Optimized Tour Plan vs. Conventional Wisdom?

Planning my trip to Disneyland for next week (excited!) and have come across a minor crossroad in planning the first day and would like some thoughts on it.

We will be using the Magic Morning option for our day on Thursday.

When entering all the attractions into an “Optimized” Personal Touring Plan, it has us heading straight to TL to do things like Space Mountain, Nemo, Buzz, and Star Tours, and then going to FL to do things like Alice, Storybook, small world, Casey Jr, but leaving Peter Pan until way later in the day at about 5:30pm (?).

However, every other sort of guide, or conventional wisdom, seems to highly encourage going straight to Peter Pan upon early entry and do all other FL rides immediately after.

Thoughts?

If you can make it as one of the first few people to the front of the Peter Pan line then yes, conventional wisdom to do Peter Pan first makes perfect sense.

The optimizer is considering that you will be somewhere in the middle of the pack waiting 20-40 or more minutes (depending on crowd level) if Peter Pan is your first stop so instead of waiting in a line first it sends you to other attractions which have much much smaller waits at RD and saves Peter Pan for when you will be pretty much waiting in a line at any of the attractions you could be doing.

If you think you can really show up to the gates 40 minutes in advance and get to the front of the rope and rush from the rope through the castle and into the Peter Pan line then go for the conventional wisdom. There can be some people jostling for position and it can be a little bit of a mob so we avoid it with our younger kids.

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Last time at DLR, we were in the first row of RD, straight to PP, and still waited 20 mins!! Can’t imagine that line is ever shorter than that. Why don’t they have FP?!?

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That is odd that they don’t have FP - the Peter Pan in WDW does have FP, and that has become the only way that we ride it now. The lines are so, so long otherwise.

Does anyone know whether the Peter Pan lines go down a lot during parades or fireworks? It might be worth doing it at one of those times.

There is no room in the PP queue at DL to add FP. None of the FL rides have FP. The lines do not really ever go down during the day, unfortunately. They also close most of Fantasyland during the fireworks, so that isn’t an option. Depending on closing time, FL will reopen after the FW (maybe 15-30 min later) so you could always head there then. We like to hit PP first thing in the morning during EMH, but you have to be at the front of the pack and go very quickly there.

The difference during the parade is very very very slight, maybe 10 minutes max. But it would still be around 30 min. If you like the boom and vibration of FWs t’s fun to watch the FWs near Dumbo and then you’ll be in a great position if they do reopen PP to head to the PP line. If there are no issues & park is open past 10pm, they should open it back up, but you’ll be waiting at least those 15-30 min for the fire marshal to declare it safe to open and for them to open it, plus others have the same idea so there may be a little bit of a queue formed at the rope. When it reopened after its long refurb last year, during FWs they would tape down a queue area at the rope and people would start lining up as soon as they closed it for FWs so it was always a 60 min wait. This year it’s died down slightly, but still basically, always a 30 min wait for PP!!!

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