We are visiting MK for the first time in February. I´ve been using Touring plan. It does´t seem to be that much wait for the attractions we are interested in. Is the plan usually correct? I mean when it says 5 min wait, is this usually right?
Karina:-)
It certainly could be, depending on the CL, the attraction, and time of day.
February is one of the slower months of the year, except for Presidents Weekend. So if you’re not going over that weekend, 5 minutes is possible. Remember, it orders the attractions for you so you’ll have the shortest wait possible at each. So 5 minutes for a particular ride at 9am may be 30 by 11am. Trust the TPs! I swear by them!
I usually do not expect that every attraction will be exact but at the end of two hours my plan will tell me how many attractions I can do in that time. Sometimes I wait a few minutes more, sometimes a little less- but it evens out in the end.
PrincipalTinker, I’m wondering how accurate your TPs have been in the past. I have a disbelieving husband who thinks there is no way that our Touring Plans will actually work given that we are going during the worst time of year (12/29 - 1/3). I’ve been pretty proud of the plans that I have crafted, but am also starting to have some doubt. Would love to hear from a seasoned park attendee who has used plans in the past regarding accuracy. Also, one other question, once we are in the parks and if things start to go awry (ride shutdown, kid meltdown, someone gets “hangry”) how is the best way to retool the Touring Plan? Do you simply optimize and hope for the best? Thank you for your insight!!!
I have some disbelief as well in February. I am prepared to skip a ride in a central area and come back to it later (hopefully with a 4th FP). I left a couple hours of free time in case. An extra FP could help you catch up too and your TP doesn’t have that inputted.
Gnatjo: I am no seasoned park attendee. When I went to an unexpected 9/10 (supposed to be 6/10) I tried to stick to the original plan but dropped some less important rides if falling behind. I looked at the wait times on my phone while in line and the lines apt.
I know many people live by “optimize” while in the park but I always create my plans and know what I will be willing to skip if something goes wrong, or if I find some magic. I often front load my priorities and schedule my FP for my “must do” attractions. That way, if at 10 or 11 I find that I expected to have completed more or less- I will eliminate those “extras”. My last trip I never made it into Peter Pan but somehow a two year old got me into the Tiki Birds and to climb a Tree House- pure magic.
This same thing happened to me, with an “actual” 8/10 when the “predicted” was 5/10. As long as you know this may be needed up front, your stress level will go down.
I confess, I’m one of those who optimizes in the park. By optimizing after every ride, our last trip we never waited more than 15 minutes for anything. Granted, it wasn’t a very busy time, but if I had followed my touring plan in its original order, we would have had some longer waits based on what I saw. We weren’t dead set on going on any rides at any particular time, except for fast passes, so optimizing after every ride worked absolutely perfectly for our family. It ended up giving us some extra free time to do things we hadn’t originally planned on and allowed us to re-ride some favorites.
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Nothing to “confess”; it probably IS the best way to best optimize your time. But being a planner who is always looking a few steps ahead, I find having my schedule change after every attraction a bit disorienting.
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It’s funny, in “normal life” I would totally agree with you because I am a major planner who is not a fan of last-minute surprises. However, at Disney, it just seems to work for me. 
You don’t have to re-optimize after EVERY attraction. In fact, you don’t really ever HAVE to do it if you don’t want to. However, you could also only re-optimize if you become way behind or way ahead in your schedule. When I went twice in the past year, I re-optimized any time were were more than a few minutes off schedule (usually ahead). It didn’t always change the order, but it was nice to have updated times. The advantage of re-optimizing on-site is because they update their times and crowd levels all day long, so a plan that you created a week before may not have the proper info if a predicted 5 because an 8 for real. Trust the TPs. They work like magic!
How does one re-optimize? What if you are at Pirates but the re-optimizer tells you to go across the park because it thinks you are at the entrance. Do you delete the rides you have been on, change the start time and put in that you have like a one minute meal close by?
When using the Lines app, and you have your TP on the screen, there is a button to Optimize. (aka re-optimize)
As you complete an attraction, you tell the plan in the app that you completed it. (Mark it “Done”) That way, when it reoptimizes it won’t include it.
I forget if it takes into account where you are currently standing in the park, but I think it does (or it is an option to take that into consideration).
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It may also be a function of the wait vs. walk setting. When creating a TP if you set the slider all the way to minimize wait times, it might have you criss-crossing the park half a dozen times or more (especially at MK). If you set it to minimize walking, it typically keeps your attraction closer together.
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Because I re-optimized after every ride, once I checked “done” for the ride I just finished, it assumed I was still at that ride (and indicated as such) and it never had me criss-crossing the park. My choice was set to balance waiting and walking.
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I found the wait times to be accurate at times and other times to be off, sometimes in our favor. They are predictions and can be off. We used the plans as an outline for the day and it worked out very well. Be prepared to skip and add attractions/ breaks as needed.
Ah lines, I am a newbie to this website/service, however I have logged over 32 WDW trips with my family (over the course of 40+ years). Touring WDW multiple times at Christmas, New Years, 4th of July and off season. I would say looking at the predictions the wait times are pretty reasonable. I would suggest giving yourself the addition of + or - 7 minutes on the wait times, this will (in most cases) not cause a wrench in you plans. I certainly can’t wait to see how the plans I built this time stand up to our tried and true methods of doing WDW. I honestly can’t recall a time that we weren’t able to do all the rides we wanted, even on days they “closed” the parks for max crowds.
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