easywdw crowd calendars?

[bluezy]

Maybe Disney's strategy is to make us all buy park hoppers so we have the flexibility to make changes to our plans at the last minute.
we always get PH because we travel in the fall when 4 of the 6 nights we are are in the parks close early for hard ticket parties.

That was my thought, too...that Disney is trying to force more people to buy park hoppers. They've already started requiring it for certain promotional rates over the last few years so this (not releasing hours/schedules until a few weeks ahead of time) might help get more people -- especially offsite guests -- to buy them.

Like you, we always buy PHs because we like the flexibility they provide. I'd rather save up my money for an extra month to pay for them than to go without them. We make definite park plans (ADRs and FP+) for mornings and early afternoons. We leave our evenings flexible for the most part so we can adjust as needed.

 

[phillymummer]

It makes sense! They probably see how much the sale of PHs increased over at Universal with the Hogwart's express and now they are trying to find ways to get a piece of that revenue! I would say, this current method is a pretty crappy one but if it works it works, right??

 

[notrub98]

I think Disney is trying to force people to buy the park hoppers too. There are so many upcharge events now that the obvious push for revenue stream is ridiculous. South American attendance was quite the blow to the bottom line is my guess.

I follow Josh's blog - I find it absolutely hilarious. I agree with the previous poster who said he makes fun of himself or his blog half the time. His self-deprecating sense of humor combined with what I consider spot-on advice really makes my planning process more enjoyable.

 

[dkrauss]

THIS! I'm probably going to get flamed for this, but I think some people need to step back and breathe and adjust their planning style. Disney is HUGE and you are NOT going to get to do everything you want no matter how much planning you do and no matter how early Disney releases their info. You cannot change the crowds in the park or the length of the lines. you can, however, change how you tour. You have to prioritize. I have always done Disney with the mindset that we can't do everything and we will be happy with what we can do. I have instilled this mindset in my daughter too. Is not seeing the MSEP parade really going to ruin your vacation? If you can't see it then pick something else to do! There is so much to see and do in Disney!

Great post here.............This is what my wife and I have always tried to do.........note I said "tired". Some times it works...........sometimes not. But it never ruins our trip.........we won't let it. We work to control "our" trip to the best of what's put there. Thats all you can do.............

Doug

 

[edk35]

THIS! I'm probably going to get flamed for this, but I think some people need to step back and breathe and adjust their planning style. Disney is HUGE and you are NOT going to get to do everything you want no matter how much planning you do and no matter how early Disney releases their info. You cannot change the crowds in the park or the length of the lines. you can, however, change how you tour. You have to prioritize. I have always done Disney with the mindset that we can't do everything and we will be happy with what we can do. I have instilled this mindset in my daughter too. Is not seeing the MSEP parade really going to ruin your vacation? If you can't see it then pick something else to do! There is so much to see and do in Disney!



I was thinking the same thing when I was typing my earlier reply about getting PH to be more flexible but I didn't want to say it!

I think what annoys me the most is ALL THE PLANNING one must do now. I have been doing this a long time and yes we do have a great time on our trips, but the planning of late is a big pain in the butt. Trying to work ADR's around the picking out of fast passes and with park hours and changes that might pop up is not that much fun. I used to LOVE planning but now when that window comes up where I can pick fast passes, I cringe. YES I know we don't have to use the new system but we all know we do, but trying to figure it out isn't fun for me anymore. THEN add in that on my upcoming trip my son and his gf arrive before us by two days, my daughter and her bf arrive three days after us and trying to coordinate some park time together with the fast passes is NOT EASY. I am one of the ones that misses the old system when all you needed to do was pick a park each day and go.

 

[mrsp1030]

I just realized the calendar was not updated last week and also have checked out multiple touring plans for our upcoming Nov. trip. Honestly, I think know what you plan to do is the best bet; make a plan for 75% of the time and let the rest fall into place. We went Thanksgiving two years ago and plan to do a similar plan of action this year with one exception; however, who knows what the crowds will be like as my SIL was expecting huge crowds this summer and got minimal. Sometimes I overplan and that backfires to trying to adjust to a happy medium this time around.

