Touring Plans Membership?

[Gina-Gina-Bo-Bina]

Does anyone have a Touring Plans membership?

Do you find it helpful in for planning a Universal vacation?

I am wondering if it will be $5.95 well spent, or ultimately wasted. I am mostly interested in their crowd predictions for our Universal weeks (May 1-8 and October 10-17) but wondered if there was more content that we might find valuable.

 

[coastgirl]

Hi Gina. I have had the UO membership at TP. I found the information in the forums to be good, though less traffic than here--but there was a mod who was, you know, paid to be up to date on the parks. (And how do I get THAT job???) Can't remember the crowd info in particular, but I think it was pretty good... For the price, I thought it worth a try, as I can easily drop $30 on a tour book (my shelves are groaning with them) and then discover I knew everything of interest to me already...

 

[macraven]

Does anyone have a Touring Plans membership?

Do you find it helpful in for planning a Universal vacation?

I am wondering if it will be $5.95 well spent, or ultimately wasted. I am mostly interested in their crowd predictions for our Universal weeks (May 1-8 and October 10-17) but wondered if there was more content that we might find valuable.

i don't use any paid touring plans but have looked at a few sites to see what they list as crowd predictions out of curiosity.
i generally look at the cost of the ep for that date to see what UO predicts.
higher ep's means more in the park.
lower costing ep's reflects not many sold.

May 1-8 won't have large crowds at the darkside.

Oct 10-17 will have days that are crowded.
i'll be there during that sametime this october.

oct 10 is a saturday and weekends bring in the crowds, especially since it is the columbus day weekend and hhn will be held that night, sunday (11), wed (14), thur (15) fri (16) at the studios.
the studios will close at 5:00 pm those dates and any date hhn will be held.
i tend to think that the sat, sun, mon will have crowds in the parks.
it will ease up on tues, wed and might on thurs that week you are thinking about going.
i've been doing those dates for the past 7 years.
i see the pattern of the weekend being crowded and after columbus day, crowds slacking off.

 

[PulsarIII]

If best day for which park to visit and expected crowd level is as deep as your planning needs go, the free sites should be all you need. If you wish for a planning guide that recommends the order to tour the park depending on the characteristics (Small Children, Teens, Adults Only, Seniors) of your group then TP may be something you would find worth your time and money. A feature I find very helpful for laying out you own plan for the day is Crowd Tracker. With CT you have graphs showing the expect wait times in 15min intervals for each attraction.

G’day
III

 

[RMulieri]

I have it and I don't use it .It isn't any more or less accurate than the free ones available out there

 

[Gina-Gina-Bo-Bina]

Thanks for all the input, everyone. Sounds like its definitely not needed, but like coastgirl said, I would spend way more on a guidebook and not blink an eye .

I will have to give it some thought!

 

[donnajherren]

I have a membership, but only because I added it to my existing Disney one. I don't know how effective it is, since our trip to Universal this May will be our first, but I don't foresee using it much. I mean, the reason we chose Universal over WDW this year is so that we wouldn't have to meticulously plan, you know?

 

[johde]

I paid for a Touring Plans membership for me last trip. I'm not sure if it helped or not. If you look around the site, you can find discount codes for 20% or so off. Their wait time predictions still need some work.

 

[pigletto]

I also have it and don't use it much. I like the free sites better for crowd calendars and I never find I really need any sort of plan for the Universal Parks.

I don't find their Disney crowd calendars terribly accurate either to be honest. If you plan in advance they always change pretty significantly as the trip gets close, which messes everything up. I used to love them but find for either set of parks they just aren't necessary anymore.

 

[mapleleaf4ever]

I used last spring, and found the customized plans for universal to be well worth it. I will use TP again for my next trip. Definitely think it's worth the extra $6.

 

[hydrotony]

I have the WDW and UOR subscription and have found the UOR part less than great. The show times, which I want to see in advance, are often missing for the WWoHP shows. I haven't used it much in the park because I use a wifi mini-tablet and wifi coverage is still spotty. I like the overall info properties of both WDW and UOR Lines but UOR is just not up to snuff yet. Seth Kubersky of Touring Plans is completing a new Unofficial Guide for UOR and maybe that improves it for the future.

The discount code for a subscription is ZUZU2015.

 

[donnajherren]

I don't find their Disney crowd calendars terribly accurate either to be honest. If you plan in advance they always change pretty significantly as the trip gets close, which messes everything up.

I will say this happened to me last year with WDW. Our dates weren't flexible anyway, so it made no difference in our travel plans, but there were massive changes maybe two weeks out? I'm talking crowd estimates shooting from 5/6 out of 10 to 8/9 out of 10. I remember thinking that if I had relied to any extent on those estimates when choosing my travel dates, I would have been sad.

 

[Gina-Gina-Bo-Bina]

Thanks again, everyone, for the excellent feedback. I think I will give it a pass. When its only the crowd predictions I was looking for, and they sound less-than-reliable at best based on the above posts, its probably not worth the $5.95.

 

[DVCkidsMOM]

I have a membership, but only because I added it to my existing Disney one. I don't know how effective it is, since our trip to Universal this May will be our first, but I don't foresee using it much. I mean, the reason we chose Universal over WDW this year is so that we wouldn't have to meticulously plan, you know?

Me too, but WDW has me "trained" so I can't stop gathering information and trying to have a plan ...then there's the panic feeling when I can't plan because the information isn't out yet, but probably not needed for UOR yet, but - come ON - it's may past my 180+ date and approaching my 60+ date right? I think I need to do some yoga now...

 

[hydrotony]

Universal Orlando parks have their own app for in-park use which has maps and wait times. I heard it is very good but only works while you are in the parks (unless you know how to spoof your devise's location).

 

[kathy884]

Does anyone have a Touring Plans membership?

Do you find it helpful in for planning a Universal vacation?

I am wondering if it will be $5.95 well spent, or ultimately wasted. I am mostly interested in their crowd predictions for our Universal weeks (May 1-8 and October 10-17) but wondered if there was more content that we might find valuable.

I agree that if you are mostly looking at it for crowd predictions, other sources will be just as good.

I got it for our mid December trip. I liked having all the ride descriptions and author and age group ratings, as I was last at Universal in 1989 and DS was last at IOA/Universal in 2008. This let us get details about new attractions since then and help us decide what we wanted to hit. We also used their one day park to park touring plan for those without early entry or express pass and it gave us a good order for hitting attractions. It also gave me some guidelines about length of time to spend browsing around Diagon Alley. We, though with the base plan wanted to cut out some things and found it very awkward to customize // their software just isn't designed for two park plans and I had to dummy in time blocks, etc. Spent way too much time messing with it and got substandard results. So I ended up using the original plan and just skipping the items we didn't want to do (like I used to do with the Unofficial Guide book touring plans back in the 80s before the website). I will say, that I really liked having a plan even this way, that we had a great day at the parks. With the plan had a good way to hit our minimal must dos, knew we would get everything in easily two hours before park closing, meaning we could stop and smell the roses -- dance with Minons, hit a show at Diagon Alley, spend some extra time at the Jurassic Park discovery center without any hesitation. So for us with our limited knowledge of these parks it was $6 well spent.

 

[soniam]

I bought it for our upcoming mid-March trip and use it a lot, especially the plans. I also have a WDW and have had a DLR membership.

 

[ccvh]

I didn't find the need to do a touring plan for Universal since I had the Express Pass, but I like the Lines app so much more than any other I tried. Fast to load up, concise information that was easy to find. The wait times and predictions were pretty accurate. I wish it did link to a map to find things. Better than the official app for finding info quickly, a description or height requirements or if it had a single rider line....