How well is touringplans working in a non-fastpass world?

I think you're missing the point. Their analysis of the data they have is sound. But updating future crowd calendars based on historic data (which is all they have) is of limited accuracy.

What is your threshold for "limited"? They just updated their crowd calendars based on Covid data last week. The forecasts aren't static.
 
You’re missing it too. Sure, if there’s a crowd surge tomorrow, it won’t be in their numbers. But, in a few weeks, they’ll have data to adjust their models and update their predictions. I followed their numbers for several months before our trip last December and they adjusted crowd levels several times between reopening and just before our trip. I used the calendar to make park reservations as it was better than just guessing.
So based on what happened yesterday, I can predict tomorrow?
As they say with investments - Past performance is no guarantee of future results. You can make an educated guess unless you have the real current data and again, only Disney has that. Everyone else is working on outdated data, best guesses and predictions.
 
What is your threshold for "limited"? They just updated their crowd calendars based on Covid data last week. The forecasts aren't static.
Disney has tomorrows data today based on park reservations, as well as knowing ticket sales for those days. Any crowd calendar will have tomorrows data the next day. Its not the same. One is based on accurate future data, the other is an estimate at best.
 
Disney has tomorrows data today based on park reservations, as well as knowing ticket sales for those days. Any crowd calendar will have tomorrows data the next day. Its not the same. One is based on accurate future data, the other is an estimate at best.

Exactly what is Disney providing that is based on the aforementioned accurate data?

Nobody is saying that touring plans data is better than Disney data (which Disney is not sharing with you). What we are saying is touring plans takes a lot of historical data into consideration when they provide their crowd calendars and line wait estimates, using those estimates, the lines app provides you with a much more accurate estimated wait time than the wait time Disney displays (over a period of time). Using the wait times estimated in the lines app it is still possible to chart out a plan of attack at the parks to reduce wait times even taking Covid into account.
 


So based on what happened yesterday, I can predict tomorrow?
As they say with investments - Past performance is no guarantee of future results. You can make an educated guess unless you have the real current data and again, only Disney has that. Everyone else is working on outdated data, best guesses and predictions.

If you have more data points, you can predict the trend. Crowd data is not the same as investments. Yes, Disney has more data. TP is based on ride wait times, which the data is readily available. TP supplements the data with user data uploaded through the Lines app.
 
I think you're mixing two totally different pieces together.
The line app and crowd calendar are separate.
They have a crowd calendar that predicts how busy a park will be on any given day in the future. This is a guess based on historical data .
They have a waiting time app that gives you estimated wait times based on time of day and current guest updates. This is more data driven on a real time basis.
 
I’m not aware of anything in life that can be predicted with 100% reliability. It feels like the counter argument here is that the service is not worthwhile unless it provides perfect results. I’ve used Touring Plans for every trip the last 10 years or so. We’re very satisfied with the service and if there is a service that can predict crowds and lines with more reliability I’d love someone to pass it on to us. Until then we will continue to subscribe. :-)
 


I think you're mixing two totally different pieces together.
The line app and crowd calendar are separate.
They have a crowd calendar that predicts how busy a park will be on any given day in the future. This is a guess based on historical data .
They have a waiting time app that gives you estimated wait times based on time of day and current guest updates. This is more data driven on a real time basis.

And I’m willing to bet that they use Lines app data to update the crowd calendar. They are not mutually exclusive.
 
And I’m willing to bet that they use Lines app data to update the crowd calendar. They are not mutually exclusive.
Interesting. Without knowing the number of park passes or park capacity, but knowing the wait time today, I can calculate the crowd calendar 2 weeks or 3 months from now.

I have subscribed to Touring Plans for years and love their service and Line app.
Based on my experience in the parks on multiple visits, I don't put a lot of faith in the crowd calendar. I have been in the parks on too many days that were listed as 2's and were packed and days that were 8's and small crowds. I look at it as a guide, but still plan on what works best for us.
 
One of my favourite features for building plans is that it tells you how long it takes to walk from one attraction to the next (based on your personal walking speed), and also tells you the length of each attraction. Always good to know whether an attraction is 2 minutes long vs. 25 - and that it takes 5 minutes to walk from one spot to your next attraction vs. 15.

Really helps in mapping the day out and we often complete an entire park in one day by using it - saves so much time and money!

Yes! and it allows you to set whether you are a brisk walker or more of a relaxed, easy going walker. That is pretty cool!
 
