crowd "predictor" question

[KyleAfterAWhile]

we are going in may and november. i have a touring plans subscription. i looked at both their crowd calendar as well as kenny the pirates and their suggestions could not be more opposite on most days. where tp says best, ktp says it is the absolute worst and avoid.

i know these things are just created by humans and really is nothing but guesswork. we did follow ktp's suggestions this past december for best park and it was CROWDED in several of them. but when we left and went to another park that was not suggested it was okay.

generally i do not care about crowd calendars but we are taking my parents who are in their 70s and so i want to make this easier on them if possible

so while i get it that the idea is to go where you want to go when you want to go i am curious for those of you who have experience with tp how close they are on their guesses? they have mk as a low day on a saturday and that blows my mind.

 

[FCDub]

My advice is go where you want when you want. I’ve never been a fan of crowd calendars or anything like that.

 

[sponica]

I think you have to look at how they define "low crowds". It's based on predicted wait times, and I believe sometime in the past 2 years TP redid their algorithm to account for decreased staffing, running fewer ride vehicles, etc. I don't know how Kenny defines his.

In May 2018 TP was pretty close to reality, the only park they really got wrong was AK...but I don't think they had enough valid data on FOP as it had barely been open a year. It's why I won't trust any predictions regarding DHS until the end of 2020, beginning 2021. Not enough data points on the GE rides.

 

[gharter]

Whether crowd calendars were accurate before or not is debatable. For the next few years, with all the new atttractions opening, I think they will be nearly worthless.
The crowd calendars, in general, are based on historical data. With all the new things, historical data is not very useful.
I agree go when you want and to the park you want. The main decision is whether to go to a park on an EMH day or not and you will find varying opinions.
Plan for it to be busy, anything less is a bonus.

 

[Leigh L]

We've never gone to MK on a Saturday that was not busy. I agree with others here, go when you want .

I've never followed calendars at all. I might look at them to determine what kind of week it will be in general and do some comparisons with different ones, but I never plan specific days around them.
For your November trip though, if you are going when MNNSHP (if they have November dates and you are going early) or if MVMCP is going on, consider planning MK on those party days (especially if you have hoppers). We did everything during a Halloween party day and then some. Ours was in August, but from what I've read, this seems to be a good rule of thumb in general.

 

[Jonfw2]

I think there's also a self-fulfilling prophecy aspect too: 60 days out, as people start getting their FPs, they do so for the parks that are showing the lightest crowds for that day...and then because so many people have decided to go to that park, it's no longer going to be a light day.

 

[Etch]

they have mk as a low day on a saturday and that blows my mind

I guarantee you will get an email from touring plans before your trip bumping up that day significantly. This doesn't help at all when your FPs are already booked etc.

I would just get hoppers like you did last time if you're concerned about which park on which day. That way you can always bail to another park if you're finding the crowds overwhelming.

 

[KyleAfterAWhile]

all helpful replies. thank you.

 

[Ladyandthepuppies]

Excellent point from @gharter about the historical data not being a good predictor with all the new rides.

Len Testa from Touring Plans went on the Dis unplugged way back in March 2018 and talked about some of the factors they use in their model. It was really interesting to me and since I’m a geek, I do buy in to their crowd calendars. It’s historical data but also other considerations like school vacation dates across the country, etc. Of course, no one has a crystal ball so there’s no way to predict the crowds with 100% accuracy, but I think Touring Plans does a good job overall. http://disunplugged.com/2018/03/06/dis-unplugged-podcast-030618-disney-world-show/

I will say though, for my December 2018 trip I kept reading about how popular of a week it was, got shut out of restaurant reservations and FPs I wanted, and TPs kept predicting 5. I had a strong suspicion it would be higher and sure enough, they updated it to be a 7 the week prior to my trip, and it turned out to be an 8 that day. In my experience, the best way to combat crowds is to get park hoppers. We love walking around world showcase when it’s too crowded to do anything else, or just figuring out which park is least crowded and ending up there.

 

[KyleAfterAWhile]

I think you have to look at how they define "low crowds". It's based on predicted wait times, and I believe sometime in the past 2 years TP redid their algorithm to account for decreased staffing, running fewer ride vehicles, etc. I don't know how Kenny defines his.

