Need help for touring strategy

[PinkBudgie]

I've never been to WDW before and today I bought a touringplans subscription.

For DAK it says the best way to tour is go to the Conservation Station, then take the train from Rafiki's Planet Watch, then take the train from the Africa station. I had thought this train takes you to the Conservation Station. I think I remember reading something about the train is the only way to get there, here on the boards. Is this true? If so, it seems odd to suggest these attractions out of order.

Also on another day we have an 11:30am reservation for San Angel Inn. Do we have time to do Maelstrom FP+ or Gran Fiesta at 11am or should we just shop and look around between 11 and 11:30? Or would we be ok with a ride from Future World around 10:30am?

We are going in mid June. So hard to plan some FP+ rides when I don't really know how long things take.

 

[mesaboy2]

An 11:00a FP for Maelstrom will work just fine with your 11:30a reservation, and so would Gran Fiesta Tour.

The train inside AK only has the two stops, and is the only way to/from RPW. CS is one of the attractions within RPW. TP can be a little goofy sometimes with their plans, this is one of those times.

 

[kmb584]

I've never been to WDW before and today I bought a touringplans subscription.

For DAK it says the best way to tour is go to the Conservation Station, then take the train from Rafiki's Planet Watch, then take the train from the Africa station. I had thought this train takes you to the Conservation Station. I think I remember reading something about the train is the only way to get there, here on the boards. Is this true? If so, it seems odd to suggest these attractions out of order.

Also on another day we have an 11:30am reservation for San Angel Inn. Do we have time to do Maelstrom FP+ or Gran Fiesta at 11am or should we just shop and look around between 11 and 11:30? Or would we be ok with a ride from Future World around 10:30am?

We are going in mid June. So hard to plan some FP+ rides when I don't really know how long things take.

You do need to take the train to Conservation Station/RPW, so it's odd they suggest otherwise. The train station is located in Africa.

I'd definitely knock Maelstrom off of the 11am list but Gran Fiesta is doable provided there isn't a backlog at the FP+ entrance. To be safe I would do a 10:30am FW attraction.

 

[mesaboy2]

You do need to take the train to Conservation Station/RPW, so it's odd they suggest otherwise. The train station is located in Africa.

I'd definitely knock Maelstrom off of the 11am list but Gran Fiesta is doable provided there isn't a backlog at the FP+ entrance. To be safe I would do a 10:30am FW attraction.

GFT does not have FP (thank heaven), and I think Maelstrom is safe because Norway is next door to Mexico (in World Showcase anyway).

 

[PinkBudgie]

Wow, If I hadn't been on The Dis boards I never would have known you can't do the train the way they said. Thanks for the help!

 

[nighttowll]

I love touring plans for the crowd calendar, advice, and pre made plans, but I feel the customized ones could still use some work. It's really just a computer algorithm. It's simply figuring out efficiency based on the parameters you give it, and it does make mistakes. Hence, it telling you to do those activities out of order.

If you try to use the personalize option, be sure you tell the computer to optimize and evaluate after you make your selections. Otherwise, you are only looking at a random list of attractions. Optimizing puts all the attractions in the most efficient order based on the preferences you tell it, either to minimize walking, or to minimize waiting. Evaluating adds times to everything, how many minutes waiting, how many minutes each ride takes, how long it takes to walk between each attraction. But don't forget, it doesn't factor in breaks or distractions along the way.

Personally, I have never had any luck with creating customized plans. They always turn out funky for me. The only thing I use the customized plans for is if I make my own plan and want to evaluate it to see how close my guesses on times are. For instance, you can use this feature to get a general idea of how long the computer estimates it will take you to rides the boat rides before your ADR. Just remember to choose the correct day, enter your start time, put in your ADR info, and list everything else you plan on doing beforehand in order. You can rearrange the order the attractions appear in by clicking and dragging until you have it right. Then make sure to only evaluate the plan. Don't optimize it or it will change the order around, and you don't want to do that. If the computer feels there isn't enough time to fit everything in, it will give you a warning.

