DCA Tower of Terror FastPass Update

 

Tower of Terror at DCA

Just a quick note here on an update to our DCA estimates.

While preparing our Disneyland RideMax update for the remainder of July today, I noticed on the Disneyland refurbishment list the following note:

Now – January 1, 2014: Tower of Terror will operate at reduced capacity during routine maintenance.”

This reinforces the feedback I received recently from a customer, who indicated that on the date of his visit, Disney wasn’t offering FastPasses for Tower of Terror. My guess is that Disney had actually run out of FastPasses before the customer arrived at the attraction that day, rather than not offering them at all. (Luckily, the customer ended up OK, as he was given his choice of FastPasses when another attraction he was riding broke down during his ride.)

In looking at recent FastPass return times for Tower of Terror, they do indeed seem to be running quite a bit later into the day than what I’d normally expect to see. It’s quite likely that Disney has cut back on the number of FastPasses they issue for this attraction, which of course causes later return windows, especially in the late morning, afternoon, and evening hours.

As a result of the reduced capacity here, we’ve updated our Tower of Terror FastPass return time estimates for all dates currently on the RideMax calendar. I recommend for those of you who have already created plans which include Tower of Terror, that you create new plans instead.

Happy Planning!

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Disney Spring Break 2013 – Avoiding the Crowds!

Wald Disney World Magic Kingdom Castle - Spring Break
Early morning at the Magic Kingdom. Arriving early during spring break is one key to beating the crowds!

Spring break is here!

Whether your trip includes Disneyland and the new Cars Land on the west coast, or Walt Disney World on the east, there are a couple of keys to beating the crowds:

1. Have a game plan (OK, you knew I’d say this, and yes, it’s a shameless plug — RideMax can help.)

2. Arrive early

If you’re an “old hand” at Disney and are already convinced of these two points , go ahead and quit reading now. If not, then this post is for you! I’ll even share some pictures to help illustrate this for you.

The thing is, you really need to consider BOTH of these tips for a successful day at your favorite Disney theme park. One without the other just doesn’t cut it.

For example, if you arrive early but don’t have a plan, you could waste your early-morning time visiting attractions that you could see later in the day without much wait (maybe with FastPass), but then you find that some attractions have huge waits by the time you get to them.

And, if you have a plan but don’t arrive early, well, there are some attractions that are just plain hard to see without a wait unless you’re in the park right when it opens. FastPasses for some attractions can also run out early in the day (Radiator Springs Racers, anyone?). No plan — not even RideMax — can save you here if you’re not in the park early when the lines are short and FastPasses plentiful.

Consider some pictures that I took yesterday at the Magic Kingdom to help illustrate the importance of arriving early.

Magic Kingdom Monorail - Spring Break

The park opens at 8:00am today, and here I am at 7:51am in line to board the monorail. You can see that the crowds are already starting to build, but this is nothing compared to the masses you’ll see here in a few hours (more on this below).

I don’t actually recommend arriving this late, but I got lucky and was able to board the monorail quickly. I arrived at the front turnstiles just as Disney had opened the park for the day.

Entering the Magic Kingdom - Spring Break 2013

Here I am making my way through the entrance tunnel into the park, at 8:02am. As you can see, there are large crowds ahead of me. It would have been better had I arrived earlier!

Fortunately, I’m a fast walker, and was able to make it to the end of Main Street quickly. (I was also by myself today, so I’m sure I walked faster than most families with children would.)

Fantasyland Magic Kingdom - Spring Break, 2013

A largely-deserted Fantasyland right after the park opened. Folks, this is why you arrive early! (Below I’ll show you a striking comparison photo taken later in the morning.)

I was mostly focused on Fantasyland today. And even though I was slightly delayed getting into the park, I still had time to get a FastPass for Peter Pan, and then make my way over to the current big bottleneck in the Magic Kingdom.

Enchanted Tales with Belle - Magic Kingdom

Enchanted Tales with Belle, posted at a 15-minute wait. My actual wait would be shorter.

