I read the Unofficial Guide thoroughly (I learned about the book through these boards) and found it be an incredible source of information -- crowd calendars, advice on EMH hours, understanding the rides to figure out which we'd like best, structuring the plan in an optimum way so, for example, one morning is devoted to Fantasyland rides and another to the others like Splash Mountain, Thunder Mountain, etc.
However, I was a bit concerned when creating touring plans because the plans they offered didn't quite fit what we wanted to do. I made substitutions but I was worried I was going to throw the plan off completely by doing that. I was thinking it would be great if they had a software so I could customize our own touring plans. And then I found out about Ridemax on these boards!
Ridemax is amazing and so worth it -- we used it during Spring Break and never waited more than 15 minutes for any ride on our plan -- our waits for the most popular rides (Soarin', Tower of Terror, TSM, Rn'R, Expedition Everest, Kilamanjaro Safaris, Thunder Mountain, Splash Mountain, etc.) were 0-10 minutes because we were either there at rope drop or used fastpasses. Test Track was the one exception; we waited 15 minutes using fastpasses at around 6:00 PM. When there was a discrepancy between the posted wait time at an attraction and the Ridemax wait time, it was striking to see the Ridemax wait time was correct! (I actually timed our wait at Pirates of the Carribean to verify this.)
I did play around with it a lot to get what I wanted -- on a first pass, if you add too many rides and shows into the plan, especially at a place like Animal Kingdom, you can wind up with long wait times for Expedition Everest and Kilamanjaro Safaris. But if you make adjustments, you will wind up with what you want. For someone who had little prior knowledge of the parks, I also found the ride descriptions in the UG extremely useful for those pockets of time when we got ahead of plan.
For example, on our day at Animal Kingdom the park opened a little early, and by 9:00 AM we had fastpasses for EE and my daughter had ridden Triceratop Spin (I wasn't even sure if that ride was open -- no one was in line -- but it was). The next step on our plan was to wait in line for the 10:00 AM Lion King show at 9:37, so we had plenty of time. So we rode Triceratop Spin again while my husband rode Primeval Whirl, and then decided to go on the Dinosaur Ride (I knew this was popular due to my UG reading but thought it would be too frightening) which was a total walk-on. I guess everyone was at Kilamanjaro Safaris or EE. Dinosaur actually turned out to be one of our favorite rides in all the parks -- our five year old was scared at points, but afterwards kept talking about it -- she was facinated.
For those who are worried about rushing around and not having time to smell the roses with a Ridemax plan -- well, there is a lot of rushing around in the early morning, especially during periods like Spring Break. But on the other hand, if you want to go on the popular rides, would you rather rush around for a couple hours early in the day or wait in hour-long lines all day? And after the early morning rush, you have the rest of the day to take it easy and smell the roses without worrying about whether or not you're going to be able to experience something. We simply would not have been able to do all that we did if we had not arrived at the parks early with a plan;we would have wasted too much time waiting in lines.
And at some parks we were actually able to do far more than planned for. For example, at DHS, I did not plan to go on Toy Story Mania -- I just didn't want our family to get caught up in all the craziness around that ride. But since we arrived at the park 40 min. early and were almost first in line at the turnstiles, I asked my husband to get fastpasses for it. Also unplanned was a second ride on Tower of Terror, as well as character meetings (Mickey, Donald, Prince Caspian, and Bolt and Rhino). We did that along with all the other rides and shows on the plan (The Great Movie Ride, Rock n' Roller Coaster, Tower of Terror, Beauty and the Beast, Arial Show, Lights, Motors, Action, a half hour break) and then left at 3:00 to go to Epcot for a dinner reservation.
All the planning paid off surprisingly well and we had a wonderful trip!
. I'll update with a longer report once we get back, but I just had to come here and give RideMax a big 
! Oh, and one thing we've been laughing about is that it's so funny to always be traveling AGAINST the crowds-- it seems like there is always a swarm of people coming towards us as we are heading the other direction! I guess that's how you zig when they zag 
!--Katie
