First family trip to WDW this April and would really appreciate some help with my two days of MK. None of the ready-made touring plans are a good fit so I’m personalizing my own but having trouble figuring out which rides to do on which days (and whether my FPP choices are good). Looking at a MK map, it seems to make sense to do one half on one day (Tomorrowland and Fantasyland) and the other half the next day (Frontierland, Adventureland, Liberty Sq), and this sort of fits with some of the ADRs we have. But when I optimize TP seems to want to take me all over the place anyway. Should I give up using the park map as a guide? Hard to know what attractions to see on which day otherwise!
Our only fast passes that are “set in stone” (because no more options) are 7DMT on the first day and A&E on the second. Both days are similar crowd levels.
I usually split MK in half this way too. The optimized plans will have you doing some wandering, but if it’s limited to one 1/2 of the park, it will still be less. Also, you can change the plan setting to minimize walking. That will help. You’ll spend more minutes in line, but fewer minutes walking. I will sometimes also manually reorder things and check how out-of-whack my changes make the plan. The "evaluate " button will give you times for your order. The “optimize” button will re-order things to shave off extra minutes.
I have been customizing for our first WDW trip this April. Same EXACT dilemma (splitting the park into 2 days by land & getting sent every which way).
While I am very familiar with doing touring plans (for many fun trips to DLR) I’m not all familiar with anything WDW specific.
What I have resorted to doing for this dilemma that is working so far:
For the First day: Taking out any attractions per land that I don’t think we’ll absolutely have to do & adding in must do’s regardless of land (or those things that I know the kids will want to enjoy both days).
Then for the second day we are focusing on what’s left that we would like to try time permitting or will want to do twice (like the parades & fireworks, Enchanted Tales with Belle, etc.).
For us since we go to DLR more often I am ok skipping things like Pirates of the Caribbean or Winnie the Pooh or It’s a Small World that we have seen in DLR. But whatever criteria you & your family have for what type of trip you want & what you would enjoy most can definitely help splitting it up.
I’m not a big fan of splitting MK into two days by “geography”, as I feel that with a reasonable amount of cross park walking each day you can come up with plans that have less overall wait times than plans that only do certain lands each day.
My suggestion is to first come up with a list of all the attractions that you want to do - if you want to do a given attraction twice, put it on the list twice. Then split the attractions across your two days by mid-day wait time (you can use https://touringplans.com/magic-kingdom/wait-times as a guide) by putting the top wait time attraction in Day 1, the second in Day 2, etc. (if you have an attraction down twice, it should end up in each day once). Optimize the plans and see what they look like. Then start tweaking the plans to suit your preferences and re-optimizing.
Yes, it will do that, as a little bit of walking can save you a lot of wait time. For example, if you have Fantasy Land and Tomorrow Land in a day, it may have you go to 7DMT, then to SpaM, then Buzz, then back to Fantasy land for a few attractions, then back to Tomorrow Land, etc.It may not make sense from a walking standpoint, but it does from an overall plan view.
Thank you guys so much for your help – it is so nice to know I’m not a) alone and b) totally off the mark. Brklinck, I’m going to take your advice. It seems so hard to believe that walking a mile out of the way is the most efficient thing to do, but clearly TP knows more than I!
When my son was in a stroller I zig zagged across the park but now he’s walking I choose lands. Our first park day we are doing Adventureland and Liberty Square. The second day Fantasy Land and Tomorrowland. Our second MK day we are spending way more time at the park, morning and evening. My favourite way to create a TP is to start with a personalized plan and just check all the attractions for the lands I plan to visit. Not choosing the things we don’t want to do. Then I optimize, and then I love to tinker with the plan. I try to organize the attractions using common sense rather than the TP’s suggestions. As you start to organize things in your plan don’t use the optimize button.
I’m a fan of just evaluating too. I’ve split my two days,
1 - Fantasy Land, Tomorrow Land, part of Liberty Sq.
2 - The other half plus repeating PP & 7DM
I’ve got 80% covered in two mornings, and then hopefully we can get an EX FP or two for things we want to repeat. We will split our FP’s at least once, when I take the girls to see A&E, my husband can do Space Mountain. easyWDW does maps that show you very clearly which attractions it’s most important to do early on, if you had one of those with you while you played around with your TP you should get a plan you are happy with. If you want to use the optimise function, I would set your end of the TP to 1/2pm, on minimal walking. I found that I could do my second day without using all my FP’s, so we can end the morning back in Fantasyland for a few repeats. My plan is to be early and do a major attraction first, then try to do the short rides that get long lines after 10am. I’m using all my FP’s in the morning, so we can hopefully pick up an extra couple for the smaller attractions, but I have young kids, so we are keeping our evening options more flexible. In MK my plans don’t zig zag, they might backtrack a bit in places, but it’s never far till the next ride. My TP’s for HS & EP do start with an immediate zig zag, but that’s because of the tier system & Jedi sign up. Hope that helps.
I tend to split with a small amount of overlap. I have 3 young DDs, so FL is ALWAYS in the cards for us. So I will look at what 6 FPPs we will want over our 2 days, then split the park in half using those FPPs, and usually on the day that isn’t FL heavy, we will do ETWB, tea cups, carousel, and done portion of Ariel/Under the Sea/dumbo.
I’m actually splitting the park “up and down” instead of left to right. We are doing the bottom half on our first half day since it’s slightly smaller with less rides/activities my cousin and I are interested in. We are doing Adventure Land & Tomorrow Land - and maybe Splash / BTMR pending on crowds in Frontier Land…
Then, on our full day, we are doing Fantasy Land, Town Square, Liberty Square and Frontier Land.
We also do the park in zones, divided up based on the number of days we’ll be there.
But your post speaks to something that I have long wished for … a multi-day TP, in which you give the plan your dates and IT tells YOU how to divvy it all up over those 2 (or more) days for the best overall experience. I have to think that doing it the way I am doing it is not exactly the most efficient, but it’s what we do for now.
If only @len would see this and let us know if this is a possibility ever…
Our two-day plans generally suggest doing most of Fantasyland and Tomorrowland on separate days (because they’re the most popular and also open first for Morning EMH).
I’d group, say, the left side of Fantasyland, Liberty Square, Frontierland, and parts of Adventureland in one day, and Tomorrowland, Storybook Circus, Adventureland, and Main Street/character greetings on the other day. That’s just a suggestion.
Thanks so much everyone – and len! Everyone’s ideas on how to split up two days are really helpful and I’ll keep tweaking. I think what I really am looking for is exactly what OBNurseNH mentioned: a multi-day TP feature where you stick in your dates and all the attractions you want and it tells you how to divide things up by day. I did notice that in TP’s two-day plans they seem to split up Fantasyland and Tomorrowland, but on the maps those two seem like the best fit. No EMH on my days (alas) so that isn’t an issue.
Really, all these suggestions are so good. I’m just a little overwhelmed by so many choices and, yes, I guess I wanted TP to do all the hard work!
