Help with itinerary

[My3SonsandMaya]

Hi we will be visiting DL on Aug 2nd and 3rd. We do not have ee for the 2nd, which fantasyland rides should we attempt to ride on Thursday or should we save them all for Friday morning? I was thinking about doing Matterhorn first thing thursday, is there another ride we should go to first?

If we do want to ride some of the FL rides on day 1 which would be the best bets and at what times during the day?

Thanks in advance.

 

[HydroGuy]

Hi we will be visiting DL on Aug 2nd and 3rd. We do not have ee for the 2nd, which fantasyland rides should we attempt to ride on Thursday or should we save them all for Friday morning? I was thinking about doing Matterhorn first thing thursday, is there another ride we should go to first?

If we do want to ride some of the FL rides on day 1 which would be the best bets and at what times during the day?

Thanks in advance.

FWIW, you should check out RideMax www.ridemax.com. For $15 it can help with itineraries.

If it were me I would save Fantasyland until Friday - a non-EE day - and do it first. I would arrive at the DL gates at 7:30AM. If you are not the type of person who can get to the gates early like that, then it doesn't matter whether you do Fantasyland on Thursday or Friday.

The more popular Fantasyland rides (PP, Dumbo, Matterhorn, Alice, etc.) will all have significant lines on Thursday morning after EE finishes. It would still be best to do them first thing, but it may take a couple hours to do all four of the above, for instance. If you can wait until Friday they can be done in 30 minutes.

 

[SunDevilDaddy]

Ridemax will save your sanity for a mere $15.

I second saving FL for Friday morning. In addition, I would suggest working the park in a clockwise motion on Thursday. The general crowd will head through the gates and immediately move towards Nemo (which with only 2 days I'd skip altogether) or into Tomorrowland, FL, etc.... By going the opposite direction you will avoid a good amount of early morning traffic.

However, if you have little ones with you or want to see ToonTown I believe Friday is a ToonTown Madness Morning and I would suggest hitting ToonTown right when it opens on Thursday. Remember ToonTown keeps different hours from the rest of the park.

If you really want to ride FL rides at some point on Thursday try saving them for late in the day. FL starts to slow down between 9 and 10 pm. You will avoid longer lines if you go during the late evening.

AND USE FASTPASS AS FREQUENTLY AND AS OFTEN AS POSSIBLE. Make sure to read hydroguy's posts on FPs.

 

[My3SonsandMaya]

thanks for the advice, I did purchase ridemax and have been using it to build different itineraries however, up until today I didn't realize that matterhorn was an early entry ride.

We only have two days so we will be starting out Thursday doing everything but fantasyland. We plan on being there at opening Friday to do that, then we will jump over to CA.

Ridemax is telling me to do BTMR first but I was thinking Indy?? Any thoughts?

 

[SunDevilDaddy]

I would either do Indy first and grab Splash FPs or grab Indy FPs and head Splash.

For some reason Ridemax thinks BTMRR sees more guests than I think it really does. We did BTMRR on a Saturday at about 9:30am with maybe a 5 minute wait. We also did it late in the evening around 9pm one day with zero wait. BTMRR does seem to fall into that peak time pattern of high lines but otherwise I didn't notice a wait on it that deemed skipping past other more popular rides first.

If it were me, I'd look at adjusting your itinerary a little to do one of the 2 above rides first and save BTMRR until after an hour or so.

 

[Hound 109]

Ridemax will save your sanity for a mere $15.

I second saving FL for Friday morning. In addition, I would suggest working the park in a clockwise motion on Thursday. The general crowd will head through the gates and immediately move towards Nemo (which with only 2 days I'd skip altogether) or into Tomorrowland, FL, etc.... By going the opposite direction you will avoid a good amount of early morning traffic.

However, if you have little ones with you or want to see ToonTown I believe Friday is a ToonTown Madness Morning and I would suggest hitting ToonTown right when it opens on Thursday. Remember ToonTown keeps different hours from the rest of the park.

If you really want to ride FL rides at some point on Thursday try saving them for late in the day. FL starts to slow down between 9 and 10 pm. You will avoid longer lines if you go during the late evening.

AND USE FASTPASS AS FREQUENTLY AND AS OFTEN AS POSSIBLE. Make sure to read hydroguy's posts on FPs.

I agree with virtually everything that Devil Daddy & HydroGuy suggests.

FL on Friday (perferably at rope drop) & Going counter-clockwise on Thurs. The one hitch with doing Indy first is that you'll probably have many EE'ers ahead of you doing the same thing. My suggestion (because of this) is to:

- grab a FP at Indy.
- & then either BTMRR, Pirates, HM, Splash (in any order).
- I only mention this because i prefer not to do Splash right of the chute.

I suppose you'll probably follow RideMax, but would encourage you to be mindful of FP return times (so you can pick up more FPs). READ HYDROGUY'S THREAD ON HOW TO DO FP ON CROWDED DAYS. (Heck, read all of his threads.)

