RideMax Rants

[dawnball]

Mind you, these are just rants, and it's only my first few hours with the software. I don't want anyone to think that I hate it and it's horrible and they should never use it. As far as I can tell - it works.

1) The "Select Park and Visit Date" screen. At the bottom of the calendar there's a line of text. I can see about the top 3 pixels of the line. The top serifs and just a bit more. It's driving me crazy.

2) Plan options. If you change your day or park - it loses the plan options. I have to keep remembering to go and fix it.

3) Adding and removing attractions. There is no "remove all" button.

4) It does everything in Internet Explorer, which I hate with a passion and which doesn't paste properly into excel. I have to save the html, open it in firefox, select my data and copy and paste.

 

[tracer]

Breath in breath out!! I feel your frustration. I too felt that way at first, but after using it for a few weeks I really am happy with the end result. The one thing that BUGS me is the lack of a 'remove all' button. I have been pasting my itineraries into word, changing the size of the font to smaller which allows me to have 3 or so alternative scheduels on one page. Good luck and vent all you need to, it usually helps.

 

[dawnball]

I suspect that I'll really appreciate what I get out of it, it's just annoying in the meantime. Worse, they don't have my dates yet - so I'll need to re-do this all next month. I'm not sure if I'll have the time then though, so I'm doing it now.

I have another one. "Free Time". I have a 2 hour break, and I can't add Alice one more time, even though Alice has a 30 minute wait on each side of the break. and it's not a scheduled break either. *sigh* ah well. I don't think we're actually going to ride Alice anyway.

 

[tracer]

Oh I had to work the "free time" over and over. If you change your break by 5 minutes it can change your whole layout...which is cool...sometimes!!

I did 3-4 IT's for every A.M. and every P.M. Instead of doing a full day because I am not sure how long we will be back at the hotel for the kids to take naps.

Did you try adding a break if you didn't have one? Or vise versa? Keep working it and you'll get something that makes sense. For me, I am not really going to go by the minutes, just try to stay within reason and hit the ride order it gave me.

Re: your Alice comment, it may have been the best way to keep the other ride lines shorter. Keep workin' it!!!

 

[HydroGuy]

In time RideMax will have all of these features, I believe. I have been sending them a list longer than yours for over a year. Other features I would really like:

1. The ability to but in "hard breaks". If I want to see the fireworks and be in the hub at 8:30, I want a hard break at 8:30. But RideMax assumes all breaks are soft breaks and will move the 8:30 break time around any time between 8:10 or 8:50.

2. The ability to set hard times for certain rides. If I add a ride twice (say Splash Mtn) it will invariably schedule that ride twice in a row. But often I want to do it once in the day and then again at night. Also, there are certain rides I like to do at certain times of the day, regardless if those times are "optimal".

3. The ability to set my "unoptimized" itinerary and have RideMax just tell me how long it will take.

4. The ability to have an optimized itinerary that starts when I enter the park and then does not schedule any "free time". Thus rather than schedule rides at the beginning and end of the day with a break in between, the rides would be scheduled without artificial breaks (and only use the breaks I schedule). This would be useful for telling me how soon I could finish what I want to do.

5. The ability to say when I want to walk out of the park. Right now you have to say when you want to get on your last ride. But sometimes RideMax will schedule a long ride at that time - say POTC which takes almost 20 minutes. When it does that then I cannot leave the park when I want. So then I have to enter an earlier "last ride time", in which case it might put a different and shorter ride last (like Dumbo which lasts 2 minutes). Then I will be done too early.


Regarding your Internet Explorer, I do not think that one is RideMax's fault. It just launches an HTML page, I believe. If IE starts it is because that is your default application for HTML. You can change this in the Control Panel by changing the associated application for HTML to FireFox.

 

[dawnball]

All of those would also be nice features. I've found that my repeats get mixed in together, actually and would rather have them be sequential.

Regarding your Internet Explorer, I do not think that one is RideMax's fault. It just launches an HTML page, I believe. If IE starts it is because that is your default application for HTML. You can change this in the Control Panel by changing the associated application for HTML to FireFox.

Actually, no - firefox is my default browser, and the default association with html. When I save the files and double click on them they launch successfully in firefox. I think I know why this happens, and if I'm right it's a development issue, and probably to guarantee layout.