I would think you could probably ride the Mexican boat ride before your ADR, and with a FP you could most likely do both. I'm just not 100% sure as we usually don't go peak season.

Just a note about Rafiki's Planet Watch. We always plan to do this and never find the time, and we go off season and stay all day. Unless the petting zoo or train itself is a big must do for you, I might consider skipping this. It eats up a huge chunk of time to do it. Give yourself a good 2 hrs, maybe more since it will be pretty busy when you go.

You have to walk to the train station from wherever you were before, then wait for the train to come, then take the train across, then walk from the train stop up to Conservation Station and Affection Section (petting zoo), (get distracted by Habit Habit, wilderness explorers badges, along the way), spend time at the petting zoo and the indoor educational exhibits where they sometimes do veterinary stuff on animals, make the return trip to the station, re-wait to board the return train, ride the train back, and finally you can walk to your next destination. That's 10 steps total. If each only takes you 10 minutes, that's 1 hr 40 minutes. If you watch a procedure be performed on an animal, stay longer at the petting zoo, have a longer wait than 10 minutes to catch the train, need bathroom breaks, etc, well, you can see how you could easily loose a whole afternoon here quickly.

I'm not saying don't do it if you want to, just be aware of how long it will take. So many people don't realize and then get frustrated because they spent all that time on a train ride and petting zoo and ended up missing out on Nemo or the Lion King or an ADR, not realizing how time consuming the whole process is. Other people go in the morning to watch the vets work and love it. They'll happily spend the whole morning there.

 

[PinkBudgie]

I love touring plans for the crowd calendar, advice, and pre made plans, but I feel the customized ones could still use some work. It's really just a computer algorithm. It's simply figuring out efficiency based on the parameters you give it, and it does make mistakes. Hence, it telling you to do those activities out of order.

If you try to use the personalize option, be sure you tell the computer to optimize and evaluate after you make your selections. Otherwise, you are only looking at a random list of attractions. Optimizing puts all the attractions in the most efficient order based on the preferences you tell it, either to minimize walking, or to minimize waiting. Evaluating adds times to everything, how many minutes waiting, how many minutes each ride takes, how long it takes to walk between each attraction. But don't forget, it doesn't factor in breaks or distractions along the way.

Personally, I have never had any luck with creating customized plans. They always turn out funky for me. The only thing I use the customized plans for is if I make my own plan and want to evaluate it to see how close my guesses on times are. For instance, you can use this feature to get a general idea of how long the computer estimates it will take you to rides the boat rides before your ADR. Just remember to choose the correct day, enter your start time, put in your ADR info, and list everything else you plan on doing beforehand in order. You can rearrange the order the attractions appear in by clicking and dragging until you have it right. Then make sure to only evaluate the plan. Don't optimize it or it will change the order around, and you don't want to do that. If the computer feels there isn't enough time to fit everything in, it will give you a warning.

I would think you could probably ride the Mexican boat ride before your ADR, and with a FP you could most likely do both. I'm just not 100% sure as we usually don't go peak season.

Just a note about Rafiki's Planet Watch. We always plan to do this and never find the time, and we go off season and stay all day. Unless the petting zoo or train itself is a big must do for you, I might consider skipping this. It eats up a huge chunk of time to do it. Give yourself a good 2 hrs, maybe more since it will be pretty busy when you go.

You have to walk to the train station from wherever you were before, then wait for the train to come, then take the train across, then walk from the train stop up to Conservation Station and Affection Section (petting zoo), (get distracted by Habit Habit, wilderness explorers badges, along the way), spend time at the petting zoo and the indoor educational exhibits where they sometimes do veterinary stuff on animals, make the return trip to the station, re-wait to board the return train, ride the train back, and finally you can walk to your next destination. That's 10 steps total. If each only takes you 10 minutes, that's 1 hr 40 minutes. If you watch a procedure be performed on an animal, stay longer at the petting zoo, have a longer wait than 10 minutes to catch the train, need bathroom breaks, etc, well, you can see how you could easily loose a whole afternoon here quickly.

