Crowd Calendars Are More Worthless Than Toilet Paper and Fake Dollar Bills

[mshanson3121]

I definitely agree with this. We were there for a week last November and had a great trip. I only just this last week, largely because of all the really negative talk on here about crowds, looked up the crowd levels for the days we were there. Apparently we had nines and tens for at least half of our trip. Frankly I'm glad they were wrong going in. If I had known that going in I would have worried unnecessarily. I'm still a little confused about the numbers to be honest--dh's response pretty much sums it up: "you mean they don't get busier than that?" To be honest, other than during the fireworks we never felt overly crowded, we never waited longer than a half hour for an attraction. We only waited more than fifteen minutes four or five times in a week (and two of those were the FP line for FOP--which apparently people are willing to wait hours for), we never got shut out of a show. We had a truly magical week and only missed one attraction--Splash Mountain was down when we intended to ride it and the two other times we were able to ride it with reasonable waits it was evening and just cold enough we didn't want to risk getting wet. If that's nines and tens I guess we just don't have to worry about crowds at all.

Definitely agree! When we went, the crowds were 8s & 9s, which most on here would be complaining about. My husband, who hates crowds, didn't find it bad at all, except for a couple bottleneck spots in MK and AK. In fact, he was surprised when I mentioned about how that was supposedly such a "crowded" time.

 

[neverlandsky]

I'm going to say not entirely useless. Crowd calendars were helpful and useful to us in regards to making ADRs & FP+. Once at the parks it was a mad house all day / everyday. Yet with that initial setup, it helped.

 

[Klayfish]

There may be some truth to all these points, BUT...it's still more crowded during school holidays. Wait times are usually still lower during less crowded days. Everything else being equal, Monday is still not an ideal day to visit MK. Etc.

I disagree with the defeatist attitude that says "it's always busy, just go when you feel like it, no point trying to beat the crowds." And, if the crowd patterns are changing, let's learn how they have changed and what we can do about it. I'm certainly not going to show up on Christmas week and say "ahh, what's the difference? It's crowded anytime anyway."

I don't see it as defeatist at all. I simply see it as not a deterrent. Each to their own, but I don't go along with the repeated posts of "Well, we can't go during (insert month here) because it might be busy". My feeling to that, in a positive way, is so what?? It's the busiest tourist destination in the USA, so sure, there will be people. But don't let that stop you from going and having a wonderful time. Yes, I would...and have twice...said "Ahh, it's Christmas. So what, let's go!!!!" We had a blast both times. In fact, the trip we just did was one of my favorite ever. Certainly Christmas week is an exception as it's at the far end of the "crowd sizing" bell curve, but even then I see zero reason not to go. Other weeks/months I really and completely feel like "So what" about crowds. Doesn't mean I'm right or wrong, just my take on it.

I wouldn't know the difference between MK on a Monday or a Thursday. Not saying it in a negative way, but...don't know, don't care. We love being in WDW, know there will be lots of others there too, and just have a good time. If we want to go to MK on a Monday, we're going. Want to hit Epcot on Saturday...we're there. We don't even notice or pay attention to what park has EMH, etc...doesn't matter to us.

 

[Davey Jones II]

We can only go on a Disney trip once a year, and we have a limited budget, so those trips are expensive for us. We want to get the best bang for our buck. If a "who cares, so what" attitude works for you, that's great, I guess. Sure doesn't work for us.

As for crowd calendars, I think they will adapt and become more useful. It's true that if everyone uses them, they become useless, but the majority of WDW visitors are not uber planners. Visitation patterns seem to be changing, so we need to know how they are changing, in order to plan accordingly.

 

[MermaidMommy]

I saw something interesting from Len on touringplans.com a couple of days ago. He said that they think Disney is making "near-continuous" changes to ride capacity and staffing, lowering the capacity so that the average wait time for rides is the same on a slow day as they would be on any other day, thus saving money on labor and ride maintenance. As he put it: "The upshot is that you’re going to wait about the same time at Space Mountain in January as you will in July, even though 95% of public schools are in session in January, and almost none are in July."

 

[maryj11]

I have used crowd calendars for years and they have been a big help. My favorite is Easywdw and Touring Plans. Now since Josh is not doing his I'm checking out Touring Plans and Kenny the Pirates.
I have a lot of respect for the ones who make them.
Over this past year Disney World has been going through so many changes I have no idea how they keep up with their calendars.
I know they are trying to adjust to the changes and it's not easy.

 

[LSUmiss]

We can only go on a Disney trip once a year, and we have a limited budget, so those trips are expensive for us. We want to get the best bang for our buck. If a "who cares, so what" attitude works for you, that's great, I guess. Sure doesn't work for us.

As for crowd calendars, I think they will adapt and become more useful. It's true that if everyone uses them, they become useless, but the majority of WDW visitors are not uber planners. Visitation patterns seem to be changing, so we need to know how they are changing, in order to plan accordingly.

Many ppl do. Last I checked it’s not free for anyone. The average family goes once every 5 yrs. I think you will continue to be disappointed if you continue to chase the elusive “low” crowd time. It doesn’t exist now. I’m speaking from experience b/c I did this & was disappointed for the same reasons you stated. But, I’ve change my attitude & touring style & enjoy it much more. It’s not defeatist to me, it’s liberating.

 

[Davey Jones II]

Many ppl do. Last I checked it’s not free for anyone. The average family goes once every 5 yrs. I think you will continue to be disappointed if you continue to chase the elusive “low” crowd time. It doesn’t exist now. I’m speaking from experience b/c I did this & was disappointed for the same reasons you stated. But, I’ve change my attitude & touring style & enjoy it much more. It’s not defeatist to me, it’s liberating.

I haven't been disappointed in any of our trips. We usually go in October, which is a pretty busy time, although not compared to the peak periods. But I also worked hard on our touring plans and FP selection, with the help of these boards, as well as TP. It certainly wasn't useless.

 

[slpeters]

The thing is there's no way they could actually build a crowd calendar that will fit everyone's experience--especially without actual attendance figures. If you could build a model that would predict with absolute certainty the standby wait times for the big ticket rides at mid-afternoon and rank days accordingly (and my impression is that this would be something akin to what TP tries to do) that would be very useful for a great many people and I would certainly be interested in that data. But it would still have limited applicability to our trip because we didn't ride any big ticket rides mid-afternoon standby. On the other hand if you wanted to build your perfectly accurate rankings around the standby times for tier one non-headliners for the first hour (including EMH), tier two rides for the next couple hours, tier three rides for about an hour and a half after that and just disregard whatever happens in the afternoon that would be great for us but have even less general applicability.

 

[hiroMYhero]

After 4 pages of discussion with the main Crowd Calendars guys nicely staying out of the thread (Thanks!), time to close.