Confused with Touring plans

[Hook326]

Nevermind, going to start my own thread

 

[chris benton]

I'd also create a customized plan. Get a very good grasp of what you want to do, plug it in, and let the machine figure out your optimal order. You can tweak almost everything to your liking. You do NOT have to criss cross anything. I also think understanding the software will help you immensely inside the park if a wrench gets thrown into your plan. You can update the plan on your phone - add/subtract attractions and re-order them, re-optimize or re-evaluate in just a few seconds on the fly.
Find a new fantastic 4th, 5th,(etc) fastpass? NO PROBLEM. Plug it right in and see where it fits the best for your remaining time and walking path.
One of the kids (or everybody) needs to take a break beacause it's 90 instead of 75 degrees? NO PROBLEM, re-organize your attractions for your remaining time and walking path.

Big fan of TP. It's easy as pie, and it usually does what it's supposed to very well. And it's dirt cheap for what it is. More experienced DW guests might not find it as awesome, but I love it.

 

[Jess_S]

I am using touringplans.com

I meant which of the touring plans for AK are you using. On touringplans.com there are a number of pre-made plans for each park and then the option to customize your own plans. When I looked at a few of the premade touring plans for AK, it didn't look to me like there was a lot of backtracking -- but there was definitely a lot of attraction skipping. So I'm really trying to understand what your specific concern is.

In any event, as others have said, you can start with one of the plans as your template and then pick and choose from there to eliminate back-tracking. I personally agree that with a small child, you want to minimize extraneous walking. It's almost as bad as extraneous waiting on the list of things that cause my 5 year old to whine.

 

[sponica]

I think sometimes it may be that walking across the park to different attractions may be overall the most efficient, depending on which lines are likely to get long quickest. You may gain more on the lines than you lose in the walking. You could try manually moving a couple of attractions around to a more locationally logical grouping and then recalculate without reoptimising and see what it does to the overall times.

I remember reading a guide book that said this like 15 years ago, back in the days before GPS and smart phones, the guide book my mom and I obviously didn't read in depth because we had no idea what FP was and spent like 75 minutes in line at Splash Mountain.

 

[kniquy]

The customize touring plans allows you to plan your attractions, put them in what order you want and then "evaluate" the plan -- it will let you know what to expect for wait times. It might also suggest which rides to use a FP for. You can set your walking pace to relaxed or very relaxed to allow the system to allot for more time walking between attractions. And select minimize walking - the system should pick attractions close together, but i do often see it making me travel further than i would like.


I personally like to look at the map that is provided at the bottom and work it so that my trip around the park is in order and it eliminates most of the back and forth around the park. Sometimes the zig zagging around the park can take up more time if you are trying to navigate crowds. But the system suggest it (when you optimize) in order to get you to a ride with a shorted wait time.

You can also put in your desired attractions and the "optimize" and allow the system to create your plan -- the only park i dislike optimizing is AK because it always puts the Pandora rides at park opening. I will not get caught up the mad rush to Pandora and prefer to head in the opposite direction.

MK I like to divide in 1/2 to do one side one day and the other side the next.

Epcot divide and do future world one day and world showcase the next.

It really depends on how long you are going for and what kind of tickets you have to work with.