A Quick Survey About TouringPlans.com Subscriptions
Every once in a while we like to see what people think about the price of a TouringPlans.com subscription. Here is a very short, 3 question survey that will help us make sure our customers feel they are getting good value for their money. If you take a minute to respond we will be eternally grateful!
If you can’t see the survey above, click here.
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I have been buying the Unofficial Guide every year since at least 2011. I have also had a Touring Plans subscription for about the same length of time, maybe longer. I have used the touring plans many times and they are great. They do save time, but they also help with bigger groups as they can eliminate the, “what do you want to do next?” “I dunno what do you want to do next.” I have also used the reservation finder to great effect. I have been able to get Be Our Guest when it was a hot ticket and Cindy’s table for our anniversary lunch. We also find the room finder app useful and have even been placed in rooms we want. Lastly the app itself in the parks when not using a touring plan is useful just to see what wait times are what. And we have found them to be accurate to within +/- 5 minutes most times. Lastly I have started submitting our wait times to help y’all out.
I think the price now is about right at least with the discount when you have the book.
My perception is that accuracy of wait time predictions have gone down during COVID times, which makes the subscription less valuable at the moment. But at least you are collecting data, which is more than most.
I have really appreciated customizable touring plans in the past, but I have been annoyed by what should be easily fixable things like never updating the walk times at the beginning of the day to account for coming from the hub instead of the front gate, or using walk times for Festival of Fantasy that assume everyone watches from the same place, instead of letting me specify that we’d watch in Frontierland. On our last trip (pre-COVID), the touring plan wouldn’t let us get to Big Thunder before 9:11 am. Not a huge deal, but those few minutes have a compounding effect during that first hour (cf. Len’s comments about Extra Magic Minutes).
The other thing that has me pausing on renewing my subscription (it recently expired) is that the creation of the travel agency makes me a little suspicious of your objectivity and independence. Not sure if there’s anything you can do about that. Is the travel agency the reason why your relationship with mousesavers is over (or at least, they no longer have the exclusive discount code for tp)?
Lastly, several features I use are free, e.g., room views and suggestions, ADR finder, menu search. I am not motivated to pay right now for customizable touring plans and room request fax. If the free features became pay-only, I might reconsider. And I wouldn’t at all blame TP if they moved the free stuff behind a paywall, at all.
We don’t go every year but I still keep my subscription up so I can keep my park knowledge up to date (never know when you will need it for an unexpected trip) The Reservation Finder is amazing and hasn’t let us down yet, even for the most popular restaurants/times. I have seen many people get help with questions while at WDW almost immediately from the chat on the app. I think it is definitely worth it. We will spend $3000 -$6000 on a trip and the knowledge I have gained is considerable for someone that only been 3 times in my life. When the crowds zig, we zag.
That’s great Dianne! Thanks for sharing.
Len, I’ll try to answer your question.
First I’m an AP who typically goes to WDW multiple times a year so if I don’t experience an attraction on one trip, I’m not worried because I’ll get it next time. Also, I tend to create my own tentative plan based on what I’ve read recently about crowds and ride availability. So I’m not your target customer to begin with.
What I like about the other websites….They provide detailed description of day trips to the parks. I read or skim these to get an understanding of how things are going. On my most recent trip the best information I received was that the parks were opening about 45 minutes early, I hadn’t read that on Touring Plans. This trip was at Thanksgiving. I want all the data so I can make the best decision for myself and the people I’m with. A touring plan doesn’t provide that. I see on social media that Touring Plans is in the park testing plans but I never read about what worked and what didn’t. I get it, you’re a business so why would you give that information away for free. For me, the rest of your content doesn’t provide enough value to pay for information that I can get free other places.
Finally, I have found that I am able to do pretty much everything I want to do in the parks without a plan.
Hi – I do software pricing for a living. Honestly I think you’re asking the wrong question. To be honest, I might pay $15 a MONTH for how often I use it (covid aside). The key is to get me to pay that without overcharging the basic users.
The key to maximizing profitability is understanding which metrics drive value differences across different types of customers to max out each group’s willingness to pay balancing total customers with limiting money left on the table.
An annual plan is cheap for a non-local passholder like myself, but more expensive for a one trip a year guest (which I was for DLR), or even a local passholder who doesn’t plan out in advance like I do. Does it make sense to bundle unlimited trips, unlimited plans, advanced features like room finder and dining reservation alerts for all customers – do the one time guests even know of these features? Can you use those features to charge some customers more? E.g. at the current price point you get them for one trip a year, or one trip at a time at a higher price point you get them for unlimited trips (I probably had a half dozen trips at a time pre covid). At the current price you can have a dozen custom plans at a time, at the higher price you can have unlimited. I think the underlying value of the product would drive the upsell for people with multiple trips a year after they experienced them on their first trip (like the AP itself). More people would use the features because nothing undervalues a feature like giving it away at no incremental charge – which means customers would get more value and stay around longer.
Further – Am I a high cost customer b/c I’m chewing server time redoing plans in the parks? Do I contribute any value back by reporting wait times or answering post trip surveys?
The cool thing is you guys should have a lot of data on your customers, what churn looks like, what features they use. It can tell you a lot about how to think about offer design – then test the price points against that.
I miss Brian. I understand if he can’t make videos in the park right now, but he used to make many other informative videos from his home.
Hi Aimee!
Thank you so much, that’s very sweet and I appreciate it. The reason is basically that a) I’ve been very busy helping set up the TouringPlans Travel Agency and b) my family has been home all the time which makes filming tricky. The good news is that more is coming: I have a totally non-theme park travel video that will be out very soon and I have a trip planned to WDW in March. I’ll try to get some news or planning videos out before then, but there will be more coming.
I love using the plans! I will say that the Crowd predictions for March Break have been way off the past few years (excluding last year), with wildly fluctuating updates as the date gets closer. And yes, the entertainment offerings really need to be updated. But overall, love them!
This is an interesting comment, Amanda. What makes those other touring plans better? And what makes the rationale better?
There are other websites that provide better touring plans that don’t cost anything. The other websites also give better rationale behind their plans.
I enjoy planning and Touring Plans has a lot of good information to reference. I enjoy using this site and plan to keep my subscriptions for a long time to come.
I view my subscription in two ways. First of course would be for the information and tools for actual trips that I am planning for Walt Disney World. The other reason I subscribe is to support the TouringPlans website which gives me information that I am interested in on a daily basis. Sort of like subscribing to an online newspaper.
As far as updated information, that is happening every day in articles and regarding crowd predictions. Actually, I go to both WDW and TouringPlans websites each day and find that they are complimentary.
Thanks Lou, your comments were the first of many that emphasized the usefulness of our content in between trips. Glad to hear you are enjoying our content.
My value judgment is different this year than at other times, due to the obvious external circumstances. In previous years I’ve found huge value in the Personalized Touring Plans and other planning resources for both WDW and Universal Orlando. But this year, with both Disney and Universal improvising so much, and with the value proposition of the parks themselves being lower, there’s just less need for tools to help with minutely detailed trip planning.
I’d recommend doing this survey again whenever the virus situation has improved to the point that Disney and/or Universal lift the mask requirement for attendance. That’s the milestone that my next trip will depend on, and by then both companies may have stabilized operations more.
I regret my purchase. Stick to WDW. My Universal plan is useless. So much Disney bias. The pages haven’t been updated in years. A huge waste of money.
I got a survey back a couple of weeks back about our trip that was suppose to end dec 31st. There was no option to say on the survey we canceled our trip for COVID Concerns and how much they increased park capacity. Might want on option on your survey for did you cancel your trip for some reason.