Anyone toured WDW with intentions of following UG or TGM strategies...

[VickiVM]

And then you chunked their plans (for whatever reason) and still felt like you accomplished all the attractions you wanted to??

I know these strategies are well thought out and backed with real data, but if you blow off one day, it may affect touring of other days. I'm a little iffy on a couple of days where to spend our time - where I want to go is not one of the optimum parks to visit that day.

So if you got off track with these touring strategies, I want to know how it turned out for you.

Thanks,
Vicki

 

[bdrex95]

I used Tour Guide Mike for our trip 3 weeks ago. It worked awesome. The nice thing about TGM is he teaches you the why's behind making a touring plan. So, when you get off track, which you definitely will, you don't go crazy trying to figure out how to get back on schedule. There is no real schedule.

There is no, "be here at 9:00, here at 9:07, here at 9:18." He suggests best times of day for the attractions, and an order in which to do them, but it doesn't have to be total commando. You have enough info to make your own plans, detailed or not.

I decided midway through my MK day that my plan was way too commando, so I chucked it. We still got a ton done, and had an absolute blast, because I knew the why's behind touring.

For more info on why I had to chuck my touring plan, you can check out my trip reports. They are titled "Takin' the In-Laws" and I will be posting my MK day in the next couple days. Hopefully I'll have the whole thing finished up by next weekend. We'll see.

 

[mommykds]

We have been to Disney 4 times, this Oct will be our 5th. I just finished the UG for 2005 & there is good information in there, however I have never used EMH to determine what parks I go to. I am there at rope drop every day & do stay until closing (no naps or midday breaks for us), so we do fit in everything that we want to do. We also go at less crowded times which to me you do not need to have a huge master plan to tour the parks but you should use fastpass & see the more popular things first.

If you are going to WDW on any day that is crowded (maybe a 5 or more in the guide) then I would say use the guide but if you are going in the fall or Jan-Feb I'd say you can wing it to some degree.

 

[tjevans]

I have both times that I have gone since I was aware of the UG. The first time was in the first two weeks of December. Crowds were so light that it was obvious there were no waits for anything, so why be so organized?

The second time was in late July several years ago. We were at MGM, which, except for a few exceptions, is a take it or leave it park for us. Because we only wanted to do about half of what was on the UG plan, we just chunked it after we saw Indy.

 

[danny1649]

Touring plans several times and would fall behind schedule of touring plan.We would then just jump ahead 3 or 4 steps in plan and that would work for us.So we didn't just drop the touring plan but stayed flexible enough not get stressed out if we didn't follow it step by step.

 

[ericafny]

Someone mentioned 'Tour Guide Mike' on here, who is he and where can I find him? I have the UG 2005 and read all the touring plans on there. My BF and I plan to make touring plans, but not be so rigid in our planning. We like to wander and take our time, but we are going at the end of July and are aware that it will be supercrowded. If TGM has some other ideas, I would really be interested in learning about them.

Erica

 

[mrslur]

In order to learn about his plans you need to register (and pay) at his site - tourguidemike.com. Well worth the investment!

 

[Selket]

I've tried the UG plans but couldn't stick with them/didn't like them. Depending on the time of the year and how crowded the parks were we either did ok (if not crowded) or terrible (if crowded). I like the UG for other general park info and restaurant reviews. I always seem to pick one up for a trip even if I don't use the tour plans. I dislike the sarcastic attitude of the book overall though.

You have to like the Passporter for its maps and cute little pockets. I'm a sucker for pockets. The touring plans I don't think would work so well.

I subscribe to Tour Guide Mike and that has worked well for us (http://www.tourguidemike.com - note you pay a fee for using his site and it is refundable if you decide you don't like it). If I could have only one guide it would be this one. With TGM's approach (at least the way we use it) we tour the parks to ride our hard to get into favorites in the mornings and use the evenings (either in the same park or park-hop) for more relaxed touring and shopping.