I am beyond frustrated with Touring Plans. First, I am a total believer in Touring Plans. I read the books and subscribe to the website. We are doing four days in the parks this coming week. I went to the recommended Touring Plans in the book for each of the major parks. Put them in and hit Evaluate. The evaluation says that my plan was not the best. WHAT! It wasn’t my plan, it was Touring Plans plan. So I hit OPTIMIZE and they changed everything to an almost exact opposite of their book Touring Plan. And not only that it put the one ride my grandson HAS TO GO ON to the very end of the day. What if we get there and he can’t get on? It’s too late.
And the new OPTIMIZED plan for Hollywood Studios says that if we go at early entry as early as possible we will have to wait 82 minutes for our first ride? WHAT? Why would that be the case. If we arrive at the ride 5 minutes after opening, are fast walkers…why would we have to wait for 82 minutes?
Any thoughts out there? This is driving me crazy. We are taking the grandkids and I want it to be as great as it can be.
Optimize is intended to re-sort your attractions list to reflect the most current data. When you’re actually in-park if you click optimize it will re-sort again based on up to the minute information. This is the purpose of the option to optimize. You can certainly leave it as you entered it. But it doesn’t mean that you’ll have the most efficient experience that day
As to the first ride, I’m not sure if you’re staying on site and using early entry, staying offsite and rope dropping published park open time, or arriving sometime later in the day. But any one of these could account for that first ride’s wait. And if it’s a headliner, it could well be accurate - Touringplans can’t make crowds disappear, it can only help you navigate them in the best way possible.
Sometimes it can help to insert a 5 minute break as the first step before your actual first attraction. Not because you’re taking a break but because it can help the software more accurately estimate that first wait time because it eliminates the time it takes to get from the gate to the attraction.
Thanks for your response. We are staying in the park and will make full use of early entry. We have no problem being there and ready to go at 6:45 am for an 8:00 am opening. I didn’t know that I could optimize it all day as we were in the park.
Yes, you can! Many people do because of the live updating it will do, which can account for ride closures, unexpected crowd shifts, weather impacts to ride availability… It’s an important function so as frustrated as you are in how it’s rearranging your day, it’s working. as intended
Also, welcome! I hope you’ll stick around and join some of the threads here - you’ll learn a lot as we all do from speaking to one another in this space!!
One thing neither Evaluate or the Optimiser can tell is if you really are going to be at the front of the pack at early entry or in the middle somewhere. Therefore it assumes you will be in the middle, and if heading to a very popular ride first thing the wait time could easily be 50 minutes by the time you get there.
If using early entry you would want to be ready to enter the park 30 minutes before the early entry start time to ensure you are one of the first.
A work around that people use if they are absolutely certain they can be there early enough to be first on is not to include the first ride but just put a break in to cover it, and start the plan at the second ride.
The Optimiser is trying to minimise your overall wait time across the whole day. Not all rides have consistent wait times all day, some start high and drop off, others start low and then increase steadily, others pretty much stay level all day.
If you have a definite plan in mind, like going to certain rides first then it is better to use Evaluate. You can play around with the order of rides depending on what wait times it predicts, but keep control of the plan.
My preference is to use Evaluate, others swear by the Optimiser.
Like others, when I make my plans I will usually start by optimising, and then re-order and use evaluate from then on.
When I was making plans for our Christmas trip I did find it hugely frustrating not really knowing what LLs we might get, so I relied on some educated guesswork as to return times. I really used the plans as a rough guide as to what we would be doing that day, and re-evaluated a couple of times in the park with actual times input.
That was when you could only add the times into the plan, which is where the guesswork (and frustration) came in. At that point there weren’t steps to select your next LL “now”.
