I’m just curious having never used them before…for those of you who have, how spot on was it for you? Have you often found yourself ahead of or behind schedule? Any standout moments of it being totally off for something or so perfectly on you were like wow? Any parks or times or days you feel it’s most or least reliable? Any suggestions that you find make it even more reliable? Just curious about others experiences!
I haven’t been to WDW in about four years, so I can’t speak to recent experiences. But the first trip I took using a TP at each park sold me forever. My husband was not bought in, but agreed to try it. Every time we would get off a ride (MK starting at RD) he would say, “wow the line is much longer now.” Or “we really lucked out, our wait was half what it is posted now.” Finally after about five rides he was like oh I see how this is working now. My experiences were that we were almost always ahead of schedule except for a time or two when a ride broke down.
No suggestions for making it more reliable other than to trust the plan but be flexible. If my kids wanted to ride a ride a second time I let them. Might throw off the plan but optimizing or checking the app for wait times got us back on track. Also you’ll have more accurate times if you are realistic about how many breaks your family might need and you build them in to the plan.
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There are always times when the touring plan gets thrown off, but my experience has been that we are either on or ahead of schedule most of the time. This has been especially true at Magic Kingdom.
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This was exactly my experience as well. After two hours in the park, DH and the kids were true believers. I should add that I re-optimized on the app after every ride to get the best lines possible and we had very low waits every day of an 8 day trip. My trip was also four years ago, though, so don’t know if I would have the same success now.
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In my experience, most of the time they have been very accurate - scary accurate, at times.
The things that tend to throw off plans are totally unpredictable events, like a high-capacity headliner going off-line. But that’s when the re-optimize in the park option really shines, as it uses the latest park data.
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How much time do you think you spend cris-crossing the parks? When I optimize it seems to send me all over the place.
I found this to be an issue even as I’m creating my TPs with a minimize walking choice. I’ve just stopped optimizing and only evaluate my own ideas. I recognize that may not give me the very best wait times, but my little people will be a nightmare if we’re zig zagging around too much.
Not sure what I will do if there’s an in park issue where optimizing may be a good solution…as that good solution may not be best for my littles if it includes increased walking
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To avoid this, I set TP to minimize walking, and then set the walking speed to very relaxed. This will usually find the best plan it can that keeps you from walking all over the place!
But in general, I think the goal is to have the lowest waiting + walking time, not just the lowest waiting time. If it only calculated for lowest waiting, you might still end up spending a lot of time walking from attraction to attraction…which really is just a different form of waiting. Or, put another way, if I have three rides, and the wait time is 5 minutes, 10 minutes, and 15 minutes if I’m willing to walk clear across the park from the first to the second, and the same for the third, resulting in walking times of 10 minutes. That means to do all three rides is 50 minutes. But, if I, instead, do rides 1 and 3, but in going so, ride 2’s wait time goes up to 15 minutes, but walk time between 1 and 3 is 2 minutes, and walk time from 3 to 2 is 8 minutes, then my total time for all three is 45 minutes, even though the total WAITING time went up from 30 minutes to 35 minutes.
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Yep, that is what I do too. First I optimize to see what the TP suggests to do first. Then I move the rides around, if the wait time goes up a lot, I might change it back.
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I should add…I only use optimize when first trying a suggested ordering of rides from TP and to see which rides are best choices for FPs…but from there, I do a log of manual re-arranging and evaluating.
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We’re almost always ahead of schedule using TPs even with small children. I do set the walking speed to relaxed (we’re actually really fast walkers).
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The only problem with waits I’ve seen are RD waits. For example, it might suggest going to Space Mountain first thing, but it’ll say that SM has a 25 minute wait at 9:07 or whatever. However, if you go at RD, you’ll wait much less than 25 minutes because you’ll get there at 9:01 since you were already at the entrance to Tomorrowland. Once you’re done with your rope drop attraction, re-optimize the plan since you’ll be done before the plan thinks you’ll be.
Besides that, I haven’t had a problem in use at Universal Orlando, WDW, and Disneyland.
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I found that express pass wait times were drastically underestimated for Universal. That was in 2018 though so perhaps it has improved since then.
I actually had problems with mine on the first ride of our first day - it told me that the wait for Dumbo would be 8 minutes and it was more like 30. It threw everything off and caused me quite a tizzy, I still have no idea what was going on there. But in general, I find it’s pretty good.
My best piece of advice is make a plan, but be flexible.
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I’ve seen to many “perfect” plans that go from ride-to-ride nonstop. You really need to put a 10 minute break in your plan every 1.5 – 2 hours. I’ve had more than one person tell me, “I’m on vacation. I don’t need to schedule when I pee.”
These breaks are a buffer for unexpected Magic / toilet / gift shops / drinks / etc.…
It’s always IMHO better to have the break & not need it than get behind.
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Also… be very careful if / when using the Lines App while in the park. It’s a great tool, but IMHO not exactly intuitive to use. It’s too easy to press the “Optimize” button and then have your whole TP rearranged with no way to get it back unless you go back into your Dashboard and reinstall the last version you updated. Try to only hit “Evaluate”.
Obviously, since I’m on these boards I love TP. It’s so fun for me to say, "Ok we arrived at the scheduled time of 9:07am. TP says we should be done at 9:19am. Then getting of the attraction and seeing it was 100% correct!
It doesn’t always happen that way, but rarely has TP let me down.
I, also, simultaneously keep the MDE App open and compare what WDW says vs. TP Lines App while in the park. If I see a huge discrepancy I adjust my plan - even cut a ride if I have to.
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Similarly, I found the Universal times way off. I eventually abandoned using TP at UOR/IOA and just used the Universal app…it was far better.
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I still make a USF / IOA TP, but it’s more like a checklist / “guide” than a real “plan”. For those reasons
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We are often ahead of TP’s schedule unless there is a ride breakdown or other unforseen event. Last summer we RDed 7DMT and were some of the first ones in the queue, but there was a breakdown, and we exited 45 minutes after what TP expected. The next ride was supposed to be Buzz Lightyear with an expected 15 minute wait, but after the 7DMT debacle, it was now over an hour. At this point it was time to be flexible and start re-optimizing. We had to do some criss-crossing of the park and did have another long wait for Haunted Mansion (45 minutes, relatively long for that ride) but nothing longer. We had fastpasses for Peter Pan, Belle, and Big Thunder already, but also secured added FPs for It’s a Small World, Space Mountain, and Jungle Cruise. The last two were big because the queues for those rides were never less than an hour long all day. We were able to circle back around with Buzz Lightyear was back to a manageable 15 minutes. We didn’t get to ride Splash Mountain that day, though. Regardless, using the Lines app made this possible. Re-optimizing the app told us where to go for the short lines, and I know we wouldn’t have been able to do that by staring at a map trying to figure out where to go next.