Hi there! I am having trouble making touring plans customized for my trip in late april. I’ve picked parks and added in my dining reservations but with some days I have a reservation and then the plan tells me to take a break right afterward (makes no sense to me). I also can’t get it to give me any suggestions as to what fast passes to get.
Thanks for any tips!
If edit the basic info of your plan you can tick a box next to “Publish This Plan” which will give you a link that you can share so that we can see your plan - this will make it easier to help you.
Without seeing your plan, my guess is that you do not have enough activities to fill up your day. The Optimizer is trying to minimize wait time, so it will put a block of “Free Time” during the peak afternoon hours and have you doing attractions later in the day when the lines are shorter. You can get around this by either adding more attractions or shortening then number of hours you will be in the park.
In order to get FPP recommendations you need to open up the “FastPass Options” section and let the Optimizer know how many FPP reservations you can make.
[quote=“brklinck, post:2, topic:10307”]
Without seeing your plan, my guess is that you do not have enough activities to fill up your day[/quote]
Agreed. The Optimizer seems to spread activities out over the course of the whole day if you don’t add enough things to fill up all of the time. You can add little mini-breaks during the day, add more attractions, plan to take a break outside of the park, or plan to arrive later/leave earlier.
ok so here’s an example Copy of Disney's Hollywood Studios One-Day Late Arrival Touring Plan for Parents with Small Children this time what I am having trouble with is I added in my fast passes (got one for frozen and another for toy story midway mania) and it’s telling me I don’t need to use the frozen one. But before I refreshed it a few times ago it had me using that one.
What the heck do I do?
As I suspected, the problem with this plan is that you do not have enough activities to fill the day. You have the plan starting at 10:30 am and stopping at 9:30 pm. However, because of the lack of things to fill the day, the Optimizer has you starting your first attraction at 11:55 and it also has a 64 minute gap (Free Time) before your dinner break at 6:00. Add some more activities to fill the day, and you can also try dropping the dinner break and setting the plan stop time to 6:00.
Essentially, it is not using the Frozen FPP because it has come up with a plan that has less wait time without it. The Optimizer does not consider free time to be wait time, so it will often come up with plans that have a lot of wait time when you would think it makes more sense to use an FPP. By reducing the available free time (adding attractions, reducing plan hours) you make the FPP a more useful choice for reducing wait time.
Thanks! That makes sense. I’m really confused by this fastpass thing! The touring plans keep telling me I don’t need to get any fastpasses or only for something like Illuminations. Take this plan Personalized Touring Plans It’s based off the afternoon of the parents 2 day epcot touring plan. I shouldn’t even bother trying to get fast passes for things that are on the plan? like turtle talk? I know we are going at a slow time so maybe we don’t need them?
I appreciate your help!
Looking at the wait times on your plan, they are all so low that the Optimizer is probably not displaying the FPP suggestions. However, it still would be a good idea to make some FPP reservations just in case - for example, the SE wait should be low, but what if right before you go there a huge tour group gets in line? You will have an FPP to bypass them and stay on schedule.
Looking at your plan, there are only 4 attractions you can make FPP reservations for: in Tier 1 you have Spaceship Earth (10 min), The Seas with Nemo & Friends (4 min). and Turtle Talk with Crush (10 min); in Tier 2 you have IllumiNations. I would make a 1:45 FPP for SE, a 3:30 FPP for TTwC, and a 9:00 FPP for IllumiNations.
Also, when sharing a plan link be sure to post the “printable” link that the plan displays and not the actual plan URL, as we only have access to the “printable” one. In this case it is Copy of Parent's Epcot Plan:1 Afternoon and 1 Full Day (Afternoon)
Here’s my latest update! I need help!!
I’m super excited that we are arriving Sat for our stay at WL and my 40th Birthday trip! We have lots of FP booked and ADR’s but I’m struggling with making a touring plan in general for our days in the parks.
I’ve been trying to make some touringplans but I’m running into glitches and getting annoyed. It keeps telling me that I don’t need FP for the things I already have them for (and want them for) and I just want to punch the computer the longer I look at it!
This most recent plan it won’t even let me optimize or evaluate. I’ve changed the hours multiple times because I thought maybe I didn’t have enough on it but that’s not working! Copy of Epcot Late Arrival One-Day Touring Plan for Parents with Small Children
Help! I’m about to go without any plan and I think that’s a bad idea!
If you are having technical problems running the Optimizer, your best bet is to e-mail webmaster@touringplans.com, describing the problem and giving the plan URL.
Remember, the Optimizer’s objective is to make the best plan possible, with or without your FPP reservations - it’s not using them because it has found an overall better plan without them. That’s one of the reasons I suggest making the plan first and then getting FPP reservations based on the plan’s suggestions. Your best option if you absolutely want to use your existing FPP reservations is to first Optimize, then move things around to fit your reservations, and then Evaluate to make sure everything times out correctly.
If you know what you want, try giving up on the optimizer and use evaluate. Look at what the optimizer suggests and then order the things the way YOU want them and evaluate. If you plug in your FPs and move those things to the spots in the plan where the timing is right and evaluate (not optimize) it should use them. You can move one thing, evaluate, try something else, evaluate again, etc. Don’t click optimize again without saving a copy of your plan or you’ll be back where you started!
It’s your trip. You can do things in any order you want. The Personalized touring plan software should be able to tell you how YOUR plan will work at the estimated crowd levels. I get the idea behind the optimizer, but sometimes you really just want to do things your own way, even if it’s less efficient. And that’s ok.
I ended up with plans that had less total wait + walk time with my own evaluated plans as compared to the optimizer suggestions. I spent more time in line for a few things, but the net time savings was better. The software is good. But if you are really detail oriented and have some specifics that you need to work around because of your family’s preferences or needs, then evaluate can be a better choice.
I’m going to be around later this afternoon, so just ask if you run into trouble.