Park Touring and the Genie+ & ILL option

I just read the Simple Strategy articles, and I think I have an idea to express the Simple Strategy more simply:

"Book the LL with the latest Return Time."

The only exception is in the morning, if you are able to book right at 7:00am, you need to know which attraction is the highest priority: SDD (HS), Remy (EP), JC/PP (MK), and KS (AK). After that, if you book the one with the latest Return Time, you are basically following the advanced Simple Strategy because you’re following what the crowd is saying should be the highest priority. Basic market economics: get in the longest line cause everyone else has access to all the same information and so they must know what they’re doing. :joy:

Of course, if you know the “Priority List” that I include in the Genie+ thread, you will have a bit of a leg up. And it’s important to understand the attractions so you can accommodate your own tastes, i.e., if you don’t care for JC, skip it!

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In the old days, after you used all three FPPs, a useful method would be to constantly refresh for better times to me the 4th FPP and the LL are identical scenarios. Does anyone knows why this fell out of flavor? I don’t see anyone discussing this.

The guys from AllEars seem to recommend this method.

I get the impression everyone treats the 2 hours blackout period as this sacred period during which you should not dare rebooking.

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Yes I would do this, but there doesn’t seem to be as much phantom availability as there used to be with FPP. You will occasionally get a new return time when someone cancels their LL, and of course there are drops, but there’s not like the dining reservation system where simply refreshing it magically makes more availability appear.

Not sure I understand - it nevers hurts to try booking. Worst case, MDE tells you you are ineligible. Also if you saw a better return time for an existing LL, it might be advantageous in some circumstances to cancel and rebook.

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This makes me smile. Because FPP only started in 2014 and I cancelled my trip bc I found it so hateful. I only did two trips with FPP. One in 2016 with a second set of borrowed bands (to secure SDFPP) and both 2016 & 2019 with throwaway campsites and leading reservations. TOO HARD.

I actually like G+ (minus paying for it). It’s more like MaxPass at DLR (2018).

And I love Merlock.

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I think people treat it as a sacred period because, if you cancel and rebook, then your timer starts again.

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but that’s my point, in the old FPP it was even worse there wasn’t even a timer. You had to wait until you used your FPP to get a new one. My observation is that people seem to have forgotten about rebooking and this as a strategy which was very common before is all forgotten now…even by TP bloggers.

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Makes sense. Seems the focus now is on getting the most LL per visit.

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I really wish they thought of offsite guests a bit more. TP is too bubble centric.

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Are you saying that they shouldn’t analyse ETPE because some guests are staying off-site? That doesn’t make sense. Should they also dismiss ILL$ or G+ in their blog or TPs because not everyone will chose to pay for it?

I do agree with @SneakyPete :100:

TP content (blog and vlog) are 90% (it seems) on-site specific, as far as helpful data and advice.

The problem is half+??? of the visitors are off site…

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I’m saying quite the opposite really, that they do more not less. I would like to see strategies for park opening not just EE, also touring without ILL or G+ although you could say that the plans already do the latter.

To me what really doesn’t make sense is to blatantly ignore the whole group of visitors that do not stay on site.

TP used to be very concerned about many different demographics with strategies for families with pre-teens, with small children, for seniors, for adults, all kind of visitors and there was always a carve-out for offsite guests but all that seems ignored now. Those plans are obsolete and have not been updated in a long time.

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Agreed.

I respectfully disagree. I stay offsite and feel that TP articles have lots of relevant info. Perhaps this is a function of the fact that offsite and onsite guests are identical for G+ purposes. As far as ETPE articles, it’s helpful in evaluating whether I would want to stay onsite.

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I dunno. It does seem like most the TP info is based on the ability to rope drop.

This isn’t the FP+ days where everyone could rope drop.

Maybe it’s just a capacity thing. I mean human capacity to update articles and they are starting with onsite, EE, and EEH. They might get to the others in due time. There’s a lot of things to update with all these changes!

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Honestly, staying onsite and NOT rope dropping at all (more like 11am will be our earliest arrival time, except for WAT and Savi’s ressies).

I don’t feel like TP is not for me.

As far as blog articles and teaching videos, I see TP pouring a lot of thought and effort into G+.

The next big thing I’d like to see from TP, is to automate G+ planning by incorporating return time forecasting into the TP planning tool. Pinging @len do you have timing on when that may be available?

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Within the next couple of weeks. This has many components:

  1. The optimizer itself. The next release will look at G+ distribution trends and suggest which G+ reservations to get, and when, to minimize overall waits. That includes suggesting pre-arrival G+ reservations to grab.

  2. The app and site UI. As under the old FP system, they need to support steps that say “Get a G+ reservation for X at time Y”.

  3. The Genie+ distribution forecasts. We’re starting with linear regression and actively investigating real-time decision trees.

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If you need a guinea pig, I’ll be in the parks 7 days between 8/10 and 8/19.

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