In May 2018 TP was pretty close to reality, the only park they really got wrong was AK...but I don't think they had enough valid data on FOP as it had barely been open a year. It's why I won't trust any predictions regarding DHS until the end of 2020, beginning 2021. Not enough data points on the GE rides.

i think kenny does his the old tour guide mike way. same think easywdw did. avoid saturday and monday mk, avoid emh. in the first two weeks of december he had studios as a good park day, with the opening of rise. i even commented on his fb page that i thought he was optimistic and asked why he thought the crowds would be low with a new ride opening and instead of answering, my comment/question was deleted. that tells me there is no real method or logic.

i agree with you about all of the new openings. it will really affect a lot.

 

[KyleAfterAWhile]

Whether crowd calendars were accurate before or not is debatable.

not sure if your comment was meant to be a snooty one, matter-of-factish or if you are agreeing with me, but clearly they were then and still are now.

agree about all of the new openings.

 

[KyleAfterAWhile]

I guarantee you will get an email from touring plans before your trip bumping up that day significantly. This doesn't help at all when your FPs are already booked etc.

I would just get hoppers like you did last time if you're concerned about which park on which day. That way you can always bail to another park if you're finding the crowds overwhelming.

yeah that is what i was thinking as well. on all points.

good thing is we are staying on property and mom and dad know how to get on a bus. if they are tired, they can leave in the heat of the afternoon and go back to the park later.

 

[scrappinginontario]

I use TP and find them to be fairly accurate. We have a trip booked for September and I'm booking our days according to what I'm reading on their site.

We travelled to Disney last April with my parents who are both in their mid-late 70's. The things we found most beneficial were:
a) they both had scooters which were a great help. It allowed them to enjoy their days without all of the additional walking
b) we took it slow and had much lower expectations of what we would get done. We did less 'back and forth' in the parks and visited things more in the order that we arrived at them.

The first 2 days we accomplished quite a lot. Days 3 and 4 they were more tired so we took things slower and were okay to leave the parks late-afternoon having experienced 3-5 things. It was more about experiencing Disney WITH them than about experiencing Disney that trip.

 

[DisLiss]

Right now is a difficult time for crowd predictions I would think. There is so much happening in the parks in terms of new lands, new rides, major construction, the upcoming anniversary, etc. And it seems that people always have very different opinions on how crowds will ebb and flow with those changes.

 

[KyleAfterAWhile]

Right now is a difficult time for crowd predictions I would think. There is so much happening in the parks in terms of new lands, new rides, major construction, the upcoming anniversary, etc. And it seems that people always have very different opinions on how crowds will ebb and flow with those changes.

yeah i agree with that completely

 

[Disneyfan754321]

There are so many factors that go into play that are not on there..
Weather is the biggest one.
I have found i really like going to the park on the days they are closing early for parties. People tend to go to another park those days.
TP has been the closest on our prior trips.
I only use them for picking the week i want to go because i dont follow school calendars.

 

[CastAStone]

Touring Plans is very accurate a few months out at WDW, but has been tripped up in their DHS predictions by SWGE. I anticipate they are probably through this problem and honestly I don’t think MMRR or Ratatouille are going to be disruptive enough to crowds to cause major misses.

I would suggest that you observe that while TP publishes a daily comparison of their predictions to what actually happened and a vault of past data, KTP does not disclose his accuracy.

I would not particularly recommend TP for Disneyland, which is notoriously difficult to predict due to the huge impact of weather compounded recently by the new Flex AP, but that’s another story.

 

[tguz]

My advice is go where you want when you want. I’ve never been a fan of crowd calendars or anything like that.

The last 3 Summers, we have not looked at a crowd calendar once. We just assume it will be busy but if you know what you are doing, it isn't bad.

 

[ISUamanda]

TP is the most transparent both about how they create their predictions and how they perform against them.

At the end of the day, it's a forecast...so set wide expectations on how accurate you expect them to be. And as they get more information, they do change closer to the actual date, but I've had changes go both ways, which I think is a good thing (if they were constantly erring in the same direction, it indicates an underlying problem with their methodology).

Disney's trained us all to be uber-planners and is now adopting unplanning-friendly practices (boarding groups, no FPs for new rides, etc)...that makes forecasting even harder as it causes completely new crowd patterns.

 

[Klayfish]

They're only accurate if you want them to be. If they take a stab in the dark and say it's going to be a 7 (whatever that actually means), if you walk in and say "Oh, this is a 7", then they were right. Otherwise, they're a complete and utter waste. They have absolutely no clue what a crowd size is going to be, and there's no way they could beyond a wild guess. Besides, remember, these "predictions" don't even guess at crowd size anyhow. Rather, they're guessing at ride wait times, which may or may not be related to crowd size. Always wonder why they then call themselves crowd calendars if that's not what they're measuring anyway. Seems intentionally deceptive, IMO.