I'm not saying don't do it if you want to, just be aware of how long it will take. So many people don't realize and then get frustrated because they spent all that time on a train ride and petting zoo and ended up missing out on Nemo or the Lion King or an ADR, not realizing how time consuming the whole process is. Other people go in the morning to watch the vets work and love it. They'll happily spend the whole morning there.

Thank you very much for explanation about the train, what it involves, and how long it could take. It does not sound like it will be high on the priority list for us and we would probably rather see some shows. We are spending one full day there and about half a day later in the trip. (Leaving around 2pm, resting at the room, then to Epcot for 7pm ADR).

I just picked all my FP+s last night at 9pm pacific time (60 days ahead eastern time). Took me an hour and a half! I was trying to decide what I could do before ADRs and what I would not want to do right after eating (ToT!). I also had to pick things I'm not sure need a FP (Spaceship Earth, Great Movie Ride), but going in the summer, with everyone having to pick them too, maybe they will.

 

[nighttowll]

Thank you very much for explanation about the train, what it involves, and how long it could take. It does not sound like it will be high on the priority list for us and we would probably rather see some shows. We are spending one full day there and about half a day later in the trip. (Leaving around 2pm, resting at the room, then to Epcot for 7pm ADR). I just picked all my FP+s last night at 9pm pacific time (60 days ahead eastern time). Took me an hour and a half! I was trying to decide what I could do before ADRs and what I would not want to do right after eating (ToT!). I also had to pick things I'm not sure need a FP (Spaceship Earth, Great Movie Ride), but going in the summer, with everyone having to pick them too, maybe they will.

You'd be surprised with Space Ship Earth; it's still pretty popular.

Great Movie Ride not so much. I'd honestly change that to Little Mermaid or another similar smaller capacity show, unless you just really want to do that. My reasoning is that even though LM is a show, and you don't normally need FP for shows. Its hard to get in to see. When we were there, we kept trying to get in line to see it, only to find that we would have to wait until the showing after the one we were waiting for to get in because of how long the line was, due to the fact they were letting in less standby people to make up for the FP+ people. It was really frustrating. I kept checking back throughout the day, but the line was always two shows behind. I think the wait was about an hour. I finally switched one of our FP+, and we were able to see it without waiting. I don't remember it being this way in the past, but since the FP+ it has caused this line to back up. This was in the offseason too, but during testing, so maybe they have fixed this issue now, not sure. I thought it was funny we could walk on TOT, but LM was an hour+ wait.

The two big shows, the Indiana Stunt show, and the car stunt show, have much larger stadium seating so not as big of a deal to get in to see. Beauty in the Beast seating is in between. Muppet Vision is about the same as LM. The Pirate show is very small, not sure if they've added it to FP+ yet or not.

A note about the pirates, when we were there, you had to go first thing in the morning to the Pirate entrance to get a hand written card with a return time on it for later in the day if you wanted to do this. This was independent of the old FP machines and the new FP+ system, not sure how they are doing it now. If you want to do the pirate show, you'll need to find out if you still need to get a paper ticket for it or not. They went fast in the morning, as we only found out we needed them after they were already gone for the whole day. They did tell us that if there were any no shows they'd take stand bys, and after a few attempts, we finally made it into the very last show of the day while Fantasmic was on.

Also, don't give up if you didn't get exactly the FP+ you wanted or decide you want to make changes after you research more. Plenty of people will be canceling and switching things around, and you will see more of that as it gets down to the last minute. Same with ADRs, lots of people book multiple, then cancel the ones they don't need once plans are finalized before the cancelation policy goes into effect. Even day before of day of, people realize that a longer than usual ADR means they will miss their FP+ and cancel. Anything can happen. For instance, we once had a lunch that took us 3 hrs; it was that slow. Waited almost an hour to be seated, then an hour to get our food, another hour to eat and get the bill. It was ridiculous. We had to completely change our whole schedule, missed the show we wanted to see and everything. Another time, I had to reschedule one of my FP+ 3 times in one day because of someone getting sick.