 

[sharadoc]

For our upcoming trip, we made our TS ADRs all not park-dependent. So if we change our plans on the fly, we won't have to re-do reservations, which was my fear. We do have an 8:30 Biergarten but with PHs, if we don't show up until then, no biggie. Everything else is at resorts - Trail's End, Wave, Boma, Olivia's.

 

[mgpan]

Add me to the "they want to sell parkhoppers crowd". Example, you can't see Fantasmic and SW show on same night because of scheduling, now SW not even held all nights of the week. There are parties and special events only held on certain days closing certain parks early. With the cost increases every moment counts, and you want to maximize park time, so you have to hop to get that value. We go to other destinations to enjoy resorts, beaches, pools, better cuisine, etc. With WDW it's about the park time.

 

[Jing]

I liked using Easy for park picks and TP for park plans. However, all of my planning is really just a back-up/plan B since once we get there, we do what we feel like doing. We also have bought hoppers since they were invented, and on any given trip we wind up ditching about 1/2 of what we planed to do.

I am personally at the saturation point of planning. Since we have been there many times before, my must-do list is very small and mostly consists of a couple of dining newbies/repeats, a few FP+s, and paid excursions/events. I will probably still use the lines app from TP and some of the info from Easy's Sept schedule, but I care a lot less about using either then I did (dare I say it) during the legacy FP years.

 

[dlavender]

@notfrostyjosh gives the best advice out there. Touring strategies, or cheat sheets, are phenomenal. Used them for the first time last year, (who is your marketing guy?), and had the best trip ever. Crowd calendars can be helpful, but is there really a difference between a 7 or an 8? And when you show up on a predicted 5 day, only to return to find out that you were there on a 10 day, does it help? No. Keep up the good work!

 

[Nancyg56]

Really, given how much complaining people are doing on DIS (ADRs at 180, FP+ at 60, but entertainment release... 30 days out?), why does everyone think that anyone predicting crowds can be at all accurate with the similar lack of information? None of the big sites have a magic pipeline that tell them "sure, we haven't announced fireworks times 6 months out, but we'll only be doing the big HS nighttime fireworks 3x/week in 6 months?" (I'm not so sure DISNEY know what they're doing 3 months out any more, with Star Wars and Rumors of Maybe.)

Any prediction more than 30 days out at this point is pure spitball. Go when it works for your family. Make a solid touring plan of what you must do. Make ADRs and FP. Hope for the best.

Yes. But oh my gosh! I liked having hours posted well enough in advance to allow for reasonable planning. I liked it when the crowd calendars could give an estimate of what days would be the better for any given park. I do think that Disney should be a little more proactive in making a plan and letting the rest of us work with it.

I wonder if this is an indication that the crowd calendars have gotten too big, that it's not just a few in-the-know people using them anymore, and Disney trying to reassert control. If you look at it from their POV, they put things like EMH in place in part to draw people to certain parks on certain days but now too many people avoid those parks on those days. I could see that being annoying from their POV. Although the crowd calendars were helping do the job they wanted done anyway in trying to balance out the crowd throughout the year (if the tiered pricing and fall and mid winter events are indeed intending to do that). But it seems like Disney's over done it with price increases and other things that have driven people away. I can't imagine they wanted attendance to be dead this summer.

I honestly think they have not decided what to do yet. They can wait until after folks book FP and look at ADR's in whatever park, and then decide if they need to make changes.

THIS! I'm probably going to get flamed for this, but I think some people need to step back and breathe and adjust their planning style. Disney is HUGE and you are NOT going to get to do everything you want no matter how much planning you do and no matter how early Disney releases their info. You cannot change the crowds in the park or the length of the lines. you can, however, change how you tour. You have to prioritize. I have always done Disney with the mindset that we can't do everything and we will be happy with what we can do. I have instilled this mindset in my daughter too. Is not seeing the MSEP parade really going to ruin your vacation? If you can't see it then pick something else to do! There is so much to see and do in Disney!


