Crowd prediction changes

[Pdollar88]

Over the past few months, I've read a few threads asking about wait time accuracy and posted some questions myself. The TP predictions for my spring trip just decreased across the board. I'm cautiously optimistic but don't want to put too much stock in it (just like the original higher number).

Does anyone have insight in how the calendar changes? I was pretty surprised to see the estimate drop - I just figured if there would be any change, it would be an increase. I found the wait time estimates pretty accurate in my plan for December!

 

[mamamelody2]

The TP predictions for our September trip just decreased, too. I'm also surprised, and skeptical.

 

[elsbit]

My May trip also decreased, which made me excited and then skeptical. Seeing that this happened across the board makes me think they have been redefining crowd levels again. They have written in the past, "We are not re-writing history; we are re-defining what the crowd levels mean. For example, an average wait time of 100 minutes at Space Mountain was a “10,” but with the 2017 adjustment it will be an “8.” It will now take an average wait time at Space Mountain to be above 127 minutes to be considered a 10. Wait times have increased, so an adjustment is needed."

 

[10CJ]

I was disappointed it was just crowd levels and not park hours.

 

[Pdollar88]

My May trip also decreased, which made me excited and then skeptical. Seeing that this happened across the board makes me think they have been redefining crowd levels again. They have written in the past, "We are not re-writing history; we are re-defining what the crowd levels mean. For example, an average wait time of 100 minutes at Space Mountain was a “10,” but with the 2017 adjustment it will be an “8.” It will now take an average wait time at Space Mountain to be above 127 minutes to be considered a 10. Wait times have increased, so an adjustment is needed."

Ahhhh. That makes so much sense. Thank you for that info!

I was disappointed it was just crowd levels and not park hours.

Same here!

 

[marcar12]

My May trip also decreased, which made me excited and then skeptical. Seeing that this happened across the board makes me think they have been redefining crowd levels again. They have written in the past, "We are not re-writing history; we are re-defining what the crowd levels mean. For example, an average wait time of 100 minutes at Space Mountain was a “10,” but with the 2017 adjustment it will be an “8.” It will now take an average wait time at Space Mountain to be above 127 minutes to be considered a 10. Wait times have increased, so an adjustment is needed."

This is an interesting point, and I agree that this is probably why there have been decreases. I was notified of some changes to crowd level predictions for my trip, too. Not all of mine went down, though. Animal Kingdom went up by 2 points for some dates.

 

[22Tink]

I was disappointed it was just crowd levels and not park hours.

Me too!

 

[Haley R]

We are going Feb 27-March 4 and our AK day went from a 3 to a 5. Not sure why the change in crowds, but it's not a huge difference. Our Epcot/HS day changed as well; HS went from 5-6 and Epcot went from 2-4. On the other hand, our MK day (a Saturday) went from 7-6. I'm confused what is causing this.

 

[PrincessWithABlaster]

My first week of May CLs went up. Epcot is a little lower one day and HS is lower on a day that I'm not going to be there, but overall the trend was up (again). So hopefully they're not re-defining the numbers or we're really in trouble. I too wonder what's prompting it. I'm not surprised May is going up, given the Jan data, but I'm surprised that others are having their CLs revised down.

 

[Eccle]

Just had a look at ours for the next couple of weeks (11th- 23rd) and there are quite a few changes, not generally dramatic but mainly down a point or two, it seems odd when mostly crowds have been higher than anticipated recently

 

[maalca23]

Our TP predictions have decreased, increase, etc.. three different times since I book our trip 6 months ago. most recently they changed yesterday.

 

[mamamelody2]

My May trip also decreased, which made me excited and then skeptical. Seeing that this happened across the board makes me think they have been redefining crowd levels again. They have written in the past, "We are not re-writing history; we are re-defining what the crowd levels mean. For example, an average wait time of 100 minutes at Space Mountain was a “10,” but with the 2017 adjustment it will be an “8.” It will now take an average wait time at Space Mountain to be above 127 minutes to be considered a 10. Wait times have increased, so an adjustment is needed."