This is where the importance of PLANNING comes in, and my RideMax plug. If I didn’t have a RideMax plan with me telling me to go here early, I might have visited one of the “big” rides instead, even though the lines for the big attractions don’t build nearly as quickly as the line for Belle does. This would have resulted in a crazy wait here later, or maybe even caused me to miss this altogether.

Belle's Cottage - Magic Kingdom

The line for Belle’s Cottage isn’t bad at all. Yet.

Enchanted Tales with Belle - Magic Mirror

We go through the Magic Mirror…

Belle - Magic Kingdom

And of course, Belle is charming as always.

Belle - Crowds - Magic Kingdom

By the time I exit the show, the lines here are already huge. I’d estimate about a 45-minute wait, and it’s not quite 8:45am!

Little Mermaid - Magic Kingdom

Next stop for me was the new Little Mermaid attraction. It’s posted at a 20-minute wait, but it was still basically a walk-on.

This is where having RideMax helped. Had I visited Little Mermaid first, and then Belle next, my total wait for these two rides would have been close to 50 minutes, as opposed to the 10-minutes or so total I waited by following the plan.

Ariel's Undersea Adventure - Disney World

The line for Ariel’s Undersea Adventure takes a while to build in the morning, thanks to it’s rather large capacity. No need to rush here first thing, and RideMax knows this.

Barnstormer - Disney World

It’s 9:07am, and the wait for Barnstormer is posted at just 10 minutes. The real wait is actually shorter. (Have I mentioned the importance of arriving early? It’s likely that some folks visiting today are still in bed!)

Teacups - Disney World

It’s around 9:15, and the Teacups are still very do-able!

Fantasyland - Disney World

Here is Fantasyland at around 9:20am, or one hour and twenty minutes after the park opened. The crowds are starting to build, but it’s still somewhat do-able here.

Peter Pan's Flight - Disney World

Still around 9:20, there is virtually no wait for “it’s a small world,” but as you can see here, you’d have to wait a while for Peter Pan now. (Thanks to RideMax, I’ve already got a FastPass for this one.)

Enchanted Tales with Belle Disney World - Crowds

OK, it’s later in the morning, but still not quite 10:00am, and it already starts getting crazy. The wait here for Belle is now posted at 60 minutes.

Aren’t you glad you got yourself out of bed early this morning, AND you followed that RideMax plan?

Fantasyland Magic Kingdom Disney World - Spring Break 2013 Crowds

OK… Here’s that comparison photo I promised earlier, taken just before 10:00am. Please don’t do this to yourself, folks!

Haunted Mansion Disney World - Spring Break 2013

Even the line for the Haunted Mansion is getting a little ridiculous, and it’s still just 10:00am! (And if you were wondering, I’m not waiting in this one, just taking the picture. 😉 )

Liberty Belle Riverboat - Disney World

It’s about time for me to leave the park, but I couldn’t resist stopping for a picture of the Liberty Belle. What can I say? The light here is nice this early in the morning!

Disney World Spring Break 2013

It’s just after 10:00am, and I’m on my way out of the park, while the crowds are pouring in!

Disney World Monorail - Spring Break 2013

Finally, here is the monorail entrance, at 10:30am. I know everyone has different tastes and opinions, but why would someone spend $1,000’s on a Disney vacation and then do this to themselves!

Spring break is survivable, but my advice remains:

Arrive EARLY, and have a PLAN!

OK, I’d be curious to see your thoughts on this. What are YOUR favorite strategies for surviving spring break at Disneyland or Walt Disney World?  Tell us about it in the comments below.

And have a great spring break!

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FastPass Enforcement Comes to Disneyland!

Disneyland FastPass
FastPass: After February 18th, you'd better show up on time!

If any customers have created RideMax plans for a park visit on February 18th or later, we strongly recommend creating new plans instead, at least if you made your plans prior to February 14th at 9:00am PDT.

The rumors have been circulating for a long time, but now that Disney has placed signs on the FastPass machines asking guests to return within the one-hour window printed on the FP ticket, it seems like it’s time to take this seriously.

