How reliable is touring plans

[jothp]

Hi all, I've been playing around with touring plans today. On one of our MK mornings with a 9am opening we are looking at doing Frontierland/adventureland/liberty square side of the park. I'm not using any FP+ in my plan at the moment. The plan is trying to send us to the magic carpets of Alladin first. Does this seem right to you? - I was thinking we would be better off doing BTM and splash first.

 

[scoobydooby]

It is anticipating future wait times. One quick turn on Aladin's Carpet very first thing will set you back 5 minutes. That will have almost zero impact on the next few rides you do. Coming back to it two hours later you will be in a much longer line. The flaw to this would be if they didn't open AC straight away. I would walk that way to BTM and Splash and ride if it's open, keep moving if it isn't. Their plans are exceptional. Trust the algorithms.

 

[Elise79]

We used it in December and it worked really well.

AK we had 4 hours in the afternoon and if got us round everything we wanted to do.

I can see then sense in doing carpets as you walk past as at that time you will only have to wait for the next ride to load then 2 minute ride so it will be under 10 minutes and it will be done. Later in the day queues would build. You will still be at BTM nice and early.

We won't do splash early as we have been soaked once too many times (once I was wearing a skirt and literally had a pool of water in my lap and 2" of water by our feet) and there is nothing worse than stinking of swamp for the rest of the day. We use a FP and it's the last thing we do before leaving the park for a break.

 

[Kath2003]

Whilst it's a good idea to have a plan, within the first 90 minutes of opening, there's not much of a wait for anything. The most sensible plan would be not to criss-cross the park but rather do as much as possible in that 90 minute period, minimising walking distances. That's probably all this plan does.

Advance warning, as I see you are a DLP fan - BTM, Pirates of the Caribbean and Space Mountain are not as good at WDW - Space Mountain particularly so. The Paris park has the better versions (longer, faster). Sorry. (Everything ELSE at WDW is better, though!).

 

[scoobydooby]

^ this is absolutely not how the plans work. In fact one of the ways they often save time is by requiring park criss crossing on occasion. They can appear counter intuitive but I have been using them for 9 years now and they work a treat. They are however far more sophisticated in approach than just clearing certain areas of the park in order. If you go on the website or read the Unofficial Guide they explain how they work. I love maths they fascinate me.

 

[DLPDreams]

I have been honing our plan on TP since December and I'm still not totally sorted yet! It seems very clever but I do find it hard to manipulate the system and find it time consuming to work through! I do think it will help though. The little maps at the bottom of the plans very cleverly show you how it takes you around the park.

Kath - Jo is going around the same time as us and PoC is closed while we are there for a refurb so we won't get to experience that one. We aren't that bothered about Space Mountain at DLP so no biggie for us, but BTM is our absolute family favourite so it will be interesting to see how we rate it! I think we will all like Everest in AK though! Sorry to digress Jo!!

 

[Kath2003]

^ this is absolutely not how the plans work. In fact one of the ways they often save time is by requiring park criss crossing on occasion. They can appear counter intuitive but I have been using them for 9 years now and they work a treat. They are however far more sophisticated in approach than just clearing certain areas of the park in order. If you go on the website or read the Unofficial Guide they explain how they work. I love maths they fascinate me.

Fair enough; haven't used a plan in years, though when I did it was from the Unofficial Guide and the advice was to minimise "wasted" time in those first few hours. I guess the distribution of headliners, plus fast pass, has changed things considerably in recent years, hence the need for a more sophisticated plan.

At Universal things are a lot simpler - if you want to do Harry Potter, head right.,Anything else, head left! And after midday, single rider line

 

[jonoble]

I've used Touring Plans for our last few trips. Haven't always stuck to them religiously, but they've been really excellent. We've definitely found it worth the cost of the subscription. Even if you aren't following a plan, having predicted wait times in the Lines app is really useful.

 

[jothp]

Thanks all. I guess we'll stick with the ride order they suggest then. It's good to hear that other people have found them effective. I'm not really looking to plan out every minute of every day but it is good to have an idea of the best order to tackle the rides in to avoid queuing. I am trying to make sure we don't have to criss cross too much by just putting in the rides/shows in a certain area of the park to start with.

Elise - I hadn't really considered getting wet that early in the morning. I might actually rethink that one and make splash a fastpass a bit later on.

Kath - I had heard that the rides at WDW weren't so good. Luckily none of the girls have ever been tall enough for space mountain in Paris so they won't notice that one. As DLP Dreams said (no worries about digressing) POTC is closed so we won't be able to go on that one so that only leaves BTM to compare.

Scoobydooby - Maths is my thing too so I will have to go and have a read how they work it all out - that is when I find time around work/family and all this trip planning.

 

[zavandor]

I've used Touring plans for my first two trips, but now I've switched to easywdw. It's not only free, but also incredibly reliable.