"Easy WDW" or "Touring Plans" ..which is most accurate ?

[celt33]

Which of the two do you feel is most accurate as far as crowd levels, wait times , park reccomendations, touring plan etc? Thanks for any replies .

 

[maltdizzy]

As for crowd levels and park recommendations, they are nearly identical.

Most of the park recommendations are based on park hours, magic hours and show schedules. EasyWDW gives excellent breakdowns of why they recommend which park which day...he "shows you his math." It's interesting how day-of-the-week impact MK crowds based on typical arrival day. And I believe Touring Plans is using the exact same criteria. I will add that the formula is solid...if you are willing to skip magic hours and a few more hours in the parks, you can end up with a much lighter crowd at another park.

Crowd levels are based mostly on past average attendance, special events, park hours, etc.

As for wait times and touring plans, I believe TP has an advantage there.

 

[trivial]

I'm curious about this myself. Josh from EasyWDW recently made a comment about Touring Plan's system being broken, but didn't comment further. That would surprise me, as it would seem they have a wealth of research and data to work with.

On the other hand, their crowd calendar predictions recently underwent some big changes, and many dates for my upcoming trip jumped by quite a large margin. Their recent crowd calendar look-backs (on their blog) didn't look super accurate, either.

 

[GrnMtnMan]

Which of the two do you feel is most accurate as far as crowd levels, wait times , park reccomendations, touring plan etc? Thanks for any replies .

Touring Plans and Easy WDW both have their believers. If you are able to follow Easy's plans, they will work (most involve being at the park turnstiles 40 minutes or so before opening). Otherwise, its better to use Touring Plans to get the best plan for your style of touring.

 

[supersnoop]

My perspective on crowd calendars:
Touring Plans gives you data. EasyWDW gives you information. I trust EasyWDW knows how to interpret the data better than I could myself, so I stick with them.

However, Touring Plans is extremely useful for, well, touring plans.

So, they each have their place; EasyWDW to choose a park, and Touring Plans to plan your day inside that park.

 

[minnie mum]

I used Touring Plans for both my park selections and for their touring plans for quite a few years. But I've switched to easywdwcom for the last several trips. I've found his park recommendations bang on, and I value that he states his reasons for the recommendations; so I know what I might be facing if I choose to go with a nonrecommended park.

I choose to use his cheat sheets instead of a touring plan now. First, I'm cheap and don't want to pay for a subscription if I don't have to. Second, he actually blogs, in great detail, about his park day when he tests his latest cheat sheet. So I know they work. They're simple, uncomplicated, and I can alter them on my own to suit our needs. I really don't dislike touring plans, though, other than not liking how much time it has taken me to customize and optimize their plans.

 

[Disneymom1126]

I think like much of planning for Disney..."it depends." I have always looked at both, but I like the explanation Josh at EasyWDW provides for his plans. As I am planning for our next trip, I looked back at the crowd levels and recommendations for our trip last November (Thanksgiving week and some of the week after) to get a sense of what the recommended park and crowd level were compared to how crowded I remember it being since I'm going at a time that I've never gone before (i.e. if MK was a 9, we went there, and we accomplished this much stuff...we should be able to do that on a lower crowd level day, etc.). I like that touring plans has an actual crowd level that you can look back on for that reason. I also followed EasyWDW's advice related to touring plans and strategies for FP+ (I learned a lot of those on here as well!). Things you can't plan for can also throw all of this off. On our last trip there was a day that in the morning it was like 53 degrees and drizzly rain..being from Pennsylvania...that's pretty warm to us for the end of November! We were there at rope drop to see the opening show (which ended up being cancelled because of the rain), but there were so few people there because of the weather that we got through all of Fantasyland (except SDMT which we had a fastpass for later in the day) and all of Tomorrow Land before 11:00 (8 a.m. opening time) and we didn't wait in line for more than 5 minutes for anything. We also met a few characters during that time frame (Cinderella & Rapunzel, Alice and the White Rabbit, Buzz & Stitch). That was a crowd level 8 day with MK being the most recommended park.

In any case....I think referring to them and trying to go with the most recommended parks (which are usually pretty similar between the two) and then having some sense of how busy in general things are (the overall crowd level) when you will be there is a first step. From there, it's all about figuring out what style of touring works best for your family. We generally work our way around each park in a circle to avoid extra walking, so once we decide on the first meal/ride/attraction/etc. of the day then we just decide whether we're going clockwise or counterclockwise and go from there...this also helps me plan where we are going to eat, especially for QS meals.

