What Kind Of Walt Disney World Traveler Are You?
An interesting topic on Lines chat today: a frustrated uber-planner spent time setting up touring plans and advice for friends, who promptly ignored it once they arrived in WDW.
This got me thinking about the full spectrum of ways families and travelers tour the parks. And, naturally (shamelessly), I then thought of TouringPlans.com. How can we help the most serious of serious planners, as well as those that must go at their own speed?
We have tools that will make your Walt Disney World vacation better, no matter what type of traveler you are.
“Proceed to Step 132, Scenario Bravo: Pirates of the Caribbean at 2:23pm after purchasing 3 churros”
Do you laminate your Touring Plans, pore over epically laid out excel spreadsheets, have a “system” that rivals trying to beat the house in Vegas? We have you so covered! Pick the best time of year to go using our Crowd Calendar, then align our park recommendations with your touring and eating schedule. Find the right Touring Plans for each day. When you make it to the parks, stay current with Lines (or if you are more old-school, arm yourself with some handy Cheat Sheets!). Use our Free Trip Planner. Go nuts!
“My plan for July 23rd is Epcot — what’s more to plan?”
This is my personal style. I’ve got my dining / park preferences lined up, usually in sync with the “best parks” recommendation of the Crowd Calendar, but I don’t typically have much more than that.
But we can still help you out! Try out a Touring Plan. If you’re new to WDW, they are great for giving you a proper tour of each park. If you’re going during a busy time of year, they can save you up to 5 hours in line. That’s a lot of time. Next, keep Lines close to you at all times. It’ll tell you the current wait times across all four parks (great for park hopping) and give you updates when attractions break down!
“I’m on VA-CAY-TION!! I shall not plan!”
Nothing wrong with that! If you’re not an early-riser, we’ve got some great “Sleep In” touring plans for you. And if you’re going during a wickedly crowded time of year, you may — just may — want to bring a few Touring Plans with you. Try them out one morning and see how it goes.
Further, using the Crowd Calendar is probably the cheapest possible way to minimize the planning you have to do. It’ll tell you good days to go, and the best parks to visit. Hard to complicate that!
Lastly, and this one requires no prep time at all: use Lines! If you’re not one for following plans, Lines is a great companion to touring the parks and avoiding long waits. You’ll get all the wait times, wait time forecasts, easy access to the Crowd Calendar, and lots of friendly people to chat with.
What type of Disney World traveler are you? What tools do you use to help you plan and tour?
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I am a total planner and a huge fan of your touring plans. It is not relaxing to wait in line, to stand in the hot sun, or rush around like a crazy person on vacation. I hate to miss out things.
On our last trip to the World we arrived early, usually finished early which left time for wonderful things like eating popcorn and people watching on Main Street. We never waited more than 5 minutes in line (except to see characters occasionally) and it was amazing.
I’m a “perpetual planner.” I look at a WDW trip the same way you should look at getting a great score on the SAT–spend your life gathering information and when it’s time for the test, you just know the answer. 😉 I use the crowd calendar as my touchstone for planning when to go and at some level, personal experience for choosing which park which day.
I read the Unofficial Guide, listen to podcasts, lurk on boards, and just absorb information. I think that’s what a lot of us do. We know without having a plan that if we go on Christmas Day, and want to do more than people watch, we need to get there early and accomplish goals early–or, my plan, stay in NJ. I know that I can make a 9:45pm dinner reservation at Flying Fish and still see Illuminations, but if I do, I won’t be getting a ride on Toy Story Midway Mania the next day unless I’m into some serious sleep deprivation. 😉
I also know after 7 or 8 Food and Wine Festivals, that I don’t want to be anywhere near EPCOT on a Friday or Saturday during that event. However, Sunday-Thursday I really want to stay at one of the EPCOT resorts so I can stagger “home” under my own power.
Once it becomes a way of life, the planning is subconscious. It spoils you for vacationing elsewhere, too! 😉
I’m a mix, too. I spend the months leading up to our trip obsessing over plans (they call mine a “disney bible, too!). We were in WDW the past 9 days and got up and to the parks early on as many days as possible. Hit the headliners then relied on Lines for the rest of the day. When we arrived early, we always took a nap break!!! For the not so early days…LOVE the late arrival plans. We used the one for AK and it worked like a charm!
I’m a mixture of planner/adapter. We use the Crowd Calendar to plan when we’ll visit, altho we also use hotel prices to help “confirm” that it is a good time.
Once there, we arrive before rope drop and have a set routine for each park for the first couple of hours to get the “high demand” rides in before the lines get too long. Once they are out of the way, we tend to adapt based on wait time/FastPass times. We also bail once the crowds get too big – since we know we will hit MK and EP twice during a trip, there’s plenty of time to hit everything we want to do.
Best part of the new Lines app is that we can see the wait times from the other side of the park. Saves lots of shoe leather! Seeing other Lines users via their posts makes me feel like there are friends around.
A tip for uber-planners/commando’s who are taking non-planners or first timers to the world and don’t want to scare them off –
My strategy is to arrive at the parks early enough to be first through the turnstiles, see the headliners asap before the park fills up, and then tour at will. After 11:30 AM or so, all bets are off and I allow myself to take my time, see what I want when I want to, and park hop as a I see fit.
