Touring Plans with a DAS

[Hoodie]

Does anyone else get completely overwhelmed trying to plan your day with the DAS? Our fast pass window is coming up and I never know what to get and when. Without a DAS you want to schedule the FP+ as early as possible so you can get your 4th, 5th, etc. With a DAS, I want to spread them out so we can have a DAS return time when on the FP ride, then do the DAS ride and then back to FP or a meal after scheduling the next DAS return. Add in the going TO the ride for the return and I feel like it's walking in circles with the planning. Of course, you don't want them TOO spread out because you never know how long your kid (or you) will last with the stimulation.

It drives me bonkers.

 

[gap2368]

I am using touring plans for my next trip it has be going to Pooh first then buss and space I plan on getting a DAS for 7DMT before Pooh but I so get what you mean. But for the most part I plan to follow the plan and if a line is too long i will use the DAS and use the time to find a quiet place or do a shorter ride close by

 

[Aladora]

Does anyone else get completely overwhelmed trying to plan your day with the DAS? Our fast pass window is coming up and I never know what to get and when. Without a DAS you want to schedule the FP+ as early as possible so you can get your 4th, 5th, etc. With a DAS, I want to spread them out so we can have a DAS return time when on the FP ride, then do the DAS ride and then back to FP or a meal after scheduling the next DAS return. Add in the going TO the ride for the return and I feel like it's walking in circles with the planning. Of course, you don't want them TOO spread out because you never know how long your kid (or you) will last with the stimulation.

It drives me bonkers.

I'll admit that I gave up trying to use TP to plan our trip. There were just too many variables and I never figured out how to make their system work for me.

So, here is what we did:
Picked the top 3 FP+ rides that we knew we wanted to do and booked those. I booked them all for the morning and moved them around on the fly as needed. For the most part, I was able to get times around 9:15, 10:15 and 11:15. This gave us plenty of time in the morning to get to the park, grab a Starbucks and then go to the first ride. After we scanned into the first one I would try and move up the next one, unless we had grabbed a RT. This worked really well for most things, although if the RT ride was a really long wait (I'm looking at you, FOP!), then we would go and get a snack, ride something with a shorter wait time or just let him sit and play his Nintendo DS.

If there was a ride DS wanted to go on other than the ones we had a FP for and the wait was longer than 30 minutes, we grabbed a RT. We have been working with DS to get him to wait for longer and longer periods of time at Disney. His first trip in 2011 when he was 6 and newly dx as autistic he was just not able to wait. Over the course of 7 years, a ton of therapy and many trips he is now able to go into a 30 minute line without a problem. We are working towards a day where he is able to to Disney without the DAS.

 

[Hoodie]

I'll admit that I gave up trying to use TP to plan our trip. There were just too many variables and I never figured out how to make their system work for me.

If there was a ride DS wanted to go on other than the ones we had a FP for and the wait was longer than 30 minutes, we grabbed a RT. We have been working with DS to get him to wait for longer and longer periods of time at Disney. His first trip in 2011 when he was 6 and newly dx as autistic he was just not able to wait. Over the course of 7 years, a ton of therapy and many trips he is now able to go into a 30 minute line without a problem. We are working towards a day where he is able to to Disney without the DAS.

We're doing the same thing and also up to about 30 minutes. I will say, usually the first couple of days we don't really need DAS at all. We will use it to avoid some of the more sensory intense lines (TSMM, Buzz Lightyear, etc.) as the interactive elements on some of those are too much for him. He usually gets more dependent on it towards the end of the trip when he's tired and had several sensory days in a row. Every time we go, we hope to get more non-DAS days than DAS-dependent ones.

 

[ttintagel]

Yeah, TP doesn't always work for me, because I don't want to ride dark rides until after dark (my eyes don't adjust to the dark as quickly as someone with normal vision).

 

[DisneyMaleficent50]

I think you have a good plan. Hope you have a good trip

 

[kaytieeldr]

. We are working towards a day where he is able to to Disney without the DAS.

Every time we go, we hope to get more non-DAS days than DAS-dependent ones

I hope this doesn't sound condescending, because it's sincere: That's great! Congratulations on the current results, and wishing you both (and your respective children) much success!

 

[Twitterpaited]

I am trying to use Touring Plans to plan the trip for my family in June, including DAS. I have modified it quite a bit and just write in the notes if I plan on going on a ride with a short wait or go to a meal while waiting for the DAS return time, and I remove those rides from my plan. I am planning meals around rides that have a long wait but we aren’t able to get a FP. Not sure if we will be able to get DAS for my DBiL with blood clot issues, though, so I need to make backup plans.

 

[Tigger in a kilt]

I’m glad I’m not the only one struggling with this. I have used the TP site to a degree, but basically I have planned as if we won’t get the DAS (though in reality if we don’t then we are screwed and will be on the next flight home). So I got the FPs from 10am, but I planned in far fewer breaks and wandering time than I expect we will need. Instead, we will use the DAS return times for longer rides to have a snack, look in the shops, and soak up the atmosphere. From our touring plan, it looks like we are planning on moving at a much faster pace than we actually are, so the DAS times are when we will have our down time.

This is probably the wrong approach, and I’m sure I could be more clever about it. However, I feel like this approach will minimise the stress of the entire day. So if we want to get a snack or have a break, we check what ride has the longest wait time, go and get the return time, and then go for our break.

I have found that it’s incredibly hard to get any good planning info for using a DAS, so I’m not sure if there is a right or wrong way to do it.

 

[tinkerbelletreasure]

It’s been 2 years since I took my son to Disney and my ex husband was a cast member, so we had to get the DAS daily and couldn’t preschedule fastpasses, but our strategy was always, try to get the longest lines FP, do DAS for whatever we couldn’t get fast passes for and look for as many lines under 20 minutes as possible. That would usually yield 2-3 rides an hour. I love the queue theming so we try to not use the DAS unless the line is longer than 30 minutes. We’ve also learned fantasyland clears out after the fireworks and you can pretty much walk on anything other than Peter Pan. So we always make that our last plan of the day. We prefer late nights to rope drop.