TP Touring Plans

[bigbabyblues]

I just signed up a few days ago. I tried a customized touring plan for MK, but it told me to start with Magic Carpets, so I'm not too sure
I am going to keep working on my plan. I do find a lot of the other things helpful. I signed up mainly for the Lines app but have been looking around at the other info.

 

[momdisfan]

Great advice in this discussion - I have purchased the subscription. We are going the end of August and I have been experimenting with the personalized touring plans. I have determined my park days already. Here's my question - does it make more sense to create a touring plan before your 60+ FP window and then get the Fp that the plan suggests or is it better to secure the FP first and then create the plan?

 

[PrincessWithABlaster]

Great advice in this discussion - I have purchased the subscription. We are going the end of August and I have been experimenting with the personalized touring plans. I have determined my park days already. Here's my question - does it make more sense to create a touring plan before your 60+ FP window and then get the Fp that the plan suggests or is it better to secure the FP first and then create the plan?

I create a tentative plan and use it to guide my FP selections then revise when I don't get all the times that fit it.

 

[Stubbzilla]

We've gotten a TP subscription and used custom plans each time we've gone. They've always been pretty close. The thing I'm seeing now with the crowd calendar is that the times look fairly busy - like 5-7 range, yet there have been good dining reservations available for months, and they're still available now right before we're going. I'm talking about character dining and stuff like that, and at normal eating times. We usually have gone in February-March, and once in late September, and I always had a really hard time getting good dining reservations even when crowd estimates were in the 3-7 range. Maybe it was just free dining promos affecting it or Disney staffing differently? When we've gone before the restaurants were full, so I don't see how it could be different staffing.

I've also noticed that on a day that's supposed to have higher crowds in a park vs. a day with slightly lower crowds, often enough the day with a lower predicted crowd level has no good/character dining reservations left and the park with the higher predicted crowd does have good reservations left.

I'm curious what our May trip will be like compared to Feb-March (including one fairly busy March), and September (which seemed just as busy as a busy March trip when we were there).

 

[soniam]

We've gotten a TP subscription and used custom plans each time we've gone. They've always been pretty close. The thing I'm seeing now with the crowd calendar is that the times look fairly busy - like 5-7 range, yet there have been good dining reservations available for months, and they're still available now right before we're going. I'm talking about character dining and stuff like that, and at normal eating times. We usually have gone in February-March, and once in late September, and I always had a really hard time getting good dining reservations even when crowd estimates were in the 3-7 range. Maybe it was just free dining promos affecting it or Disney staffing differently? When we've gone before the restaurants were full, so I don't see how it could be different staffing.

I've also noticed that on a day that's supposed to have higher crowds in a park vs. a day with slightly lower crowds, often enough the day with a lower predicted crowd level has no good/character dining reservations left and the park with the higher predicted crowd does have good reservations left.

I'm curious what our May trip will be like compared to Feb-March (including one fairly busy March), and September (which seemed just as busy as a busy March trip when we were there).

Crowd levels are not a strict measurement of the actual crowds in a park. They use estimated wait times to determine the crowd levels, with the thought that those are indicative of the number of people in the park. However, that assumes that there's a somewhat consistent capacity/throughput for each ride. If Disney reduces that capacity through staffing reductions or actually shutting down part of the ride, then the capacity/throughput is lower. Therefore, the crowd level goes up, even though there aren't more people at the parks. That could explain lots of available ADRs, but high crowd levels. Also, like you said, free dining can affect that.