Please critique my EPCOT, 2 adult, Crowd Level 1 Plan

Walt Disney World Touring Plans
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I find that the knowledge about general loading rates, capacities, routing etc gained from putting plans together helps a lot with dynamic re-planning once in the park - and yes, you should expect to be doing that re-planning to make best use of the developing situation.

On 3 out of 4 mornings on our latest trip we diverged from the plan before even the first step due to better opportunities (walk-on FoP, FEA downtime, walk-on 7DMT) - you then just keep an eye on things and get back on track as you go. Average wait times over the day will tend to work out, especially if you have the big-name rides covered via FPP or RD so only have to worry about ones that don’t really build long lines.

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132

Exactly!

So many people walk around WDW aimlessly asking their kids, “What do you want to do now?” The amount of money you pay per minute to have access to the parks during operating hours is too much to waste. I really don’t know how more people haven’t heard of / used TP before. It’s like dropping loose change on the walkways of WDW with every step you take.

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@JDAdams, thanks, and I agree that having gone through the whole optimization process in my TP plan has already made me more capable of changing things on the fly, I guess I just hit the park with these new super planning powers, Marvel heroes beware :wink:

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134

RD non-FPP strategies for any big name ride ideally boil down to “Get there early enough to walk on”. Personally I don’t see the point in getting there just early enough to be in a (really early) queue. The advantage, indeed the whole idea, is to be on, off and then stay ahead of the “wave” of people so you can get around multiple other attractions while they are all trapped in the line for the ride you did in 5 mins.

This is what we did at MK (walked on 7DMT, WtP, PPF, SM x2), AK (walked on FoP, NRJ, EE x 2, D) and HS (EEMH so did almost the whole park - SR, SDD, ASwS, TSM, RnRC, ToT, RnRC). It really makes a huge difference and makes the rest of the day a lot less stressy!

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135

You want to buy something, even if you don’t think you do.

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136

Hi everyone, I am sorry that I persist in updating this topic, but I know I will forget these great tips which I am now learning before we need to plan our next trip to WDW and this topic is where I will come back to, in order to, see how I should plan the next trip :wink:

Taking everything to heart in the last 13 posts here, I have revised my optimization strategy for the day.

I have learned that, in order for the plan to be more flexible to glitches at Epcot tomorrow, I really should have a plan which I can use the TP ‘Optimize’ button, with some predictability, that it will not re-order my walking plan too much, which is a big complaint that I have read for using that button.

SO, I have had to investigate the nuances of the dreaded ‘Optimize’ button.

I have found that there IS a way to have Optimize NOT re-order the steps of my walking plan that will FORCE Optimize to keep my walking plan.

The secret is that ‘Optimize’ only moves meal time steps around within the time flexibility that you assign to the Arrival time of an ‘Add Meal’ step.

Knowing that fact, you can develop your preferred walking plan as simple steps using the ‘Add Meal’ button. :wink:

This is what I have found that works for a RD to a nonFPP ride at Plan Step #1 situation:

  1. Start your Plan Step #1 by adding a meal at the closest restaurant to the attraction and in the Confirmation # for the meal, type ‘SKIP MEAL - go to such and such ride’.
  2. For the ‘Time of Day’ field, select the time you plan to arrive at the attraction (minus the time it takes to wall from the meal location to the ride).
  3. To keep a tight window on the Step, select the smallest ‘Flexibility’ you can (currently 10 min).
  4. Then you need to set a duration, which is a bit tricky to determine, but if you have gotten here, you can understand what I am about to say and how to get that info :wink: . The Duration needs to be the sum of the current Wait and Busy times as if you were to ‘Evaluate’ an actual ‘Attraction’ step at the time you would arrive to the attraction… I am sure there is a way to get that easily but I won’t go into that now.
  5. The you can make further Notes in that Confirmation field and the Notes field.

The above case is the hardest concept to grasp here, which is a RD to a nonFPP ride at Step #1.

It is much easier to keep your Pavilion walking order and times using a similar method.

It turns out that all 11 pavilions have sit down restaurants at them, EXCEPT the American Pavilion (go figure :wink: ). The American Pavilion does however have an ‘Add Meal’ location close to it at the ‘American Adventure Frozen Treats’ cart…

So, you can force the park walking plan to be adhered to by the ‘Optimize’ button by adding meals at each Pavilion… and by putting the duration you want to stay at each pavilion in the meal duration field.

When things start to glitch up tomorrow, I can gradually reduce my pavilion Duration times, increase the size of Arrive Time flexibility windows or even change meal arrival times to make a re-order the walking plan. :slight_smile:

AND here is my latest plan where my personal walking plan for the day does NOT get changed by an ‘Optimize’:

https://touringplans.com/plans/print?id=3942729

One neat thing about this method is that my walking times for the day have been more closely determined by the Meal method, since when you use ‘Breaks’ in your plan, then the walking time from the place before your break to the place after your break was never taken into account.

