Just a quick note here to let everyone know that today we’ve made some major adjustments to the RideMax estimates for the two new Toy Story Land attractions at Disney’s Hollywood Studios — Slinky Dog Dash and Alien Swirling Saucers.
I mostly mention this to let any RideMax customers know that if you’ve created RideMax plans which include these attractions, I’d strongly encourage you to create new plans instead.
I know this is a bit of a hassle, but we’ve had the chance to look at the wait times for these attractions for a couple of weeks now, and the good news is that, on average, the actual waits are coming in well below our initial estimates.
So, re-run those Hollywood Studios RideMax plans — and have a great trip!
Disney has updated the Animal Kingdom’s park hours to include early morning Extra Magic Hours (EMH) for most dates from April 28th through June 30th, and we’ve just updated RideMax (and our park recommendations calendar) to reflect this change.
Unfortunately, this also calls for a re-run of any Animal Kingdom RideMax plans for the affected dates, so if this includes you, hopefully this gives you ample notice to get that done before your visit.
Just attempting some brief armchair analysis here, this is an interesting move on Disney’s part. With the huge crowds in Pandora since its opening, I can see how Disney might think this will help to reduce the overall wait there, and they’re probably right. Think about it: There will now be one hour almost every day of the week where guests can get in the standby line and not be slowed down by FastPass+ guests — provided they’re staying at a Disney hotel, of course.
If a lot of Disney hotel guests take advantage of this, it should also help reduce pressure on the ride during normal operating hours as well, so hopefully non-hotel guests will benefit too, even if not to the same degree as will those who are eligible for EMH.
We may also make some tweaks to the RideMax standby estimates for the Pandora attractions once we see the daily EMH in operation, so stay tuned for that as well.
If this is your first time visiting the RideMax website, you should know that RideMax is planning software designed to save you time in line at Disneyland and Walt Disney World. You enter the date you’ll be visiting the park, as well as the attractions you want to visit, along with your preferred touring options. RideMax takes these into account, crunches on our estimated wait times for the date of your visit (possibly comparing *millions* of potential itineraries), to create a custom, optimized game plan which you can then take to the park.
RideMax was initially released in the pre-smartphone days, when folks actually printed their RideMax plans on paper and took them to the park.
Although you could still follow this procedure today, a lot of technology has been introduced since those early days which can assist the visitor to Disneyland and Walt Disney World. Some of these innovations include smartphones in general, FastPass+ at Walt Disney World, MaxPass at Disneyland, and the parks’ own apps, which give users insight into current wait times in the park. Third-party apps also abound.
Given all of the tools available to theme park visitors these days, I thought it would be helpful to outline ten reasons why I STILL think you should be using RideMax to help plan your next Disney park visit.
Reason 1: It saves you time in line (and time is money!)
This may seem obvious, but the whole point of RideMax is to save you time standing in line, while also reducing the amount of walking you need to do to make this happen. (It’s optimization algorithm is specifically designed to minimize your estimated waiting AND walking time.)
Crowds build early at the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train in the Magic Kingdom. A little strategy here can go a long way.
So, how much is that time savings worth to you? Let’s assume for a moment that you are a family of four is planning a three-day visit to Disneyland, where you expect to spend an average of eight hours each day in the park, at a total cost of $2,000 for everything, including park tickets, hotel stay, and travel.
If you divide that $2,000 by the 24 total hours you expect to spend in the park, you’ll see that the cost per hour of park time is just north of $83. At that rate, RideMax will only need to save you eleven minutes(!) in line before you break even on your $14.95 RideMax investment. And that’s not eleven minutes per day, but eleven minutes TOTAL for your entire vacation.
We’ve had customers report saving HOURS of time in line thanks to RideMax, so this advantage seems pretty clear.
With all of the construction going on at Hollywood Studios to make way for the new Pixar and Star Wars areas, Disney has closed down half of the capacity at Toy Story Midway Mania.
I mentioned this on Twitter a couple of days ago, but just in case you missed it, we’ve made some major adjustments to our standby estimates for TSMM at Hollywood Studios. If prior to Tuesday, January 16th you created RideMax plans for Hollywood Studios which included riding TSMM in the standby line, I’d strongly encourage you to make new plans instead.
The 2018 Epcot International Festival of the Arts kicked of this past Friday, and runs through February 19th. I’m hoping this post will give you a “flavor” of what you can expect should you be visiting Walt Disney World soon.
