Word on the street has been that Disney World would offer FastPass for the new Enchanted Tales with Belle show in the Magic Kingdom, which is part of the new Fantasyland expansion project.

Disney held another soft-opening of the new area yesterday. While I was there I asked whether FastPass would be offered for this attraction, after noticing that what appeared to be the FastPass entrance didn’t have any signage indicating such.

The Cast Member staffing the entrance indicated that while FastPass would eventually be offered here, it could be quite a while before they do so. He seemed very sure that the attraction wouldn’t offer FastPass when the new area officially opens on December 6th.

I went ahead and removed FastPass support in for this attraction in RideMax, at least for the time being. If any of you have created December RideMax plans which have you using FastPass for Enchanted Tales with Belle, I recommend creating new plans instead.

Note also that it’s very possible we’ll continue to adjust estimates for the new attractions right up until the new area opens (and afterwards as well), so I really recommend creating your “final” plans as close to your actual visit date as possible!

Crowds streaming into the new Cars Land at Disney California Adventure. See our new tips for avoiding the wait!

We’ve just published advice for navigating the new Cars Land attractions at Disney California Adventure. If you’re a RideMax subscriber, be sure to check out this new page in the RideMax Tips & Hints!

For those of you who have patiently waiting, we’ve just published plans for June 15th-30th for Disneyland and DCA. Plans for DCA after June 15th include the new Cars Land attractions, and we expect to be in the park opening weekend looking at wait times and gathering data to help us refine our estimates further.

For those creating DCA plans for these new dates, please pay special attention to the “Arrival” tips at the top of these plans on specific dates, as well as the attractions-specific tips at the bottom of the plan, as we’ve added several new tips related to the Cars Land opening.

Happy Planning!

Hollywood Studios log-jam before the new opening procedure went into effect. These "rope-drop" crowds are a thing of the past, but you need to arrive early to take advantage of this!

We’ve now updated RideMax to show an 8:45am opening time for Disney’s Hollywood Studios on days when DHS isn’t hosting morning Extra Magic Hours.

Although the “official” park opening time remains 9:00am, for all practical purposes the “real” opening time is typically 8:45am now. By reflecting this more accurately in RideMax, I’m hoping it will help with the overall planning process.

Note that Toy Story Midway Mania may be the ONLY attraction that actually opens early, but this extra 15 minutes is huge, especially since the lines for TSMM can build so quickly.

With the new opening procedure guests are allowed all the way into the attraction areas of the park as soon as the turnstiles open at 8:45am, with no more pre-opening ceremony or “rope drop” to hold everyone back. The new procedure causes guests to gradually filter into the park through the turnstiles, rather than forcing everyone into a crazy, crowd-packed mobbed heading over to TSMM.

Although I much prefer the new opening procedure, in order to take full advantage of it you’ll still need to arrive early in order to help ensure a position near the front of the turnstiles.

For our Disney World RideMax subscribers, I hope you’ll find this update helpful.

Happy planning!

Just stopping by to post a link to a few scenes from around Epcot yesterday. Enjoy!

Pictures from the Epcot Flower and Garden Festival 2012

Today we’ve updated RideMax with an important change for California Adventure customers!

As the FastPass machines for the California Screamin’ roller coaster are now “disconnected” from the rest of the system, RideMax will now take this into consideration when it creates plans for DCA. As a result, don’t be surprised if RideMax has you obtaining a FastPass for this attraction even if you recently obtained another one elsewhere.

Happy Planning!

We messed up this past week!

Disneyland decided to hold Magic Morning (early entry) every day of the week, but we didn’t catch (and adjust for) this until later in the day Wednesday. That means that plans for Disneyland on Monday, April 2nd, and Wednesday, April 4th, would have missed the “EE factor.” (Friday plans created BEFORE the afternoon of April 4th would have had the same problem.)

