Touring Plans actual touring plans worth it now?

[Spaceace5150]

On a recent trip I found the wait time app much closer to reality than Disney's posted times. Crowds are so crazy I don't know how they are adjusting the crowd calendars.

I like supporting them as they do great work, and the podcast is the best one out there.

 

[J-Dog]

You can put in your LL and Genie + reservations once you get those, hit optimize and it maps out the most efficient plan for you. You also can put in your planned meals and places. Not sure if it's worth it to others, but it is for me. I buy the subscription to start with their premium touring plans which are recommendations for the group I am going with as to what to do with just one park day (subscription is required for access to those and I want that access), do additions and subtractions customized from there based on group preferences (we have experience from being at the parks before, so don't always want to do what they have on the plan or have some stuff we want to do that isn't on the plan -- for the most part thought the plans are a great starting point for us and pretty spot on for what would make sense for us to do (helpful to me for planning a Disney park day), put in meals, optimize and then I actually follow the plan with minimal deviations.

In decades past with the paper fast passes they were so spot on as to when to pick up paper fast passes, then do this, this, and this, and then do this ride with your FP. It was absolutely amazing. They are the reason of all the systems Disney had before I loved the paper fastpasses best. I will be trying the plans with Genie+ and LL on March 21 and 23 my two Disney days and can report back. (Note I have not tried their plans plugging these in yet. This will be my first trip with the new system.)

I did a Christmas trip without the plans one year and hated my experience. The next year I did a Christmas trip with the plans and had the best time and reasonable expectations of what I can do. Just the predictions that help me decide what to do and what to skip is super helpful to me for making my Orlando vacation great.

With FP+ they would tell me to not even use fastpasses that didn't save me time (The system intelligently told me not to zig zag the park for bottom of the barrel fastpasses that were all the were available to me when they wouldn't save me time overall. I appreciated that in the FP+ years. It did though help me realize how worthless FP+ pretty much was for offsite visitors.). I could never get the FPs they recommended as an offsite visitor FYI.

Four in our party are doing one park to park day at Universal with a one time express pass over the busy spring break time and I subscribed to touring plans for that to help them do an efficient park day. A plan with and without the one time EPs that I did are what convinced me to spend the money on the EPs too. If it weren't for Touringplans it would have been much harder to make that decision, but I could clearly see a great day with the EPs and for the long lines predicted for the things the kids wanted to do without the EPs it didn't even look like it would be worth going for one day at that busy time.

If it weren't for Touringplans there is no way I would do as many Orlando vacations as I do for sure.

I don't mean any offense, and I am glad the Plans work for you, but doesn't all that mean even MORE time staring at your phone?

Personally, I hate G+, not for the cost or the inconvenience, but for the need to be always using my phone. If anything increases my phone use when I'm on vacation, I'm against it.

 

[Westerner]

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[Goofy4]

I think the TP blog says something about G+ being a continuous work in progress for them; which makes sense. If nothing else, it's probably a full time job trying to keep up with Disney's tweaks to the system.

We are just wrapping up a 4-day vacation and I find that G+ pretty much thwarts planning. Just 2 of us this time. I will never be back with a larger group and high crowd levels, given the current state of LL/G+. I have no idea what I'm going to get from the app at 7AM, or at what time I may get it. Ditto for the next selection. Simply no way I can effectively orchestrate a crowd-avoiding plan unless I get a lot smarter, or the app does.

Edit: I will likely always have a TP subscription. The cost to be at Disney easily justifies picking up on the smallest of hints and suggestions.

 

[jpkkld]

I couldn’t use an actual touring plan at MK because we bought G+ and ILL$. But what I COULD do was build a touring plan for MK without those and confirm there wasn’t enough time in the day. It made it much easier to see I would need to shell out for the paid options.

I figured if we shaved off even 1 hour, we could do it all on our busy spring break day. We lucked out and the crowd was lighter than predicted, so G• worked awesomely.

On the days we didn’t use G+ (Epcot & AK) the plans were helpful to keep us on track moving from one land to another “on time,” We don’t actually follow a plan minutely, but I do build them and that effort helps me manage the day sort of on-the-fly.

 

[Twitterpaited]

I use it to get a better idea of how much I can fit into the day, or how long our plan will take. I think the Lines app will also be very helpful. If you use G+ or ILLs, touring seems to require much more flexibility and making decisions as you go.

 

[goingtotheworld]

You can put in your LL and Genie + reservations once you get those, hit optimize and it maps out the most efficient plan for you. You also can put in your planned meals and places. Not sure if it's worth it to others, but it is for me. I buy the subscription to start with their premium touring plans which are recommendations for the group I am going with as to what to do with just one park day (subscription is required for access to those and I want that access), do additions and subtractions customized from there based on group preferences (we have experience from being at the parks before, so don't always want to do what they have on the plan or have some stuff we want to do that isn't on the plan -- for the most part thought the plans are a great starting point for us and pretty spot on for what would make sense for us to do (helpful to me for planning a Disney park day), put in meals, optimize and then I actually follow the plan with minimal deviations.