Here's a question that I never really found the answer to, or if it is known. Is it possible that they also use user trip information that you supply when planning to do some of their future forecast modelling? Obviously, this is dependent on how large their userbase really is, but I'm sure they are able to get a decent sampling of when people are going (and potentially where based on actual plans created).
 
In any given (normal) year, somewhere between 100,000 and 140,000 families use our website tools to plan a visit to WDW. There's another 100K-150K for the Unofficial Guide, with less than
I see average wait times often in the 30-60 minute range for most rides across the parks lately. Though not terrible, I'm used to being able to stay under about 20 minutes by strategic touring. Yet on doing a custom TouringPlans plan for this week and letting it optimize for me, it shows me hitting all of my major MK rides without fastpass and never waiting more than about 20 minutes for anything, including 7DMT and the mountains (minus space).

Is it really that good?

I've been planning on staying at a DS resort that I'm not that thrilled about because of the upcoming "early entry" benefit and the hope that maybe fastpass will come back and DS might get special privileges. But if touringplans is that good at getting wait times down to sup-20 minutes waits, then I'm going to move off site.

Thoughts? Experiences?

I'd be happy to look at your plan for specific questions.

One thing to note is that for certain rides, Disney's posted wait time is artificially inflated. Here's Big Thunder Mountain from Sunday. Black dots are Disney's posted wait times. Green dots are actual wait times submitted by our users.

590931

So Big Thunder's posted waits averaged just under 35 for the day, and went as high as 60. We didn't get an actual wait time higher than 24, and the average actual wait we saw was around 20.

For what it's worth, we suggest re-optimizing your plan throughout the day. We're using those actual wait times to do intraday adjustments on our day-of models, and we'll re-route you around any issues we didn't see coming.

Some rides' posted wait times are more accurate than others, too, of course.
 
In any given (normal) year, somewhere between 100,000 and 140,000 families use our website tools to plan a visit to WDW. There's another 100K-150K for the Unofficial Guide, with less than


I'd be happy to look at your plan for specific questions.

One thing to note is that for certain rides, Disney's posted wait time is artificially inflated. Here's Big Thunder Mountain from Sunday. Black dots are Disney's posted wait times. Green dots are actual wait times submitted by our users.

View attachment 590931

So Big Thunder's posted waits averaged just under 35 for the day, and went as high as 60. We didn't get an actual wait time higher than 24, and the average actual wait we saw was around 20.

For what it's worth, we suggest re-optimizing your plan throughout the day. We're using those actual wait times to do intraday adjustments on our day-of models, and we'll re-route you around any issues we didn't see coming.

Some rides' posted wait times are more accurate than others, too, of course.

First, thanks a million Len for taking the time. I've read and listened to a ton of your work and really enjoy it!

OK, pasted below is the plan I came up with for early December. I'm not really worried about this *specific* plan, but was just just a bit amazed that it suggested I could get through my entire itinerary in one day with minimal waits on anything with no early entry or fastpass.

Now I know that you can't guarantee anything - it's just a model and things can happen - but is this computer model actually realistic? I also changed the date to late July, and the results were actually quite similar.

What do you think? I may change to an offsite resort and forego early entry or any potential future fastpass benefits based on this! (No pressure of course...)

Thanks again!

Picture3.jpgPicture2.jpgPicture1.jpg
 
So based on what happened yesterday, I can predict tomorrow?
As they say with investments - Past performance is no guarantee of future results. You can make an educated guess unless you have the real current data and again, only Disney has that. Everyone else is working on outdated data, best guesses and predictions.

No, Disney does not have future data. Yes, they have the reservations, so I guess you could assume that is useful for a crowd calendar. However, they don't know what rides are going to go down or what rides will be popular at what particular times any more than TP. To suggest that because something happened in the past means it's no longer relevant just flies in the face of every statistican and data modeler.

What you are suggesting is akin to saying that there's no reason to forecast weather because we don't know what will happen in the future. As the lady in the commercial says, that's not how any of this works.
 
No, Disney does not have future data. Yes, they have the reservations, so I guess you could assume that is useful for a crowd calendar. However, they don't know what rides are going to go down or what rides will be popular at what particular times any more than TP. To suggest that because something happened in the past means it's no longer relevant just flies in the face of every statistican and data modeler.