If you pick up FPs on the return times you should be able to pick up 4-5 FPs the first 2 1/2 hours. (& you'll be riding lots of non-FP rides)

When you are doing the Ride Max itinerary, factor in a FP pickup every 45 min. - 60 min. the first 3 hours (& look at a map so you know where the next logical FP ride should be...that way you're not backtracking too much).

If you leave the park (either to go to DCA or for a break) after riding a dozen or so rides & with 4-5 FP in your pocket, you'll be way ahead of the game & can relax & enjoy the rest of the day.

Have fun.

hound

 

[HydroGuy]

For some reason Ridemax thinks BTMRR sees more guests than I think it really does. We did BTMRR on a Saturday at about 9:30am with maybe a 5 minute wait. We also did it late in the evening around 9pm one day with zero wait. BTMRR does seem to fall into that peak time pattern of high lines but otherwise I didn't notice a wait on it that deemed skipping past other more popular rides first.

If it were me, I'd look at adjusting your itinerary a little to do one of the 2 above rides first and save BTMRR until after an hour or so.

FWIW, my past experience would agree with your assessment. But when we were there the week of June 25 BTMRR had much longer lines than I was accustomed to. FP return times tended to stay pretty close to 45-60 minutes as usual, but the lines were longer in the morning and evening. One morning we went to ride BTMRR at 9AM and I was expecting a 2 minute line, and it was posted as 20! At 9AM Splash was a virtual walk-on, which also was contrary to my experience on hot summer days - so we did Splash and skipped BTMRR and FPed it later. Typically at 9AM the Splash standby line is already 15-20 minutes long. BTMRR lines longer than Splash lines? I have never seen that before (at least during the summer). I never noticed BTMRR being down and causing this problem. Maybe they were running less trains than normal? Most likely it was all an anomaly and everything is back to normal as you outlined it.

 

[SunDevilDaddy]

FWIW, my past experience would agree with your assessment. But when we were there the week of June 25 BTMRR had much longer lines than I was accustomed to. FP return times tended to stay pretty close to 45-60 minutes as usual, but the lines were longer in the morning and evening. One morning we went to ride BTMRR at 9AM and I was expecting a 2 minute line, and it was posted as 20! At 9AM Splash was a virtual walk-on, which also was contrary to my experience on hot summer days - so we did Splash and skipped BTMRR and FPed it later. Typically at 9AM the Splash standby line is already 15-20 minutes long. BTMRR lines longer than Splash lines? I have never seen that before (at least during the summer). I never noticed BTMRR being down and causing this problem. Maybe they were running less trains than normal? Most likely it was all an anomaly and everything is back to normal as you outlined it.

That's funny. That was the same week we were there. Although we weren't in the park until the 28th. And, come to think of it... I did notice 1 morning where BTMRR was running a pretty long line early off. If I remember correctly we had already acquired our FPs though.

I also noticed that Splash was a walk on early in the morning. On Sat the 30th of June we went into the park and hit Splash as the 3rd or so ride... it was roughly 9am and we walked on. I wasn't expecting that at all.

 

[SunDevilDaddy]

I agree with virtually everything that Devil Daddy & HydroGuy suggests.

When you are doing the Ride Max itinerary, factor in a FP pickup every 45 min. - 60 min. the first 3 hours (& look at a map so you know where the next logical FP ride should be...that way you're not backtracking too much).

Hound makes an excellent point! Ridemax doesn't do the greatest job of maximizing you FP opportunities. Make sure you grab FPs as often and close together as possible. We relied on FPs during the afternoons when everyone else in the western hemisphere was inside the park too! Never waited over 15 minutes.

If you collect them like some people collect pins the worst that can happen is you end up with a bunch of free souveniers in your pocket

 

[Master Mason]

In my last several trips, I have never waited more than 10 minutes for the materhorn. My trip on June 1st and 2nd, in the morning the materhorn line was bad, but I chalked that up to folks heading to nemo and then either going for the materhorn after or instead because of the line.

hopeing to ride nemo this weekend, but not willing to wait more than 1 hour for it, so we will see.

 

[tinkerbelt]

In my last several trips, I have never waited more than 10 minutes for the materhorn. My trip on June 1st and 2nd, in the morning the materhorn line was bad, but I chalked that up to folks heading to nemo and then either going for the materhorn after or instead because of the line.

Yeah, Matterhorn lines have been really light lately. On Sunday, we walked onto Splash at 9am, and got to ride a second time without getting off because there was nobody in line when we got back to the loading area. At 11:30, the line was still posted as being 10 minutes.

Crowds have been very light this summer. I have seen worse crowds in spring and fall than I have this summer. It has been really nice! I don't think that we have waited for more than 15 minutes to ride anything this summer (except for Nemo), and we've gone on average once every week and a half.

We were even given a front of the line pass for any ride (except Nemo) the other day, and we never even bothered to use it because none of the lines were long enough to bother.