In decades past with the paper fast passes they were so spot on as to when to pick up paper fast passes, then do this, this, and this, and then do this ride with your FP. It was absolutely amazing. They are the reason of all the systems Disney had before I loved the paper fastpasses best. I will be trying the plans with Genie+ and LL on March 21 and 23 my two Disney days and can report back. (Note I have not tried their plans plugging these in yet. This will be my first trip with the new system.)

I did a Christmas trip without the plans one year and hated my experience. The next year I did a Christmas trip with the plans and had the best time and reasonable expectations of what I can do. Just the predictions that help me decide what to do and what to skip is super helpful to me for making my Orlando vacation great.

With FP+ they would tell me to not even use fastpasses that didn't save me time (The system intelligently told me not to zig zag the park for bottom of the barrel fastpasses that were all the were available to me when they wouldn't save me time overall. I appreciated that in the FP+ years. It did though help me realize how worthless FP+ pretty much was for offsite visitors.). I could never get the FPs they recommended as an offsite visitor FYI.

Four in our party are doing one park to park day at Universal with a one time express pass over the busy spring break time and I subscribed to touring plans for that to help them do an efficient park day. A plan with and without the one time EPs that I did are what convinced me to spend the money on the EPs too. If it weren't for Touringplans it would have been much harder to make that decision, but I could clearly see a great day with the EPs and for the long lines predicted for the things the kids wanted to do without the EPs it didn't even look like it would be worth going for one day at that busy time.

If it weren't for Touringplans there is no way I would do as many Orlando vacations as I do for sure.

Curious to know how Touring Plans worked out using G+ and ILL during your trip...

 

[kathy884]

Curious to know how Touring Plans worked out using G+ and ILL during your trip...

At Epcot, with so few LL attractions, our touring plan was helpful (I ended up getting the LLs for about the time we'd hit the attraction) which put us ahead of the game. We did two days there. On the first day, I got a Soar'in LL which at 9:15 to 10:15 meant we rope dropped the Dinosaur ride, went to the Living Seas and Nemo and then did Soar'in. It was super nice too that I was with my dad who had a scooter and they let us do front of line for Living with the Land even without an LL (actually an even faster line that LL). I did in fact on the second day, only sign in to get the first LL for Frozen at 7:20 p.m. rather than seven, just thinking we wouldn't be over to Norway till 1 p.m. or so and made a guess that waiting 20 minutes that might be when I'd get the LL (random guess). And what do you know, I got a LL for 12:50 p.m. to 1:50 p.m. LL, but we actually arrived at 12:40 p.m., so we just looked around for 10 minutes before getting in line. We mostly enjoyed Flower and Garden and World Showcase. I was touring with three 80+ year olds lol (had tons of fun and a great day with them). My favorite experience besides all the beautiful flowers were live performance (especially the incredible woman who performed in the English Gardens). We made sure to get over there to hear her both days.

For DS and our other 30 somethings and 30 somethings for their day at the MK, they did so many LLs (due to the crowds and the long lines for even more minor attractions), that later in the day they really deviated from the touring plan and didn't even bother to update the online touring plan. They did, though, still utilize the lines app from touring plans to see if it would be worth getting a LL. The touring plan was super helpful, though, for them to decide as a group what they wanted to hit and what they based on line estimates wanted to try to get an LL for (e.g. they decided to totally skip 7DMT and Peter Pan, for example - not worth the wait or wasting an LL - not big deal rides for them).

 

[Pookie9922]

We were there last week. Prior to the trip, I used the custom itineraries to get an idea of what might be doable. I didn't really refer to them on the trip though like i did last time with FP+. I did try to optimize a custom itinerary while at AK and it never went - I think the cell service/wifi wasn't good enough to make it work.

BUT their wait times were super helpful!! Very accurate the whole week and way more accurate that Disney's posted times. There were several rides we would have skipped or postponed had I not had their app. Or some lines we would have waited in had I not seen through the app that the lines were expected to be lower later in the day. The predictions were almost spot on. I think the only one that didn't work out for us was that RnR was a longer wait that predicted because ToT was down for a while.

 

[T'Lynn]

I used the custom plans to load in my strategic plan for the day and modify it to see if everything would potentially work. It was especially helpful in showing the expected wait times/walking times/length of the ride. It was VERY useful in planning the EEH for Epcot and MK nights!

It also helped me keep track of what I had listed next because my DD would ask as soon as we got off a ride "what's next?" lol

 

[mousedroid]

Yes, IMHO TP is worth it.

