A Better Disney Day: Optimizing Our Touring Plan Engine’s Use of Lightning Lane Multi Pass

We’ve released an updated version of our touring plan software that improves Lightning Lane Multi Pass suggestions and use, for Walt Disney World and Disneyland.

In testing using real-world, comprehensive plans from the Magic Kingdom, these changes increase the use of in-park Lightning Lane Multi Passes to 4 per day from an average of 2 before these changes. That works out to a savings of roughly 10 minutes per day in line for our test plans. Many of you will see more time savings than that.

These savings come from improving our calculation of “the time I can get my next Lightning Lane Multi Pass”, in two areas:

• Better handling of rules around expirations, tiers, and grace periods
• An improved “look-ahead” feature that more accurately determines when the next Multi Pass will be used

As an example of the improved “look-ahead” feature, consider this scenario:

• It’s 10 a.m. in the Magic Kingdom
• You’ve already used one Multi Pass and cannot make another
• Your next Multi Pass is for Peter Pan’s Flight, valid for 10:45 a.m. to 11:45 a.m.

What’s the next time you can get another Multi Pass? It’s the earliest of:

• The time you redeem the Peter Pan Multi Pass -or-
• 11:46 a.m., after the Peter Pan Multi Pass expires

At 10:00 a.m., the software (and you) can’t be certain of the exact time you’re going to use that Multi Pass, because that’s in the future and you’ve got things to do between now and then that have not yet happened. So prior to today, the optimizer would take the safe route and set the “next Multi Pass time” to 11:46 a.m.

The updated software does a better job of estimating your chances of redeeming that Peter Pan Multi Pass before it expires at 11:46 a.m. If you’re very likely to redeem the Peper Pan Multi Pass at a time before 11:46 a.m., the software uses that earlier estimated redemption time as the new “next Multi Pass time”. (And if you’re not able to redeem it before 11:46 a.m., the software goes back to update the previous plan steps with the corrected time.)

Some Comments At Touring Plan Optimization #37,000,000

At current rates we’ll do our 37 millionth touring plan optimization in the next few days, and we’re approaching our one millionth user. At those numbers, the software has two broad goals for things like Lightning Lane recommendations:

• Provide reasonable defaults for families unfamiliar with Disney parks
• Allow advanced users to customize parameters to fit their touring style

As an example of a reasonable default, the software requires a minimum savings of 10 minutes in line before it’ll recommend obtaining a Lightning Lane Multi Pass. Why 10 minutes? It takes time to find that Lightning Lane and book it, and that’s time on your phone that you could be spending talking to your family, taking a break, or enjoying the parks. Given the number of complaints we hear about folks having to be on their phones constantly in the parks, ten minutes seems like a reasonable default for now. (I don’t think the number is 1 and I don’t think the number is 20.)

An example of a customizable parameter is the “Lightning Lane Grace Period” setting, which you can configure to between 0 and 119 minutes on your touring plan. We’ve talked to folks who are most comfortable with just the official one-hour return window, and we’ve talked to folks who will use every extra minute they can. That 120-minute range is wide enough to require the ability to change it in the app.