Touring Plans Review - Tech Tuesday

Welcome to another Technology Tuesday. On Friday, I am off to Walt Disney World for my annual family trip, and I recently discovered an awesome new website and app called TouringPlans that is gonna save me hours of planning and also shave off hours of waiting in line. So it's a website and an app.

I'm gonna hop over to my computer because I want to share it with you. So this is what the TouringPlans.com dashboard looks like, and the first thing I did was enter in my information as to when it was going to be arriving. So I'm going to be going from March 22nd until March 27th. The first thing that I loved about this was that it would tell me how busy each of the parks were on each of the different days. It starts off by telling you the weather and then also telling you how busy in general Walt Disney World crowds are, from a 7, uh, here 7, 7, 9, 9, 9. And then what it lets you do is select the parks so you can figure out which park is best to see on which day. So the day I arrived was a Sunday. I was worried it'd be really busy. I click on Select Parks and it shows me that Magic Kingdom is a 7, Epcot is an 8, Hollywood Studios is a 7, and Animal Kingdom is a 9. So, you know, if I'm planning this out, I want to avoid Animal Kingdom and go to Magic Kingdom. So I picked that one to start. I did that for every day. What I discovered was that Wednesday was actually one of the busiest days, at least March 25th is for some reason. And so I'm actually going to be avoiding the park on that day. I have a 5-day plan and 6 days to do it, so I thought I'd be skipping out on either that first Sunday or the last Friday. But as it turns out, this Wednesday is the busiest day of all. So if I click on Select Parks, everything is a 9 out of 10, 9 out of 10, 9 out of 10, 9 out of 10, 9 out of 10. So right there, by avoiding Disney World on that Wednesday, I'm gonna be saving a lot of time and frustration standing in line. The next thing that it lets you do is create a touring plan. Basically, you can figure out what you're going to do on each day in each park. So on the first day, I'm going to Magic Kingdom day 1. I'm going to load both my itinerary as well as all of the attractions so I can see what's up. So this is a list of all the attractions, and it tells you how it ranks for different age groups. My son is 5 years old, so I'm going to be looking in this area to see how well some of the rides rank. Of course, I'm going to be concerned about is this entertaining for him, is it going to be scary for him, is he going to be tall enough to go, and this quick website shows me all the information that I need. Next, I move into my customized plan. I can add all the different things that I want to see on that first day. There's a tool here at the bottom that says Add Attraction. I can click on that. It knows that I want to go to Walt Disney World Magic Kingdom, and it'll show me all the different options that I can add to it. I would just have to click any one and then click save. Once you've added in all the attractions you want to see, you can then click optimize and it'll tell you what order you should go see all the events in. So for my first day, I'm going to rush to the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, where I'm still going to wait 39 minutes in line, but then jump to Winnie the Pooh, Barnstormer, Dumbo the Flying Elephant, and continue on with my day. They give you the option about how fast you walk and how much time you want spent between waiting and and walking. That will help you pick the most customized version for your day. You can also add in meals or breaks so that you're not just going from attraction to attraction to attraction and burning out. So for all of my days, I added in a lunch at 12 o'clock to rest, and that gives me 60 minutes to have lunch and wander around. Finally, what I did was book my FastPasses. With your tickets, Disney allows you to book FastPasses so you can skip the line and get right to the front. I basically looked at my touring plan's optimized plan and looked at what had the longest wait time, and then I went to book a FastPass for it. Now unfortunately, the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train FastPasses were all sold out, but I managed to get them for Under the Sea, The Little Mermaid, Peter Pan's Flight, and Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger. So you can see all of those, those usual timelines were going to be at least 20 to 30 minutes in line, and here I'm going to be waiting 5 minutes, 8 minutes and 6 minutes. I'm going to end up doing 15 things and be done for that show at 3 o'clock. It's amazing how much time it saves. And then I went back to my dashboard and basically repeated the same thing. I have a plan for Epcot, Magic Kingdom Day 2, Disney Hollywood Studios, and then a Disney Animal Kingdom to end it off.

And of course all the information is available here on your tablet so you can check things off as you're going along. So all in all, a fantastic tool. I recommend you checking it out. It's touringplans.com and WDW Lines.

For the app.

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Psst, and if you have any recommendations for me at Walt Disney World, let me know in the comments below.

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