easywdw crowd calendars?

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Anal Annie

at least I KNOW I'm a kook...I just can't help it
Joined
Dec 8, 2006
I have only been using Josh's crowd calendars for the last 4 years or so....I noticed tho that he hasn't been updating them lately and he currently doesn't have anything posted beyond October...has he stopped doing them??????:confused3 :sad1: I need one for January....
TIA
 
Wow, I hadn't noticed until you said that. I use his as my primary source and then just bounce it off other crowd calendars for a sanity check. I really hope this isn't going to completely screw up my plans!
 
He's stopped doing them for now. He did a post on it, but he said this on his forums the other day, which I think is ultimately a better explanation:

"Disney did away with their long term predictions back in March and they're not saying anything more than two weeks out. Last year's crowds aren't a good indicator of this year's crowds. The summer has been completely dead. June saw lower attendance than virtually any time since September 2012. The last week of April this year was busier than Easter. No crowd calendar predicted that. Can't really go by wait times since Disney now reduces staffing so much when they're expecting fewer people. So you can have half as many people in line and still see longer waits if a ride is running with half the vehicles on the track. Avoiding Extra Magic Hours is antiquated advice. Animal Kingdom wait times this summer have been longest on Tuesdays. So I guess what I'm saying is that I don't have any information to provide. I could make it up like the "competition" and spend 20 minutes every month color coding the travel agents calendar based on when EMH is, but it wouldn't be accurate. So I don't know." (Source: http://www.easywdw.com/forums/showthread.php?33926-April-2017-Crowd-Calendar)
 


That's a Major Bummer!! Thanks a lot Disney!!! :headache::mad::sad1::sad2::eek::worried:>:(:guilty::(

I know. :( I loved those crowd calendars! You can always pull up the January 2016 one though, and so long as the EMH's are the same, you can probably kind of piece together your own one (which is what I've been doing for my own 2017 trip). Best plan though is basically just to have a good touring plan, but that's not the answer any of us want to hear lol.
 
I know. :( I loved those crowd calendars! You can always pull up the January 2016 one though, and so long as the EMH's are the same, you can probably kind of piece together your own one (which is what I've been doing for my own 2017 trip). Best plan though is basically just to have a good touring plan, but that's not the answer any of us want to hear lol.

I thought about that but it was always just easier to print his out & have a guideline so when it's time to make plans for ADR's & FP+ I know which parks we're doing on any given day. Disney is making it impossible to plan ANYTHING and I'm getting sick of them making it so that you HAVE to plan - but then can't plan accurately. It's just stooooopid stupid.
 
used his preliminary November crowd calendar from last spring to set our park days and make ADRs for our trip. spot on as now that we are closer TP has our park days as:

5,4,4,3,2,4

does stink that we have to make our plans 180 days, 60 days out but Disney feels no need to give us the information we need to plan properly.
 
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Aw, somehow I missed that post. Well that's certainly a bummer. Anyone know if what he has up now (like for this month) is still somewhat decent info to go off of?
 
Anything through the end of this year should basically still be fine. I don't think he updated it for the additional hours, but even AK extending hours/etc. shouldn't really affect crowd predictions.
 
Aw, somehow I missed that post. Well that's certainly a bummer. Anyone know if what he has up now (like for this month) is still somewhat decent info to go off of?

Anything through the end of this year should basically still be fine. I don't think he updated it for the additional hours, but even AK extending hours/etc. shouldn't really affect crowd predictions.

DH & I are going on an adults only trip in a couple of weeks and I have have been watching for updates for the Sept. calendar and he hadn't updated it since he published it last Feb. He has Fantasmic at 8:30 and it's really at 8:00 now - and of course the new Star Wars Galactic fireworks wasn't even on the radar then - it's at 8:15 so it means you have to choose 1 or the other.... So I have it printed out & am using it to plan park days but I had to go look up all the updated park hours & stuff on MDE on my own & make my own notes....

I will use his general thoughts on last January to make my own homemade calendar for January so I can start figuring things out. I rarely make ADR's at 180 days (unless it's for BOG or O'hana) but it IS time to sort of start making a couple of plans....FP window will open in Nov. so I have a little time on that yet...
 
And as usual, easywdw can't make a post without a snarky comment about Touring Plans. I will literally use anyone else than this guy for WDW info. Sure, he may be right sometimes, but his attitude sucks.

But being right is sort of the important part if you're going to bother trying to plan.... I found his info. was more right than it was wrong....and since that's the whole point I'm not going to cut my nose off to spite someone else's opinion....
 
And as usual, easywdw can't make a post without a snarky comment about Touring Plans. I will literally use anyone else than this guy for WDW info. Sure, he may be right sometimes, but his attitude sucks.

I think it's just a matter of taste. I appreciate that he expresses an opinion that isn't 100% positive all the time (I read most of the Disney blogs - but not EVERYTHING can be amazing, you know?). But yes, his sense of humor definitely isn't for everyone (but it is for me!).
 
I love his blog. He doesn't mince words and tells it like it is. Some blogs kiss Disney's posterior all the time but he doesn't. I guess his sense of humor isn't for everyone. But then I'm sarcastic like he is so.....

Truth is he gives away for free what TP makes you pay for and Ive always found Josh more accurate.
 
And as usual, easywdw can't make a post without a snarky comment about Touring Plans. I will literally use anyone else than this guy for WDW info. Sure, he may be right sometimes, but his attitude sucks.
Yup. He transitioned from snark to nastiness years ago IMO.

All of these calendars have had their ups and downs over the past 12yrs (since we've been going multiple times a year) wrt "accuracy", I think . I've never used them as gospel -- only taken 2-4 of them together to help guide when we travel to WDW. Other than that, have never found them that useful.
 
but his attitude sucks.