One downer is that Wait time for the Step #1 RD to nonFPP ride is missing from the Wait time total :wink:

EDIT: And here is the same plan, with minor adjustments, that is uses the ‘Relaxed’ walking speed, with a note that says ‘Walk fast’ to the RD ride at FEA:

https://touringplans.com/plans/print?id=3942555

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137

I hope you have a Magical day at Epcot! Let us know how it went & if the Optimize button solution worked for you in the parks.

FYI - It just recently closed. A new BBQ eatery, in the same spot, called The Regal Eagle Smokehouse will open in a couple months

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The Regal Eagle Smokehouse is only a QS, as was its predecessor, The Liberty Inn. At least, I assume “sit down” meant TS.

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Note that the thread you linked to was from January, 2018. In January/February of 2018 most (maybe all) predictors of wait times were way off because Disney decided the scale back staff significantly for those normal low crowd level months. It seemed to take everyone by surprise.

Now, I still think that all wait times should be used as guides and there is always a chance the predicted wait times will be off, but I wanted to point out background of the thread you linked to and why that is not necessarily applicable to your trip.

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It used to be quick service, but the Regal Eagle will not be:

image
image.png773×155 54.7 KB

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141

In that same image, it also says Quick Service. I’ve seen it described as fast casual and as QS in articles. I’m not sure I’ve seen it described as TS. The food pictures look more like QS, but we’ll see how it actually plays out!

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142

Yeah. I see what you mean. That is confusing.

Everything else on the Disney site where it says Table Service really is Table Service where you need an ADR…but when I read the article about it, they are calling it “fast casual” and outdoor seating. If it is the same outdoor seating that was there before, I guess it isn’t really Table Service.

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143

I interpreted their statement to be a place with tables and chairs instead of a “booth” like at F&W or a place like Yorkshire County Fish Shop where you “grab & go”.

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@darkmite2, LOL, I guess the ‘line’ IS blurry between Table Service and the rest…

I just thought it was IRONIC that the ‘key’ to planning our day so that ‘Optimize’ would not mess up our personal ‘walking plan’ was for us to plan the day with planned stops at ADR locations and we NEVER planned or ended up with an ADR restaurant reservation or had a Table Service food stop :wink: …

Our day was BEYOND all our expectations, we were able to maintain our anticipated walking plan, able to absorb quite a few ‘same day’ glitches thrown in by Disney and TP demons and were able to do everything and more than we possibly dreamed of…

It will take me a while to properly put together a good ‘post/new topic’ to describe the day…

Here is a small spoiler alert…

We maintained our walking plan and still got through 10 FPP attractions using 7 FPPs for, 3 Soarin rides, 1 Mission Space ride, 2 LWTL, 1 Epcot Forever fireworks in ADDITION to 1 nonFPP Mission Space, 1 nonFPP Soarin, 1 nonFPP FEA and a nonFPP Test Track… We even saw Sergio, Serveur Amusant, Quebec Band Suroit, Chinese Acrobats and took the 3 Caballeros boat ride… All while spending only $95 on food and drink, for the two of us, at 15 Food and Wine Festival locations throughout the day (we did not drink any hard drinks except we did share a plum Sake :wink: )… STAY TUNED :sunglasses::astonished::upside_down_face::slightly_smiling_face:

And the final irony is that we never used the ‘Lines’ APP or re-Optimized…

EDIT: and I guess it is OK now to come full circle on this topic and spill the beans on what ‘middle age’ means to my husband and I…

We are in our low 60’s and my husband needs an ankle replacement, has CRPS and used a ‘cane seat’ during our day at Epcot (he does know his limitations well :wink: )

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145

This is a test to see how well the forum handles pdfs:

Epcot_Wed-20-Nov-2019_CL1day.pdf (56.1 KB)

That is first draft of what actually happened on our day at Epcot… I will update this pdf till I like it…

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I know that if you look at that above pdf chart, you WILL think that we spent our whole day keeping track of what we did vs enjoying the day… Nothing could be further from the truth…

The GPS logging APP on my iPhone failed and we did not have a usable GPS track, still unsure how that happened, bummer.

That pdf chart was assembled from:

  1. Timestamps on the photos we took at Epcot (and we historically don’t take many photos but will take many more on our next trip :wink: )
  2. Timestamps on receipts of purchases made during the day.
  3. The actual walking distances, of our 18 major ‘walks’, were determined using Google Earth Pro ‘paths’ that I created from memory on the day after the visit.