 

[dawnball]

Ah, multi-select with shift and control enabled. I *can* delete all the rides from an itinerary in one swell foop!

 

[HydroGuy]

Upon further consideration I thought I should say that, despite my "wish list" posted earlier, I think RideMax is very kewl. It is a unique product and I like experimenting with it. It is something that everyone should consider.

Glad to see you made some progress with the interface.

 

[dawnball]

Having never visited DLR before (and having lots of recent visits to WDW under our belts) we were really concerned that DL was going to have much longer lines and that we didn't know enough about the traffic flow to avoid them. People talk about waiting in lines for hours, and my family just doesn't wait well. My preschooler has a meltdown, I start to get claustrophobic and paranoid and the day is shot to heck.

Ridemax has given me some confidence that the lines aren't really any longer and it's given me some data to know which lines are longer and should be scheduled around.

It really is a nifty idea and very useful - a good bit more useful than the guide books I bought.

 

[HydroGuy]

Funny you should say that. A couple months before our first WDW trip last year RideMax came out with their WDW version. I used it the same way as you are using the one at DLR. By experimentation I gained a feel for how the lines would build. And it helped me understand how much we could fit practically fit in in one day - especially with Epcot. I never followed a strict RideMax itinerary.

I also used TGM a lot, and kind of melded TGM advice and RideMax test itineraries. And that worked. We rarely waited in any kind of lines.

I cannot remember when you are planning your trip, but unless you go during a very crowded time (like on July 4 - in which case RideMax data will be very close to reality) RideMax errors on the side of caution and overpredicts wait times. I suspect you will find lines 20-50% less than what RideMax tells you. It did the same thing for me when I was at WDW in 2006. I thought that might help you to be aware of that.

And the idea that somehow lines are "longer" at DLR than WDW is funny. I do not know where that came from. DL and DCA have a lot more rides on average than the WDW parks and that sucks up people. Plus the park hours tend to be longer. If anything that makes the lines at DLR shorter than WDW.

 

[Pirate-Emery]

The problem I have with it, is it isn't updated for the "Fast People", those that are able to go back and forth quickly.

Now, this really comes into effect with this mode: going back and forth between PARKS. Instead (with RideMax), I have to schedule a break in DL so that I have DCA time.

And frankly, I'm not going to do what it says for tomorrow. Not at all...


Also, why can't I use a RideMax for Sundays? Does this annoy anyone else?

 

[Danauk]

How far in advance do you guys purchase ride max? I know you need to wait for info for the dates you are going to use it properly, but I like to plan so I would want to buy it as soon as I could so I could understand the best way to use it etc.

 

[dawnball]

Well your choice is a 90 day subscription or a 1 year subscription. I bought it once I decided to use Ridemax, but I was inside the 90 days. I probably would have waited until 90 days otherwise, but if I had 2 trips planned in a year I might purchase once I was within the 1 year window for the last trip.

 

[dawnball]

I'm really not sure where the idea that DL had longer rides came from. I think it's that most of the pictures I've seen look crowded. We're going in early-mid may (2nd-15th) and the DL hours are shorter than WDW hours during the week, particularly DCA so I think that there's some feeling of not having as much time. Also, it felt like our first choice hotel booked really early - which I suspect is more that WDW has significantly more lodging available during the off season.

Not very rational, I'll admit.

 

[JennyW]

Don't bother buying RideMax more than 45-60 days in advance, because the ride info doesn't get updated until then. For example, we're going in mid April. About a week ago they updated the ride info for April. They seem to update it around the end of every month for the month following the next month.

They don't do Sundays because they've decided not to do Sundays. It's a personal thing, apparently. I'm guessing a religious thing. Just like some businesses choose to be closed on Sundays.

 

[HydroGuy]

Also, why can't I use a RideMax for Sundays? Does this annoy anyone else?

They don't do Sundays because they've decided not to do Sundays. It's a personal thing, apparently. I'm guessing a religious thing. Just like some businesses choose to be closed on Sundays.

Yes, I agree there is a religious reason which is fine by me. But it is not only offering Sunday itineraries. Remember, if they do that then they have to collect data on Sundays as well. Since they apparently are not willing to do that, then offering itineraries for Sundays would be a guess on their part which they are not willing to make.