I think it’s a great compromise for a planner/commando going with a non-planner or first timer. After the park fills there’s not as much of a need for a set game plan, and during the more crowded times of the year it’s almost impossible to plan anything after noon anyway because you never know what you’ll find! This past March Small World had an hour + wait after lunch. Who would’ve thunk it?!
I guess that I am a non-planner. July will be our 29th visit to The World and have a pretty good idea of what to see and where to be. The crowd calender is basically all we need just to keep current to any changes. Still love every minute I’m there.
Super planner. Now I don’t feel so bad that I have the rest of the postings. My husband also thinks I am obsessive -compulsive(wouldn’t nessicarily disagree with him). All dining reservations were planned 6 months in advance, excel spreadsheet done with park times, dinner reservations, crowd calendar ratings, special events each day. Keeps me excited in advance. My hubby is a non planner so I just keep him uninvolved and we are both happy. He absolutely agrees with me once we are there because we are not wasting all day waiting in lines. The kids don’t necessarily enjoy gettin up early while on vacation but mid week we sleep in , go to the pool and then the parks in the afternoon. Keeps us all sane by taking the midweek break.
I am an uber planner..I am a die hard touring plans believer! I have a binder that friends, family and co-workers call the “disney bible”, it has all my touring plans families with small children, tween boys and girls plans so I can compare them and make sure we dont miss anything. My cheat sheets and crowd calendar have there place as well,along with all my travel documents and disney character reservations. Mouse savers and all ears are constanst reading when my vacation planning starts. I booked my vacation 80 days in advance and just keep obsessing about it daily. My husband says the way I obsess over disney is the same way people obsess over Christmas. This will be my 2nd trip to Disney and I know that my vacation was so awesome because of touring plans and the unofficial guides…We were able to see everything twice because of touring plans, I LOVE IT!!!!!I wish they could do everything like that…
Let me also say Touring Plans is the 5 Ps principal to a T!
Proper Planning Prevents Poos Performance
I’m totally the uber planner. I love to plan. I figure out days by the crowd calendar, make the ADR’s at 180 days, familiarize myself with the correct touring plan, and I also use Steve Soares site to figure out the show times. I make a list of every attraction or show that I want to see and how many times. Then I cross it off the list when I plug them into the big spreadsheet. Then I throw it all out the window when I get there. I have a plan if I need it but usually the info is so ingrained in my brain that I don’t check the spreadsheet except for ADR’s.
I wouldn’t say I am an uber planner, but I am extremley organized. This will be my first trip since bootcamp in 1975. I have selected only two parks to spend my time at (this time). Next trip (Dec ’10) I will include all 4 parks. I will be using the Sunrise/Starlight plan as it fits my syle the best. I have split my day into thirds so I can go to each park each day and still have time to go back to the hotel and take a nap if needed. My plan is laminated on 4×6 cards so I see what I want and still enjoy myself. I have identified places where I want to take pictures, where to eat, and where to meet fellow Liners. All I know is when I see the castle, all my plans will fall by the wayside and I will become a kid again.
Uber Planner! One of my roles during my career has been as a Production Planner. “Planning is the vision, replaning is the response to reality”.
I’m the middle kind of planner. I plan what day to what park, I’m up at 6am 180 days out. But once I’m there I generally go with the flow (of course trying to hit rope drop!) I use the Touring Plans as a guide for about the first 3 rides, after that I do whatever.
I’m with you Kelly.
I use a similar plan. Know the park, plan out the first few rides and what we would like to do that day. But always end up after the first few rides, end up going with the flow.
I’m a total uber planner! I laminate my touring plans, my cheat sheets, my mini spreadsheets with park hours and crowd levels. It helps me get prepared but once I get to the parks I relax. If I don’t follow my plans exactly as they are written I don’t freak but I am a total line snob and will not stand in a line for more than 15 minutes since using touring plans 😉 Planning is a big part of the fun for me
I’m the uber planner. I use the crowd calendar to decide which days to do which parks. I book my restauants 180 days in advance. I use TouringPlans.com and Steve Soars’s website to determine what attractions and shows I’ll do when. I’m at the park at least 45 minutes before it opens, and stay there until it’s closed. Fortunaltely for the friends and family I travel with, I don’t tell the. More than they want to know, so as far as they’re concerned, they haven’t planned anything, everything to them is unplanned.
Anytime my son and I go for Rope Drop at the Magic Kingdom, which isn’t too often, as we’re “locals,” we begin with the basic “Dumbo-or-Die” morning. The afternoon we spend just wandering around and doing whatever. I can’t imagine how we would get through our days without Lines. It’s amazing. And, if I hadn’t known about touring plans, my son would have never ever been on Dumbo. I had no idea that THAT was the ride to run to first thing!
My first couple of trips, I was an uber-planner. We benefited mightily from the crowd calendar and the touring plans! But since then, we’ve sort of memorized the basics of the touring plans and know generally where to be at what time. So now we just use the crowd calendar to plan which park on which day (and we make our ADRs at 180 days, of course).