Good luck.

 

[PFHite]

I love touring plans for the crowd calendar, advice, and pre made plans, but I feel the customized ones could still use some work. It's really just a computer algorithm. It's simply figuring out efficiency based on the parameters you give it, and it does make mistakes. Hence, it telling you to do those activities out of order.

If you try to use the personalize option, be sure you tell the computer to optimize and evaluate after you make your selections. Otherwise, you are only looking at a random list of attractions. Optimizing puts all the attractions in the most efficient order based on the preferences you tell it, either to minimize walking, or to minimize waiting. Evaluating adds times to everything, how many minutes waiting, how many minutes each ride takes, how long it takes to walk between each attraction. But don't forget, it doesn't factor in breaks or distractions along the way.

Personally, I have never had any luck with creating customized plans. They always turn out funky for me. The only thing I use the customized plans for is if I make my own plan and want to evaluate it to see how close my guesses on times are. For instance, you can use this feature to get a general idea of how long the computer estimates it will take you to rides the boat rides before your ADR. Just remember to choose the correct day, enter your start time, put in your ADR info, and list everything else you plan on doing beforehand in order. You can rearrange the order the attractions appear in by clicking and dragging until you have it right. Then make sure to only evaluate the plan. Don't optimize it or it will change the order around, and you don't want to do that. If the computer feels there isn't enough time to fit everything in, it will give you a warning.

I would think you could probably ride the Mexican boat ride before your ADR, and with a FP you could most likely do both. I'm just not 100% sure as we usually don't go peak season.

Just a note about Rafiki's Planet Watch. We always plan to do this and never find the time, and we go off season and stay all day. Unless the petting zoo or train itself is a big must do for you, I might consider skipping this. It eats up a huge chunk of time to do it. Give yourself a good 2 hrs, maybe more since it will be pretty busy when you go.

You have to walk to the train station from wherever you were before, then wait for the train to come, then take the train across, then walk from the train stop up to Conservation Station and Affection Section (petting zoo), (get distracted by Habit Habit, wilderness explorers badges, along the way), spend time at the petting zoo and the indoor educational exhibits where they sometimes do veterinary stuff on animals, make the return trip to the station, re-wait to board the return train, ride the train back, and finally you can walk to your next destination. That's 10 steps total. If each only takes you 10 minutes, that's 1 hr 40 minutes. If you watch a procedure be performed on an animal, stay longer at the petting zoo, have a longer wait than 10 minutes to catch the train, need bathroom breaks, etc, well, you can see how you could easily loose a whole afternoon here quickly.

I'm not saying don't do it if you want to, just be aware of how long it will take. So many people don't realize and then get frustrated because they spent all that time on a train ride and petting zoo and ended up missing out on Nemo or the Lion King or an ADR, not realizing how time consuming the whole process is. Other people go in the morning to watch the vets work and love it. They'll happily spend the whole morning there.

We just got back from doing all 4 WDW parks plus IOA last week (week before Easter). Used the customized plans for all five and didn't have any trouble. I just selected the attractions we wanted to do and used the optimize function. We did rope drop and used FP+ later in the day at the WDW parks and the longest wait we had for anything was maybe 15 minutes. We did most of the major attractions (Space and Splash Mountains plus BTMR, Everest (3X -- 2X in morning and once later w/ FP+), Test Track (2X - once in morning and once later w/ FP+), TSM, RNR, TOT).

Waits at WWOHP a little longer, but we did that in the afternoon and it was expected.

