planning advice

[cjnix29]

I'm trying to get my days scheduled, as my fast pass window opens next week. We are Disney veterans, but last year when we went, my normal strategy seemed to not work at all. We were rope drop people, morning EMH people. We just found that it didn't work. Now, it was Easter week, which was part of the issue. But going again in April, and want to pick a better strategy. I've been looking at different crowd calendars, and there is so much variation between them. Is there one that is more accurate? Do you go to morning EMH? or skip that park all together? When do you start your fastpasses for the day? 10? 11? Advice wanted!! Thanks!

 

[chris benton]

You "found that it didn't work" is extremely vague. What issues did you have?

 

[Klayfish]

I'm trying to get my days scheduled, as my fast pass window opens next week. We are Disney veterans, but last year when we went, my normal strategy seemed to not work at all. We were rope drop people, morning EMH people. We just found that it didn't work. Now, it was Easter week, which was part of the issue. But going again in April, and want to pick a better strategy. I've been looking at different crowd calendars, and there is so much variation between them. Is there one that is more accurate? Do you go to morning EMH? or skip that park all together? When do you start your fastpasses for the day? 10? 11? Advice wanted!! Thanks!

There was a long discussion on here recently about crowd calendars. The summation of it is that they're useless and a waste of time. None of them can be any more accurate than flipping a coin or throwing darts blindfolded, so don't bother with them. Frankly, I think they're intentionally misleading and deceptive.

We are offsite people, so we can't do EMH. However, we don't even look to see what park has them, as it doesn't matter to us. We don't notice any difference.

We start our FP+ the moment we plan to step foot in the park. So if it's 10am (we don't rope drop), that's when we start. If we're hanging out in the rental house until 2pm, our first FP+ is for 2pm. There's really no reason to "save" them for later. They are plentiful and pretty easy to get same day, with very limited exceptions.

I know it's generic advice, but truly my best suggestion is to plan to go to the park you want to go to on the day you want to go. Don't waste your time with "crowd calendars" or special "strategies". Do what suits your family.

 

[Mome Rath]

Are you park hop people? That may change things a bit. We still love EMH and rope drop, but we hop about once a day. So, one way to do it is to rope drop a morning EMH (AK for example), and then soon after that hour, or when you start noticing more people pile in, then you hop to a different park (usually a park with EMH that day is more crowded than non-EMH parks).

Another aspect is FP's and are you willing to use the refresh strategy to get more FP's for the day. If you want to do that, it is recommended that you get your first 3 FP's out of the way as soon as you can so that you can begin to hunt for your 4th, 5th, etc... So, sometimes we do that, and sometimes we set up our FP's for the park that we are going to hop to, just depending on which parks we hit in a day and in what order.

ETA; I personally think "Crowd Calendars" are worthless, so I never look at them.

 

[PrincessWithABlaster]

When in April are you going? Easter week again? If not, then I would not necessarily say that your RD EMH strategy isn't going to work this time. Easter week is busier than most. Other strategies that work for people are refreshing for FPs or staying late and hitting rides ride before closing.

Also if you want to hit EMH do so, the impact on crowds is greatly exaggerated. One of the respected bloggers took a look at variations in crowds on different days of the week and found that the difference between the busiest day and least busy day was about 5 mins per ride at MK. The EMH were not the most busy (they fell in the middle).

 

[Alesia]

Without knowing what didn't work (and why it didn't work,) it's impossible to give good advice.

 

[cjnix29]

We are going the first week in April. My husband is running the Star Wars races. It just seemed to us that the EMH parks were SO incredibly crowded. We are fortunate in that we are not people that feel like we have to see everything or run from one place to another. We have been many many times, and so it's all in stride for us. Last time I planned our days around EMH. We did have park hoppers, and we did a split stay at BC and GF, so we planned our park days around those stays to be more efficient. It may have just been wall to wall people no matter what we did though. But it seemed we picked the wrong place to be each time! But we did rope drop, and I planned our fast passes to start about an hour or so after opening time. We did grab more fast passes during the day, and switched them up when we needed to. But we never rode the boat ride in Mexico. We always do that, it was always just packed to the gills! We only did small world once, because the line were so long. That is crazy! We always do that more than once, because it's a quick line usually. Maybe that trip was just an anomaly, but I don't want to repeat it! We are staying at SSR this time, so not as convenient for rope drop, but not out of the question. (but with DH running three races, an in room washer and dryer is essential! lol)

 

[Mome Rath]

When something like Gran Fiesta Tour is packed, it's just usually that way WDW wide... or there's a storm. lol It sounds like you were just there at peak time. If you didn't really like the EMH parks you can always just rope drop the non-EMH parks and go from there. I find Fantasyland is much busier now pretty much all the time, which means even Small World can have a wait, hence milk the FP system as much as you can.

 

[chris benton]

We are going the first week in April. My husband is running the Star Wars races. It just seemed to us that the EMH parks were SO incredibly crowded. We are fortunate in that we are not people that feel like we have to see everything or run from one place to another. We have been many many times, and so it's all in stride for us. Last time I planned our days around EMH. We did have park hoppers, and we did a split stay at BC and GF, so we planned our park days around those stays to be more efficient. It may have just been wall to wall people no matter what we did though. But it seemed we picked the wrong place to be each time! But we did rope drop, and I planned our fast passes to start about an hour or so after opening time. We did grab more fast passes during the day, and switched them up when we needed to. But we never rode the boat ride in Mexico. We always do that, it was always just packed to the gills! We only did small world once, because the line were so long. That is crazy! We always do that more than once, because it's a quick line usually. Maybe that trip was just an anomaly, but I don't want to repeat it! We are staying at SSR this time, so not as convenient for rope drop, but not out of the question. (but with DH running three races, an in room washer and dryer is essential! lol)

So was that the first time you went during Easter week? My guess is that you normally went during low crowd times previously, and are comparing that to, "AVOID AT ALL COSTS" crowd levels, and now you know the difference between crowd levels. Perhaps expectations should be tempered accordingly when you go with tens of thousands of your closest friends because their kids are out of school. I'll bet you got more done than 90% of everyone else who was there. I get frustrated walking through the sea of WDW smitten slow walking gazers in World Showcase on a CL4 day. On a bonkers cl day, I'd lose my marbles. If crowds are not in your favor, I'm not sure if your strategy was the issue. The only thing I'd suggest, is to try to work in the "previous day park emh" strategy. Either RD or try to hop to the park that had emh the day before if it works out for you. So, if you are at an am emh at park a, and park b had emh the previous day, try to target park b as the park to hop to after am emh at park a. OR, if there are no am emh, then rd the park that had emh the day before. Thinking would be that the people who used emh the day before would "cross that park off the list." I employ this method when I can, but also, going during heavy crowd times when kids are out of school - not a chance for me. WAY too expensive to spend time trying to walk through crowds and stand in lines for everything. Just nowhere worth it compared to taking the kids out of school for a few days instead, and having a vacation. Plus, I'd simply just lose my marbles. I'm not gonna spend a ton of money to lose my marbles. I can do that at home for cheap.