touring plans, and other like it, do they work?

[ngvenice]

im tempted to subscribe, does this really work, I mean Ive been to 3 diff websites to and they all say diff things as far what parks to avoid wich days, does anyone use these websited, do they work?

 

[suemom2kay]

I use Tour Guide Mike and swear by him. But, I'm a control freak and like to make my own plans (his is a system you learn rather than just following a plan written by someone else).

Others swear by Unofficial Guides Touring Plans. For least crowded parks they sometimes conflict but for how to tour they have many similar concepts. And... they definitely DO WORK!

 

[clandrum]

I use touring plans for the crowd calendar and swear by it. This last trip we did not go by it one day because my daughter wanted to do a DHS and boy did I regret it. The calendar was right it was the park to avoid that day. The rest of the trip we followed it and walked on to everything.

 

[vicki_c]

There are 2 different types of information you get from those sites.

1 - park & crowd recommendations (which park do I go to on x day), and
2 - touring plans (so which rides to do in which order).

I find both valuable and use TGM as well and swear by it. But I have used the Unofficial Guide/touring plans in the past as well and also think their touring plans are good.

The touring plans guys say having a good touring plan is way more important than picking the right day for each park and I think that's accurate. But I still think it's better to have a good plan AND be in a less crowded park.

Edited: Just wanted to add that I have tried RideMax as well, and it also works, but it just wasn't my style for the reasons posted by David below.

 

[dqpowell]

I have used Tour Guide Mike, Unofficial Guide/touringplans.com, and RideMax on various trips. I used and compared all three for one of my trips.

In my opinion, touringplans.com is the best value, offering the most benefits with the lowest subscription cost. If you get the companion book, The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World, the overall cost goes up but the cost of the website subscription is cut in half, and you end up with a useful reference book too.

Tour Guide Mike is useful if you have a lot of time to plan (several months) and can take your time reading everything on the site and interacting on the private forums there. The disadvantage is that a lot of his material is outdated and hasn't been updated in a long time. The advantage is that he has an active community of subscribers on the private forums who are willing to help you work out a plan. And that's the other advantage or disadvantage, depending on what you want to get out of it. He doesn't provide actual step-by-step touring plans. You will build them yourself using his recommendations and touring philosophy and probably some help from the forum regulars.

Touringplans.com offers actual touring plans in lots of "flavors." You pick the plan that best matches your available time and preferences, and it gives you the steps. 1. Go here, and do this. 2. Go there, and do that. ... I have used their touring plans to great success, and can assure you they do work well.

RideMax is designed for the person who wants to customize a touring plan to the nth degree. You enter what rides/attractions you're interested in, and the number of times you want to do each thing, and it comes up with a down-to-the-minute plan for your park day. You have to remember to plan things like potty breaks and lunch. It's good for control freak/commando touring, but little else IMO.

TGM and touringplans offer other useful information such as recommended parks/avoid parks each day. Touringplans has also implemented a new per-park crowd calendar that estimates crowd levels at each park each day.

I like touringplans.com best, but all of them work (keeping in mind what each one is designed to do).

David

 

[Got Muchness]

I'm so obsessed with Touring Plans that I re-subscribe every year even when I am NOT going to Disney that year. Yes it works! I am sure Tour Guide Mike does too. Those are the two I would chose from if I were you. I don't go by Touring plans actual itinerary because I like to do my own. I just use them for guidance and the crowd calendar is so swear by. Also you can get he Lines app with your subscription for your iphone or other smart phone if you have one. I love love love Lines.

 

[toesinthesand]

I recently tried RideMax and liked it. What was said before is true, you enter in your ADR's or a specific lunch time, swim time at the resort, shopping time, etc. and you pick which rides/shows/parades/etc. you want to see and then it makes a customized plan for you that is specific right down to the minute. It tells you the time you need to arrive at each attraction and how long the wait will be.

The feature I liked best was once you select your rides/attractions the program will tell you if you are planning the impossible. It will tell you something along the lines of you have too many things planned in the amount of time you allotted. You can then go back and eliminate things until the program is able to configure a plan for you.

I was with a group of nine in June when we used RideMax and I was amazed at how much stuff we were able to do. We didn't stick to the plan down to the minute like what the program specifies and we improvised along the way. There were a few things we decided to skip and a some that were done twice, but we still never waited more than 20 minutes for anything.

 

[Pluto_fan]

David, thanks for that excellent summary of each of the options! Wow, that is extremely helpful. I am also a fan of touringplans, but always wondered what the other choices were like.

 

[RMulieri]

I always use Touring plans.Last year I tried TourguideMike as well..Really wasn't any better than TP and honestly he was so slow to update stuff that I just got frustrated and stopped using him.But lots of people here love him.

