Long-time lover of touringplans here!
The crowd calendars come out a year ahead (and you can look at historical crowd calendar information, as well). Since that's when I start booking things, that's when I subscribe (or update my subscription) to touringplans, to help me pick dates.
Before the 6-month mark (which is where you are OP, and I'd say it's a perfect time to subscribe -- it's annual, anyway, so there's no reason to delay if you're going in November), I go back to touringplans to check the latest crowd estimates and set up a "crowd tracker" for my dates, as well as add our trip to my touringplans "dashboard" so I can start organizing. I look at projected park hours and crowd levels and we decide on a rough itinerary (which park, which day). I browse touringplans' restaurant reviews and menus and we make our dining decisions before the 180-day window opens. If there are any ADRs we can't get, I use touringplans "reservation finder" tool to set up a search for them.
I come back to touringplans about 3 months out to start making personalized touring plans for each day (SO MUCH FUN!!!), which I then use to see which FP+ we ought to try and make at the 60-day mark, and for what times of day.
Around 30 days out, we tweak our touring plans, browse around the touringplans hotel "room finder" tool, and configure a room request fax (which touringplans will send for us a few days before we arrive).
Just before traveling, I re-evaluate and update our touring plans, double-check my crowd tracker, watch for last-minute refurbs, and update my itineraries with any changes in park hours and entertainment schedules. I also like to pull up the touringplans "wait times" app periodically in the days before we travel, to get a realistic picture of "current" wait times at different attractions at various times of day.
