Former Touring Plan complainer with suggestions

[gzmtlock]

Having complained about Touring Plans earlier this week, I feel I must return to share the solutions I found to a couple issues. Call it my honesty streak. Perhaps my struggles may help others. . .

I had two major issues: I wanted certain rides at certain times of day, and I wanted to maximize FP+ usage, not ignore it. But when I tried to use the "order" function, it would just totally hose things up. Like put scheduled meals at totally different times. Or move breaks to the end of the day.

So here's how I "forced" my time constraints into software that was built to tell me what it wanted, based on extensive experience and analysis, rather than take what I wanted and give me the best possible. (Which, in retrospect, was too high an expectation on my part.)

Rides at certain times: I wanted Jungle Cruise and BTMRR at night. I find JC kinda stupid in daylight, but fun at night. At the thrill aspect of BTMRR is heightened after dark. So I split my MK day into two sections: MK Afternoon as one plan, and MK Evening as a second one. (Adult trip, we will not do rope drop.) The separation point is dinner. So using the personalized plan, I selected all the rides we wanted before dinner in the Afternoon plan. And the three rides we wanted after dinner, plus Wishes, I selected on the Evening personalized plan. Bingo!!! That enabled me to maximize our afternoon, and do exactly what we wanted after dinner, in the best order.

FP+ was a bit more involved. Again using personalized plans, selected everything we wanted. Let the program set the order. Then selected FP+ times that overlapped with the suggested times by the plan. Once I had those through MDE, I then plugged them into the personalized plan. The program then shortened the associated wait times and was able to re-organize slightly to again maximize time usage.

All that said, it probably took me 8 hours to do four days of plans, including plugging in meals, breaks, etc. It was definitely a bigger time commitment than I expected, but that is not necessarily a bad thing.

One last thing I learned - once I manipulated a plan more than 3-4 times, I was better off starting over with a new plan but using what I had learned in developing the overly-manipulated one. For example, my Epcot plan had things dropped, moved (to not be running back and forth across FW), etc. I would guess I had used Optimize 4-5 times. And it started returning things which didn't make much sense. So I started a new plan, leaving out the things I had omitted on the previous plan. And, whiz-bang, the program returned a great plan! Had my trimmed down list in great order, without running me all over.

I'll let you know how it all works out in May!!

 

[jenninaustin]

This is very helpful for me and sort of matches what I think is going on with me. I now have a crazy number of plans out there...in large part b/c I keep getting weird things - most likely b/c of multiple optimizing.

It's great to hear about your success and I will be waiting with baited (bated?...I'm never sure...I think it IS "BATED" come to think of it...) breath as I will be following right behind you in June.

Good luck! I hope to have an all adults trip sometime in the near future. My fingers are crossed for a bounce back offer!

 

[minmate]

We are staying offsite this time and I'm not sure which crowd calendar to rely on in picking our days for next week. I've looked at easywdw and undercovertourist. I'm feeling too cheap to look at anything you have to pay for.

Your opinions please?

 

[emonade8]

Having complained about Touring Plans earlier this week, I feel I must return to share the solutions I found to a couple issues. Call it my honesty streak. Perhaps my struggles may help others. . .

I had two major issues: I wanted certain rides at certain times of day, and I wanted to maximize FP+ usage, not ignore it. But when I tried to use the "order" function, it would just totally hose things up. Like put scheduled meals at totally different times. Or move breaks to the end of the day.

So here's how I "forced" my time constraints into software that was built to tell me what it wanted, based on extensive experience and analysis, rather than take what I wanted and give me the best possible. (Which, in retrospect, was too high an expectation on my part.)

Rides at certain times: I wanted Jungle Cruise and BTMRR at night. I find JC kinda stupid in daylight, but fun at night. At the thrill aspect of BTMRR is heightened after dark. So I split my MK day into two sections: MK Afternoon as one plan, and MK Evening as a second one. (Adult trip, we will not do rope drop.) The separation point is dinner. So using the personalized plan, I selected all the rides we wanted before dinner in the Afternoon plan. And the three rides we wanted after dinner, plus Wishes, I selected on the Evening personalized plan. Bingo!!! That enabled me to maximize our afternoon, and do exactly what we wanted after dinner, in the best order.

FP+ was a bit more involved. Again using personalized plans, selected everything we wanted. Let the program set the order. Then selected FP+ times that overlapped with the suggested times by the plan. Once I had those through MDE, I then plugged them into the personalized plan. The program then shortened the associated wait times and was able to re-organize slightly to again maximize time usage.