!

I agree that there is a lot to do, however, if I want to see evening entertainment and I know that there is some in the pipeline.....what do I do? It is not as easy to switch gears as it used to be.

 

[Dan Murphy]

I agree that there is a lot to do, however, if I want to see evening entertainment and I know that there is some in the pipeline.....what do I do? It is not as easy to switch gears as it used to be.

Steve's site is always a good site for current entertainment. Updated weekly.

http://wdwent.com/

 

[Nancyg56]

Steve's site is always a good site for current entertainment. Updated weekly.

http://wdwent.com/

Thank you!

 

[Lisa F]

I think what annoys me the most is ALL THE PLANNING one must do now. I have been doing this a long time and yes we do have a great time on our trips, but the planning of late is a big pain in the butt. Trying to work ADR's around the picking out of fast passes and with park hours and changes that might pop up is not that much fun. I used to LOVE planning but now when that window comes up where I can pick fast passes, I cringe. YES I know we don't have to use the new system but we all know we do, but trying to figure it out isn't fun for me anymore. THEN add in that on my upcoming trip my son and his gf arrive before us by two days, my daughter and her bf arrive three days after us and trying to coordinate some park time together with the fast passes is NOT EASY. I am one of the ones that misses the old system when all you needed to do was pick a park each day and go.

you really don't HAVE to plan. IF you want your trip a certain specific way with certain specific things then you need to plan those things. if you want to go and have a good time you can do that too. A friend of mine never went in her life, took her son (my son's age) did no planning except fastpasses the same day. stayed at AKL. Did the DDP. Came back to the resort each night to eat at Boma every night. Ate QS in the parks. had a great time, best vacation of her life. no stress, no insane planning. I don't know if she went on 7DMT but she went on pretty much everything else. Whatever she missed she didn't even know she missed. Planning like this is a choice, not compulsory. It's a choice that I make and most people here make but plenty of people don't and still have perfectly lovely vacations.

 

[AquaDame]

My first trip in 2008 I did the same. Booked a month out at ASSp, went to one park for each of our 4 full days. Called that afternoon for reservations somewhere for dinner. They'd toss us 2-3 options and we'd pick one based on what we felt like right then. It was a great vacation and I followed it up with a slew of super planned ones which was fun too, now I'm easing back a bit again.

 

[TeamEvansGo]

Not nearly as much as yours does.

Did you seriously just give me a "nu uh, you are!"? Thank you for proving my point Josh. Grow up.

 

[Delirium]

Did you seriously just give me a "nu uh, you are!"? Thank you for proving my point Josh. Grow up.

As an unbiased 3rd party, it seems YOU cast the first stone in this thread. Not sure why you don't feel he has the right to defend himself.

 

[Nancyg56]

Did you seriously just give me a "nu uh, you are!"? Thank you for proving my point Josh. Grow up.

Perhaps moving forward it woudl be a good idea to know your audience. Your post was kind of personal when you consider that Josh is a member of the boards, ends the posts on the boards, and also participates on the boards. I am not fond of message boards insults under any circumstances, but I figure that when you toss a nasty remark out to a member you have to at least be willing to accept that you may get a response.

 

[miamimi]

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.

This is what I find so depressing. We used to aim for slow times to visit WDW. Now there are no slow times since everyday is a 7.

Josh, you mention South America as having an impact on attendance. Maybe this is wishful thinking, but do you think the amount of planning created by MDE has also caused a decrease in attendance?

 

[GaryDis]

Perhaps moving forward it woudl be a good idea to know your audience. Your post was kind of personal when you consider that Josh is a member of the boards, ends the posts on the boards, and also participates on the boards. I am not fond of message boards insults under any circumstances, but I figure that when you toss a nasty remark out to a member you have to at least be willing to accept that you may get a response.

Easywdw is a web site which, though available to users at no charge, accepts advertising and thus is a commercial endeavor. It shouldn't get a free pass from criticism just from participation here, and let's be fair, complaints about the approach to humor on easywdw have been made here before.