I’m using personalized plans for my upcoming early-December trip, because we’re splitting most days with a mid-day break and late-afternoon park-hop.
Our first full day is at MK on a CL5 day with a 9am open and no Christmas party. We’re traveling with two under-six kids, so I set the plan for “very relaxed” walking speed and “minimize walking,” but it’s still got us hitting 9 attractions (most of Fantasyland) before lunch, including an only-29-minute wait for 7DMT at 10am.
I’m treating these plans as very-tentative (I’m not cracking the whip on the kids, unless it’s the Dole whip), but that seems pretty aggressive, given the crowd level and walking speed. TP vets, what do you think? Reasonable?
All I can say is this. I always do personalized plans and they have always been pretty accurate. Things may update a bit before your trip, so be sure to evaluate again right before your trip, but I would trust them. If you are getting there at RD, you can get quite a bit accomplished before the rush of people enters the park.
Cool, I appreciate the insight. Given the amount of data, I assume that the calculations are pretty-close, but it’s helpful to have real-world verification. I’ll definitely re-evaluate the week before, but it really does seem like arriving early will let us squeeze in an awful lot without feeling too over-taxed.
I don’t know if I’m just being paranoid (and I haven’t been to WDW in 15 years and haven’t used a TP) but I feel a little skeptical of the lines on the big ticket rides early in the morning. My DHS TP had SDD at 20 minutes at 9:30 on a 9:00 opening day. That seemed really low to me.
There probably isn’t enough data yet for TSL rides to predict super accurately for every crowd level day.
I’ve seen reports of SDD being walk-on if at front of RD at 9, 25-35 min if you are middle of the RD pack, and 60-75 minutes if you arrive at taps at 9ish. Not sure of CL for those estimates though. Someone here also reported that there was a dip in wait times after the initial RD crush, but not sure if 20 min would reflect that dip???
I’m having the same issue for my December 9th-16th trip. I wasn’t able to get a Seven Dwarf FP so I keep putting it first so we can hit it at rope drop. Our personalized plan keeps moving it to second and wanting us to do Winnie the Pooh first. That doesn’t make sense to me. What do you guys think?
It’s trying to save you time and steps over the course of the day. By its calculations for the entire day, and not just those first two rides, it is better for you to get on Pooh with a shorter wait, than 7d. It thinks you can do more in the time you have that way. It uses real data to make guesses on wait times, not assumptions, for your entire day, not just the first few rides. You might spend more time in lines over the course of the entire day if you do 7d first.
If you want to do 7d 1st, just use the evaluate option instead of the optimize option.
The TP optimizer is almost certainly assuming that the two rides are equally important to you (unlikely), and seeing that the line for WtP will grow faster than the line for 7DMT, probably because 7DMT has very high capacity and can move a lot of people.
So I personally would do 7DMT first, just because it means more to me and if I missed WtP or if the line spiked for some reason, I wouldn’t be heartbroken whereas missing 7DMT or ending up in a super long line for it would pretty much ruin my day.
One approach is to add all your stuff, then hit “Optimize”, then move things around to fit your tastes. In your case, you could manually re-order 7DMT and WTP. Once you’ve done that, just use the “Evaluate” button (NOT “Optimize”). It will calculate the wait times, but without re-sequencing anything.
Another approach is to create multiple TPs, one for each “segment” of your trip. If you know you’re going to rope drop 7DMT, then create one plan with a 9:00 start time and 7DMT as the only ride. Use it to get a calculation for the wait time. Then create a second plan that starts with WTP, and with a start time equal to when you’d exit 7DMT. Creating separate plans for each segment of your day lets you manually plan certain segments where you want to be very precise, while still using the “optimize” feature on other segments where you’re more willing to trust the computer to find the best plan.
Okay all of that makes sense. I don’t want to take over someone else’s question. 7DMT is more important to us than WTP. We’re two adults with two young adult children. I’ll go back, move 7DMT to first and WTP to second and hit optimize. Thanks for everyone’s help.