HydroGuy
A Pirate's Life For Me
- Joined
- Jun 5, 2005
A number of regulars around here have expressed some skepticism of the TP crowd calendar for DLR. I am a subscriber for both DLR and WDW and for DLR there always seems to be something off about their calendars.
I am going to visit DLR Thanksgiving week this year for just a day trip and decided to check their calendar. I found out that of the two days I am considering going both are ranked as "10" for the resort as a whole on a scale from 1-10. FWIW, TP gives a rank to each park and then a resort combined rank.
Out of curiosity I checked the historical ranking of the three days we visited in August this year and two days were 10s and one was a 9. Those days did not seem especially crowded to me based on experience I had over past summers. It seemed strange they were ranked so high. I would have said they were more like an 8.
Out of further curiosity I checked all days ranked 10 this year. Here is what I found:
Jan - 3
Feb - 2
Mar - 5
Apr - 3
May - 1
Jun - 2
Jul - 15
Aug - 8
Sep - 0
Oct - 3
That is 42 total days ranked as a 10 for this year up to today. Looking at their projections for Nov-Dec I found:
Nov - 6
Dec - 8
So TP is projecting 56 total days this year as days of 10 level crowds. How do they define a 10? Here is what they say:
What that means is that with 365 days in the year there will be 36.5 days ranked as a 10, 36.5 days as a 9, and so on. In other words 10% of all days in a year will be a 10 and 10% a 9.
But TP has 56 days ranked as a 10 - or over 15% of all days at DLR.
Since I apparently have a lot of spare time on my hands I checked the number of days ranked as a 9.
So far this year there have been 59 days ranked as a 9 - this is historical data and not projection - plus another 7 days in Nov-Dec projected to be a 9. That is 66 days ranked as a 9 or over 18% of all DLR days.
In other words TP ranks 33% of all DLR days as a 9 or a 10 although it should only be 20%. No wonder their rankings seem off so often. A 9 or 10 day at DLR happens once every third day.
Until TP can present their data in a way that is consistent with their own definitions I will continue to advise folks to ignore their crowd calendars as they are virtually meaningless and not helpful in trip planning.
I am going to visit DLR Thanksgiving week this year for just a day trip and decided to check their calendar. I found out that of the two days I am considering going both are ranked as "10" for the resort as a whole on a scale from 1-10. FWIW, TP gives a rank to each park and then a resort combined rank.
Out of curiosity I checked the historical ranking of the three days we visited in August this year and two days were 10s and one was a 9. Those days did not seem especially crowded to me based on experience I had over past summers. It seemed strange they were ranked so high. I would have said they were more like an 8.
Out of further curiosity I checked all days ranked 10 this year. Here is what I found:
Jan - 3
Feb - 2
Mar - 5
Apr - 3
May - 1
Jun - 2
Jul - 15
Aug - 8
Sep - 0
Oct - 3
That is 42 total days ranked as a 10 for this year up to today. Looking at their projections for Nov-Dec I found:
Nov - 6
Dec - 8
So TP is projecting 56 total days this year as days of 10 level crowds. How do they define a 10? Here is what they say:
Sorting The Marbles
The Crowd Calendar is based on a percentile rank (for more on its genesis, read here).
Imagine you have a box of 100 marbles of different sizes. If you sort the marbles from smallest to largest you can divide them into ten groups of ten, according to size. The largest ten marbles get put into Group Ten. The next ten largest get put into Group Nine, etc.
In our case, we are sorting all the possible crowd sizes at the Disneyland Resort into ten groups. The highest ten percent get a rank of ten; the next highest ten percent get a rank of nine, etc.
What that means is that with 365 days in the year there will be 36.5 days ranked as a 10, 36.5 days as a 9, and so on. In other words 10% of all days in a year will be a 10 and 10% a 9.
But TP has 56 days ranked as a 10 - or over 15% of all days at DLR.
Since I apparently have a lot of spare time on my hands I checked the number of days ranked as a 9.
So far this year there have been 59 days ranked as a 9 - this is historical data and not projection - plus another 7 days in Nov-Dec projected to be a 9. That is 66 days ranked as a 9 or over 18% of all DLR days.
In other words TP ranks 33% of all DLR days as a 9 or a 10 although it should only be 20%. No wonder their rankings seem off so often. A 9 or 10 day at DLR happens once every third day.
Until TP can present their data in a way that is consistent with their own definitions I will continue to advise folks to ignore their crowd calendars as they are virtually meaningless and not helpful in trip planning.