 

[nighttowll]

We just got back from doing all 4 WDW parks plus IOA last week (week before Easter). Used the customized plans for all five and didn't have any trouble. I just selected the attractions we wanted to do and used the optimize function. We did rope drop and used FP+ later in the day at the WDW parks and the longest wait we had for anything was maybe 15 minutes. We did most of the major attractions (Space and Splash Mountains plus BTMR, Everest (3X -- 2X in morning and once later w/ FP+), Test Track (2X - once in morning and once later w/ FP+), TSM, RNR, TOT). Waits at WWOHP a little longer, but we did that in the afternoon and it was expected.

That's great to hear. Maybe they have worked some of the bugs out.

I just know I had issues with it not putting my ADRs at the right time, or starting my day at the right time, or telling me to do things like the train example from the OP, and giving me bad FP- instructions when I knew in reality doing what I was trying to get it to do would work differently than the computer was stating. With the removal of FP-, and as the computer gets fed new FP+ data, I think these types of glitches will become less and less. I really love touringplans and have had nothing but success with their premade plans and advice, and I'm sure that eventually the customized plans will have all the kinks worked out of them. It sounds like they are already getting a lot better based on your experience. I'm glad they worked so well for you. Maybe I will give the customized plans a try for our next visit.

 

[PinkBudgie]

Thank you! I will consider that about the Little Mermaid show. I wouldn't have known about that. These are all the little things that make it hard to choose FP+ for a place I've never been. I'm sure we'll be trying to make changes to FP+ on the day of and we'll see how it goes. Muppet Vision I don't need to see since I've seen that many times at DLR. Same goes for Capt EO.

Also good to hear the customized touring plans worked well. If nothing else, I'm having fun playing around with it. And again, since I've never been, it is hard to know how much to put in for one day. I really want to do it all!

 

[nighttowll]

Thank you! I will consider that about the Little Mermaid show. I wouldn't have known about that. These are all the little things that make it hard to choose FP+ for a place I've never been. I'm sure we'll be trying to make changes to FP+ on the day of and we'll see how it goes. Muppet Vision I don't need to see since I've seen that many times at DLR. Same goes for Capt EO. Also good to hear the customized touring plans worked well. If nothing else, I'm having fun playing around with it. And again, since I've never been, it is hard to know how much to put in for one day. I really want to do it all!

In general, if you are looking at average crowds, arrive at park opening and stay the day, and want to do 75% to 100% of the attractions at an average pace, not rushing too much, but not getting too distracted either, you need:

MK- 2 days
Epcot- 2 days
AK - 1 day
HS - 1.5 days
? - 1 day to repeat favorites or hit the 25% you still missed

Can you do these parks in less or more time? Of course.

For instance, lots of people say AK is a half day park. The problem with this statement is that they are only doing half of what AK offers, the half that they are interested in. What they should be saying is that they only think half of the attractions are worth doing, so after hitting the headliners and most popular attractions, it's only a half to 3/4 day park for them. You might find as my family does that you really like AK and want to do all the attractions, in that case you need at least a day, more if you plan on character meals, or to get all the wilderness explorers badges, or to spend a lot of time at the petting zoo, or a lot of time walking through the animal trails, or repeating rides. You can see, if you actually tried to fit in every single thing I just listed plus all the attractions, you couldn't do it in half a day, you probably couldn't do all that in a full day. Just the majority of the attractions and one or two of the above will take about a day, maybe a little more, so that's where I'm getting that number from.

From the above days, you can estimate how many days you will need at each park. So if only half of the attractions appeal to you at MK, plan a day. If you are going to do the parades, spend time window shopping, get lots of character signatures, and maybe do a few ADRs also at MK, add back in a half day to make up for that time, so 1.5 days. If you are going during a very busy time, figure you will need more time than the above to account for long lines, so back to 2 days or more. It's kind of a guessing game based on percentages, crowds, and extra activities, but it usually gives you a close enough guess to plan your trip from.

Also, if it helps any I've found that I can do about the same number of attractions in the first few hours the park is open, as I can do the rest of the day. Assuming, I arrived for RD. We always try to commando tour those first hours, no breaks to maximize the no line or very shorts lines. Then we go back in the afternoon and focus on ADRs, window shopping, parades, shows, playgrounds, and other high capacity attractions. Then if things calm down at night, we may ride a few of the more popular rides we missed or that we want to do again.

