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Disney World Tips and Tricks

yep, we are Windsor Hills for life (if we ever go back to Disney). In fact, I told Mrs. 923 that if we ever go back, I want to skip stupid Hollywood Studios and just spend a day derping around Windsor Hills. The big community pool is awesome.
 
HUGE recommendation for Windsor Hills. We paid $700 for a three bedroom place for the week, decorated for Disney, pool in backyard, nice community pool, etc. It's less than 10 minutes to any park gate and in/out was a breeze.

Good to know.

touringplans.com is a very useful site. It's run by a guy named Len Testa who lives in Greensboro. Basically, they use analytics to project the crowd levels at each park (as well as Disneyland and Universal Orlando), the lines for any ride any time of the day, and have a program to recommend the most efficient touring plan based on your individual needs. If you're traveling with two toddlers or elderly parents or want to take a nap in the middle of the day or get to the park in the afternoon or don't want to ride coasters or whatever, the site recommends which Fastpasses to book and when to do each attraction in order to have the most efficient trip.

Members of his team also go to the parks and test out the plans in order to make sure they work. Their app, Lines, is much better than Disney's app for estimating line times. Disney just tells you the posted wait. Lines estimates the actual wait. It may say 60 minutes, but the wait is really closer to 30.

Here is an article about Testa. It's long. I've posted some of the most interesting parts.
http://archive.wired.com/geekmom/2012/11/len-testa-math-vacation/

The other thing that makes our app different is that we’ll estimate how long you’ll actually wait in line at a given ride at a given time of day. Every other app just tells you Disney’s posted time, or (worse) tries to estimate Disney’s posted wait time because they don’t have people in the parks feeding them data. Any theme park veteran will tell you that the wait time posted outside an attraction isn’t how long you’ll really wait. Sometimes the posted waits are set artificially high on purpose, as a form of crowd control, to get people to get in line somewhere else. Sometimes the waits are set high at the end of the day to dissuade people from getting in line, so management can close the park on schedule and keep their labor costs low. And sometimes the posted waits are too low, because the kid staffing the sign got caught up doing something else.

The smartphone apps can recalculate your planned park itinerary based on ride data direct from the parks including current wait times on rides, how do you access the data you use?
The wait times are crowd sourced from within the parks, and we have paid staff which collect times as well. Those are fed into our statistical models in real time. The models will generate updated crowd forecasts for every attraction in the park for the rest of the day, based on what’s happening in the parks right now.

How often do you renew … or refresh … the data to keep it up to date. Daily? Weekly? How often does feedback from subscribers get incorporated?
The current day’s predictions are updated every five minutes. The forecasts for the next 365 days after today are updated nightly.
Do you report on trends in this data? For example the month of September, historically a very quiet month for WDW, is becoming less quiet over the years as we have helped to spread the word that September is the time to go.
We get calls from the investment community looking to know whether attendance is up or down at the parks. Usually, though, the fluctuations in attendance are 1, 2, maybe 3 percent one way or the other. We’re not yet at that level of resolution, so it’s hard for us to be that accurate. We’re trying.




What was the trickiest problem to solve during the creation of Touring Plans?
The concept of “free time,” where you may have 15 or 20 minutes with nothing to do before your next attraction, was a little hard to code and definitely hard to communicate to users. An example of free time is when you tell the engine you’re going to be in the Magic Kingdom for 13 hours, perhaps staying to see the nighttime fireworks, and the engine thinks it’ll only take 8 hours to see all the rides and shows you’ve selected.
If you’re busy for 8 hours in a 13-hour day, you’re going to have 5 hours of free time. The engine has to put those 5 hours of free time somewhere in the schedule. And it chooses where to place the free time so that the overall amount of time you spend waiting in line is minimized. In practice, what happens often is that the engine will put the free time in early afternoon, say between 1 pm and 4 pm, since that’s when the parks are most crowded and lines are longest. And it’ll put you on rides and in shows during the morning and evening, when lines are lowest.
Some folks will write us to say that the engine must be malfunctioning, because it has this huge chunk of free time scheduled in the middle of their day. Most folks think that the free time should come in the evening but whenever we’ve looked at the plan, it’s always optimal for the free time to come in the mid-afternoon. So we’ll encourage people to move steps around in their plan and use the ‘Evaluate’ button (which doesn’t re-arrange their steps) to see how much longer their version takes, and it’s usually a significant difference.


