Quick Postmortem for Animal Kingdom RideMax Roulette

DisneysAnimalKingdomDeVine

This is just a quick follow-up to my previous post from Tuesday’s round of RideMax Roulette at Disney’s Animal Kingdom. (And yes, I did meet DiVine, shown above, shortly after entering the park!)

For those who were wondering, Tuesday went really well in terms of low wait times and a decent touring plan. About the only downside was that I lost my prescription eyeglasses on Expedition Everest while trying to ride and simultaneously video stream the experience on Periscope. (I have to admit I thought it was fun to “scope” the ride, though, and I’ll have a longer follow-up post on Periscope later today or tomorrow.) All’s well that ends well, as Disney has found my specs and promised to put them in the mail today.

Anyway, as a recap, here’s the RideMax plan I followed Tuesday during this round of RideMax Roulette:

RideMaxRouletteDisneysAnimalKingdom

After seeing this plan, some of you may have been wondering about that second green line, the FP+ at Primeval Whirl. This was my second ride on that particular attraction, where I also began my day.

I’m guessing some of you were wondering if it wouldn’t have been faster and involve less walking to just do that second ride on Primeval Whirl right after the first one, rather than coming back to it later in the day?

And if you were thinking this, you’d be right.

This is a case where using FP+ actually *hurts* the overall efficiency of the plan. In fact, RideMax estimates that I’d save about eight minutes of walking (with a similar amount of waiting) if I just hit Primeval Whirl again the second time right at the top of the day, rather than using FP+ and coming back later.

One big reason that using FP+ for the second ride on Primeval Whirl is less efficient is that when you make your FP+ reservations, you’re forced to “space out” the reservations so that they don’t overlap, and RideMax knows about this restriction when it creates your plan. So, because I already had a FP+ for Dinosaur that ran from 9:05 to 10:05, the earliest time slot available for that second ride on Primeval Whirl was sometime *after* that.

There are a couple of lessons I draw from this.

First, it pays to play with your options in RideMax before settling on a final plan for the day (and this especially applies to your FP+ options).

Second, maybe you really *do* want to use the plan the way it’s outlined and use FP+ for that second ride on Primeval Whirl. Why would you do that? If you really do plan to leave the park as soon as the plan is finished, then you probably shouldn’t. If, however, you’re trying to get a fourth FastPass for the day and want to visit attractions after the formal plan is finished, it might make sense to follow the plan and “burn” that FP+ anyway. Remember, you can’t get those fourth (or fifth…) FP+ reservations until you’ve actually used your first three.

I hope this helps reinforce the idea that experimenting with options in RideMax is a good thing. And thanks again for following along on this latest round of RideMax Roulette!

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