Does everybody's email say this?
"Most updates to crowd levels are the result of unexpected changes in park hours. When those happen, crowd level updates are made after park hour changes--it generally takes us a week or two to perform that analysis, and there may or may not be changes for your travel dates. We also regularly adjust our forecasts based on statistical trends that we observe in the wait times that our community collects in the parks each day. We share updated predictions so that you have the best available information when planning your vacation."

There's no way the changes to my dates are due to park hours changes, as my trip is in September and hours aren't out at all yet. Sounds like hours didn't change for a number of other posters, either. SO, I agree they may be doing another re-defining of crowd levels.

I did notice last week that there were only 3 "1s" in the whole next year on TP crowd calendar. Now there are 11 "1s" just in my week. That's a big change.

 

[MDH]

As a note to all reading this. We just returned from a 2 week trip. I've relied on TP predictions for every trip I've ever gone on, but for this trip their predictions were useless. Our entire trip was supposed to be 4's to 2's across the board at the parks we went to. Every day I checked their "how did we do" section for crowd calendar showing if they were close, and they were always out by a factor of 4. 4 to 8, 3 to 7, even say a 2 to 8 once. I'm not blaming them, but clearly something has changed that they were not able to account for. We still enjoyed our trip, but it was dissappointing to see such high crowds when we planned our trip around lower crowds.

 

[slpeters]

I can see where they would feel like they needed to sort of adjust the numbers down. I just looked back at the week we were there and apparently half the time we were there the parks were 9s or 10s--but there's no way that I would have put any of them (other than perhaps our last evening at MK, I'd give that a 9) that way on a ten-point scale. The morning we were in DHS that park was adjusted up to a ten--that makes absolutely no sense to me. One, it just wasn't that crowded. Two, I can definitely imagine it being a lot more crowded. So would those be fourteens? It sort of defeats the point of a ten point scale. One the other hand despite the post-adjustment up of the crowd levels our touring plans done through their app worked like a charm. The wait times were scarily accurate.

 

[PlutoTheDog89]

Always expect the parks to be crowded. It's impossible to predict anymore.

Albeit, we went for Pro Bowl weekend, but it was the "down time" and the parks were still packed.

 

[Mom2Stitch]

We are going Mid May and many of our numbers went down by 1, aside from AK which seemed to increase. My guess is that they are adjusting the scale. I just don't think they can honestly tell anymore.

 

[cindyfan]

I think they are just fine-tuning a lot of days for this year. It seems to be balancing out, and not so much of a "redefining".
For my trip next month.... for all days MK and DHS decreased by 1 each, but AK increased by 2. For overall WDW, one day down, another day up.
I think that Pandora's popularity at AK is having a very strong effect on crowds, to the point of many people adjusting their plans just to get a full day in at AK in anticipation of a long wait for FOP. And fewer people going to DHS until after the opening of Toy Story Land.
I just plan to be flexible, as usual! Most of my FP+ can still be adjusted should I decide to change park days. Just go with it!

 

[KristinU]

My crowd predictions changed as well, and I also noticed some advertising elsewhere of a 20% discount on rooms during my visit...so apparently Disney is predicting lower than expected crowds too and wants to jack that back up.

 

[LuckyH]

As a note to all reading this. We just returned from a 2 week trip. I've relied on TP predictions for every trip I've ever gone on, but for this trip their predictions were useless. Our entire trip was supposed to be 4's to 2's across the board at the parks we went to. Every day I checked their "how did we do" section for crowd calendar showing if they were close, and they were always out by a factor of 4. 4 to 8, 3 to 7, even say a 2 to 8 once. I'm not blaming them, but clearly something has changed that they were not able to account for. We still enjoyed our trip, but it was dissappointing to see such high crowds when we planned our trip around lower crowds.

We just returned from our trip too and the parks were much busier than expected. We had several days predicted to be CL 3 and were actually CL 8 in the "How did we do" section the next day. It was very disappointing. The wait times were also not accurate at all. Not even close. I seriously doubt I'll use TP again and this is the 4th trip that we had used them.

 

[rer1972]

I think there are a lot of extra variables going on this year. Toy Story Land opening is going to push crowds to HS, and AK crowds do not seem to be going down much with FOP/Pandora. Not that this would be the only things affecting crowds this year, but I think TP is taking a lot of these changes into account. There has gotta be some sort of adjustments on their part.