Did you know that Dixie Landings was originally going to be built next to Downtown Disney? The idea was that Fulton’s Crab House would be one of the icons (as well as a snazzy restaurant) marking the entrance to this resort from DTD. Hear the whole story as Jim walks us through the history of Disney’s hotel development starting from Disneyland and going up through the Eisner era.

Here’s the link to listen in iTunes. Here’s the direct MP3 file.

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New Unofficial Guide Disney Dish Podcast: History of WDW’s Moderate Resorts is a post from the TouringPlans.com Blog. Signup for a premium subscription today! Or get news via Email, Twitter, & Facebook.

We’ve updated the desktop and Lines versions of our personalized touring plan software to support FastPass+ at Walt Disney World. We’ve also added Fastpass+ coverage to the site. And a new Lines updated allow you to specify a future date for touring plan optimization, instead of having Lines assume you’re in the park.

Disney has not yet released Fastpass+.  In fact, Disney hasn’t yet specified exactly how FastPass+ is going to work.  But the tests they’ve done in the past are a good guide. We’ll update our software if FastPass+ changes.

The new desktop UI looks like this:

For now, there’s a checkbox to indicate whether you’ve got the ability to use legacy FASTPASS and FastPass+ at the same time. This option is turned off by default, since we’ve been told that guests can participate only in one or the other. It may be possible during an upcoming test, though. If you’re invited to participate in the test, use this option.

The next section is where you enter any FastPass+ reservations you’ve already made. Let us know the attraction and start time of those reservations, and we’ll incorporate them into the touring plan.

The third section is the most interesting. One of the problems we anticipate with FastPass+ is having to choose which attractions you want to ride 60 days in advance. The problem, as we see it, is that most people won’t have enough information about attractions and wait times in order to make the best choices.

This section is designed to help with that. Tell the optimizer how many FastPass+ selections you have, and then choose all of the attractions you want to see. The optimizer will return a list of attractions sorted so that the best FastPass+ opportunities are nearer the top. In the example shown, Space Mountain and Peter Pan are the best choices in Group 1 and Pooh and Haunted Mansion are the best choices in Group 2. The touring plan details will tell you the time at which you should request those FASTPASSes. (And if you end up with FastPass+ reservations at different times, the software is able to handle that, too.)

Lines Mobile App Support

The Lines user interface also gets an update for FastPass+. Like the desktop version, you’ll be able to enter, update and delete any FastPass+ opportunities you’ve already got:

You can ask for FastPass+ recommendations:

… and get a list back with prioritized recommendations:

And you can now enter a future date for your touring plan in Lines. With this update, Lines no longer assumes you’re in the park while you’re optimizing a plan on your phone:

Thanks very much for our Lines chat community for suggesting the text we’re using for FastPass+. We’ve also made it easier for you to enter wait times from Lines’ touring plan screen: tap the “+ Wait Time” link to do that.

Finally, note that this release of FastPass+ code is a “beta” release, meaning we think we have all of the functionality ironed out, but there may still be bugs. If you see something unusual, post a description of the issue and the URL of the plan here and we’ll take a look.

FastPass+ Added To Personalized Disney World Touring Plans is a post from the TouringPlans.com Blog. Signup for a premium subscription today! Or get news via Email, Twitter, & Facebook.

Jim walks us through the history of Pirates of the Caribbean, first as the 1968 release Blackbeard’s Ghost (with Peter Ustinov), then as an attraction at Disneyland. Jim points out that even in the 1960′s, the attraction was borrowing scenes from the movie. Fast forward to the Pirates franchise movie franchise today, and you see a cycle where the movie borrows from the rides, then the rides borrow from the movie, and the cycle repeats with every sequel.

Here’s the link to listen in iTunes. Here’s the direct MP3 file. The YouTube version is below:

Please rate us on iTunes and let us know what you’d like to hear next.

New Unofficial Guide Disney Dish Podcast: Pirates of the Caribbean is a post from the TouringPlans.com Blog. Signup for a premium subscription today! Or get news via Email, Twitter, & Facebook.

The funny thing about this episode is that we didn’t plan it.  I’d called Jim to record the Tokyo Disneyland show and we were just catching up on what we saw in WDW on our latest trips.  Luckily, I possess a Nixonian habit of recording everything Jim and I discuss.  You know, for posterity (read: “Grand Jury indictment.”  As David Lee Roth once said, “You know you’ve made it when you can spell ‘subpoena’ without a dictionary.” ).

We ended up talking for almost an hour about Limited Time Magic and Disney’s Next Gen project.  Hope you enjoy the show.

Here’s the link to listen in iTunes. Here’s the direct MP3 file.

Please rate us on iTunes and let us know what you’d like to hear next.

New Disney Dish Podcast w/ Jim Hill: Limited Time Magic and Disney’s Next Gen Project is a post from the TouringPlans.com Blog. Signup for a premium subscription today! Or get news via Email, Twitter, & Facebook.

Join Jim and me as we discuss the history of Tokyo Disneyland, from its conception through opening day and its reception by the Japanese people.  While the Oriental Land Company had long wanted a Disneyland of its own, it wasn’t until the late 1970′s when Disney finally took the idea seriously. Hear what it was like to be in those negotiations and how future projects, such as Tokyo DisneySea, also happened. And Jim has a surprisingly not disturbing discussion on Tokyo secretaries.

