Has anyone used RideMax to create touring plans?
In an abundance of caution (and my tendency to over-plan), I subscribed to RideMax for my upcoming trip to Disneyland. The consensus seems to be that RideMax has a better handle on actual wait times for DLR and DCA. I’m attempting to create touring plans using their system to compare to my Touring Plans’ touring plans. The waits are very different.
Just curious to know if any liners have used RideMax and what your thoughts are. Thanks.
I’m interested in seeing what plans they’d make for me but I’m using Extra Magic Hour every day of my trip and they don’t incorporate that.
My opinion is that RideMax is better at estimates but worse at everything else. The optimization engine for RideMax is pretty bad, so much that it makes it almost unusuable. However, the wait times are more accurate.
Overall, you have to ask yourself if being more accurate for 12 minutes is really what you want. The difference between them will be erased after your first bathroom break, after that TP’s optimize is all you need (if you need anything at all).
Yes, they’re seriously lacking in features.
Thanks for the feedback and advice SneakyPete.
We started with Ridemax for our DL trips. somewhere along the way, I had heard of Touring Plans, but didn’t switch. It worked for us, even when we strayed a little bit. I can remember bringing printouts of several different options, before it was easy to do and use on phones.
When we did our first WDW trip last year, I signed up for both. But just used TP in the parks. Will be going back to DL this July. I switched my TP plan to the DL version for this year, but not sure how I will use it, since MP is hard to figure and we do hop. I will probably set up a TP and just move things up as they become available on MP. Don’t see myself going back to Ridemax since it isn’t customizable.
I’m a huge Touring Plans fan for WDW, but I find it challenging for Disneyland because we park hop and the FP strategy is different. So after your post reminded me of the existence of RideMax, I bought a subscription to see if it would be helpful for planning my May 29-June 1 trip to Disneyland. I’ve had it for less than 24 hours now and I am not impressed for the following reasons:
It does not allow you to incorporate early entry in your planning. When I sent an inquiry in about this, I was told to read the page about early entry on the website, which basically says you should never use early entry at the park but if you do, just do 9 Fantasyland attractions in a certain order (or 3 attractions in CA in a certain order). Since I’m using early entry for 3 of my 4 days in the park, this is not helpful.
It does not allow any customization of the plan. You are just stuck with whatever the software generates. The FAQs say do multiple versions of the plan to get a plan that looks like you want, but that takes a lot of time and effort. With Touring Plans, you can drag things around in a plan and select “evaluate” to get an idea of those changes. This is particularly frustrating when it comes to shows. For example, I want to go to the 1 p.m. showing of Frozen, but the plan will only place it in the 2 p.m. slot no matter how many changes I make to the plan.
The software adds strange “free time” blocks throughout your day. I don’t know what we would do with this time unless it falls during a time we wanted a snack or a break, but I would prefer controlling that. To be fair, the Touring Plans software also does this sometimes, but I can simply move things around to eliminate this issue on the existing plan. The software does allow you to schedule breaks but warns you not to schedule many because it causes too many conflicts for the software.
It doesn’t appear much effort is taken to keep everything up to date. For example, I was looking to add a dinner break and specify the Lamp Light Lounge, but it wasn’t there. The software also still says Fantasmic and World of Color FP are only available at kiosks and not through the MaxPass system. I appreciate the effort Touring Plans makes to keep everything as up to date as possible.
Most frustrating is the fact that I often get a warning message that I have too many activities scheduled before my day ends, but no information about how many things I need to eliminate to make it work.
Finally, most mind-boggling is that I can only make a touring plan through May 30 now. May 31 and June 1 are not available yet. This makes absolutely no sense to me as park hours have been released. SWGE is opening, so that might be why, but I don’t know what information they might be waiting for to open up those dates as none of us will really be able to plan for SWGE until others have been there. But it seems they could let me make a CA touring plan for those dates, and also for DL outside of SWGE!
It definitely hasn’t been $14.95 well spent. I’m tempted to ask for my money back, but I’ll probably just let it be. But I wanted to share what I’ve learned with others who may be looking into it. I do find Touring Plans very optimistic in terms of wait times, so RideMax may well be better in estimating those. But for general utility and flexibility, I definitely recommend TP over RM!
Yeah, I’m very frustrated with RideMax. I would ask for a refund if I hadn’t purchased it so long ago. It does seem to be waste of money. I apologize for my post causing you to waste your money, as well.
No worries - you just reminded me of the service. I wanted to check it out for my last big trip to WDW but decided not to. Since I’m going to DL in a few weeks and found TP not as helpful, it was worth $15 to check it out.
I love all of this stuff, so it’s great to know what’s out there. Small price to pay to know what works and what doesn’t!
I have found I use TP different at DLR than WDW. I start with my own plan and use it as a sort of a check list. But after the first 2 hours I start adding in the FP I have gotten and use optimize. While I pull FP based on availability, not what TP tells me, I do start to use it as a guide for ride order. I have also never hopped, so there is that…
Thanks, this sounds like a great plan!