DURING the day, we only looked at this last printed version of the relaxed walking TP plan, and did not use the ‘Lines’ App:

https://touringplans.com/plans/print?id=3942555

Here were the major points where we made decisions in order to stay on track with our preferred ‘walking plan’ for the day:

  1. First off, we knew we were well ahead of schedule since we finished FEA at 9:10 instead of 9:28, so we walked to MS via TT entrance to see if we could pick up TT now instead of end of day…
  2. At TT entrance, we saw that we could get TT and still make our FPP for MS, so we went single rider nonFPP TT.
  3. Then at MS entrance, we were still early and the CM said we had time to take nonFPP MS before using our FPP by taking singles/standby? line now, so we did nonFPP MS first
  4. After our second MS, which was using our FPP for it, we knew we had to skip our planned break and go directly to SE at a fast walk.
  5. SE was closed with no expected time of re-open. We missed SE on this trip (no big deal), but what caused the biggest hassle all day, was that the CM at SE did not suggest swiping our passes anyway even though I had a FPP discussion with him and he kept saying it would not matter as we now had a ‘multiexpereince’ tier 1 FPP that could be used anytime… (that was new to me)
  6. As we walked away from SE, Carmen noticed that she had lost her ‘swiping’ Disney card that they gave us for the day. We were fortunately close to Guest Relations, but it took 10 minutes or more to get a new card…
  7. No problem though, as a powerwalk to the Mariachi Cobre band got us back on track for the day and we quickly switched to a more relaxed pace for the rest of the day.

AND, here is a summary of the personal, Disney and TP demons that interfered with our day.

  1. TT broke down while we were on it for 10 minutes.
  2. MS broke down while Carmen was in her pre-briefing room for more than 10 minutes.
  3. SE was broken down for most/all? of the day, so we never went on SE.
  4. Carmen lost her Disney ‘swiping’ card and had to replace it a Guest Relations, 10-15 minutes lost.
  5. ‘American Adventure’ film was broken down when we were near it.
  6. TP allowed us to plan to see ‘Impressions de France’ film and it has already been closed for 2 months and won’t re-open til January.
  7. Bad advice from CM at SE regarding being able to get additional FPPs after our 3rd one since SE (our 2nd) was broken down (should have swiped SE anyway). This caused at least a further 30 minute delay in our day.

I believe that the most relevant things, I learned in this topic, which allowed us to have such a great day and allowed us stay on our personal walking plan, to mostly ‘adult’ attractions (Epcot Crowd Level 1 day), were these:

  1. Create you own walking plan for the day that minimizes backtracking and which gets you to the attractions/acts that you want to see, at the times they are available, matching FPPs you can get and in consideration of the expected nonFPP wait times for additional attractions.
  2. Force this walking plan to be adhered to by the TP Optimizer by adding meal breaks at each pavilion on your WS tour of the pavilions.
  3. Use the TP ‘Relaxed’ walking speed for your ‘Optimizations’ and ‘Evaluations’ prior to the day. This gives you some cushions to use, during the day, to EASILY walk faster to catch up to the schedule if you fall behind.
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147

Oh and I forgot to show those Google Earth Pro paths that I created:

Epcot_Wed-20-Nov-2019_GoogleEarthPaths_EPCOT
Epcot_Wed-20-Nov-2019_GoogleEarthPaths_EPCOT.JPG900×1060 1.29 MB

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Epcot_Wed-20-Nov-2019_GoogleEarthPaths
Epcot_Wed-20-Nov-2019_GoogleEarthPaths.JPG1668×988 457 KB

148

So did your SE fastpass convert to any times? If so, you needed to book & use another Tier 2 fastpass before you could book a tier 1. Anytime (also called multi experience) fastpasses don’t count against your initial 3 fastpasses when it comes to tiers.

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I wish the CM at SE knew that :wink:

The CM just repeated that we would not have problems booking the 4th FPP after we use the ‘multiexperience’ one at any time.

BUT, we DID have a problem, we used the SE multiexperience at LWTL just prior to our afternoon FPP at tier 1 Soarin. When we swiped Soarin, it became the 3rd FPP for the day that we used, we should have been able to get the 4th FPP at that point, but we had to schedule a LWTL for after Soaring and then just swipe and not ride LWTL and at that point were were able to FPP more tier 1 ride… so confusing…

We should have not even asked the CM, we should have just swiped inside the SE FPP time window that we arrived in, regardless that SE was broken down at the time…

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It wouldn’t have mattered though. Swiping at SE would have used a multi-experience FP since it had already converted. Even though you use it on the original attraction. So if you ever get a multi experience FP you should book another FP right away to count as your “third” even though technically it is your fourth.

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