For those who visited on Monday and Wednesday especially and felt that you didn’t receive sufficient value from RideMax, please contact us at “support at ridemax dot com” and let us know!

(And obviously, our goal is to avoid missing this next time!

I know that even contemplating such a thought is considered heresy in the “expert” world of touring the Magic Kingdom, but is there ever a time when you might want to NOT visit Dumbo first thing in the morning?

I ask because in experimenting with a few RideMax plans for this very busy week before the Easter holiday, I noticed that some of the Magic Kingdom RideMax plans were coming up with Dumbo LATER than first thing in the morning. Assuming that some of you may be seeing the same thing and thinking RideMax must have gone nuts to *not* recommend Dumbo first during such a crazy-busy week, I thought I’d take you on a photo tour from Monday morning’s EMH at the Magic Kingdom.

Keep in mind that later today, Disney itself would report the line for Dumbo at 130 minutes!

The above is a picture of the line for Dumbo at 7:36am. More than half of the EMH hour is gone, but Dumbo is easily still just a one-cycle wait.

The above shows the line for Barnstormer at the same time in the morning. The ride is down right now, but there are just a handful of folks milling around.

Fantasyland at 7:46am. Nice wide-open spaces!

Winnie the Pooh at 7:46am. The 10-minute posted wait is high.  :-)

The above picture shows the line for Dumbo at 7:50am. STILL just a one-cycle wait!

The Barnstormer queue at 7:52am. The ride is open now, but still no line here.

Random picture of the Tomorrowland Speedway just before the park opened for regular guests at 8:00am.

Dumbo at 8:04am. Finally a line here! I’m estimating it’s still just between 10-15 minutes though.

Just to recap at this point, we could have arrived a full HOUR after the EMH began, and still visited Dumbo without much of a wait. (See my summary at the end for the HUGE caveat though!)

A quick hop over to Adventureland shows no line for Aladdin at 8:15am.

Pirates is looking pretty deserted too. Disney would report the wait here at 50 minutes later this afternoon!

Another deserted walkway at 8:15am!

8:20am. What’s not to like?

Back to the Barnstormer at 8:31am. A 10-minute posted wait, but…

Still no line to speak of!

Now, let’s take a break and come back for more pictures later in the morning, shall we?

Here is the area around Space Mountain at 10:16am. The line on the left is for the FastPass machines!

Back over to the Barnstormer area at 10:23am. The posted wait still shows 10 minutes, but I’m guessing it’s more like 30 now…

The line for the Teacups at 10:29am. Yikes!

Random shot over the construction wall.

And another one. Being tall does have a few advantages, I suppose…

Fantasyland at 10:37am. Why would anyone do this to themselves??!

“it’s a small world” at 10:41am. Wow.

Peter Pan’s not looking too great either.

More crowds over here…

Magic Kingdom main gate around 11:00am. I’m leaving now.  :-)

So, back to my comment previously about Dumbo. As you can see, the crowds didn’t really start building until around an hour after the EMH began, when the park opened for regular guests. I have to stress, however, that I wouldn’t expect to see this pattern on a day when the park opens later. This week is unique, because the EMH begins at 7:00am, and further, morning EMH is being held every day of the week, further diluting the crowds taking advantage of the EMH on any given day.

There also seems to be something about a 7:00am start that simply makes it hard for people to get there in time for the really low crowds.

So, if you’re visiting the Magic Kingdom this week and next, be sure to arrive early and enjoy the lack of crowds while you can.

And if you are visiting during the EMH at this time of year, don’t be surprised if RideMax has you NOT visiting Dumbo first. With crowds this low first thing in the morning, it might save you some walking time to hit another area of the park first, and circle around to Dumbo a half-hour later or so. I wouldn’t necessarily suggest this at another season of the year, but 7:00am openings are amazing and unique, and worth taking advantage of if you can!

Have a great time at the parks!