As a result, RideMax for Disneyland has been updated so that any plans created for dates on or after President’s day, February 18th, will no longer have the option to use FastPass late. (For those who are new to Disneyland and RideMax, up to this point Disney allowed you to use your FP ticket after the time shown on the ticket, even if you arrived several hours “late.”)

The other effect of this change is that we’ve updated our FP estimates themselves to better take this change into account. It’s always been easy for us to err on the late side with those estimates, since this was allowed by Disney and gave us more “wiggle room” in the plans. Now that the wiggle room is gone, we thought it best to pull the estimates back.

What does this mean for you? We hope the change isn’t earth-shattering, but you will, of course, have the annoyance of re-creating your plans if you’ve already made them for the affected dates. Once in the park, you will also need to double-check the return time shown on your ticket to make sure it fits within the time indicated on your RideMax plan, and adjust your day on the fly if necessary. (This is especially the case for FP return windows in the afternoon and evening, when predicting FP return windows can be more difficult. Fortunately, the afternoon and evening is also the time of day when the timing of the plan is less critical, so we’re hoping this will still work OK for most cases.)

With this update we’re also releasing a new version of the Windows application. This new version includes the ability to schedule more breaks (up to five), and also allows you to specify the location of those breaks. It also allows you to specify which specific attractions your FastPass runner is willing to miss, if any.

Note that we’ve implemented this change quickly enough that the RideMax “Tips & Hints” pages haven’t yet reflected these changes. We expect to get this done over the next few days.

Please let us know how these changes work for you, and happy planning!

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Magic Kingdom Update: Barnstormer and Dumbo FASTPASS — Disconnected or Not?

Disney World's Magic Kingdom - Dumbo
Dumbo was flying high today, but does the FastPass loophole still exist?!!

As many of you know, RideMax has been taking advantage of a loophole in the FASTPASS (FP) system at Disney World’s Magic Kingdom which had allowed someone to obtain a FP ticket for both Barnstormer and Dumbo, even if he or she had recently obtained another FP elsewhere. This would normally be against the FP rules, but the machines seemed to be operating somewhat independently of the rest of the FP network. This allowed someone, for example, to get a FP ticket for Peter Pan (or some other MK attraction), and then to immediately get FP tickets for both Dumbo and Barnstormer, even though two hours hadn’t elapsed since the Peter Pan ticket was obtained, nor had the “ride window” for that first FP ticket arrived yet.

We had received reports within the last few days from a couple of customers who had read online that the Dumbo and Barnstormer FASTPASS machines were “connected” to the rest of the FASTPASS (FP) network again, so I decided to drop in on the Magic Kingdom today to check it out. I decided to “test” the loophole by obtaining a FP ticket for Peter Pan, then I’d try to also get FP tickets for both Dumbo and Barnstormer, to see if the system would allow it.

To make a long story short, the picture below shows the result of my “test” (click for a larger image):

FastPass tickets for Peter Pan, Dumbo, and Barnstormer

It may be hard to read the time stamps in fine print at the bottom of these tickets, but I obtained the Peter Pan ticket at 11:29am, and successfully obtained both the Dumbo and Barnstormer tickets five minutes later, at 11:34am.

Given the recent reports of this loophole going away, I decided earlier this week to remove this feature from RideMax, at least for now. Even though this test indicates the loophole still existed today, it seems safer to NOT depend on this, especially since the parks aren’t crazy-busy right now, and this really isn’t absolutely necessary for efficient touring.

Having said this, I do expect to check this again as Mardi Gras week and President’s Day weekend approaches. If the loophole still exists then, I’ll likely put the feature back in RideMax so that folks using the planner can take advantage of this during those busier days in February.

Oh, by the way, while I was in the Magic Kingdom today I took a picture over the construction wall of the new Rapunzel’s tower and village, which I’ve posted below. It seems to be coming along nicely!

Rapunzel's Tower and Village - Disney World Magic Kingdom

Happy planning!

