Touring plans vs. reality of plans

Check out the blog post from today. It may not have been that the Touring Plans were wrong, but that the wait times were false.

https://touringplans.com/blog/2019/02/20/crowd-calendar-review-for-february-2019/

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So I will say that I have never used these but will be using them in a week(squee!), but there are two things that I think are inaccurate that make me concerned for the plans overall.
It gives a 7DMT wait of 34 minutes for 9:30 am and a SDD wait of 30 minutes for 10:30 am. Those just seem ridiculously off.
I know some people on disboards have been saying something similar. I’m a little concerned that means all times on the plan are off.

I’ve noticed the same thing and it has me worried. TP have always been great before.

Make sure you add a few breaks to your touring plans. (I don’t mean lunch!) My family of 2 parents and 2 kids went to WDW last year for the first time. Someone needed the washroom or a break to sit down and have a drink or snack every 2 hours. I did not have enough breaks last year in my plan and it caused us to run behind.

My best advice is set the walking speed to the slowest possible to buffer for restroom breaks and such.
Notice the difference on the exact same plans:
https://touringplans.com/plans/print?id=3228715&print_now=true
https://touringplans.com/plans/print?id=3228715&print_now=true
The first at very relaxed shows 71 minutes walking
vs the second at average walking speed is only 38 minutes.

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I was there this week on CL10 days. The only time the TP plan failed me was for Alien Swirling Saucers. The plan said 23 minutes. Lines that morning said 12 minutes. Actual wait was 32 minutes. Other than this one ride, my TPs were flawless, and predictions were +/- 5-10 minutes of what actually happened.

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Mine was way off, particularly in the estimate of how long rider swap will take

I think bc it only takes into account the time to ride twice and not the fact that setting up the rider swap can take 5-30 minutes depending on the CM, the iPad their trying to work actually working and families in front of you not understanding the RS or DAS process. (The same CM with the iPad gives out both times and the lines can get long)

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I am so glad to hear that your TP plans worked even with the high crowd levels. Did you have to optimize them during the day or were you able to stay the course as you planned? We are leaving next week and I am worried that my TP plans are not going to work because I didn’t do them right or something.

I only reoptimized twice. The first time was because of the above-mentioned Alien Swirling Saucers, and the second time was because of a ride closure.

Keys in my opinion is to set the plan to relaxed or very relaxed pace, and put a 15 min break in every 1.5-2 hours or so to add a buffer.

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Throwing my two cents in here because I keep seeing a recurring theme across the boards:

Printed plans are beautiful (seriously, my type A personality lays them out with all the reservation numbers, coordinated colors, little Disney icons, etc,… and then they get laminated), but the plans that are made in advance are working with data from the past. This site does, in my opinion, an awesome job mining the data to give the best predictions possible, but they are still predictions. It seems in the last year, WDW has gotten pretty good at throwing some curve balls.

I’ve used the touring plans going on 15+ years - back when the plans were just pages in the guide and I was a novice 14 year old planner. I used the website for the first time in 2017, but I made the mistake of relying on printed plans. During that trip I experienced quite a bit of variance - particularly in MK. For me, the difference in plans that are off or plans that work has been whether I am using the app and letting the plan work with the real-time data, or if I am relying on a plan that was refreshed and printed a few days ago.

This past trip, the plan did change slightly throughout the day, but with re-evaluating (and one time when I did re-optimize), we did not miss out on anything that we wanted to do.

I suppose, in a nutshell, my lesson learned was that for this tool to truly work the way it is meant too, you have to work with it live on the day, not just in the days leading up.

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I also found that you need to re-evaluate your plan or even optimize it again, if you decide to make changes to it while you’re at WDW. Last year, my plans assumed we would be ready to get on rides at 9 am, but parking and security took longer than anticipated, so we were about half an hour behind from the beginning. Plus, if you get a 4th or 5th fastpass in the park for some rides, you’ll want to optimize your plan again.

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Even 3 years ago, I was printing off my plans the morning of, so I could evaluate one last time before entering the bubble. Yep, took a printer on vacation.

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