Touring Plan ?- AK specific

[closetmickey]

Hi! I am using Touring Plans (for the first time!) this trip. As we are west coasters, rope drop does not work for us. For our day at AK day(crowd prediciton 7.8) in mid June, I have imputed a 10:30 arrival on a 9am-7pm day. No matter what I do, it keeps putting the safari towards the end of the day, around 5:00. Will we still see active animals at that time? Is there any way I can specify that I want to go there first? Or would that really mess up my day creating longer waits all over? Thanks so much for any advice you can offer.

[TweedleMe]

I've read that doing Safari in the evening is sometimes even better than the morning. But, I also use touring plans and all you have to do is drag the safari box to the top, then click evaluate (not optimize). That will update all the times and everything and hopefully not mess anything up.

[lentesta]

closetmickey-

Drag the Safari to the top of your plan, then click the Evaluate button. That will tell you the time difference between seeing the Safari first vs last.

I don't think there's a noticeable difference in animals. We've had a team ride all day just to count them.

Len

[closetmickey]

Originally Posted by lentesta

closetmickey-

Drag the Safari to the top of your plan, then click the Evaluate button. That will tell you the time difference between seeing the Safari first vs last.

I don't think there's a noticeable difference in animals. We've had a team ride all day just to count them.

Len

Oh my goodness! How exciting to have THE expert address my question. I will trust the "plan". Thanks!

ps...really enjoying the whole Touring Plans site.

[Senator Tressel]

Originally Posted by lentesta

closetmickey-

Drag the Safari to the top of your plan, then click the Evaluate button. That will tell you the time difference between seeing the Safari first vs last.

I don't think there's a noticeable difference in animals. We've had a team ride all day just to count them.

Len

That sounds like it would be an interesting article if you could write up your findings from that day.

[WaltsMartini]

How awesome -Len Testa responded! I follow him on Twitter

Only other option - if you are afraid that animals will be "inactive," AKL offers special tours - but only for resort guests. They offer one at dawn and another at dusk - the dusk one takes you on a close up tour of the animals "being brought in," I believe. It's pricey, and you must stay at at AKL, but from all of the reviews I've heard it is amazing.

Also, another alternative is to pop over to the lodge (very short bus ride from AK), and you and your kids can look out at the AKL savannah and have a buffet lunch at Boma. There are no lines to look at the savannah - unlike the safari ride! Depending on how much you want to do at AK, it may take too much time, but the AKL is a destination in itself, and Boma is a good bang for your buck, especially if you do the dining plan.

Good luck, and very jealous of your impending trip!

[lentesta]

Originally Posted by Senator Tressel

That sounds like it would be an interesting article if you could write up your findings from that day.

Ah, good thinking. We have a summary of it in the book.

The longer version is that we asked two members of our team to ride the Safari from park open to close one summer day a couple of years ago.

For each ride, we had the researchers count the number of "big" animals they say (e.g., elephants, giraffe, hippos, lions), "small" animals (gazelle, etc.) and even birds.

When we looked at the results at the end of the day, we didn't see more than a small variation in any of the categories on any trip. That variation was probably due to random chance, like a gazelle running out of view temporarily.

We didn't count how many times you saw each individual species, so we don't know whether there were always 2 lions, 4 elephants and 2 giraffe. I suppose with enough people we could figure that out.

We should have people collecting wait times through the summer. I'll see if we can get a couple of them to jump on the safari for a day.

Len