TGM and Ridemax

[jldunbar]

I purchased both, having used TGM in the past with excellent results. I plan my park days according to TGM and am trying to plan touring with Ridemax.

The problem is, I don't care for the Ridemax touring plans. Is anyone still using just TGM touring recommendations with good results?

p.s. I have gone to the ridemax faq.

 

[baler31]

I did not know Ridemax had pre made touring plans ? We just enter all of our info (what time we will arrive for our first ride, what time and where our adr's and breaks will be) and then select what attractions, rides, shows and it spits out a plan with order, wait times, and walking times to next attraction.

Having used both I much prefer Ridemax over TGM and have never waited over 15 minutes during our visits when following the Ridemax plan. Wish they would add EMH for evening and other parks than MK and also wish they would add Sundays.

 

[baler31]

Are you putting your info and just do not like the schedule ? We like it because we don't wait when we use it, although some of the advice does not follow traditional touring plans. I have used it exclusively for our last 3 trips and even during busy times we did not have to wait lines.

 

[jldunbar]

I did not know Ridemax had pre made touring plans ? We just enter all of our info (what time we will arrive for our first ride, what time and where our adr's and breaks will be) and then select what attractions, rides, shows and it spits out a plan with order, wait times, and walking times to next attraction.

Having used both I much prefer Ridemax over TGM and have never waited over 15 minutes during our visits when following the Ridemax plan. Wish they would add EMH for evening and other parks than MK and also wish they would add Sundays.

I am in-putting my information. For example, at Epcot, it says to get a FP for Soarin (not ride) and then go to Fast Track, at HS, get a fastpass for TSM (not ride) and go to tower of terror. It shows riding the main attractions at the end of the day rather than first thing.

 

[michelle06]

Ridemax takes into account all of your info and gives the plan for the overall reduction of wait times. So, given your plan you save x amount of minutes vs doing big attractions first. However, if you choose to do certain attractions first, you can input a break in that area of the park and tweak. I did that for character meet and greets. Also, want to ride Splash Mt at a particular time right before we head back to the hotel so I don't have to spend the whole day wet. So, sometimes you have to play with it using breaks and start/stop times to accomodate your preferences that you don't want to budge on. Otherwise, it gives you the optimum schedule for reducing wait times (or walking if you choose slow touring).

 

[jldunbar]

Ridemax takes into account all of your info and gives the plan for the overall reduction of wait times. So, given your plan you save x amount of minutes vs doing big attractions first. However, if you choose to do certain attractions first, you can input a break in that area of the park and tweak. I did that for character meet and greets. Also, want to ride Splash Mt at a particular time right before we head back to the hotel so I don't have to spend the whole day wet. So, sometimes you have to play with it using breaks and start/stop times to accomodate your preferences that you don't want to budge on. Otherwise, it gives you the optimum schedule for reducing wait times (or walking if you choose slow touring).

Thanks, I will try this a little more. I have did some of this for example not putting any of the trails at AK in the plan and then using the "free time" on the touring plans for that.

 

[vicki_c]

I think RideMax is cool and we used it a few times. It worked well even if the suggestions were not always intuitive to me. But in the end, I prefer my own plan using TGM. I thought Ride Max ending up being a waste of money for our recent January trip and I'm not sure if I would buy it again or not (we have used it twice).

 

[jldunbar]

Any other thoughts?

 

[baler31]

I agree with the other response about sometimes the plan does seem counter intuitive but it has worked for us on our last 3 visits. Now for things like Toon Town meet and greets I just put in 75 minutes arriving at Toon Town at 9:45 something like this may work for the trails.

Some things we did do differently, i.e. I alway ride TSM at HS then get a FP (this is if I arrive at rope drop) I also in general collect more FP's than they will have on there. I find if you play around with it you will find one or two plans you really like. We usually get a little ahead of the plan in the morning which allows for some random character stops. Even during heavy crowds we have never waited more than 15 minutes for the big rides by using Ridemax. Hope some of this helps.

 

[LizEN]

I'm thinking that in order to align RideMax with TGM a bit more, you could break the day up into sections. For example, do a tour just for the morning and include just those rides suggested by TGM. Then do another tour for the afternoon matching up the rides and time frames with TGM, etc. I'm just guessing though because I haven't seen a TGM print out.

On that note, what exactly do the guides from TGM work? I've used RideMax and Unofficial Guides touring plans and it sounds like TGM is more like UG--yes?

 

[jldunbar]

I'm thinking that in order to align RideMax with TGM a bit more, you could break the day up into sections. For example, do a tour just for the morning and include just those rides suggested by TGM. Then do another tour for the afternoon matching up the rides and time frames with TGM, etc. I'm just guessing though because I haven't seen a TGM print out.

On that note, what exactly do the guides from TGM work? I've used RideMax and Unofficial Guides touring plans and it sounds like TGM is more like UG--yes?

Please PM me.

 

[vicki_c]

I'm thinking that in order to align RideMax with TGM a bit more, you could break the day up into sections. For example, do a tour just for the morning and include just those rides suggested by TGM. Then do another tour for the afternoon matching up the rides and time frames with TGM, etc. I'm just guessing though because I haven't seen a TGM print out.

I don't think that approach would work. The value in RideMax is that it orders all the attractions for a day in the best order. Once you start heavily interfering with what you're riding when, it's not going to give you the same kind of optimal plan (it should be optimal for what you picked, but perhaps not optimal overall). I think you will find if you do that, the wait times in the RM plan start getting much much longer than they would be if you let the program "do its thing". I even did a Ride Max plan with a 7 hour break in the middle and it still worked very well, but I didn't try to force it to do too many things that were different from what the program wanted to do. KWIM? But you can tweak it, over and over again, and come up with many different variations of a plan for a day -- and see which one works for you.

 

[vicki_c]

Please PM me.

 

[jldunbar]

What does this mean??? I am trying to get best pland for my dd and dniece

 

[LizEN]

I don't think that approach would work. The value in RideMax is that it orders all the attractions for a day in the best order.

I agree, it's definitely not the best use of RideMax. Just popped into my head that if you wanted to combine the two you might be able to do it this way. This is the way RideMax suggests using their plan to get more than one park in the same day (DL/DCA). You just tweak your arrival and departure times and cut down on the number of rides. But, I'm sure the more tweaking you do, the less you benefit from the software.

I loved RideMax for Disneyland but have been wondering if it's what I really want for WDW.

Also, have to admit I'm about the PM request as well, the more public input the better in my view!

 

[arcurioa]

I used RM last year and was not real thrilled with the results that I got. We were traveling with my mom and my MIL and the plans had way too much walking for them. I think everyone would have rather waited a little bit longer rather than criss-crossing the parks over and over again. We ended up ditching the plans pretty early on in our trip. We seemed to do fine, not waiting very long for anything in mid August.

This year we are going to the MK one day and I am debating whether I want to try again. We will not have the luxury of spreading our attractions out over the 7 days. It may just be worth the cost to make sure we can squeeze in everything.