 

[jharaldson]

I will give a specific example of a difference on a recent trip. Our family wanted to do the Star Wars breakfast and the best time available for us was on 05/11/2015 which meant that would be a Hollywood Studios day for us. TouringPlans and EasyWDW were pretty divergent on the recommendations for that day. EasyWDW had the day overall as a 5 and recommended not going to HS and said the extra hours would be overwhelmed with guests exiting from Fantasmic.

http://www.easywdw.com/calendar/may-2015-walt-disney-world-crowd-calendar/#more-14501

TouringPlans had a different view. They had the day overall marked as a 4 but specifically marked HS as a 2. Any day marked that low looks like a recommendation to me:

http://touringplans.com/walt-disney-world/crowd-calendar/date/2015-05-11

Based on this we had a choice to make, we could either get a different reservation for the breakfast on a different day recommended by EasyWDW but know if would be earlier than we would want or we could keep the time we like and go with the TouringPlans date. We opted to go with TouringPlans and had a great day. The concerns with the EMH being overwhelmed with resort guests were overblown as we rode TSMM 2 times and ToT 3 times after the early Fantasmic during the EMH. We also didn't see bad crowds and TouringPlans later reported the day was observed by a 3.

I like the effort Josh puts into his site and I like his writing style but I find the "never go to a park with EMH that day" strategy a little too simplistic and like the data driven approach of TouringPlans more.

Just one guys opinion though and I am sure there are reverse examples.

 

[Angel Ariel]

I don't look at it as an either or. I think both sites collect a ton of data and do their best to interpret that data to help those planning trips. I consult both sites when planning a trip. If I see big discrepancies (which has been rare), then i just use my own judgment and past experiences to decide what we will do.

 

[Duffy Lover]

My perspective on crowd calendars:
Touring Plans gives you data. EasyWDW gives you information. I trust EasyWDW knows how to interpret the data better than I could myself, so I stick with them.

However, Touring Plans is extremely useful for, well, touring plans.

So, they each have their place; EasyWDW to choose a park, and Touring Plans to plan your day inside that park.

I am a EasyWDW disciple, and I agree with the data statement about Touring Plans. Unfortunately their data is flawed as they are always changing it -in particular just days before the date itself. Something important to note is that EasyWDW does have touring plans, or "cheat sheets" that Josh vets out himself. In fact he has two such recent blog posts:

http://www.easywdw.com/uncategorized/epcot-1-day-cheat-sheet-touring-plan-in-practice-may-25-2015/

and

http://www.easywdw.com/uncategorize...t-sheet-touring-plan-in-practice-may-20-2015/

And they are FREE!!!

OP, either way this topic has been discussed to the n-th degree here on the boards, and you'll get replies from both camps. Personally, in addition to spot on touring advice Josh drinks like a fish and takes tilted photos, so right there you know you have a winner.

 

[PeasandCarrots]

Which of the two do you feel is most accurate as far as crowd levels, wait times , park reccomendations, touring plan etc? Thanks for any replies .

Easywdw for crowd calendar - I like his explanation of why rated them in the way that he did, plus I've had good real world experience using his crowd calendar
Touring plans or another phone app for wait times (Lines is good from TP and also I use WDW Waits - both free apps)
I don't rely on others for touring plans so I can't speak to that.

Good luck!

 

[eeyore45]

I am a EasyWDW disciple, and I agree with the data statement about Touring Plans. Unfortunately their data is flawed as they are always changing it -in particular just days before the date itself. Something important to note is that EasyWDW does have touring plans, or "cheat sheets" that Josh vets out himself. In fact he has two such recent blog posts:

http://www.easywdw.com/uncategorized/epcot-1-day-cheat-sheet-touring-plan-in-practice-may-25-2015/

and

http://www.easywdw.com/uncategorize...t-sheet-touring-plan-in-practice-may-20-2015/

And they are FREE!!!

OP, either way this topic has been discussed to the n-th degree here on the boards, and you'll get replies from both camps. Personally, in addition to spot on touring advice Josh drinks like a fish and takes tilted photos, so right there you know you have a winner.

exactly! Free is good for me

I think this question gets asked a lot on the disboards. I think planning a trip to WDW can be overwhelming with the information. Just reading those posts Josh made for his touring plans took a lot of time - for him to post, with pictures, as well as for me to read them. They make sense. and I agree, I don't like that TP changes, yet, I know that their service is helpful.