Getting the Most from Touring Plans

[trenty]

I subscribed to Touring Plans mainly to put in a room request. Those of you who have used Touring Plans in the past: what else did you find useful besides the Room Finder and requesting a room?

 

[tx911]

I also use the Room Finder a lot.

I like the crowd calendar. In the parks, I often glance at the "Lines" app to see if there's anything I want to wait standby for.

That's about it.

 

[eandt]

I subscribed to Touring Plans mainly to put in a room request. Those of you who have used Touring Plans in the past: what else did you find useful besides the Room Finder and requesting a room?

Lines app is ok but only as good as the info users put in … I have found their crowd calendar to be way off on our past 2 trips (Nov 25/Mar 26) to the point of using the calendar being of zero value

 

[focusondisney]

I use the lines app at the park sometimes. I like inputting my wait times. The only problem is remembering to actually stop the timer & hit submit. They still hve customized plans I think, if that appeals to you. We’ve been going for 33 years so don’t use specific plans like that.

 

[Brian rhymes with dyin]

For whatever reason it seems like the touring plans themselves/the app don't work as well anymore since the dawn of Genie/LLs.

 

[RickNJane]

Disney can really throw a monkey wrench into crowd calendars that model based on past crowd levels. Disney has crowd models as well. Disney uses their models to help level crowds with special pricing on lodging, food, tickets etc. This can really mess with crowd calendars. So it is really no surprise that Touring Plans calendar can have issues.
I use the crowd calendar as a guide to past crowd levels, which may or may not reflect current crowd levels. I also go by what school holidays, special events, etc are happening. It is really difficult to predict crowd levels especially since Disney really holds most if not all the cards.

 

[kathy884]

I subscribed to touringplans again for a trip I am doing in December. I agree with the above posters, though. I didn't think it was worth using the lines app the two times we tried it when we were offsite visitors and had LLs. It was too much time on the phone with not enough benefit IMHO and time estimates just seemed off. I'm not planning to even use that lines app on our next trip.

I still though like to map out a daily touring plan on paper. And to plan my park days, I like to look at their touring plans to see what attractions they recommend and then I add and subtract. And when I add LLs I'll do a last paper copy that will be a guide for me for my park days. I also in the planning state like to look at their ratings by age group and descriptions of the attractions too to decide what attractions I might want to try I haven't done. I tend to have a plan of must dos and then like to have a few free hours after that to wing things, do whatever, catch something we missed if something was broken down. The plans help me prioritize and come up with a good list of my must dos that I'll do first that will leave me some extra free time at the end of the day. I take things off the plan if things seem too full as I like to have that end of day free time to just do whatever.

I'm also planning to use their recommendations for what lightening lanes I will try for in advance.

My overall feeling though was that the hey day of Touringplans were the days of those paper fastpasses. OMG did those plans work like clock work. They would tell you when to get the fastpasses, when to use them ... The early rope drop suggestions (I was always an offsite visitor visiting on non morning extra magic hour days) were amazing. It's just not like that any more.

For offsite visitors especially, you can't get a lot of popular LL at the busy times when we go, you don't have the rope drop advantage, and plans just really don't work so well.

I'm onsite though for this next trip, and I have to say for the price of the subscription I get a lot of enjoyment out of planning my days with the touring plans and adding and subtracting stuff (DS and I work on this together). The exercise kind of forces us to decide what we really want to do, and we like to do that as efficiently as we can. We take out things that don't mean as much to us to make sure we get our must dos in and have the free time later to do whatever -- just makes for a more satisfying park day for us and that's how DS and I like to do Disney. The touring plan estimates are great for predicting how much we can cram in and leave three free hours or so for relaxing, whatever, shopping, breaks, repeats.

 

[mi*vida*loca]

It's worth it just for the Lines app. For us it's always been more accurate than MDE.

 

[unrequited23]

We use personalized touring plans to put together a rough plan of our days. I like the estimated walking times, ride length times and show times it provides, plus the option to tinker with the order of your activities.

 

[RickNJane]

We use personalized touring plans to put together a rough plan of our days. I like the estimated walking times, ride length times and show times it provides, plus the option to tinker with the order of your activities.

Same. DW has a bad ankle and walking can be painful. We pick the must do attractions for the day, setup a slow walking speed and choose to minimize walking. The routes it picks are usually pretty great. We find the wait times may be off, but it is a really good guide and starting point. We watch wait times in MDE and by observation. If the line is too long, we skip it. We kinda just go with the flow like Crush on Finding Nemo. Schedules and plans are fluid. This is vacation and I dont want to spend it worrying about getting to the next ride or meeting some LL schedule. We mosey, we ride, we adapt and take in the vibe. Much more relaxing than keeping your nose in the phone and rushing between attractions. If we miss some headliners, that's ok. We usually have several park days and will hit most everything eventually.

 

[Kitty-chan]

I use it for customized touring plans, and re-optimize them as the day goes on. I also use the crowd calendar to plan which parks to visit, which then drives my ADRs.

 

[RickNJane]

Sorta On Topic. Just got an Email from Len Testa of Touring Plans. Seems Disney will stop taking their room requests 4/19. Here is the blog post.
https://touringplans.com/blog/wdw-room-request-feature-last-day-is-april-19-2026/

 

[trenty]

Yes. I saw. Sad....I only signed up for the room request feature. Oh well.

 

[AZMermaid]

I'm onsite though for this next trip, and I have to say for the price of the subscription I get a lot of enjoyment out of planning my days with the touring plans and adding and subtracting stuff (DS and I work on this together). The exercise kind of forces us to decide what we really want to do, and we like to do that as efficiently as we can. We take out things that don't mean as much to us to make sure we get our must dos in and have the free time later to do whatever -- just makes for a more satisfying park day for us and that's how DS and I like to do Disney. The touring plan estimates are great for predicting how much we can cram in and leave three free hours or so for relaxing, whatever, shopping, breaks, repeats.

agree with this! I enjoy playing with the customized tour plans and find this well worth the money for me. For me it’s a fun part of planning. I dont take it as a sure thing but just a good planning tool.

 

[wintershawl]

I like the crowd calendar, but I haven't been since 2018. I'm not sure if it is as good anymore. I guess I'll see. However, we are staying a bit longer than usual this time, so I have some time to flex around with. I can always adapt as we go. When we first started going to Disney, I got the book and that was so helpful for me to start off with. I guess I just got used to using them since we don't go every year.

 

[Best Aunt]

It's worth it just for the Lines app. For us it's always been more accurate than MDE.

One of my friends lives in Florida and goes to Disney frequently. She also thinks the Lines app is more accurate than MDE. I believe if you pay for the subscription you can enter your own wait times to make the Lines app more accurate for others.

 

[melk]

Yes. I saw. Sad....I only signed up for the room request feature. Oh well.

If it makes you feel any better the couple of times I used it I didn’t get my requests.