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!

Fun Friday: RideMax Roulette at the Magic Kingdom

If anyone wants to join me, either virtually or in-person, I’ll be in the Magic Kingdom again this coming Friday, May 8th, doing live tweets and Facebook updates as I play another round of RideMax Roulette.

For those not familiar, RideMax Roulette is a game using the RideMax planning tool, where I select a list of attractions at random and plug them into RideMax. RideMax then creates an optimized game plan using those attractions designed to minimize my waiting and walking. I then take the plan to the park to see how it works out. (Just FYI, because I’m biased, I call this a “RideMax plan,” but I know that some would call this a “touring plan” instead, lol).

Playing this “game” helps me keep things real by actually using plans the software produces, as well as having me ride attractions that I might not normally visit, but which customers very well could. (“Business philosophy” note here: There’s nothing quite like putting yourself in the shoes of your customers and actually, you know, *using* your own product, to help you know where the strengths of that product are, as well as learning what could be improved.)

For this week’s test, my only requirement going into the process was that I wanted to at least hit the new Seven Dwarfs Mine Train ride. So I made sure I included that attraction, then added attractions to the list using my handy-dandy random number generator, until I had enough attractions to fill a half-day at the park.

In alphabetical order, here is the complete list of twelve attractions I plan to visit from 9:00am, when the park opens, until noon-ish:

Aladdin’s Magic Carpets
Astro Orbiter
Astro Orbiter (Yes, I’ll be visiting this one twice.) 🙂
Barnstormer
Barnstormer (Yes, also twice!)
Cinderella’s Golden Carrousel
Country Bear Jamboree
Haunted Mansion
Little Mermaid: Ariel’s Undersea Adventure
Peter Pan’s Flight
Seven Dwarfs Mine Train
Splash Mountain

Before creating the plan, I had to decide what I wanted to use my three FastPass+ reservations for. While this can sometimes be a hard choice, this time it seemed obvious: Peter Pan, Splash Mountain, and the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train probably offer the most opportunity for time-saving with FP+. (And If I couldn’t get a FP+ reservation for 7DMT, I’d probably use it for the Haunted Mansion instead.)

Well, as luck would have it, there was still a FP+ slot available for 7DMT in Disney’s reservation system, so I went with it.

Here is the plan RideMax came up with for Friday, and which I plan to use:

RideMax Touring Plan for Disney World's Magic Kingdom

So, you might be asking yourself, “But what if you weren’t able to get that 7DMT FastPass+ reservation? What would the plan look like in that case?”

Well, since you asked, here is the RideMax plan the software produced when I told RideMax to use FP+ for the Haunted Mansion instead of 7DMT:

RideMax Plan riding Seven Dwarfs Mine Train standby

As you can see, this plan estimates we’d wait 43 minutes longer overall using FP+ for Haunted Mansion and visiting 7DMT using the standby line right at opening time. As I look at this second scenario, the estimates for Astro Orbiter look a bit high to me, but even if the actual combined wait for Astro Orbiter ends up being 15 minutes less than shown on the plan, this second scenario would still involve an extra 30 minutes or so of waiting over the first plan.

The other thing to note about this second scenario is that the 10-minute estimate for 7DMT right at opening time depends on your ability to follow some pretty specific instructions, and to get to the ride right after rope drop. (That note in the plan next to the 7DMT entry to “see tip #1 below” is crucial to the plan’s success.) RideMax subscribers will see various tips like this sprinkled throughout their RideMax plans, and this particular tip is probably the longest and most detailed of any, as you’re trying to stay ahead of a rope-drop crowd that looks like the scene below, with many or even most of the crowd headed to 7DMT:

I guess the moral of this story is that if you can use FP+ for the Mine Train ride, do it, since it can help you avoid this whole rope-drop mess. (And of course the second moral of the story is that RideMax makes plan comparisons like this very simple.)

So, please join me Friday morning for live tweets and Facebook updates as I go along, including pictures of the day as it progresses. And if you want to join me in person, watch for me near the Newsstand outside the Magic Kingdom tunnel just before the rope drop. I’ll be the really tall guy with a large-ish camera hanging around my neck, getting ready to make a beeline to Astro Orbiter as soon as the opening countdown finishes. 🙂

“Tomorrowland” Movie Preview Comes to Disneyland and Epcot

Just a brief post today… I stopped in for a quick visit to Epcot this morning for the Annual Passholder preview of the “Tomorrowland” movie. This is basically a 12-minute “tease” for the film.

I won’t give anything away here, but let’s just say that I’m really looking forward to the movie!

Here’s a picture of the entrance to the preview at Epcot. This takes the place of Captain EO. Not sure if EO will eventually return or not, as there are conflicting stories on social media about this.