What you are suggesting is akin to saying that there's no reason to forecast weather because we don't know what will happen in the future. As the lady in the commercial says, that's not how any of this works.
The initial question was about the crowd calendar, not wait times. So yes, Disney does have all the data to predict how crowded a park will be on any given day. Nobody else has access to that data and Disney doesn't release that data early or later. No matter what type of analysis you are using, if you don't start with good data, the results are flawed. Outside of Disney, nobody knows how many park passes are given out on any given day or what the current park capacity is. Without that information (especially post Co-Vid closure, since you can't really use historical data) what you are using is old data and a guess at best.
For ride wait times, I agree, touring plans is much better than the times posted by Disney.

using your weather analysis, using the weather today, I can predict what the weather will be 1 month in the future. I wish our weatherman was that good. I'd be happy if they could be accurate about tomorrow.
 
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First, thanks a million Len for taking the time. I've read and listened to a ton of your work and really enjoy it!

OK, pasted below is the plan I came up with for early December. I'm not really worried about this *specific* plan, but was just just a bit amazed that it suggested I could get through my entire itinerary in one day with minimal waits on anything with no early entry or fastpass.

Now I know that you can't guarantee anything - it's just a model and things can happen - but is this computer model actually realistic? I also changed the date to late July, and the results were actually quite similar.

What do you think? I may change to an offsite resort and forego early entry or any potential future fastpass benefits based on this! (No pressure of course...)

Thanks again!

View attachment 590990View attachment 590992View attachment 590993

I do hope that Len comments on this for you but i just wanted to share that most of this looks fairly managable. The one thing that I would be skeptical about is the Jungle Cruise wait…we have always had a longer wait for Jungle / Jingle Cruise at that time of the day and year but I don’t have any data to know what that translates to in a world without Fast Pass so maybe it’s okay!

I still am a super firm believer in rope drop - it was not AS important for our April trip but capacoty was still really low. BTMRR is usually slow to build a line as long as Splash opens on time - but missing rope drop definitely changes things and you won’t get those first 2 wait times without it.
 
There is real world data that can be used to predict crowd levels in the future, and that is the cost of tickets at later dates. If the prices are low that means lower crowds at that time. So actually you can use that data in your algorithms to give a more accurate projection of crowd levels.
 
First, thanks a million Len for taking the time. I've read and listened to a ton of your work and really enjoy it!

OK, pasted below is the plan I came up with for early December. I'm not really worried about this *specific* plan, but was just just a bit amazed that it suggested I could get through my entire itinerary in one day with minimal waits on anything with no early entry or fastpass.

Now I know that you can't guarantee anything - it's just a model and things can happen - but is this computer model actually realistic? I also changed the date to late July, and the results were actually quite similar.

What do you think? I may change to an offsite resort and forego early entry or any potential future fastpass benefits based on this! (No pressure of course...)

Thanks again!

View attachment 590990View attachment 590992View attachment 590993

Thank you!

I'm a little suspicious of that 16-minute 7DMT wait at the end, and maybe those Pirates waits should be in the teens. Let me check with the stats team to see what they're basing those on.

I'm not sure I'd move offsite. We're anticipating a pretty substantial wait-time advantage for on-site guests once Early Theme Park Entry begins, based on tests we've been doing in the parks.

You mind emailing me the link to this plan? len at touringplans.com. This way I can share it with the team and run some what-if scenarios on it.
 
Thank you!

I'm a little suspicious of that 16-minute 7DMT wait at the end, and maybe those Pirates waits should be in the teens. Let me check with the stats team to see what they're basing those on.

I'm not sure I'd move offsite. We're anticipating a pretty substantial wait-time advantage for on-site guests once Early Theme Park Entry begins, based on tests we've been doing in the parks.

You mind emailing me the link to this plan? len at touringplans.com. This way I can share it with the team and run some what-if scenarios on it.

I just wanted to follow up and say that Len Testa has been an absolute gentleman and extremely helpful. He followed up by email and walked me through why the numbers look the way they do and even got his analytics team involved. The short answer is that the suspiciously low 7DMT time was the result of their models still being set up for the typical Christmas party (when day crowds were depressed on party days). I take it they've updated it to reflect the "new reality." (I think 5 months ahead is pretty timely.)

In any event, I can say that in the past, I've used Touring Plans and found them extremely helpful and I plan to use it next trip as well. Sure, it's never going to be 100% accurate, but I still find it (much like a weather forecast) still vastly better than going in blind. Given how much we all spend on these trips, Touring Plans is (not even) a rounding error.

My interactions with Len give me some additional confidence that they continue to be on top of their analytical game.
 

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