Buying a Touring Plan? Is it worth it?

[LoveThatMouse!]

How many of you fine folks purchase a Touring Plan? If so, Is it really worth it and what company is best? Any and all opinions welcome.

 

[harrowgirl]

I've paid for a touringplans.com membership and have been thrilled with every plan I've put together through them

 

[Sargeant Tibbs]

Just ask questions here. Put together a plan and ask us if it can be done.

 

[MataHari22]

You can create a personalized Touring Plan without subscribing. You must register with an account, but you do not need to pay.

 

[CampbellzSoup]

I dunno it just seems not worth it - just go and have fun !

 

[EmilyS90]

We used touringplans for the first 3-4 hours of the day, and then just did our own thing after that. We had a general plan for the rest of the day that we loosely followed and changed a bit. I was pretty satisfied with it. The app is a great help too and helps you recalculate if your plans need to change or get interrupted.

 

[itchin2go]

You might try looking at the touring plans over at easywdw.com. It is not a pay site. Just reviewing those will give you a lot of information, and will help you make good decisions in the parks.

That said, I almost always spring for a membership over at touringplans.com. I am one of those whackos that enjoys the planning process, and I like to read everything I can get my hands on. I haven't purchased it lately, but I think the cost (in terms of the cost of a Disney vacation) is fairly nominal.

You don't *need* to pay for anything extra, but a Disney World vacation can be complicated and costly.

I don't recommend winging it, but we are never very rigid about a touring plan. We do know where lines form fast. Definitely put in some time familiarizing yourself with priority of attractions.

 

[DisPup75]

I have a touringplans.com membership mainly because I think it is fun. I think a combination of plans from that site and easywdw give you an idea of what a day might look like and gets you to start thinking about not just wait time but attraction length, time to walk between locations, etc. It can help in answering what can we realistically do before our 11:15 ADR type questions.

Plus I just really like playing with it when I'm months alway from a real trip - I deal with bad days at work by playing 'let's schedule an afternoon at Hollywood Studios' type games.

 

[LoveThatMouse!]

You might try looking at the touring plans over at easywdw.com. It is not a pay site. Just reviewing those will give you a lot of information, and will help you make good decisions in the parks.

That said, I almost always spring for a membership over at touringplans.com. I am one of those whackos that enjoys the planning process, and I like to read everything I can get my hands on. I haven't purchased it lately, but I think the cost (in terms of the cost of a Disney vacation) is fairly nominal.

You don't *need* to pay for anything extra, but a Disney World vacation can be complicated and costly.

I don't recommend winging it, but we are never very rigid about a touring plan. We do know where lines form fast. Definitely put in some time familiarizing yourself with priority of attractions.

I love the planning process as well and used to be extremely whacko about the details...In my children's younger years, I was a fanatic. As I've aged, I've relaxed quite a bit but sometimes those old tendencies of being a perfectionist creep back in. We are leaving in just a few days for a very spur of the moment trip and was curious if the 'touring plans' would be worth it to help an 'old veteran' out.

 

[minnie mum]

Tourinplans.com subscription can be worthwhile if you are the type who likes to plan to the nth degree and spend lots of time on optimizing everything about every day. In recent years I've just relied on the park recommendations and cheat sheets from easywdw.com and have been happy with the results.

If you are not a WDW veteran and aren't very familiar with the parks and the intricacies of FP+, I would absolutely NOT recommend just winging it.

 

[itchin2go]

I love the planning process as well and used to be extremely whacko about the details...In my children's younger years, I was a fanatic. As I've aged, I've relaxed quite a bit but sometimes those old tendencies of being a perfectionist creep back in. We are leaving in just a few days for a very spur of the moment trip and was curious if the 'touring plans' would be worth it to help an 'old veteran' out.

You probably don't *need* it ... but it might be fun.

I really like the (free) touring plans on easywdw.com. So check them out for sure. That said, they are form plans. Good form plans with tons of information built in, but they're not customizable.

On touringplans.com, you can customize your own plans. PP says you can do that without paying (yay!). I was already signed up so I didn't know that. It was kind of fun to create our customized plans, taking into account our FP selections and ADRs. That said, I didn't use them. They were more just to get an idea of how much we *could* get done.

Necessary? no
Beneficial? yes
Change much on our vacation? probably not
Fun to play around with? yes

Hope that helps!

 

[itchin2go]

If you are not a WDW veteran and aren't very familiar with the parks and the intricacies of FP+, I would absolutely NOT recommend just winging it.

Amen. Just checked and touringplans.com is $12.95 for the year.

 

[Choozee]

I purchased the touring plans thing too. I am like the other poster, I like playing with it too. It's user friendly and puts me in a good mood after a hard day at work. The closer I get to our actual trip, I'm going to take planning the days out specifically more seriously. I will be like hey, I think this plan is going to work! It's fun

 

[lwc]

I have used touringplans(.com) since it was a book and you couldn't customize plans. Our last two trips were Christmas and Easter break trips. So HIGH crowd levels.

We didn't rope drop. We didn't use EMH. We saw every attraction we wanted to. And we never waited more than 20 minutes in a line.

In my experience it has been money well spent.

 

[jeweaver]

I used then the first few times we went to WDW. It was totally worth it. We did not wait long for anything. My son was 2 1/2 so it was great!

 

[Tomh]

It goes like this:

If you have a few trips under your belt, you understand fully how FP+ works, and how to get the most out of it, and you have some idea as to what rides get busy at what points during the day, then by all means, save your money, and just put together your own "plan" for the day.

If this is your first, or second (or maybe even third or fourth) trip, and you aren't a FP+ master. If you are still uncertain as to what rides get super busy, and what rides are almost always a walk on, then I would absolutely spend the money on one of the many great touring plans that are available for purchase.

We have used Touring Plans.com, as well as RideMax. Of the two, I liked the ridemax plans the most.

Typically, we will make a plan for our morning, get in as many rides as possible before the crowds hit, THEN we move on to using our FP+. By the time we are done with them, it is usually lunch time, and then taking it easy after lunch seems to work very well for us.

 

[Networth]

I bought it simply for their app I see everything else as a bonus. I want to know the real wait times not Disney's inflated.

 

[soniam]

Love the personalized optimized Touring Plans and wouldn't do a trip without it, even we have been before. It's especially useful if you go during high crowd times, ie spring break, summer, holidays.

 

[BudgieMama]

Regardless of whether you use the plan or not (we made personalised plans, but the parks were pretty quiet, so we didn't use them), the lines app from touring plans if worth the subscription. I wouldn't want to tour without it. Their predicted wait times were much more accurate than the posted wait times, and got us into short lines with long waits posted that we would have skipped looking at the posted time. They were much shorter!

 

[Kathryn777]

We always use it, I love using as a tool to plan out my day