This past week touring plan predictions for the MK on non party days were pretty far off // Saturday prediction 8 (11/11) / actual 10, Monday (our day 11/13) prediction 6 / actual 8, Wednesday (11/15) prediction 5 / actual 7.
Our plan started just fine with Space Mountain, Buzz Light year, and Tea Cups as walk on but then our originally projected 38 minute wait for 7DMT was actually two hours and it was downhill from there. We missed one of our fastpasses (Pooh which we didn’t really care about just did it because of long line projection), switched the other from Peter Pan to Pirates as we wanted to do that, but didn’t want to do any lines more than 25 minutes, and used our original fastpass for Haunted Mainsion // We still had a great day, but decided to totally skip the following due to long lines (non fastpass) 25 minutes was our cut off – Pooh, Peter Pan, Jungle, Big Thunder, and It’s a small world.
Next time as a back up plan I’m thinking of finding another day with a higher crowd level of lets say 2 points as a back up touring plan.
Anyway, touring plans have worked like a charm for me many times, but with the crowd jump to 8 from 6 the plan just didn’t cut it last Monday. And we did everything as suggested with rope drop and all.
What are your thoughts and experiences? Any good strategies when your plan is way off?.
If you do that - pick a higher crowd level day - you’ll need to go by paper because it will adjust when in park (though it won’t reoptimize unless you tell it to)
I think a lot of what we’re seeing lately has to do with rescheduled trips post Irma. It has been unusually busy per regular visitors yet revenue is down.
An increase that large does not sound like something due to increased crowds, that sounds like the attraction went down for a little while so its line built up. In general, plans aren’t too sensitive to CL changes (except when you hit CL 9 or 10), but an attraction or two going down can really screw them up.
At any rate, my go-to strategy when a plan is going wrong on the day is to re-optimize as TP will then use the latest data from that day. In order to do that you need to be tracking your plan on your phone, ticking off attractions as you complete them - just make sure that before you reoptimize you tick off the very last attraction you completed so that the optimizer knows where you are. If you base your plans on a different day you cannot do this, which is why I do not recommend that strategy.
That sounds like a good plan. We did the optimization morning of, but not part way through the day. Thanks for the tip. The app and having this on the phone is handy.
Makes sense. And actually too we were down at this time because of our flights being canceled down in September because of Irma. I like November weather so much better too.
I’d suggest this:
If a projected wait time of 38 minutes turns into two hours, BUG OUT!
Reoptimize. There’s no way that 7d is worth 2 hours, because later in the day, it will not be a 2 hour wait. You could do a handful of the things on your plan INSTEAD of waiting for 7d (and possibly grab a 7d FP that someone dropped, if you’re diligent.) Especially in the am as it sounds like it was? Sounds like the ride was down and catching up. Not only do you miss out on other stuff while waiting, but the lines of those other things are getting longer while you are in line, so you just hose yourself more.
7D is pretty cool. It is nowhere even remotely close to 2 hours cool.
I always get confused when people talk about the wait time changing and being “stuck”. In pretty much every line I have experienced, you can always walk back down the line and leave.
I get wanting to do something, but when it is clear that the line has stopped, you have the option to leave.