Hi, I’ve tried using ‘evaluate’ my plan and the plan leaves me with chunks of free time in the middle of the day and then says I won’t get to do all of my attractions?? Also, when I use ‘optimize,’ it has me criss-crossing all over the park. Am I missing something?
To reduce criss-crossing, there is a setting where you want to tell it to minimize walking. I also suggest setting your walking speed to relaxed.
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Hello and welcome!
TouringPlans is designed to have you wait less in lines. So the program will have you reporting to attractions at a time when the wait will be the least within your day, and based on your other selections. When there are large chunks of time that have nothing in them, it is because you don’t have enough attractions to fill up the time you’ve told TouringPlans you’ll be in the park. That’s great news!
So, you can either try shortening up your time in the park and see if that condenses things a bit better, add some more attractions (yay!), or leave it as it is and use it as a buffer and maybe time for shopping and strolling without specific plans.
To resolve the criss-crossing issue, follow Ryan’s instruction about toggling your “wait more or walk more” slider. That may impact some of that empty space too since it’s possible your wait times will increase as you eliminate the criss-crossing (walking more). This slider used to be more toward the top of the page; it is now located toward the bottom. Here you can see a screenshot from one of my plans that has our last step seeing Wishes (it’s an old plan LOL). Underneath that you can see the two sliders that help you customize your plans to you: walk speed (I always use slowest) and wait more or walk more. Give that some adjustment, re-optimize, and see what happens!
Let us know how it goes!
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Oh…something else about evaluate…look at what attractions you have. If any one them are shows that only have certain times, evaluate doesn’t re-order things. So large gaps can result because it has to wait for a specific time for a show, or meal, etc. when that happens, you will need to manually re-order things around those particular attractions. (Without seeing your plan, I can’t say for sure that is happening…but something to look for.)
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Good call-out Ryan! I always forget this nugget
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Great advice. The other thing that happens related to G+ If you have a step in there to get your next G+ selection, it will hold up your plan until you are eligible to make the selection.
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While you can change the settings to allow for less walking, I wouldn’t suggest it unless you absolutely are unable to walk long distances. Most parks (especially MK) have the most popular rides at different area in the park to keep on area from getting densely packed. Criss-crossing the park will save you time in lines overall.
It MAY save time in lines, but not necessarily save TIME. The time saved in line is often offset by the time you spend walking. Not always. But I’ve pretty much always changed my settings to optimize for walking, with relaxed speed. Otherwise we end up exhausted halfway through the day.
Optimizing for walking will also try to optimize wait times…but not at the expense of walk times.
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That’s probably the difference. I don’t change the walking speed setting, but we often “walk with a purpose” (as we tell our kids as opposed to telling them to speedwalk). We get about 25,000 steps in a day, but often have the entire touring plan knocked out by mid-afternoon except for fireworks.
When we were a number of years younger, we may have been able to do that. Not so much any longer! 
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