Not nearly as much as yours does.

I am not sure how to move forward with the crowd calendars. A lot of the patterns that we enjoyed prior to FastPass+ don't hold true anymore. Simply avoiding extra magic hours or not going to Magic Kingdom on a Monday "because it's always the most crowded" isn't true. Relying on school calendars won't get you very far as more and more people are using alternative forms of education or the schools are going to year-round schedules. And now with Disney cutting staffing so much on days that it is expecting to be "less crowded" you can reasonably expect to wait longer when there are fewer people in the park. That's particularly true with Disney distributing the same number of FP+ whether one side or both sides of Primeval Whirl are operating or there are 12 trucks on the road on Kilimanjaro Safaris or eight. And going by previous years wait times/attendance patterns doesn't seem to be a viable alternative either. Nobody predicted the summer would be this soft or late April would be so busy.

Like I said in that quoted post, easywdw used to largely rely on what Disney was expecting. It was why I provided more accurate information than any of the other sites. But since Disney is no longer offering guidance more than 2 to 4 weeks out, I can't tell you how busy next February is going to be. And I am not sure how you would. I can tell you how busy last year was and how long waits were at every attraction in 5-minute increments, but that has proved to be largely irrelevant.

And even now heading into the fall with Mickey's Halloween Party, I am not sure if the advice to go to Magic Kingdom on a Mickey's party date is going to be better advice than going on a longer day assuming you can take advantage of the very early or very late hours. I think you would be able to get more done from 8am-12pm and 8pm-1am on a Saturday than you could hope to accomplish from 9am-7pm on a Party Tuesday. Those hours are so short and so few FastPass+ are distributed that wait times are going to be high with so little capacity given to standby. It's just going to be a matter of how many FP+ you can pick up later in the day as people cancel.

And Disney not updating their nighttime entertainment schedule doesn't help things. They just released when and how often the Star Wars fireworks would be in October this weekend. It's already September obviously. So if you were planning on which days to go to Hollywood Studios 60 days in advance and wanted to see the nighttime entertainment, you may well need to change your entire schedule around if you want to see the fireworks as they won't be offered on Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. And since we can expect those days to be a little less crowded than days that do offer nighttime entertainment and a later close, the crowd calendar would need to be changed somewhat significantly based on some pretty late breaking changes.

But I will see if something workable is possible. At the moment, my advice would be have a sound plan and visit the parks on the days that you can execute an efficient touring plan. Stay late if you can.
 
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I think he wrote recently somewhere that he is working on a new format for making park recommendations, but IMO, understanding how lines build throughout the day at various attractions and what to FP helps you do well in the park regardless of the day of the week. Of course some days are worse than others (MK on Saturdays), but other than that...as for the snark, I think it's funny, so it doesn't bother me - I like that he is honest about what is going on in the parks.
 
Not nearly as much as yours does.

I am not sure how to move forward with the crowd calendars. A lot of the patterns that we enjoyed prior to FastPass+ don't hold true anymore. Simply avoiding extra magic hours or not going to Magic Kingdom on a Monday "because it's always the most crowded" isn't true. Relying on school calendars won't get you very far as more and more people are using alternative forms of education or the schools are going to year-round schedules. And now with Disney cutting staffing so much on days that it is expecting to be "less crowded" you can reasonably expect to wait longer when there are fewer people in the park. That's particularly true with Disney distributing the same number of FP+ whether one side or both sides of Primeval Whirl are operating or there are 12 trucks on the road on Kilimanjaro Safaris for eight. And going by previous years wait times/attendance patterns doesn't seem to be a viable alternative either. Nobody predicted the summer would be this soft or late April would be so busy.

Like I said in that quoted post, easywdw used to largely rely on what Disney was expecting. It was why I provided more accurate information than any of the other sites. But since Disney is no longer offering guidance more than 2 to 4 weeks out, I can't tell you how busy next February is going to be. And I am not sure how you would. I can tell you how busy last year was and how long waits were at every attraction in 5-minute increments, but that has proved to be largely irrelevant.

And even now heading into the fall with Mickey's Halloween Party, I am not sure if the advice to go to Magic Kingdom on a Mickey's party date is going to be better advice than going on a longer day assuming you can take advantage of the very early or very late hours. I think you would be able to get more done from 8am-12pm and 8pm-1am on a Saturday than you could hope to accomplish from 9am-7pm on a Party Tuesday. Those hours are so short and so few FastPass+ are distributed that wait times are going to be high with so little capacity given to standby. It's just going to be a matter of how many FP+ you can pick up later in the day as people cancel.

And Disney not updating their nighttime entertainment schedule doesn't help things. They just released when and how often the Star Wars fireworks would be in October this weekend. It's already September obviously. So if you were planning on which days to go to Hollywood Studios 60 days in advance and wanted to see the nighttime entertainment, you may well need to change your entire schedule around if you want to see the fireworks as they won't be offered on Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. And since we can expect those days to be a little less crowded than days that do offer nighttime entertainment and a later close, the crowd calendar would need to be changed somewhat significantly based on some pretty late breaking changes.

But I will see if something workable is possible. At the moment, my advice would be have a sound plan and visit the parks on the days that you can execute an efficient touring plan. Stay late if you can.

Was typing while you were posting lol....btw, thanks for tweeting out the AK entertainment schedule - planning for October and it will be really helpful!
 
No prob I was interested in how things were going to shape up myself. It's going to be interesting to see what we can reasonably hope to see and accomplish from 6pm - 9pm in September. I think I will go out on Tuesday and see assuming the weather is half decent. It's been a wet couple of days. I was planning to go to MK tonight but it's pouring.
 
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