Is Universal over-selling?

Thanks! It just feel crazy that at 5 till the first drop was already gone :grimacing:

First drop is usually before park open, around 10-15 minutes prior to open. They went quick!

2 Likes

@darkmite2 and @Jeff_AZ I discovered a fatal flaw in my plan to test a touring plan in real time. And that is I live on the west coast and there is no way I’m getting up at 5:00 AM to do this! :rofl:

4 Likes

@darkmite2 How can I make my TP more realistic? If I put in a 20 minute break here and there, will that help? And how often should I do this? We are going to be there April 4-6. Crowd levels are predicted to be mostly 7-8. It’s Easter week and spring break for a lot of the country but the two lower levels of AP’s are blocked that week.

1 Like

This is true - and now that Daylight Savings has sprung forward, I am now back to 3 hours behind the East Coast! At least I’m in line with my coworkers in my LA-based company.

1 Like

That’s funny. I love springing forward because now I’m on the same time as my family in AZ!

1 Like

I’m the opposite it makes me go from 5 hours apart from my brother in NZ to 7 (plus a day)

1 Like

Yeah… I live in Central time - just one hour difference and I usually start checking the moment I’m half awake.

IME - I find a 20 minute break about every 75 - 90 minutes is reasonable & realistic. I input a dining locale near either the ride I’m leaving or the one I’m going to next. This gives an accurate “walk time” between rides - even a 1 / 2 minute cushion. If you just enter “break” it assumes you are stopping right outside your last step and then doesn’t always account for the walk to the next. (Often a longer meal time can substitute for this)

As far as CL are concerned, this is why I do these. (Plus they’re fun to me)

Doing these fake plans in real time allows me to see how accurate TP is - especially in busy times like now during Spring Break.

Here’s today’s as an example - Jungle Cruise was a bit behind at start and Splash was entirely wrong (40 minutes off!). This forced me to skip it and move PPF to a bit earlier and have a couple extra minutes before / after a CRT breakfast! (Which put me back on track!)

image

I’d start making one now! Just to see what your expectations should be. Along with the, aforementioned “perfect” plans, I often see some with 40 steps! By doing these trials & seeing how the unexpected can happen, it’s really helped me have a realistic trip planned. This way I don’t get frustrated or disappointed that I “didn’t get it all completed as planned”. I’d rather find that I have 10 minutes extra here & there than to always feel like I’m cramming it in. (just sayin! :sunglasses:)

1 Like

Oh, I have plans! I have multiple plans for each day, actually. Is that crazy? No one here thinks that’s crazy, right? And I have longer than anticipated meal breaks and extra slow walking speed and attractions that we wouldn’t mind missing.

Thanks so much for this advice! I’m going to stick some breaks in there and hope that helps create a more realistic schedule for us.

6 Likes

Not crazy at all! I have the same!

I really think you’ll experience a big and more relaxed difference. I always feel bad when I have the “Come on! We gotta move to stay on track” tone in my voice. This really fixed that for my family. (Now, it only happens when I’m trying to wake them up for a RD!)

2 Likes

You’re the best! I didn’t realize how much I missed you on the forum during the time you were off recently. :slight_smile:

1 Like

Thank you!! That means a lot! I missed y’all too… I was just in a “funk” about theme parks because there’s no news and I’m still unsure about when I’ll go back.

I’d see questions about travel right now and think, “How should I know!??! I haven’t been since 2019!”

That made me kinda “check out” on hanging around. I think knowing, as much as its delay sucks, when Remy will open put me back in the mood.

5 Likes

I said it earlier and have in the past, that WDW really gets the majority of focus when it comes to Touring Plans. I totally understand, but the quality of data from the Lines WDW app versus the Lines UOR app is night & day. (Plus the WDW Lines App has the new update - which I’m really enjoying versus the older version still in place for UOR)

I mean look at this for today… Everything at Universal is off by at least double than predicted, but my WDW plan is right on time…

image
image

3 Likes

I have a theory that the reason it is so far off for Universal is because they don’t get enough real world wait times to adjust their data to compared to Disney users. As a result, the data becomes useless, resulting in people not using the app for wait time data, which perpetuates the problem.

So I suppose the Universal data will become more accurate if more people log their wait times in it.

I keep trying to envision a way to automate the wait time logging. Trouble is, things are a bit too dynamic to do this effectively.

6 Likes

You are so right. I’ve been checking the historical data and sometimes have to look long to find a green dot (wait time submitted by user).

2 Likes

I agree. I think the DLR TP’s have the same issue.

3 Likes

All of that makes sense. I guess my “gripe” is that we pay for these TP services (UOR & DLR)
They should be as accurate as WDW IMHO. If they can’t then they should just focus on WDW.

My Universal TP was still helpful, but I had to cancel 3 separate attractions. Whereas, my WDW plan only skipped one - Splash Mt. (which may have just been down for cleaning at the time my plan put me there)

I’ll still make a Universal / DLR TP on my trips, but will not rely on it.

1 Like

I think this is absolutely true. And I think a lot of that is because so many people use EP and then they can’t enter standby wait time data. I think about that every time I’m at Universal. With my EP. :smile:

5 Likes

Never had EP. Never needed them. I am worried, though, for May.

2 Likes

That’s spot on that there’s not enough solid data to calculate accurate TPs at UOR vs WDW. Anecdotally, I know when I’ve gone since knowing of TP, it’s been sporadic in the summer and I ran into all kinds of surprises when on a time crunch and had to skip some things I didn’t want to.

In 2019, I was willing to pay a little more to stay at RP for one night for the EP and not worry about arranging the perfect plan with unpredictable waits, and just focus on getting on Hagrid at the right time, which was about 3 weeks old. So worth it, was totally a cheat code.

Hope these wait times calm down a bit for those going in the near future. It seems they’re doing some things quite differently than WDW.

1 Like