 

[MomOTwins]

I will say, I personally won’t use the line app again for this reason: I’d rather overestimate ride wait times than underestimate. Most of the time touring plans was correct about ride wait times whereas Disney posted waits were higher. But we had some bad luck several times where I would jump into a line that TP said was significantly leas than the Disney posted wait and Disney was correct. It may not matter to some, but we were late to an ADR once and another time missed the start of fireworks because we waited a lot longer than Lines predicted, and that was super stressful to me. Just a risk to keep in mind.

 

[CodeGoddess]

We used their plans in 2018 and they were great. Tried again in 2020 and not as successful but that may have had to do more with the group we had.

Just got back a week ago and didn't use them at all this time instead use Genie Plus exclusively with a list of priority for which passes we wanted. We had almost everything at magic Kingdom riden before dinner.

 

[Alice in Okie-land]

We used a custom Touring Plan for our four day trip prior to C*VID and had a fantastic time, hit every last thing we wanted to do. I was continuously grabbing FP after our preplanned 3 were done, dropping the ride off of our plan, and reoptimizing. I expect to use it the same way when we go again with G+.

Whatever I book at 7am, pin that in my Touring Plan just as I would have for a FP. Swipe in for my G+ ride, then refresh/refresh for the next G+ I want, modify Touring Plan by pinning that time, optimize and go.

I’m confident it will still reduce the time I spend waiting in lines, and help ensure I don’t miss any of the showtimes/parades I planned on.

 

[Doingitagain]

We used a custom Touring Plan for our four day trip prior to C*VID and had a fantastic time, hit every last thing we wanted to do. I was continuously grabbing FP after our preplanned 3 were done, dropping the ride off of our plan, and reoptimizing. I expect to use it the same way when we go again with G+.

Whatever I book at 7am, pin that in my Touring Plan just as I would have for a FP. Swipe in for my G+ ride, then refresh/refresh for the next G+ I want, modify Touring Plan by pinning that time, optimize and go.

I’m confident it will still reduce the time I spend waiting in lines, and help ensure I don’t miss any of the showtimes/parades I planned on.

We tried the same. The diificult part was not being able to select a time for Genie+, you had to take the next available.

 

[TheSouthernBelle]

I see many posts asking about the crowd calendar accuracy of touring plans.

What about paying to join and using the actual custom daily touring plan?

Is it worth it now with Genie+ and LL?

We are going for a week (4 days in parks) the first week of April. I am wanting to maximize what we can do and experience.

All these changes have my mind turning to mush and I have been going since the year I was born. Although I havent been in a few years.

Ditto PP, I don't use the park touring app simply because we go enough to know some of the ins/outs but I do use the Lines app which 9 times out of 10 is more accurate than disney's posted wait times.

 

[zombieScar24]

I find making a TP via their service provides a good outline for the parks. The down side of not know which LL reservations you will have beforehand provides a hinderance to adhering to the TP as "strictly" as you would previously. But the Lines app is worth it along with a generally good gauge of what to expect crowd wise.

 

[Dis Dragon]

TP was instrumental in our first few trips there starting back in 2017 when we were newbies, with the introduction of the chaos that is Genie+ I can see why the plans suffer now - there's no way to pre-plan everything anymore since you have little control of LL access times.

The reservation finder, room finder and lines app we still use all the time. Room finder helps me know ahead of time if I'm getting a crap location and need to visit the front desk before hitting the room. You have to take the lines app with a grain of salt, if we show up and know the line isn't reflective of their wait time we move on.

In their defense, no one can predict the crowds right now - it used to be semi-accurate prior to the COVID shutdown, but since then it's been wildly all over the place. TP made an algorithm based off historic trends that are no longer applicable.

 

[MainMom]

I have never made an actual Touring Plan because I make my own highly plans. I have, however, subscribed for several trips now and have used their other features: reservation finder, room requests, lines app. I do enter my dates and parks and love that they send me emails of changes in park hours. I have a trip coming up in a month and have subscribed once again. It’s worth the $, custom plan or not, IMO.

 

[mamaofsix]

We still find it very helpful even with G+. The most valuable tools for me are that it tells you how long it takes to walk from one attraction to another, and tells you how many minutes each attraction takes. So, when I map out a rough touring plan ahead of time, I see that it will take me 13 minutes to walk from attraction B to attraction C, that attraction D is 8 minutes long and Attraction E is 21 minutes total.

And it adjusts the line wait estimates based on time of day / day of the week / dates, etc. So, I can get a general estimate of how long the wait will be for Flight of Passage at 9a.m. on Easter Monday vs. 4p.m. on a random non-holiday week Thursday. It really is very helpful and worth the money, especially if using the tools way ahead of time to plan your trip.