World of Color at Disney California Adventure

We recently received a trip report from a repeat RideMax customer from Kefar Saba, Israel. We’ve copied his report here in it’s entirety (with minor editing adjustments).

Enjoy!

Dear RideMax

Let me start my story at the beginning – 23 years ago. In the summer of 1988, my wife (my girlfriend back then) and I visited Disneyland. Although we had fun, the most prominent memory we have from that visit was waiting in endless lines – sometimes up to an hour (and if we remember correctly, even an hour and a half for one attraction). In fact, during our first day, we wanted to ride the “Star Tours” attraction, and the sign posted there claimed that the wait will be 2 hours. Since we didn’t want to wait that much, and we were planning to come back the next day in any case, we returned the following day early in the morning, and were among the crowd waiting at the end of Main street for the rope to drop (at 9:00am, I think). When the rope dropped, we ran towards the “Star tours” attraction – as did everybody else there; We ended up waiting “only” 45 minutes.

The next chapter in the story takes place during July 2009 – when we went on a family vacation (we are now with 3 children) in the USA, including several days in Walt Disney World. We dreaded the expected lines, and I started to look for some tips on how to get the most out of a visit to WDW – that is when I first heard of RideMax, and decided to purchase it. Needless to say, the results were great – our waiting time was minimal for almost all rides, and we succeeded in doing everything we planned (and then some more).

The final chapter (in the meantime), is the family vacation we went on last month, including a visit to Disneyland and California Adventure on July 11th and 13th 2011. Of course, I decided to use RideMax once again, as the challenge in visiting Disneyland seemed to be greater than the parks in Disney World.

Once again, the results were fantastic – we were able to do almost everything we planned to (21 rides, three shows during the afternoon and two shows in the evening), and even succeeded in riding Indiana Jones and Space Mountain twice, and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad three times, all in one day, without waiting in line more than 15-20 minutes, and usually much less. To be honest, during the planning we ended up eliminated in advance the peter pan ride, as the projected wait time was too long for us (more than 30 minutes – RideMax “spoiled” us) and during the day at Disneyland, we decided to skip “Finding Nemo Submarines” as the standby wait time was more than 40 minutes (as projected by Ridemax). The same goes for our visit at California Adventure – we were usually ahead of plan, hardly waited in line (except for Toy Story Mania – for which the wait is inevitable), and did the “Goofy’s Sky School” twice and “California Screamin’ Roller Coaster” three times.

But in addition to the planning that RideMax does – taking FastPasses in the correct order, allowing us to maximize the number of FastPasses we collected during the day, scheduling rides at times that there was little to no wait at all, while the same rides had standby lines of 30 minutes or more during other times of the day, the tips the came with RideMax were very helpful – in particular the tips on arriving early and how to plan the arrival (my Wife and kids initially wanted to “kill” me for forcing them to wake up at 6:30am in order to be at the gates no later than 7:20am, but ended up thanking me for doing so) and the tips about the shows and parades (where the best location to view them is, when to arrive for them, how to get a ticket for World of Color).

So once again – I can say without any hesitation: RideMax is worth every cent it costs (and then some more), and I recommend it to anybody planning a visit to Disney’s parks. In fact, I have a feeling that more and more people are using it – during our visit in Disneyland, we met two families that also had RideMax plans in their hands (and had some time to exchange views on this – not too much time, as this was during our waiting in lines, which as noted was usually very short), and another person who saw our plan and asked if it was “from that software that plans the visit”.

Thank you very much, and keep up the good work.

Thanks to this customer for sharing his RideMax experience. We’re glad he had such a nice trip, and that RideMax could help!

RideMax includes advice for viewing the new World of Color show at California Adventure.

Just a reminder that entries for our RideMax Give-Away on Facebook are due today. Three lucky winners will receive annual subscriptions to the RideMax version of their choice.

See all of the details on our RideMax page on Facebook. (Look for the RideMax Give-Away post on our wall.)

Good luck!