a “rest” into a plan, the walking times after the rest are wrong due to a bug in TP software. For example, you are at Dumbo, then rest, and then plan to go to Jungle Cruise it only allocates a one minute walk time, instead of what should have been like 10-15 minutes.
If your next attraction is nearby this isn’t a big deal, but it is something to consider.
It’s always IMHO better to have the break & not need it than get behind.
Also, IME, while I LOVE TP it’s not perfect. On average I have to cut 2 - 4 attractions / shows every day. This is even with giving myself all those breaks. More often than not TP will greatly underestimate a couple of predicted queue waits. (Often an additional 30 - 50 minutes) So… be prepared to figure out what you can be ok missing or not getting a repeat ride on.
I have kept my plans over the last three years and written out all the data. (predicted vs. actual waits) IME - Touring Plans averages 81 minutes longer than predicted each day. Again… I’ll never go to WDW / DLR / UOR without a personalized TP , but I’ve learned that you have to leave good amounts of unscheduled time & add in 10 – 15 minutes breaks every 90 minutes or so to be able to realistically accomplish all that I want.
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And I vividly recall once seeing a mother loudly berating her child for not having to/being able to pee on schedule and throwing off her carefully crafted plan.
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