 

[jasmom]

we used touringplans and they really work. We ended up going to DHS when they said not to and it was right. We had GAD passes so it was fine for us, but it was really busy. We also went the next day back to DHS and it was so much less crowed, just like the crowd level said it would be.
Same thing at MK much busier our first day than the second day. The second day it was walk on to most rides, you didn't even need the fast passes. the first day you really did.

 

[scubamouse]

Tour Guide Mike is useful if you have a lot of time to plan (several months) and can take your time reading everything on the site and interacting on the private forums there. The disadvantage is that a lot of his material is outdated and hasn't been updated in a long time. The advantage is that he has an active community of subscribers on the private forums who are willing to help you work out a plan. And that's the other advantage or disadvantage, depending on what you want to get out of it. He doesn't provide actual step-by-step touring plans. You will build them yourself using his recommendations and touring philosophy and probably some help from the forum regulars.

I agree, especially with the bold. I think TGM is worth doing at least once because once you get the mentality, you can figure things out for yourself. First time or two I used him, I learned so much and got so much out of it.

I subscribed to it this trip and I have to say I was disappointed that all the articles I printed out two years ago were still the most recent versions. DHS hasn't been updated to include TSMM. I mean sure everyone knows what the drill is but it's been two years, how about including it? It definitely wasn't my 'go to' bible like it's been in the past.

I've done touring plans for best parks and that really helps. I also love the free WDW wait times app for the iphone. I think it's better than the undercover tourist because the print is bigger for my screen strained eyes and you can let people know if a ride is closed during part of the day. Very helpful when EE was down. I send a PM to UCT giving them feedback so maybe they'll update the app.

 

[ChrisHartman]

I agree with the others. I subscribed to TGM, Ridemax, and Touring Plans because, well, its my first trip and I wanted to get a taste for all of them to make sure i didn't miss anything. (And I'm an OCD planner - LOL)

By far, touring plans is the most valuable of the three.

I sent a question to TGM support to ask about TSM and I didn't even get an email acknowledgement response, that was enough for me not to recommend them. Not to mention, the outdated information. If its a forum you want, disboards is better than the TGM forums. As a newbie, some of the information was helpful, but it was all information I could've easily gotten here as well. Definitely not worth it, to me.

Ridemax, doesn't include Sundays in their touring options for WDW so you have to pick a "like" day. In addition, if you have an early ADR before park opening, you can't add it into your plan. For example, we have an 8am ADR at Tusker House on our AK day. And, because I couldn't specify that we were starting in the back of the park, the touring plan it created really didn't do what I needed it to. It also wouldn't let me specify parent swap, which is kind of a big deal for us since DS is 41 inches tall and we need to work around that in all 4 parks.

With touring plans, you can create your own custom touring plans, use plans that others have created and published or the standard plans they offer. In addition, you get the crowd calendar and the per park crowd calendars. To me, it is by far the best value....not only that, but its the cheapest!

Hands down, touringplans.com is the best...

 

[mjp12831]

Common sense works just as well and it's free.

Get to the parks as early as possible and ride popular attractions standby, utilize am emh, accumulate fastpasses to use later in the day, avoid or delay arrival in PM emh parks until later in the day.

 

[POB14]

I have used Tour Guide Mike, Unofficial Guide/touringplans.com, and RideMax on various trips. I used and compared all three for one of my trips.

David, I've read hundreds of posts on this subject over the years, and yours is the best. I agree with every word.

 

[danceintherain]

IMO the best resources on the touring plans website are the cheat sheets. They're charts that list all the attractions, and block off the most crowded times of day. Towards the end of the day the times are less specific, but it gives you an idea of when NOT to attempt to ride a specific attraction.

I went to Disney twice last year. The first time I utilized the cheat sheets to create my own specific touring plans. I did look at the Unofficial Guide's plans and copied some of the information, but none of them worked for us entirely. The first trip was 10 days long, which allowed us to spend 2 days in every park if necessary, plus a little extra. Their advice helped a lot, and when we deviated from the plan we waited much longer.

The second trip had similar results, except I didn't map out a specific plan, because we were traveling with a larger group. When we deviated from the cheat sheets, the lines were longer. Actually, that group looked at the wait times boards in the parks, didn't believe them, and insisted on walking all the way to the attraction to check. Yeah...that trip wasn't exactly pleasant for me.

Even though my next trip (hopefully) is going to be very relaxed - traveling with an infant - I still want to get a subscription to the website, because I'm curious to see the new system in depth.

 

[ngvenice]

ok you guys convinced me, I just subscribed to touring plans!

 

[shocker]

I think the moral of the story is...have A plan!!! It doesn't really matter which one you choose or even if you severly modify it to your personal tastes. You will be miles ahead of those groups that I saw line up for rope drop. Walk to the end of the road and then stop cold and start discussing which way they wanted to go They just clog up the sidewalk while the rest of us run them over on our way to our first FP or ride.

Have a plan....
Have a plan....
Have a plan....