Finally, they say this clearly on their website and give advice on how to choose an alternate day which represents Sunday. They also do this for their WDW version, FWIW.

 

[HydroGuy]

How far in advance do you guys purchase ride max? I know you need to wait for info for the dates you are going to use it properly, but I like to plan so I would want to buy it as soon as I could so I could understand the best way to use it etc.

If you buy the 90 day subscription, I would buy it 90 days in advance. It is true that they do not offer data until 4-8 weeks in advance, so you will not be able to run scenarios at first for your actual dates. But you can experiment.

Even so, even after they offer data 4-8 weeks early, they still may modify this data based on what is happening during this time. Thus you should always run your itineraries as close as possible to your departure date as possible. With that, it doesn't matter if you get your data 8 weeks in advance, because you should re-run everything the week before anyways.

The bottom line is that no matter how early you buy it, or how early you get your data, you should only experiment with it until right before your trip when you run your actual itineraries.

 

[HydroGuy]

I'm really not sure where the idea that DL had longer rides came from. I think it's that most of the pictures I've seen look crowded. We're going in early-mid may (2nd-15th) and the DL hours are shorter than WDW hours during the week, particularly DCA so I think that there's some feeling of not having as much time. Also, it felt like our first choice hotel booked really early - which I suspect is more that WDW has significantly more lodging available during the off season.

Not very rational, I'll admit.

Not to be argumentative, but out of curiosity I looked at the hours in early May. Here is what I found:

MK: 9AM-9PM or 9AM-10PM (12-13 hrs per day)
Epcot: 9AM-9PM (12 hrs per day)
MGM: Usually 9AM-8:30PM (11.5 hrs per day)
AK: 9AM-6PM (9 hrs per day)

DL: 9AM-8PM Mon-Th, 9AM-12AM Fri-Sat, 9AM-11PM Sun (11, 14 or 15 hrs per day - average 12.5 hrs per day)
DCA: 10AM-6PM Mon-Th, 10AM-9PM Fri-Sun (8 or 11 hrs per day - average 9.3 hrs per day)

Conclusions? DL has more differention between weekdays and weekends, but the average was about the same as MK. But this also parallels the fact that crowd differences between weekdays and weekends at DL are greater than MK. Comparing DCA to MGM and AK shows DCA is comparable to AK in hours but less than MGM.

Here is a comparison of July hours:

MK: 9AM-11PM or 9AM-12PM (14-15 hrs per day)
Epcot: 9AM-9PM (12 hrs per day)
MGM: Usually 9AM-10PM (13 hrs per day)
AK: 9AM-8PM (11 hrs per day)

DL: 8AM-12PM (16 hrs per day)
DCA: 10AM-10PM (12 hrs per day)

Conclusions? DL has longer hours in the summer than any of the WDW parks, and DCA's hours are comparable to Epcot, MGM and AK.

One other difference here, and I think this is key, is that with DCA and DL being so physically close, it is easier to park hop in the morning and evening. What this means is that at DLR it is much easier to experience the full DL hours each day because you can start and end your day there. In other words, even though DCA may start at 10AM, you can easily start your day at DL at 8AM (or 9AM in May) and then hop to DCA. The same thing goes in the evening after DCA closes when hopping back to DL. At WDW this is much harder, and you are more likely not to try to hop to the park which is open latest (MK) because of the time it takes to park hop.

Not sure if this proves anything. In general it is fair to say that the scheduled park hours are roughly comparable between DLR and WDW with DLR. DLR has slightly less hours than WDW in May, but slightly more in July. But the easier parkhopping at DLR allows you to more easily spend more hours of each day inside one of the parks. The walking distance hotels also help you do this. And, for that matter, so does the overall better weather.

 

[emilyclaire]

Probably a silly question, but I've never even seen Ridemax, so here goes: Does Ridemax allow you to put it exact times for your ADR's in the parks? And does it calculate how long meals will take too? It seems like it couldn't, since they would have no way of knowing how much food a party would order or how crowded a restaurant will be! I guess my question really is, how do they account for your meal breaks when planning your itinerary?

 

[JennyW]

You can have two planned breaks during your day of a duration that you specify.