Hi,
Just returned from a 4 day 5 night trip to Orlando with my 14 year old son. ( Feb 8-11)
We stayed off site in a cheap but clean motel. Rented a car from the airport.
Day 1 - HS morning, Epcot afternoon and evening
Day 2 - Magic Kingdom
Day 3 - Universal + Island of Adventure
Day 4 - Animal Kingdom morning and HS afternoon and evening.
I started playing around with the personalized TP a few months ago and every few weeks evaluated to see if there were any changes. So we got to Orlando with the most up to date information.
We were by the entrance to each park every morning by 8:05 AM at the latest, and left the parks when they closed each evening.
(Therefore all we cared about regarding the accommodations was cleanliness, distance from parks and price).
The TP worked great until around 12:00. We were always able to do what was planned and even finished ahead of the plans. But everyday around noon the original plans simply did not reflect what was actually happening in the parks.
We had to keep optimizing after each attraction, and the plan kept changing.
In the original TP there was no wait time longer than 30 minutes.
On the ground, each day we had at least one ride where we waited for over an hour. Either due to crowds or due to technical issues which each park had every day.
Overall, though, we did get to do everything we planned, and because of our early arrival in the mornings, we got to do some things twice and even 3 times. Also, we didn’t have any meal reservations so were very flexible with the breaks we took.
The TP was good for us to start the morning with a plan. We knew where to go and didn’t waste time.
But my recommendation is to understand that it is only a guide and that many variables can cause the day to require changes.
I want to thank the TP team and all the contributors in the Forum. The information gleaned during the planning process was extremely helpful.
We had a great time!!!
thank you for your comments. my experience with touring plans has been good, my problem is I don’t stick with it, we seemed to get by sidetracked by characters, my son is older now, so hopefully we can stick more to it.
Interesting how the times were off in the afternoon, I will have to keep that in mind and add some extra time.
Question for you ( or anyone) regarding fastpasses. when you used up your three did you get more? We you able to get any good ones like 7 dwarves or toy story mania?
We used 7 FastPasses In one day for MK. Original: Space, BTMR, and Splash but since splash was down we traded it for HM. We then FP JC, Speedway, barnstormer, and Splash. We were able to get the latter ones for times about ten minutes from when we left the kiosk. It was fun having DS say what he wanted to ride and us “magically” getting on within a few minutes with the FPs