I’m newish here and haven’t yet started my own TP (not going until May 2020), and therefore have no experience with the TP program yet, so if this seems dumb to you, please be kind.
Is there a place on TP that people can share their TPs? Like, if I’m going for 8 park days with 2 littler boys, I could search for another family’s plan who has a similar agenda?
Although I’ve already started to form my own plans (offline on paper) I’d love to see something like that!
Some people can make their plans visible to someone who specifically has their link, but there’s not a generic way to share plans openly.
What I do is add everything into the day I want to do…all the attractions, meals, shows, and breaks, and let TP sort it out. It is different for everyone depending on group size, day, and wants.
If you want the standard TP plans, those are available as well.
For instance, this is the 2 day Magic Kingdom TP for folks with children under 44" that TP has: https://touringplans.com/plans/39
There are many more premade ones to choose from, as well.
Before the internet, I used TP’s premade ones and also had great success.
Thank you. I will definitely be using the TP program once I have a firmer idea of our plans! Just love to see/hear about how others do it so I can form some ideas myself! 
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I used TP eight years ago – I believe I mostly started with their pre-made plans and tailored those a bit. I mostly used the “Optimize” option last time, because we were all doing the same thing at the same time, and FastPass (at the time) were day of. FastPass+ (FPP) complicates that b/c now you “get to” reserve them in advance, which means your plans can be much more tailored to your actual situation. My situation is also more complicated this time through: first trip we had three kids, all about the same height; this trip I have a fourth child who is only 5yo/42" tall can’t ride a lot of rides – so I am trying to maximize family time and minimize use of rider swap for things the 5yo can’t ride.
What I’ve found is working the best for me – my trip is in October – is that I start with a pre-made plan – it’s a nice way to make sure you are hitting the highlights that are likely to appeal to your situation. Customize the plan for your specific date, start time, expected leave time, and meal plans (which you may have already locked in with ADR). Review the list of attractions at that park and add/remove any as necessary. Optimize the plan to get a rough outline that you’re comfortable with, which in this case assumes you have no FPP. Use this time before FPP to try and make sure you have a good sense of what you really want to do/see. It may be helpful to keep multiple copies of your plans at this point - one with the “must do” and one with those plus the “if we have time”.
Get your FPP’s as soon as you can as recommended by your plan. Your individual Touring Plan will suggest what rides to get them for - and I originally did them that way. Independent of TP’s recommended FPP’s, I would say to preempt their recommendation with any attractions are absolute must-dos for your situation. Be ready to be frustrated by FPP especially on your initial flurry of making requests. (I didn’t do it this way, but if I had been able to do so, in hindsight I would have schedule all my Tier 1 rides and optimized my plans before getting Tier 2 rides… More on that below).
Add your actual FPPs to your plans. Optimize.
Now the fine-tuning begins, and for me, modifying my FPPs in the Disney system.
This didn’t happen to me, but say you were lucky enough to get a Flight of Passage FPP - that may save you 90-120 minutes of time in the park, which may allow you to do more things, and may in fact change the time or sequence of your plans. While I’m planning to ride FOP first thing in the morning without a FPP, if I had gotten one I would have been able to experience one or even two other attractions in that same time – potentially without an FPP because they would have been earlier in the day when crowds were low.
In any case - what I’ve been doing most evenings since I first got my FPPs is tweaking my plans. In my case I’m trying to minimize bouncing around the parks (my 5yo walks slowly and gets distracted easily) so while I largely got the attractions in that I wanted, I modify the times to try and make sure they will work for my plans. During this phase I’m mostly “Evaluating” my plans and not “Optimizing” – but I do periodically optimize to see if there’s anything major I’d want to consider doing differently. This is the phase where I’m also planning against my actual preferences – 8am may be the “best” time to visit Splash Mountain in terms of wait times, but I’d much prefer to visit later in the day when it’s a bit warmer (so too, would everyone else). I prefer not to rely on the FPP grace time, and would rather my plan have me show up during the scheduled time. Etc.
Anyway - I enjoy planning and the challenge of it. Even though I spend a lot of time doing this part, once we’re in the park it’s much more a set of guidelines than a set of rules… We go with the flow but use the plan to have a sense of what to do next.
The last thing I’m doing with my plans is trying to create them in phases - we get the major things done first, and we either decide to stay and do more or move to another park or the hotel. For AK, for example, we will have gotten through the major attractions shortly after lunch. If the kids have had enough and want to leave, we can do that; otherwise we spend the afternoon doing as much of the other things as we want, through dinner. After dinner we can stay and do yet more (at this point, re-riding things but with much shorter lines) or leave.
Happy planning!
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THANK YOU! Wow! I didn’t expect this level of reply, but it totally makes my Type A, planning-loving personality extremely joyous! lol! I love the detail about how you accomplish what you’re doing and find it super helpful! I have printed this to put into my Disney planning folder 
I, too, will be with a slow moving 5 year old (and equally slow moving 7 year old tbh). Slow and not into walking, although a stroller is not in my plans unless they are totally killin’ me - lol! Thankfully my 5 year old just hit 44" so I don’t have to worry about that component. I’m in agreement with the idea that what I’ll be putting together is a set of guidelines…if I look at it as a super firm plan, I will stress out and get pretty irritated with the kiddos when they’re happily slowing down to see something (or unhappily slowing down to whine). No point in that!
I’m so excited for this trip and totally appreciate the time you took to write this response!
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I would actually play around with the TP online custom plans to start! Even though you’re in the tentative planning stages, the drop down lists of rides/attractions/character meets are so helpful to see.
I start a plan for a park, click everything I/my kids would want to do (even if it’s a totally unreasonable amount of things) and then I can see where everything is located, how feasible it is, and how many days I would like to spend in that park. That makes it easier to determine that we need 2 days in MK, 2 in Epcot, 1 in AK, etc.
Then, I check out the crowd calendar for approximate best days for each park (be aware this can change drastically in the time leading up), and any special events or dining packages that we want to do that have set days. That helps give me a rough outline for the more detailed plan of specific rides, arrival times, making FPP, breaks, etc.
And definitely be prepared to be flexible too! Not only will that help avoid breakdowns (both adults and kids 
), but you may stumble upon some magic you weren’t expecting like a quiet area of EPCOT to explore or a random street performance!
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Thank you! I really appreciate you taking the time to share your methods 
I like the idea of just getting a feel for how much time/days we should allocate and didn’t know there were drop down lists to work with (really have just been looking around more than inputting info yet) I think I’ll get started!
The online info and plans are SO helpful, but can take a bit of time to find and fully utilize. I think you’ll get a lot of out using them sooner rather than later Enjoy!
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In terms of the overall agenda (e.g. doing MK Day 1, EP Day 2, etc.), there is no built-in way to share that. What people generally do is make a post with their park plans for review by the Forum community.
As previous posters have mentioned, you can share your TP for a given park/day by making it “Public” in the settings and sharing the plan URL that it gives you. However, there is no library of “Public” plans that you can browse through - for that you should look to the ready-made plans that TP has on-line and in the book. There is a wide variety of plans to suit different age groups, agendas, and touring styles.
In terms of how to set up plans, a good starting point is to take one of the ready-made plans and make a copy of it so it becomes a Personalized plan. You can then modify it to suit your needs and Optimize/Evaluate it for your specific days. You can also use it to help decide on FPP selections - see this post for my methodology for doing this:
Finally, all this planning can be overwhelming at times - here is my post on how organize your planning efforts to minimize the stress:
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Thank you!! Another super helpful post! I can’t wait to try these techniques