 
Touring Plans worked for us...my sister planned it all out and it was nice to know exactly where we should go next rather than wondering what we should ride. Though sometimes it would overestimate wait times on popular rides so we were able to ride them a few times in a row. Like we did the Hogwarts ride 3x at Harry Potter World at the start of the day in the same amount of time it would take for 1 ride.
 
Never used Easy WDW. It does look easy to use.

Two interesting Disney tidbits I've seen recently.

Epcot has opened up The Odyssey for World Cup games. The Odyssey is the large building between Test Track and Mexico in World Showcase. I've never heard of any place in the parks open to watch sporting events. This would be nice on Saturday and Sunday trips to Epcot. If you're in a pinch, you can take a boat from Epcot to the Boardwalk and go to the ESPNZone. I did that once to watch a football game while my wife and oldest (then only) were at Epcot.
http://eatingwdw.com/2014/06/17/2014-fifa-world-cup-at-the-odyssey/

There is a rumor that Hollywood Studios is closing American Idol, Sounds Dangerous, and the Indiana Jones Stunt Show in January. All of those attractions are located on the left side of the park between the entrance and Star Tours. The word is Disney will build a Star Wars Land in this area. This would go a long way toward making the Studios a better park. That side of the park is beside the parking lot so they could use even more space if they want.
http://www.wdwthemeparks.com/rumors/2014/02/26/the-american-idol-experience-to-close

Additional information about the Star Wars Land rumor:
http://www.wdwthemeparks.com/rumors/2013/08/20/star-wars-land-coming-to-hollywood-studios



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Hollywood Studios is hosting daily Frozen themed live shows and fireworks this summer running from July 5 to Sept 1. May be a way to see Anna and Elsa without having to stand in line for 5+ hours.
http://www.insidethemagic.net/2014/...royal-welcome-sing-along-fireworks-and-party/

New entertainment called Frozen Summer Fun LIVE! is coming to Disney’s Hollywood Studios beginning July 5, continuing daily through September 1.
Frozen Summer Fun LIVE! will include a variety of “Frozen” themed entertainment including a royal welcome for Anna and Elsa on the Sorcerers Stage (not exactly their official coronation), Frozen sing-along on the Streets of America, “Frozen Funland” in Pixar Place, a dance party with a live band, ice skating rink, ice carving demonstrations, and fireworks show on Hollywood Boulevard. Plus Kristoff will make a first-ever appearance along with ice skaters, skiiers, and hints of Olaf too.
 
I never saw the Indiana Jones stunt show, did I miss anything?
 
Here you go. It's OK if you want to learn how movies were made in the 80s.

 
loved it as a kid but i think they changed it to add all participation. i also got to be the guy in the submarine on the backstage tour ride once. good times.
 
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loved it as a kid but i think they changed it to add all participation. i also got to be the guy in the submarine on the backstage tour ride once. good times.

my cousins got to "ride the bee" one time from Honey I shrunk the kids. Pretty cool
 
Star Wars expansion news moved from officially unofficial to officially official. Plans will be announced next year.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/05/star-wars-disney-parks_n_5653067.html

Guardians of the Galaxy can come to Disney World because the Universal Studios rule only applies to characters at Universal Studios.
http://bamsmackpow.com/2014/08/06/the-guardians-of-the-galaxy-could-come-to-disney-world/

It would be sweet if Hollywood Studios could:
1. Add Star Wars Land to the whole left side of the park.
2. Retheme the Tower of Terror, Rockin' Rollercoaster, and Fantasmic area around villains
3. Add a Marvel area featuring Guardians of the Galaxy, Big Hero 6, and other lesser known Marvel characters
4. Of course, add another Pixar themed ride or two.
 
^^^Game changers all Ph. Star Wars/Villians/Marvel = profit. They should give us moneys.

I'd also build a damn Frozen castle there too, asap.
 
^^^Game changers all Ph. Star Wars/Villians/Marvel = profit. They should give us moneys.

I'd also build a damn Frozen castle there too, asap.

The new Frozen day long event at Hollywood Studios is apparently very popular.

I don't know why they haven't just announced they're closing Blizzard Beach to turn it into Arendale.
 
because who the fuck goes swimming in Arendale

Olaf and his buddy in the hot tub?

Clearly a Frozen water park would be HUGE. If the fad of Frozen ever dies down, they could always transition back to Blizzard.
 
River Country was my jam back in the day.
 
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