All that said, it probably took me 8 hours to do four days of plans, including plugging in meals, breaks, etc. It was definitely a bigger time commitment than I expected, but that is not necessarily a bad thing.

One last thing I learned - once I manipulated a plan more than 3-4 times, I was better off starting over with a new plan but using what I had learned in developing the overly-manipulated one. For example, my Epcot plan had things dropped, moved (to not be running back and forth across FW), etc. I would guess I had used Optimize 4-5 times. And it started returning things which didn't make much sense. So I started a new plan, leaving out the things I had omitted on the previous plan. And, whiz-bang, the program returned a great plan! Had my trimmed down list in great order, without running me all over.

I'll let you know how it all works out in May!!

This is pretty much the exact strategy I used to get the plans to give me what I wanted without them moving things I already had scheduled or trying to make me ride Splash Mountain at 9:15 am. It seems that the personalized plans schedule things more efficiently if you don't include breaks or meals or ask them to suggest FP+ candidates.

 

[DakotaRose]

I do like touring plans, but I'm not a fan of their optimize function. I take a canned plan, add things to it, subtract things that don't interest me, then hit optimize. Then I just drag and drop a few items so the order works for us, add meals and breaks,and FP+, and then use Evaluate, not Optimize. Takes about 20 mins or less per plan.

One isn't required to use the optimize function. It's easier to drag and drop to change the order of things and then hit Evaluate.

 

[HJRWoman]

I agree with PP, if you have a specific plan in mind, always use the Evaluate button, versus the Optimize button. That way only the wait times are inserted, but the order of the attractions is not changed. Then I could try to minimize my wait times by switching a couple of attractions that were close together. I too had to do my first personalized touring plan several times to figure this out. I found when I compared an optimized plan to an evaluated plan, my walking time would increase 10 minutes to avoid a 5 minute wait time. I was able to get all of my wait times (except shows) at 10 minutes or below. I'll be able to see how accurate that is next week!

 

[gzmtlock]

We are staying offsite this time and I'm not sure which crowd calendar to rely on in picking our days for next week. I've looked at easywdw and undercovertourist. I'm feeling too cheap to look at anything you have to pay for.

Your opinions please?

FWIW, I used easywdw. Didn't look into much else. I was a tourguidemike devotee for years, until he stopped maintaining his site. It seemed to me that easywdw used much of the same logic for setting crown predictions, so that was good enough for me.

 

[gzmtlock]

I agree with PP, if you have a specific plan in mind, always use the Evaluate button, versus the Optimize button. That way only the wait times are inserted, but the order of the attractions is not changed. Then I could try to minimize my wait times by switching a couple of attractions that were close together. I too had to do my first personalized touring plan several times to figure this out. I found when I compared an optimized plan to an evaluated plan, my walking time would increase 10 minutes to avoid a 5 minute wait time. I was able to get all of my wait times (except shows) at 10 minutes or below. I'll be able to see how accurate that is next week!

Actually, I think I was wrong saying I used Optimize late in the process. I used Optimize after plugging in all we wanted to do, then added ADRs, then got FP+s based on when the Optimize function had said was a good time for that ride. With the extra time the FP+ got (by reducing wait time), I then rearranged and used Evaluate.

Thanks for helping me remember more correctly!

 

[sethschroeder]

We are staying offsite this time and I'm not sure which crowd calendar to rely on in picking our days for next week. I've looked at easywdw and undercovertourist. I'm feeling too cheap to look at anything you have to pay for.

Your opinions please?

I am a huge TouringPlans supporter and think its a must in the parks but:

Don't ever think that TouringPlans is about a crowd calendar. While they can be in the ballpark then can also be off just likely everyone else.

If all you want is a crowd calendar use free resources, if you want the in park tools than you can't beat TouringPlans to help with your daily schedule on the fly throughout the day.

 

[sethschroeder]

To the OP I don't think I ever set a schedule before I entered the park. I basically had my ADR (usually just for dinner or possibly no ADR until around 5PM when we decided where to eat) and knew which rides we wanted to go on.

As we were walking to or riding the bus to the park I would optimize so get an idea of which ride to hit first. Once we got inside the gate I would optimize again and on our way to the ride the app said. As we wanted to take breaks we just took a break to eat or what not, when we were done I would just optimize again.

With FP+ I haven't looked into it too much yet with TP but we will likely take the same thought process where we will just do the FP+ time and then re-optimize after we get off the ride.

I feel that setting up a whole day schedule is a waste as no prediction for times throughout the day is ever going to be perfect, what happens to your set in stone schedule when rides have wacky wait times at different times then they are supposed to? If you think your just going to skip the ride and come back why not just wait and go with the flow?