Crowd prediction changes

[Hatwriter456]

The crowd levels for my mid-June trip all just went down yesterday. Last time TP did an adjustment all of the crowd levels increased and even to a 9 at HS on Saturday June 16th. I figured that the increase in crowds, especially at HS, was due to Toy Story Land opening up. But, with this update the CL all went down especially in HS - one day even decreased to a 5. MK is predicted to be a 4 on Sunday, June 17th. I hope this doesn't mean that they have an idea of when TSL will open and it won't be the predicted Memorial Day weekend. My kids would love to check it out when we are there in June.

 

[windcriesamy]

We're going in September, and all our days decreased by at least 2 levels. I originally assumed the crowd numbers went down based on the hurricane weather from last year. Now I'm guessing they're adjusting their scales.

 

[PrincessWithABlaster]

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!

DHS CL went up for us, and TSL will most likely not be open first week of May (soft openings would be possible).

Since there are increases and decreases I don’t think it’s a redefinition. You’d expect all the CLs to go one direction (down) if that were the case.

 

[WillowRain]

My Sept trip reduced at AK and HS from 3 or 4 to 1 on some days! But, they also reduced my January stay from 3 to 2 at AK that turned out to be an 8, so even though I paid the 14.95, I don't know how much I trust it at this point. We will see.

 

[lambdabeta]

We got the same thing for our trip in December. I think they are adjusting the crowd levels based on whatever data they use. I found that historically they are not very good at predicting crowd levels. They were off most days last year. Sometimes by a lot and sometimes by 1 level. Predicting crowds at WDW is less science and more a guess because it seems to always be crowded and you don't know what will make levels go up or down. My DH did a graph on crowd levels since 2013 to see if they were trending up. What he found was 2014 was a great year to be at Disney. For some reason that year had the lowest crowd levels. Otherwise the crowds have been pretty much consistently high. I look at the crowd calendars but make my decisions based on what I think will work.

 

[zebrastreyepz]

My March and Octobers decreased.

 

[lolomarie]

I got the same email as you folks.

My question is this, even though there seems to be a consensus between this and the other trending TP thread right now (the one with toilet paper in the title), that the CL prediction is off, do people still value the plans? Specifically, the personalized plans? I've never followed a plan, but after my last trip, Christmas 2015, where it was CRAZY BUSY, I really want to try out a plan to try to optimize my time.

So what are your thoughts on following the TP plans?

 

[Jen_G]

I got the same email as you folks.

My question is this, even though there seems to be a consensus between this and the other trending TP thread right now (the one with toilet paper in the title), that the CL prediction is off, do people still value the plans? Specifically, the personalized plans? I've never followed a plan, but after my last trip, Christmas 2015, where it was CRAZY BUSY, I really want to try out a plan to try to optimize my time.

So what are your thoughts on following the TP plans?

I love making the plans - it satisfies the min-maxer in me. But on my last trip Jan 8th-21st I ended up tossing the plans away on day 1 and just relying on getting more fastpasses. Part of the trouble was that the wait times were off, but the other part was that I had made assumptions during the planning process that we weren't able to keep. ("I'm sure I can totally get my parents out to the park in time for rope drop" turned in to "I promise I won't set an alarm for tomorrow, you can sleep as late as you need.")

I think the plans are probably valuable if you know you're going to have to wait in a lot of lines without the option of fast passes, but I found things were easier on us (and our poor feet) if I just got on my phone and looked for FPs and took them in to a show while we waited.

 

[Eccle]

I signed up to TP the other week but at the moment feel pretty disappointed with it from a planning point of view. The first plan I did doesn't work as it shows BB8 not opening until 9 on an EMH day when he is open from 8, and it doesn't include Kylo Ren or Chewbacca at all.

Maybe because we tend to do shorter days, but it doesn't seem to be giving me anything I hadn't worked out myself, and as it doesn't include the majority of characters, it doesn't help with some of the main things I was unsure about. I feel like I've wasted my money to be honest

 

[Lisa F]

I'm going in a couple of weeks and some went up some went down. Not sure why but it doesn't seem to be consistent. MK went from a 9 to an 8, not sure it will make an appreciable difference.

 

[Spork24]

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."

They wouldn’t redefine the park levels without an announcement, this is almost assuredly just a tweak to the focasting model which is necessary from time to time.

Also we got our Updated Crowd predictions along with updated park hours. It’s also possible they are using posted park hours across the board for predictions even if the park hours for your trip didn’t change. Their model is pretty complex, but in some ways is like a weather model, it’s looking at lots of stuff to come up with it’s prediction.

 

[Spork24]

I'm going in a couple of weeks and some went up some went down. Not sure why but it doesn't seem to be consistent. MK went from a 9 to an 8, not sure it will make an appreciable difference.

8, 9, and 10 were all a 10 on the old scale. Plan for heavy crowds and be pleasantly surprised if they are light.

 

[AFwifelife]

The first plan I did doesn't work as it shows BB8 not opening until 9 on an EMH day when he is open from 8, and it doesn't include Kylo Ren or Chewbacca at all.

They don’t add the characters because most don’t have wait times listed. They make their data from wait times so there’s no way for them to add characters because those wait times are so variable.

 

[Lisa F]

8, 9, and 10 were all a 10 on the old scale. Plan for heavy crowds and be pleasantly surprised if they are light.

it's the second Saturday of president's week so I'd been planning on heavy crowds all along. They just downgraded the Friday from an 8 to a 7 but again I'm not sure that is really a substantial difference.

We have an 11am TS lunch, a 4:30 TS dinner and a plaza fireworks dessert party booked along with frontierland/adventureland rope drop activities planned so I think we'll be ok with breaks from the crowds. We love a lot of the secondary stuff too like the train and people mover etc.