VIP tour help needed.

[Timandalicia]

Going to book our first tour.
Wondering what people think of length of time is good? How far can you get on 10 hours?
How do we eat without losing valuable time?
In order to shore up touring plans, where do you enter the parks?
Can we meet our guide at a ride to start the clock?
My father has cancer. Might be his last trip. You think they’d let us do 12 people?
Does anyone know what rides are currently not included?

 

[DL1WDW2]

I think I have noticed the Disney Tour Guide waiting one morning (standing outside of the resort drop off with a Van outside of BLT to pick up guests for the day. I also noticed this with my recent stay for Halloween at the Contemporary early one morn.
Is your entire group staying at the same location on property?

 

[SkyGuy]

Going to book our first tour.
Wondering what people think of length of time is good? How far can you get on 10 hours?
How do we eat without losing valuable time?
In order to shore up touring plans, where do you enter the parks?
Can we meet our guide at a ride to start the clock?
My father has cancer. Might be his last trip. You think they’d let us do 12 people?
Does anyone know what rides are currently not included?

We’ve done all four parks and every ride we wanted to do in 8 hours, so I think 10 would be plenty; however, depending on what you want to accomplish, it won’t be leisurely. We never do sit-down meals; we either grab a pretzel or a ronto wrap and keep on trucking, or we may stop at a QS with no line if we really need a break. It’s up to you if you want to waste time on a sit-down meal, since you control the tour. You can meet your guide at a hotel (on property) or at a park - signature service will work out the logistics with you. When you’re with the guide you will enter the park through backstage areas for quicker access. Ten is the max allowed; if you want twelve, you will need to pay for two VIP tour guides. They are very strict about this - even infants are included in head count for VIP Tour purposes. Any ride that has a LL is included. You may only ride Rise of the Resistance and Remy one time, but you may ride any other ride as many times as you please.

 

[Timandalicia]

We’ve done all four parks and every ride we wanted to do in 8 hours, so I think 10 would be plenty; however, depending on what you want to accomplish, it won’t be leisurely. We never do sit-down meals; we either grab a pretzel or a ronto wrap and keep on trucking, or we may stop at a QS with no line if we really need a break. It’s up to you if you want to waste time on a sit-down meal, since you control the tour. You can meet your guide at a hotel (on property) or at a park - signature service will work out the logistics with you. When you’re with the guide you will enter the park through backstage areas for quicker access. Ten is the max allowed; if you want twelve, you will need to pay for two VIP tour guides. They are very strict about this - even infants are included in head count for VIP Tour purposes. Any ride that has a LL is included. You may only ride Rise of the Resistance and Remy one time, but you may ride any other ride as many times as you please.

Wow. That is really helpful. Thank you very much. Good to know we will have enough time. I think I’ll reserve San Angel at the end to celebrate the day after the tour, and snack during. Good to know about rise and remi. I’ll have to figure out the 12 person thing. 2 people are leaving early in the trip so they might just be out of luck.
Thanks again.

 

[Centopar]

A (ridiculously) kind friend gifted us a tour in December. He's a member of Club 33 and had one spare; I need to get him something fabulous for Christmas!

We're a family of four; our youngest is going to be 19 months when we go. We're doing seven hours, and have decided to attempt all four parks but not get too hung up about it; we'll do Animal Kingdom last (I've booked Tusker House at the finish of the tour). If we don't make it to AK in time for any rides, I'm more than happy with that; we'll be there for two weeks and it's always an afternoons-only park for us anyway. ILL means that we'll be able to ride FoP even without the tour (I've never actually been able to book FoP before with FP+ because we've always stayed offsite), so we're quite relaxed about it.

For us, the tour isn't about counting rides per hour and using that as a proxy for value. It's about a new and fun experience, hanging out with a guide who has in-depth knowledge about the parks and their history, and knowing we can ride some things which we've had to skip before because the kids are too little to tolerate very long lines. (My daughter's just big enough now for things like SDD and Seven Dwarves; she's beyond excited to be able to ride all the "big girl" rides she can in one day.)

 

[holden]

We’ve done the tour twice; both times for 7 hours. I found that to be a good amount of time. Sure we could have done a few more attractions if it was longer, but we were exhausted after running around all day. Both tours were at a fast pace.

We never stop to eat. We start at park opening so that by the time our tour is finished we are ready for a meal. We bring snacks or grab a quick popcorn, etc. I can’t see paying a crazy amount of $ per hour to sit down and eat.

On one tour we met our guide in AK to start at FOP. On another we were picked up at Kidani to begin our tour at AK. Both worked out well. You enter all parks through back entrances when you are with the guide. In AK there is an entrance right in Pandora.

With a group of 12 you will be charged for two guides. If it’s possible to narrow it down to ten I’d do that.

Both of our guides were fabulous. Jimmy was our most recent. Our first tour guide was Raevon. He is now a WDW Ambassador! We’ve seen him on tv a few times. Pretty cool!

Enjoy your tour!

 

[WIll C]

We just (this morning) booked our first VIP tour. We have a small party so hopefully move quickly but we stuck with 7 hours. I doubt we could do more.

Start at AK where we will meet the guide. Ride FOP, maybe Navi or Everest and then head to HS and end up at MK for fireworks. It's also extended hours for MK resort guests so we'll have even more time there after we eat something.

We're starting after Noon so we'll eat something beforehand and buy snacks to take with us. We'll limit any time not heading to or waiting for rides. We tend not to be big eaters as it is so skipping a meal or so won't be an issue.

This is the first full day of our trip so any other day we spend in the parks will be easy as we've ridden all we wanted.