Easy WDW or Touring Plans Recommendation?

[atilley01]

It doesn't make sense to go to an EMH park if you can't take advantage of EMH.

I was just going to mention this. We're choosing to stay offsite so I think that avoiding parks with EMH would be a good strategy for us.

 

[Happy_2_B]

Thanks so much for this. I wouldn't be against taking advantage of EMH however we are staying offsite so that's not an option for us. Does your opinion of the original question change at all with that information?

Absolutely not- because touringplans tells people staying offsite to avoid early EMH parks. We always stay onsite so use early EMH, but what you would do is get to rope drop at the park that had EMH the day before. This is a generalized observation- but that tends to be one of the less busy parks since it just had an EMH and the resort guests will be moving on to the next EMH park. This doesn't work all the time, though. Because of this, my advice is to consider buying the 2016 Unofficial Guide, then sign up for the touringplans premier access- which costs like 8-9 bucks a year for people that own the book. You are in for about 25 bucks or so (if you get the book through Amazon or another book reseller) and it will save you much, much more than that in both time and money. I have been using the unofficial guide since it first came out- and it has never let me down. In the 2016 guide they mentioned the rumors going around that there was going to be another round of ticket price increases before the end of 2015. I immediately bought our APs for an upcoming trip. A month later guess what happened? AP prices went up. That one paragraph saved me hundreds of dollars. Yes, I'm a big fan. I have saved dozens and dozens of hours of standing in line over many trips- and many days we have just walked on to stuff. I remember once doing Splash Mtn. 7 times in a row with no wait- then doing BTMRR right after that 5 times with no wait. The boards are great- and I have learned a lot of supplemental information over the years here- but my core trip planning philosophy is built on what is printed in the Unofficial Guide (the touringplans people do both the website and the book if you didn't know).

 

[kathy884]

Rope drop (being one of the first in the parks) is wonderful. As an offsite visitor we always avoid morning EMH as that would take away the rope drop advantage for us. Interestingly enough (we usually only do one or two Disney days per trip), touring plans and Easy WDW usually are making similar recommendations for the park or parks we are visiting. // In the end, though, we make our own choice about when to go and when to do it (consider their advice), but do what makes the most sense for us in the end.

 

[senadler]

I look at both, but I probably go by easywdw a little more. I don't agree that Josh indicates to completely avoid party days or EMH, it just depends on the situation. For example, we are going next week, and the most recommended MK days are definitely the ones with the party, but he will also indicate which of the longer days are best if you want the evening entertainment. Touring plans gave AK a 7/10 this coming Sunday and HS a 5/10 when HS has EMH and two fantasmics. Easywdw has AK as recommended and HS as not recommended. I guess I will find out who was right on Sunday. I should add that we are not a RD family, so evening EMH are more likely to effect us. Also, we don't spend more than a half day at either park and cover most of what we want to do with FP+, so it is not that big an issue either way.

 

[MNDisneyMommy]

I look at both to pick a park for the day. But - once you're in the park, nothing beats having Touringplans' Lines installed on your phone. Lines was so helpful overall for the trip - alerts when things changed, actually reminding me for booking ADRs and Fastpasses, helping us pick our room request, etc. It helped us before we left figure out how much time we needed in each park, what kinds of things we could fit in each day before lunch, etc. But it really shined when we were in the park and all of a sudden you run into a 40 minute wait at something you thought would be a walk-on - and you can enter everything in Lines and see how long it will take to walk, wait in line, ride the attraction, etc....that saved my bacon many many times over the week. We had lunch ADRs and it always gave me the right information I needed to know whether to steer my group of 10 towards one more thing (yes, we can fit Laugh Floor in before lunch!) or whether it was time to hang out a while by the Muppet fountain because, darn it, we weren't going to have time for Little Mermaid before our TSMM Fastpass before lunch. (As the week wore on, DH and I were constantly checking the app and saying things like "Yes, you can go do teacups and should be able to do it twice and then meet us at X at X time and we will still have time for Belle before our BOG ressie" or "Go, you have time before Le Cellier to ride Soarin on that FP if you go NOW!"). I felt like a data queen!!

Being able to have the app up while in the park, mark off things done, re-optimize on the fly when we skipped something (essential with a party of 10, including little kids with unexpected diaper/snack issues!), it was totally awesome. Even with unexpected crowds and unexpected delays, we only missed a couple things the whole week - which was amazing given our complicated party composition.

(BTW - also came in really handy when Disney's app didn't work for two days! We always knew when our FPs and ADRs were!!)

