RideMax Roulette Tuesday at Disney’s Animal Kingdom

RideMax Roulette at Disney's Animal Kingdom

I’m heading out tomorrow (Tuesday, January 12th) for another round of RideMax Roulette, this time at Disney’s Animal Kingdom. Feel free to follow along as I send out live tweets and Facebook updates throughout the day. Who knows, I may even try out that Periscope thing for a ride on Expedition Everest or something. You can find me at the Periscope username @RideMax4Disney.

For those who’ve followed the blog for a while, you know that RideMax Roulette is a sort of game where I choose a set of attractions at random, and plug them into the RideMax optimizing software. I then take the resulting plan to the park to see how well it works out. Playing this game gives me a good chance to test the plans RideMax comes up with, as well as — quite frankly — forces me to visit attractions I might not otherwise be all that inclined to see.

One additional goal with tomorrow’s plan is to check out the new Pizzafari restaurant, something I haven’t done since it came out of refurbishment a little over a month or so ago. Josh over at easyWDW did a write-up on this recently, which has me intrigued.

My random number generator came up with the following list of attractions for tomorrow’s visit. I’ve listed these in alphabetical order:

Dinosaur
Dinosaur again (yes, we’re doing this one twice)
Discovery Island Trails
Expedition Everest
Finding Nemo, the Musical
Flights of Wonder
It’s Tough to Be a Bug
Maharajah Jungle Trek
Primeval Whirl
Primeval Whirl (yes, also twice — hopefully no barf-bag required)
TriceraTop Spin

This may seem like sort of a “softball” list of attractions, as I’m expecting tomorrow at Animal Kingdom to be fairly uncrowded. Tomorrow is a RideMax “recommended day” for Animal Kingdom, coming off an Extra Magic Hours morning day today. To make things even easier, Kilimanjaro Safaris didn’t even come up in the list of attractions I’ll be visiting. I decided to push ahead anyway. 🙂

For FastPass+ selections, I decided to tell RideMax I wanted to use FP+ at Dinosaur, Expedition Everest, and Primeval Whirl. I also plugged in a lunch break at Pizzafari, and RideMax came up with the following game plan for the day.

RideMaxRouletteDisneysAnimalKingdom

We’ll see how this actually works out in practice, but on paper, it looks pretty decent, with just an estimated 64-minute wait to visit 11 attractions, or just six minutes per attraction. Even if you take out the two zero-wait “walking” attractions — Discovery Island Trails and Maharajah Jungle Trek — the average wait is still just a hair above seven minutes each, and that assumes we arrive 20 minutes early to wait for Finding Nemo. Overall, this looks like a great day with very little wait.

Continuing on with the planning, as a further confirmation of my expectation of low crowds tomorrow, I didn’t have any trouble securing FP+ reservations at the times recommended by RideMax on this plan, even though I made the reservations this afternoon, just one day before my visit. Here’s a really big picture taken from my phone, just to emphasize the point (and because I’m too lazy to size it down lol):

AnimalKingdomFastPassPlus

Note that if I hadn’t been able to secure the FP+ reservation times shown in this RideMax plan, I would have used the new feature added recently to RideMax which allows me to specify the times at which I want to use my FP+ reservations, and had RideMax recalculate accordingly.

So, wish me luck on my quest tomorrow. Again, feel free to follow along on Twitter, Facebook, or (possibly) Periscope @RideMax4Disney. I also welcome any guests for lunch at Pizzafari if you’re free at the lunchtime shown on the RideMax plan.

Here’s looking forward to tomorrow!

First in Line for Seven Dwarfs Mine Train: Hyperlapse Video

Here’s a raw Hyperlapse from this morning’s park opening at Disney World’s Magic Kingdom, where I made my way from the park entrance to the first in line for 7DMT.

The video has no sound at this point — I’ll likely be adding some verbal “tips” and moving this to the RideMax subscribers area in the next few days, but in the meantime, I thought this would be fun to share.

Warning: This is running at about 8x normal speed, and with all of the camera movement it might make you dizzy watching it. Also, just to clarify, this shows the *walk* from the entrance to the 7DMT boarding area, not the ride itself.

Enjoy!

First in Line for Seven Dwarfs Mine Train: Hyperlapse Video from Park Entrance to Ride from RideMax LLC on Vimeo.

RideMax Fan Mail

Just a quick update today. It’s always fun hearing from RideMax customers who found the software helpful. Knowing that we’ve helped folks more fully enjoy their experience in Disney’s theme parks is one of the things that keeps me going.

In that spirit, I appreciated this recent note from Jason, from Salem, Ohio, who used RideMax to plan a trip to Walt Disney World trip with his young daughter.

The software was worth double the cost, easy. I planned a spur-of-the-moment trip to Disney World for my daughter’s sixth birthday. We are a spontaneous family like that, but I’d been there twice before and in order to make sure my daughter got to ride everything I thought she’d like, I knew I needed a plan. RideMax to the rescue.

