Are there any good planning options other than RideMax?

[quiltymom]

I wasn't thrilled with RideMax and I know I'll be needing some help trying to plan my days at DLR with all the new stuff that's opening this summer. Any other suggestions?

TIA!

 

[skiingfast]

You could give ridemax another go. Or ask on here. And watch closely as the calendar for late June comes out and you can get reports on how Cars Land is effecting crowd patterns.

 

[HydroGuy]

The only two options at DLR of which I am aware are RM and touringplans.com. Good luck.

 

[thagness]

What is it that you don't like about RideMax? I have it and have been busy making my plans for the coming week (so I don't know how accurate it is). I do find it easy enough to plan (I like using the online version better - then copy and paste it into my schedule).
I can post afterward to the accuracy of the plans (my wife is skeptical about any "plans" but I'm getting closer to convincing her that a plan of some kind is better than total spontaneity...especially with 4 and 5 year olds).

 

[quiltymom]

I need to qualify this by saying I grew up going to DL and we have developed a plan of attack over the years that worked, and we usually got on all but 3 rides in one day (opening to closing). We only allot one day per park, but have only done California Adventure once. With the addition of the new Star Tours and the Mermaid ride at CA I didn't know how to begin fitting everything in.

Maybe it sounds petty to some folks, but I didn't like directions like this:

• the fact I couldn't factor in the getting of and the use of fastpasses. I emailed them about it and they said (in my words) that if we followed their plans we didn't need to use fastpasses, they were a waste of time.
• they had me riding Peter Pan right after the fireworks AND hitting FL at about 4 different times of the day when "the lines would be shorter. Um - right. I've never seen short lines in FL outside of the first hour, especially PP & Dumbo.
• they had me hopping around the park more than I already do, and believe me, that's a LOT.

There were other things, but I can't remember what they were (it was 2 years ago). I know that there will be peeps that don't agree with me, but that's okay. Just my opinion on it all.

 

[Eeee-va]

Ridemax absolutely has less value if you already know the parks very well. If you have a smart phone, I'd look into one of the ride wait apps, even to just start playing with it on days that you anticipate will look like your day. Ridemax predicts all the wait times for each ride (mostly accurately) and then just uses the shotgun approach to try several itineraries and give you the best one. Unless it's changed, it doesn't do fancy math or anything to discover the best schedule, but uses trial and error. So you could come up with a viable plan on your own.

Now, I did think Ridemax factored in Fastpasses; I know they have (or had) an option to either use your Fastpasses late or use them during their window. This was in 2009, and I still have the plans saved using FPs. You can also use the option for slower parties to (hopefully) avoid some criss-crossing.

In my experience, much of Fantasyland DOES get less busy a couple hours before closing on a late night--Snow White and Pinocchio tend to become walk-ons, and even during a very busy time in 2009 (one of the last days before blockouts of the Southern California APs) Mr. Toad was only about 10 minutes as midnight approached. I think they clear Peter Pan Flight for the fireworks shows? So if you wait until after the fireworks you can ride with a short line...the only issue is you have to wait until the fire marshall clears it, which could take a while.

They do sometimes get things very wrong, though; I'd forgotten that. I didn't have any wait time problems (aside from when I rushed to a ride, only to find it broken down, but that's not really Ridemax's fault). But they told me to do Tarzan's Treehouse at 11:30 PM. It closes that late at night (or at least it did in 2009) so I never saw it that trip. I emailed them and they just thanked me for the feedback and said they were fixing it (no apologies).

 

[blynn]

We have loved using RideMax for several years. I became a fan of it after using it for the first time over a Labor Day weekend and we never waited in a line for over ten minutes and often walked right on to rides. I was amazed when we saw so many long lines that weekend and we were never in them. We have always used Fastpass with RideMax - it always has that option, so I'm not sure how you thought you couldn't. One thing I learned to do is to let the computer figure out several itineraries for the same rides and then I picked the best one. I also customize it for our schedule, such as setting the morning time for one side of the park and the afternoon time for the other so we aren't running back and forth across the park, or one day for one side of the park and the next day for the other. Though we don't always follow it exactly, it has been very valuable for us and has really maximized our time.