I’m really struggling here trying to get TP to work for our family. I’m not hoping to follow it to the T – we literally can’t – but I’m just trying to create something that would maybe show me what our day could look like, and I’m getting nowhere. Firstly, we have DAS. I haven’t made pre-selections yet, and I see that I can add those, so that’s great. Adding LL as an “on the day” pickup is fine, but I’m really just trying to see ahead of time what certain itineraries might look like. I’m replacing that with saying we’ll have Genie+ (maybe we will, who knows, lol), to see what it recommends we pick up.
The other BIG issue I’m running into is my friend needs to take smoke breaks (which is fine as my daughter needs breaks often) and we will need to hit the lockers up front, but there’s literally no way to input that. Now that they’ve moved them outside it takes a lot of time to do, so it’s really an “event” we need to plan for now instead of quickly hitting the closest one. When I use “breaks”, it just gives a 1 min walk time, even when selecting “leaving the park” (what does this even do?). Shouldn’t “leaving the park” know to calculate you’re exiting the turnstiles, at minimum? The smoking sections are outside the park, in MK they’re near the bus. If you’re heading here from, say, SDMT, that’s like a 30 min round trip when you account for going thru turnstyles, not counting actual break time. There’s no way to say I want to go to the bus stop, the bathroom at the bus stop, even guest services. Fine, I’ll pretend we’re going to Tony’s for lunch a few times and bake in the correct time. Nope – only let’s you eat somewhere once (why?).
I have NO IDEA what to do from here. Calculating the walking times in and out of the park was really what I wanted to use this for, as it seems it’s going to take a lot of time over the day, but it’s the thing that’s not really working. We are having a more leisurely day so I don’t care about the frequent breaks (I have to hit the lockers anyway for snacks throughout the day), but I just want some semblance of an idea what it’ll look like and I don’t know what to use to make the system work for us. Any ideas? And this is just MK, lol, I’d need a place to put near the exit (multiple times) in lieu of a break for each park.
For the breaks I would probably just manually add a 30 or 45/ minute break, and add a note to remind you what it’s for.
The plans don’t function for leaving the park. So for example if you plan to go to GF for a meal you need to finish one plan and then start another with an appropriate start time. And the start time is when you get through the ticket barriers.
I agree with Nicky - I’d just add a manual break with a start time whatever you think it needs to be and flexibility set to the minimum of 10 minutes, then try to come up with an amount of time to select in the “How Long Do You Plan to Spend?” field for a manual break each time
I wouldn’t bother even picking a location like Tony’s at the front of park.
I’d also overestimate the time a bit - from most places beyond Main Street you are talking 15 minutes at best to get to front gate, could take 15-20 minutes to get back in through tapstiles and security each time depending on day and timing. Then you’d have to walk back to the next step in plan.
If the actual break time is 15 minutes, you are talking a possibility of 50-60 minutes each time.
In general, after I select all the things for a plan and let the system optimize - I like to make a copy of it then move things around manually and hit “Evaluate”. Evaluate will keep the order you selected and crunch the times again.
So, if you find that after optimizing the plan that the breaks really take out some of the things you want to do, you might try bunching together other things near the front of park and evaluating to see if that saves you any time. Things like meeting Mickey, watching parade from Main Street, or just shopping etc. could help minimize the walking times if built around the breaks. Still, with even a few front of park breaks, it is going to make optimizing the plan more difficult overall.
Thats odd. I know I’ve had Y&Y Foods in twice but that is Quick Service.
As a former smoker it was very difficult to navigate plans around smoke breaks. So I can sympathize with your struggles.
Unless you are at the front of the park (or near International Gateway in Epcot) add 30 mins as a break for smoking. 20 if you are super close to a park exit. This gives you enough time. In Disney, smoking was an evil necessity and I wasn’t interested in wasting anymore time than needed on it.
A few tips that helped me:
-Add 30 mins to every meal because this is when smokers want to smoke the most.
Set your walking speed to 1 setting slower then you think you will walk and your strategy to less walking.
Add 2 smoke breaks for 30 mins at times between your meals, when you anticipate wanting a snack. Set the flexibility to 30 mins. You can always change the length of the break if you end up close to a park entrance at the time or adjust the time to a more practical one.
-Add all the things that you want to do. As I’m adding things I make a list of things I wouldn’t mind doing if I have time and where they are located but I don’t add them just yet.
-Then optimize your plan. Move things around to where they make more sense for you. If you see some free time you can add in some of those things from the would like to do if I have time list.
And if you think you will need additional smoke breaks, add them accordingly. But this is the time to puah those as much as possible. You lose a lot of time walking back and forth. Last trip that DH was still smoking, I cut him back to 3 breaks in the park day. And 2 were with meals. He’s quit for the last 2 and realized how much time and walking we save.
As a side note, I dont use the TP suggested Genie plus. I like to enter mine on manually like you do with DAS. But that takes a level of research. I did see where they made some adjustments to what is suggested. So it may be better.
Here is how we handle it…in general the parks are the only place I can go for a few hours without twitching.
I build it into the meals and plan for minimum 30 minutes at the smoking area. Honestly I and every other smoker I see panic chain smokes before going back in. ( that and you meet the nicest people from all over so I account part of that time for chitchatting)
I give myself 2 built in breaks and that’s it but time it no where near a castle show or parade. If I choose to go back out I don’t expect my family/friends to come with its on me to catch up….
They somewhat recently moved the MK smoking area onto the walkway to Grand Floridian instead of by the busses. It’s still outside of security point though.
A few people do still smoke in the old location by the busses. I’ve never seen any of them hassled by cast, but there are no ashtrays there anymore. Just be mindful of what you do with your butts afterwards
It started back by the GF boats outside security- but supposedly there were complaints so they moved it over by the busses. How long till they just put it on discovery island
I hated this as a kid. Once wound up with a tiny fish in my mouth when I finished up a waterslide ride. I was done with River Country after that incident.
And there were ashtrays.