 

[momof2n2]

I will throw a little bit of a wrench into this thread since I am an over-analyzer. I have been keeping a daily tally since August 1 since we have a November trip planned. I have been trying to figure out the same thing. I actually extended it to include easy wdw, TP, kenny the pirate, undercover tourist and wdw prep school. I also showed what TP showed as a crowd level and then everyday would go back to the day before and look at the "actual" crowd level and this is what I based my scoring system on. Each crowd calendar got 1 point for each day they got correct based on the "actual" crowd level. Keep in mind that on many days the crowd predictors chose multiple parks as recommend/green/crowd level giving some of the crowd predictors an advantage and on other days there were some parks that were by far the best park for crowd levels and none of the crowd predictors chose them at all.
Here is what I have seen so far:
August
Out of 31 days in August
TP- 13 days correct
easywdw- 11 days correct
Undercover tourist- 11 days correct
Kenny the Pirate- 24 days correct
wdw prep- 17 days correct

September
Out 30 days ini September---keep in mind that September had a couple of weeks with a 1 or 2 crowd level and several days that every day was a 1 or 2 in every park so every crowd predictor got chose correctly
TP- 20 days correct
easywdw- 16 days correct
Undercover tourist- 19 days correct
Kenny the Pirate- 27 days correct
wdw prep- 27 days correct

October- through yesterday
Out of 21 days so far in October
TP- 9 days correct
easywdw- 8 days correct
Undercover tourist- 6 days correct
Kenny the Pirate- 11 days correct
wdw prep- 11 days correct

With all this tabulation, I have also noticed that, especially with wdw prep & KtP- the parks they chose as the best park, even though they got a point for choosing the best, the other 1 or 2 parks that they chose was the very worst park based on the actuals.

Personally, I use TP and easywdw both with Kenny the pirate as a tie breaker.
The strangest thing is that during our 8 day trip, all 5 of these predictor websites have chosen the pretty much the same exact parks each day, which really scares me. With that being the case, we are mixing things up a little bit because if everyone that is using the crowd calendars go to the recommended parks, those parks may end up being the most crazy.

Ok, disboard friends.....you can all tell me that I am crazy and have way too much time on my hands

This is incredible.
I'm stalking @kennythepirate now (had joined last month) in anticipation of his May calendar.

If he's most often right, why not make him first as opposed to the tie-breaker?

 

[momof2n2]

I look at both to pick a park for the day. But - once you're in the park, nothing beats having Touringplans' Lines installed on your phone. Lines was so helpful overall for the trip - alerts when things changed, actually reminding me for booking ADRs and Fastpasses, helping us pick our room request, etc. It helped us before we left figure out how much time we needed in each park, what kinds of things we could fit in each day before lunch, etc. But it really shined when we were in the park and all of a sudden you run into a 40 minute wait at something you thought would be a walk-on - and you can enter everything in Lines and see how long it will take to walk, wait in line, ride the attraction, etc....that saved my bacon many many times over the week. We had lunch ADRs and it always gave me the right information I needed to know whether to steer my group of 10 towards one more thing (yes, we can fit Laugh Floor in before lunch!) or whether it was time to hang out a while by the Muppet fountain because, darn it, we weren't going to have time for Little Mermaid before our TSMM Fastpass before lunch. (As the week wore on, DH and I were constantly checking the app and saying things like "Yes, you can go do teacups and should be able to do it twice and then meet us at X at X time and we will still have time for Belle before our BOG ressie" or "Go, you have time before Le Cellier to ride Soarin on that FP if you go NOW!"). I felt like a data queen!!

Being able to have the app up while in the park, mark off things done, re-optimize on the fly when we skipped something (essential with a party of 10, including little kids with unexpected diaper/snack issues!), it was totally awesome. Even with unexpected crowds and unexpected delays, we only missed a couple things the whole week - which was amazing given our complicated party composition.

(BTW - also came in really handy when Disney's app didn't work for two days! We always knew when our FPs and ADRs were!!)

I had no idea I could use the app for all this! I've had it downloaded a while!!

 

[ciera321]

We just got back from our 26th DW stay, our 8th using easywdw, and Josh's advice is spot on. We never waited longer than 15 minutes in line and the crowds in the suggested parks were very manageable. I have never used TP, but when I find something great, I stick with it!

 

[SPOERLX3]

This is incredible.
I'm stalking @kennythepirate now (had joined last month) in anticipation of his May calendar.

If he's most often right, why not make him first as opposed to the tie-breaker?

As others have posted, each crowd calendar measures something different.
TP measures line waits and have TONS of data that they update daily. I soooo agree with MNDisneyMommy, there is nothing better than the TP app with the line waits. It shows the posted time and the expected time based on times that have been turned in by actual people standing in line.
Also, as I had mentioned, some crowd calendars choose just 1 park as the "best" park where others, show 2-3 parks as green and the others as red. I also mentioned and noticed from my stats that the crowd calendars that choose 2-3 park- one of the green parks they chose would be the best park (giving them a point) BUT the other 2 parks they chose were the very worse parks soooo YOU have to choose which of those 2-3 parks to go to that they are showing green and if you choose the wrong one, then you have now gone to the most crowded park. I hope this makes sense.