With a good touring plan and a little knowledge, you can hit 8-10 attractions in the first 2 hours, more if the parks open at 7:00. It really just depends on the crowds.

Hopefully, I haven't confused you too much. Hope some of this helps.

 

[PinkBudgie]

I feel like I'm cramming for finals! I'll take any and all help I can get!

We have 10 day park hoppers for mid June.
The plan thus far:
1.Epcot
2.MK
3.DAK
4.DHS
5.Day off of parks
6.DAK morning, Epcot evening
7.MK-tour in morning
8.Epcot
9.DHS
10.Day off parks
11.Open park day- whatever we want to go back and see. No ADRs or FPs so far. I call this "Wing It Day"
12.MK-after rope drop, after breakfast at The Wave

There may be more evening park hopping, but I just don't know yet. We are not planning to stop for characters. May or may not happen on the spur of the moment, but not too much. Also it sounds like the character lines are much longer than DLR. There we might stop if it is a short line. The longest we waited was about 20 minutes for Merida and Tinkerbell.
At DLR we are rope drop commandos. At WDW I suspect we will be stopping more often to take it all in (and to consult the map!)

 

[snowweisz]

Have you looked into Josh's site?
I find both his crowd calendar strategies and is cheat sheet are spot on.

http://www.easywdw.com/calendar/june-2014-walt-disney-world-crowd-calendar/

http://www.easywdw.com/cheat-sheets/disney-world-cheat-sheets-maps-touring-plans-and-wait-times/

I know he also has a strategy somewhere for characters, but I can't look for it right now.

On the subject of commandos... I find that taking breaks is a nice way to tour especially if you're going to be there during a season when the parks will have really long hours.

You can hit rope drop and do a lot at your park of choice and then go lunch to a resort and take a nap in your room for a bit.
During June, Magic Kingdom would close at midnight. So imagine that you take a break and then go back to MK at around 4 or 5, you still have 7 or 8 park hours to tour some more!

And those super late EMHs are just as amazing as the first hour after rope drop (if not more since only onsite guests can enjoy them!). Last year, we did walk in at attractions like Peter Pan, Enchanted Tales, Tower of Terror, Splash Mt during those evening EMHs! But it's really hard to be hitting midnight at the parks every day without a mid day break.

 

[PinkBudgie]

Have you looked into Josh's site?
I find both his crowd calendar strategies and is cheat sheet are spot on.

http://www.easywdw.com/calendar/june-2014-walt-disney-world-crowd-calendar/

http://www.easywdw.com/cheat-sheets/disney-world-cheat-sheets-maps-touring-plans-and-wait-times/

I know he also has a strategy somewhere for characters, but I can't look for it right now.

On the subject of commandos... I find that taking breaks is a nice way to tour especially if you're going to be there during a season when the parks will have really long hours.

You can hit rope drop and do a lot at your park of choice and then go lunch to a resort and take a nap in your room for a bit.
During June, Magic Kingdom would close at midnight. So imagine that you take a break and then go back to MK at around 4 or 5, you still have 7 or 8 park hours to tour some more!

And those super late EMHs are just as amazing as the first hour after rope drop (if not more since only onsite guests can enjoy them!). Last year, we did walk in at attractions like Peter Pan, Enchanted Tales, Tower of Terror, Splash Mt during those evening EMHs! But it's really hard to be hitting midnight at the parks every day without a mid day break.

Yes, I used his site to help pick out which parks for which days when I made my ADRs back in December. We are mostly planning afternoon breaks like that. (This is how we do DLR but there our room is only a 10 minute walk) Except for maybe if we are at Epcot which is only open until 9pm. I believe his "best parks" of the day were the non EMH park. I debated about early morning rope drop vs the rest of the day and just decided to go with what he said. We can always hop for a late EMH if we want.