I’m trying to create a touring plan for the day we are going to Mickey’s Christmas Party. As I understand it, with a ticket to the event, you can enter the park at 4:00 even though the event starts at 7:00. The problem is, even if I set my start time to 4:00, the touring plan optimizer will only start presenting me scheduled rides starting at 7:00. So if I enter 4:00 PM as my start time, the first item in my plan is Mickey’s Most Merriest Celebration at 7:25. Of course I’d like to work in other MK rides starting at 4:00, but the plan won’t allow it. Anyone else have this problem, and how did you overcome?
Yeah unfortunately you’ll have to create a separate touring plan for the 4p-7p timeframe right now, and then create a second plan for the actual Christmas party hours.
I wonder if @len and team can adjust the hours for those plans to accommodate that 4pm early entry for parties in the future. I imagine it’s doable since there is an option to select early entry or extended evening hours.
Although now that I’m thinking of it, can you click a box to say that you’ll be attending MVMCP? 
If the date you set for the plan matches a date of the party, then yes…there should be a checkbox available to select whether you are attending or not. On the website at least, not in the app.
I just noticed that in the app, after having created the plan in the website, the “intro” to the plan says, “You are planning to attend Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party. You can enter the park at 7:00 PM without a park ticket, or at park open with a valid park ticket.” (Emphasis mine.)
This text appears to be incorrect. You can enter the park at 4:00 pm. So the text is incorrect.
BUT, I’m not noticing the issue @maboot38 pointed out. I was able to create a plan in the website, and it allows things before 7:00 pm. Just make sure you are putting enough into the plan that isn’t party related that it can “back-fill” prior to 7:00 pm. It seems like it is trying to, by default, put everything later in the night because that is when wait times are the least. But if you have enough attractions added, it will have no choice but to fill up times before 7:00 pm.
I just created a plan that starts at 4pm on the website.
See if this works
I went to magic kingdom plan, copied, and changed hours/added attractions.
I did this yesterday for MNSSHP
There are a number of issue surrounding MVPCP that I have already reported.
For instance:
In the Web interface … If the date is set for a party night, and you do not set the Attending option in the initial configuration wizard, the flag gets set in the plan that is created but the end time remains a 6:00 PM. The end time needs to be manually set to 12:00 AM.
There is also a similar topic that was posted yesterday about MNSSHP. The OP included an Android screen shot showing they could not control the Attending flag, but my Android tablet allows it to be controlled and the start/end times to be correctly configured. @PrincipalTinker sees yet a third scenario on her iPad.
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“I just noticed that in the app, after having created the plan in the website, the “intro” to the plan says, “You are planning to attend Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party. You can enter the park at 7:00 PM without a park ticket, or at park open with a valid park ticket.” (Emphasis mine.)”
This may be the problem….I’ve entered start time of 4:00 and finish of 12:00 am, but it still only builds the plan starting at 7:00. I wonder if the app is configured wrong.
Can you open my plan? It starts at 4. My first step is at 4:11
Yeah I saw yours. I have mine configured the same way (I think) and it now starts at 6:00. So weird.
@maboot38 At the time you took this screenshot, were these the only 3 steps in your plan?
Let’s assume for a moment that these were the only steps. Frozen Holiday Surprise has limited start times that are fixed (in your case 6:15). Mickey’s Most Merriest Celebration is similar and has limited start times that are fixed (in your case 7:40). The optimization process put Under the Sea between both fixed start time attractions to minimize the free time between them. You need to have enough attractions in the plan to use the available time between the 2 fixed start time attractions in order for the optimizer to utilize time prior to 6:00 OR you can set the advanced option Prefer Free Time at End of Plan to force the optimizer to use the time between 4:00 and 6:00. If you do that and reoptimize you will get this:
It might be an issue with not having enough attractions. For my MNSSHP plan I added PeopleMover and Philharmagic because I don’t think they are open during the parties. Try that and see if they show up at round 4.
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No, I just shot the top of the list. Sorry…there were more!
I’m 99% sure this is the problem.
The optimizer will still need to fill all the gaps between your first fixed start attraction and the last fixed start time attraction (what ever that is) before it will use the open time prior to Frozen Holiday Surprise. Try the advanced option and see what you get.
No. The text of the message was wrong, but it isn’t the problem. The problem really comes down to you not having enough attractions to force TP to need to use any of the time before 7 pm. It is picking times that reduce waiting (in line) time, and it doesn’t consider “free time” to be waiting time.
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In fact, Free Time is actually penalized by the optimization process
My xmas party TP with me tapping in at 3pm (AP) is working fine. But I use Evaluate, not Optimize, so that my plans don’t get topsy turvey. Your mileage will vary but I suggest using Evaluate.