We went to Hollywood Studios, Magic Kingdom, and Epcot, each for a day. I crammed as much as I could into those days, including being at Magic Kingdom early (we got up at 6, at park by 8:30) and stayed until 11pm. Out of 3 days we missed only 2 rides on our list, but it was mainly due to my poor planning – I didn’t expect the line for Anna and Elsa to be 2 hours.

Even though Epcot was on a Sunday, I picked the Friday before because the hours and extended hours closely matched. It was pretty darn accurate.

We had a blast all three days and I know we got double the rides in with RideMax.

Thanks for those kind words, Jason. I’m glad you had such a nice trip, and that RideMax could help!

New FastPass+ Feature in RideMax

For customers who’ve used RideMax recently to plan a visit to Walt Disney World, you know that you can tell RideMax which attractions you wish to use FastPass+ (FP+) for, and the software will work those FP+ reservations into your RideMax itinerary.

Up until early last month, the only mode RideMax supported was that it would tell you the time of day at which it expected you to use those FP+ reservations, and it expected you to make the necessary adjustments in Disney’s online reservation system to match the times shown on the RideMax plan.

This worked OK for someone making FP+ reservations well in advance (which I still advise), but what about those situations where there were only a couple of FP+ “time slots” available in Disney’s system, and you simply couldn’t get the reservation times to match up with your RideMax plan?

The new feature in RideMax looks like the following. This is captured from the FP+ options page in RideMax where you check off your FP+ attractions:

FastPass+ Options

As you can see in the screenshot above, once you check a given FP+ attraction in the list, RideMax now gives you two options: you can either allow RideMax to tell you what time to make your reservation for (same as was supported previously), or you can tell RideMax when your existing FP+ reservation begins.

Note that it’s still better if you can allow RideMax to tell you when to use your FP+ reservation, as this can result in more efficient plans. I also believe that RideMax is the only Disney planning tool that offers this option. I’ll probably post a more detailed example on this at some point in the future, but just to explain briefly why you may want RideMax to choose your times for you, if the most optimum plan for your list of attractions is to have you visiting the rides in Tomorrowland at 11am (for example), but you tell the system you have a FP+ reservation at Splash Mountain at that time, the reservation will place you on the opposite side of the park from where you “should be” if you allowed RideMax to choose the time for you.

Having said all of that, I know there are simply occasions where you just can’t get the FP+ time slot RideMax recommends, and the closer you get to your visit date, the less flexibility you have to change reservation times in Disney’s system. If you find yourself in this situation, I hope you find the new feature helpful.

Happy planning!

Three Tips for Making the Most of a Summer Visit to Disneyland or Walt Disney World

OK, so you’re thinking of visiting one of the Disney theme parks this summer while the kids are out of school, but are dreading the crowds and the heat. Here are three tips to help you get the most out of a visit this time of year.

Tip #1: Arrive Early!

I seem to say this a lot, but if you’re trying to beat the crowds — and the heat — there is simply no substitute for arriving early at the park, and this normally means being at the front gate about 30 minutes before the park opens for the day.

By arriving early, you not only get a jump on the crowds, but you also are able to visit attractions during the cool part of the day, leaving you less fatigued and more energized to actually enjoy your day at the park.

Arriving early helps you get a jump on the line build-up for popular attractions, such as the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train at Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom, shown above. Compare with the wait just an hour or so later, shown in the picture below:

Tip #2: Take an Afternoon Break

If you use the RideMax planner for Disneyland or Walt Disney World to plan out your day, you’ll often find that the optimization software leaves you with a large block of “free time” during the afternoon hours. You may be tempted to fill up every minute of the day with more attractions, but you may want to reconsider, and use the afternoon hours for a break back at the hotel instead. This is especially the case if you’re visiting with young children. The afternoon hours typically see the highest crowds of the day, and temperatures are at their peak as well. Taking a break will leave you refreshed, rather than hot and tired, for the evening entertainment Disney offers during the summer months.

Tip #3: Watch the Shows!

All of Disney’s theme parks offer indoor attractions or shows where you can take a load off your feet and enjoy a break from the crowds in air-conditioned goodness. Shows that are good for this (and often not crowded) include:

Magic Kingdom: The Hall of Presidents and Mickey’s PhilharMagic
Epcot: Captain EO (or the movie preview in the same theater), and Ellen’s Energy Adventure
Disney’s Hollywood Studios: Frozen Sing-Along Celebration
Disney’s Animal Kingdom: Festival of the Lion King
Disneyland: Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln
Disney California Adventure: Aladdin (shown below)

So, there you have it. Of course, planning out your Disney day with RideMax should also help reduce the amount of time you spend in line — and in the heat. But whether you use RideMax to plan out your Disney day or not, you’ll be doing yourself a huge favor in terms of beating the crowds this summer by arriving early, taking an afternoon break, and ducking into a show when you find yourself getting hot or tired.

I hope this helps. Enjoy that trip to Disneyland or Walt Disney World this summer!