Here’s the link to listen in iTunes. Here’s the direct MP3 file.

New Disney Dish Podcast w/ Jim Hill: Tokyo Disneyland’s 30th Birthday is a post from the TouringPlans.com Blog. Signup for a premium subscription today! Or get news via Email, Twitter, & Facebook.

Join Jim and me as we review the new Habit Heroes and IBM Think! attractions at Epcot’s Innoventions. Jim also talks about the challenges in maintaining the “future” part of Future World. Here’s the link to listen in iTunes. Here’s the direct MP3 file.

One of the ideas discussed for keeping Future World “future-y” is to invite college and university R&D labs to exhibit their ideas. In 2008, for example, the folks at MIT’s User Innovation Lab were working with 3-D printers – three or four years before they became relatively common. Showing ideas such as those, while still in their infant stages, would give Epcot an element of “here’s the future” it’s (mostly) lacking.

How would you suggest Epcot bring back its future-looking perspective?

New Disney Dish Podcast w/ Jim Hill: Epcot’s Habit Heroes and IBM Think! is a post from the TouringPlans.com Blog. Signup for a premium subscription today! Or get news via Email, Twitter, & Facebook.

Episode 36 of the Unofficial Guide’s Disney Dish podcast is out. Recorded last week at the Magic Kingdom, Jim Hill and I cover the history of Disney’s Hall of Presidents. From early demos using the head of Confucius, to then state-of-the-art animatronics for Abe Lincoln, Jim tells the story of how Walt got the idea for a patriotic show, then iterated through its design to its current form.

Links: iTunes / RSS / Direct MP3 download

New UG Podcast with Jim Hill: The Hall of Presidents is a post from the TouringPlans.com Blog. Signup for a premium subscription today! Or get news via Email, Twitter, & Facebook.

Unofficial Guide readers will recall the review of Snow White’s Scary Adventures, where we mentioned Ben, an autistic boy whose love of the attraction led him to ride thousands of times. Equally amazing were Ben’s parents, who not only had unlimited patience and love for Ben, but unlimited tolerance for Snow White. Ben’s dad, Ron Miles, said that they coped by re-imagining Disney’s rides with different effects. Their idea for a Stitch-based Tiki room is still the best I’ve heard for that attraction.

Ben’s story is now out in book form. 3500: An Autistic Boy’s Ten-Year Romance with Snow White, written by Ron, tells the story of raising a child with autism, finding Walt Disney World, and the amazing Cast Members who helped make Ben’s childhood a little bit better. It’s funny. It’s emotional. It reminds you that there are patient, good people all around the world (especially The World). Mostly, it reminded me of how lucky I am as a parent. Worth the price of the book alone is the story of Ben getting to be the last person ever to ride Snow White’s Scary Adventures, before it closed for the Fantasyland expansion. Get it today.

New Book: 3,500 – An Autistic Boy’s Ten-Year Romance With Snow White is a post from the TouringPlans.com Blog. Signup for a premium subscription today! Or get news via Email, Twitter, & Facebook.

We’re doing hardware maintenance early Tuesday morning, between midnight and 2 AM Eastern. The site, blog, and mobile app (Lines) will be unavailable during this time.

TouringPlans Site Maintenance – Tuesday, January 15 Midnight to 2 AM is a post from the TouringPlans.com Blog. Signup for a premium subscription today! Or get news via Email, Twitter, & Facebook.

Episode 32 in the Unofficial Guide Disney Dish series is available. iTunes link / Direct MP3

In this show, Jim and I walk through Disneyland’s Toontown and discuss how it came to be built.  As soon as the early 1960′s, Disney realized that guests wanted to interact more with their favorite characters.  Things really took off in the early 1980′s, though, when inexpensive videotape recorders began to replace 8 mm film recorders for home movies, and families no longer had to worry about the cost of filming longer and longer interactions with the characters.

Toontown is also one of the rare Disney theme park features that moved west from Disney World, instead of the other way around.  Jim talks about how Mickey’s 60th birthday party finally kickstarted the development of Toontown, and how the success of Who Framed Roger Rabbit gave Disneyland it’s own version of the land.

Please rate the podcast on iTunes and leave feedback on what episodes you’d like to see next!  Here’s a link to the RSS feed to subscribe.

Links to Recent Episodes

Disneyland’s Toontown, with Jim Hill (Episode 32) — iTunes / Direct MP3

A History of Walt Disney World’s Osborne Family Spectacle of Lights (Bonus Episode) — iTunes / Direct MP3

Disneyland’s Fantasyland, with Jim Hill (Episode 31) — iTunes / Direct MP3

Disneyland’s Critter Country, with Jim Hill (Episode 30) — iTunes / Direct MP3

Disneyland’s Frontierland, with Jim Hill (Episode 29) — iTunes / Direct MP3

Disneyland’s New Orleans Square, with Jim Hill (Episode 28) — iTunes / Direct MP3

Disneyland’s Adventureland, with Jim Hill (Episode 27) — iTunes / Direct MP3

Disneyland’s Main Street, with Jim Hill (Episode 26) — iTunes / Direct MP3

How Disneyland Really Got Built, with Jim Hill (Episode 25) — iTunes / Direct MP3

New Unofficial Guide Podcast Episode: Disneyland’s Toontown, With Jim Hill is a post from the TouringPlans.com Blog. Signup for a premium subscription today! Or get news via Email, Twitter, & Facebook.