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Christmas Week at Disneyland & Walt Disney World – RideMax Customer Reports

Disney World Castle
Cinderella Castle lights up with magic during the Christmas season!

Just a quick update today to share some very nice customer reports from Christmas week, one from a customer visiting Disneyland/DCA, and another one from Walt Disney World.

First, from a Disneyland RideMax customer (I’ve bolded some text for emphasis):

Hello. My family was at Disneyland and California Adventure 12/26-12/28 and thanks in part to your computer program and tips, we had an incredible trip. We got to do everything that we wanted to do and some things two or three times. We had time for shopping, watching shows, and doing other things (like riding the train and monorail) not listed on RideMax, too. We looked at people standing in stand-by lines that had up to 3 1/2 hour long waits and felt sorry for them. We were often ahead of schedule (wait times were shorter). We will tell everyone that we know about your service.

Here’s an example of our success. We arrived at the gate for California Adventure on Friday, 12/28 at about 7:20 a.m., knowing that hotel guest were being let in early. We stood near a Magic Morning entrance so that as soon as it changed to a regular entrance we could get in that line. We knew (from our past day’s experience and from reading your tips) that we would be let into the park to the end of Buena Vista Street to wait until the official 8 a.m. opening. We were right against the rope. We were led to Cars Town and to Radiator Springs by cast members behind a gas hose. We were ordered into a single file line as we approached Radiotor Springs. We ended up being about the 8th-10th people in that line. We walked right into the lane for single riders. We walked right onto the platform for the ride. My husband and son ended up being able to ride in the same car, and I was in the car behind them. INCREDIBLE!!

On Thursday, 12/27, we checked both single rider and regular rider lines for Radiator Springs at least half a dozen times. The single rider line was always about an hour long, and the other line was anywhere from 2 to 3 1/2 hours long. We also kept checking the lines for the other two rides. We were able to ride both of them during our free time on Thursday when the lines were the shortest we had seen them all day (probably waited no more then 35 minutes in each one). We started this trip knowing that we would probably not ride anything in Cars Land but would enjoy seeing all of the sights. We are not die-hard ride fans. Imagine our delight when we were able to ride all three rides!

We were able to ride every ride in Paradise Pier that we wanted to ride on Thursday with little to no wait. Our first ride was Toy Story Mania, and we walked right onto it.

On Wednesday, 12/26, we were able to enter Disneyland early (before 8 a.m.) because of Magic Morning and because it was drizzling, many people did not show up. We were able to ride everything that we wanted to in Tomorrowland by 9 a.m. before crowds appeared and started the day ahead of our schedule.

THANK YOU!!

And from a Walt Disney World customer:

We just came back from a 6 day trip to Disney World over Christmas.

This is a very, very busy time and the crowds were overwhelming at times.  With this in mind, we purchased RideMax and set our schedule around the online recommendations.

I was skeptical when my friend told me about RideMax, I doubted it would work at Christmas time but it was only $16 so I thought it was worth a try.

I am a believer!  It was truly amazing but we never waited more than 10 minutes and we rode all the best rides.  The total cost for our Disney trip was nearly $10,000 and the $16 dollars I spent on RideMax doubled our fun!  What a great product!

Thanks again RideMax Team!

To which I say, “You’re welcome!”  🙂

I should also add that in addition to using RideMax, arriving EARLY at the parks is key to success if you’re visiting during the holidays or other busy season, such as spring break. We received a note from another customer who wasn’t nearly as successful as those shown above, but after reading their report, it seemed pretty clear to me that they were late getting to the first attraction on their RideMax plan, and things sort of cascaded downhill fast from there: the line was longer than expected at the first attraction on the plan, causing them to be “late” getting that first FastPass, and the late FastPass messed up the time at which they could get the next FastPass, etc.

I know I say this a lot, but if you’re going to be brave enough to visit during the holidays, you almost need to be hyper-focused on making sure you arrive early. There’s simply no substitute for this, RideMax plan or not!

What are YOUR thoughts about visiting during the holiday season? Do you find the extra “magic” worth braving the crowds?

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