Touring Plans Crowd Tracker Updates

For what it's worth, I just re-evaluated all ten days of my trip on TP and while wait times went up here and there, it wasn't by much, even on days with a 3 point increase. So, who knows.
 
Wow. We'll be there right after that. Does it go down do you know? (24-29th)
Ditto that ..

I planned a trip at the end of August due to predicted low crowd levels (and past crowd levels) (AND it happens to correspond with my son's birthday)... I figure my family (and in-laws) will forgive me for the heat and humidity if crowd levels are low.

I still can't imagine it being as busy that last week of August compared to June/July or even mid August .. SOME kids (despite the late Labor Day) will be back in school (or close enough that a family doesn't want to go on vacation days before) ... it is just before the first day of Free Dining (and I am sure a lot of people have their vacations starting on August 28th or 29th because of it) (I would have tried to shift my vacation to start a few days later if I qualified (too short of trip). Plus ... some people just avoid that time due to the known heat (I know I considered it)

That being said .. the room only summer discount isn't anything to scoff at, and I'm sure many have taken advantage ... after discount .. my reservations at Pop Century will be costing less per night than most roadside hotel chains.

I'm just curious how they make their predictions besides just "past experience" .. the only way it seems to make an accurate crowd prediction is to look at information that I would think they don't have at their disposal.:
1) % rooms/packages booked on resort during that time
2) Fast Pass reservations (which are unknown yet)
3) ADR reservations at specific parks

Disney World is just more crowded than it used to be (I went first week of October and it was more crowded than I expected (but still had a great time thanks to the Fast Pass system)).
 
Going to guess they revised the levels based on park hours being added and hotel occupancy levels.
We are going Aug. 16-23 and I know it'll be busy and there is nothing I can do about that except have a good plan. Worse comes to worse we can always stay in our lovely DVC resort for more hours per day.
 
Ditto that ..

I planned a trip at the end of August due to predicted low crowd levels (and past crowd levels) (AND it happens to correspond with my son's birthday)... I figure my family (and in-laws) will forgive me for the heat and humidity if crowd levels are low.

I still can't imagine it being as busy that last week of August compared to June/July or even mid August .. SOME kids (despite the late Labor Day) will be back in school (or close enough that a family doesn't want to go on vacation days before) ... it is just before the first day of Free Dining (and I am sure a lot of people have their vacations starting on August 28th or 29th because of it) (I would have tried to shift my vacation to start a few days later if I qualified (too short of trip). Plus ... some people just avoid that time due to the known heat (I know I considered it)

That being said .. the room only summer discount isn't anything to scoff at, and I'm sure many have taken advantage ... after discount .. my reservations at Pop Century will be costing less per night than most roadside hotel chains.

I'm just curious how they make their predictions besides just "past experience" .. the only way it seems to make an accurate crowd prediction is to look at information that I would think they don't have at their disposal.:
1) % rooms/packages booked on resort during that time
2) Fast Pass reservations (which are unknown yet)
3) ADR reservations at specific parks

Disney World is just more crowded than it used to be (I went first week of October and it was more crowded than I expected (but still had a great time thanks to the Fast Pass system)).

The other crowd calendars still has that week pretty low. Let's hope!

I'm hoping it will be ok, but I agree about overall crowds increasing. We have gone that week for the past few years and I have noticed the crowd levels ticking up slowly.
 

FWIW, touring plans posted on their blog about the reasons for the crowd level updates. http://blog.touringplans.com/2015/05/19/walt-disney-world-crowd-level-changes-may-2015-to-may-2016/ For those who seemed to think that this is just a computer spitting out data without human review or analysis, this is clearly not the case. They do long term projections, based on a great deal of solid and measurable data, as best they can, and they they update it as other information becomes available. I agree that it can be disconcerting to have the crowd levels change for an upcoming trip. but usually the levels don't change by more than a couple of notches, which isn't that drastic a change if you look at the actual wait times associated with the crowd levels.
 
Going to guess they revised the levels based on park hours being added and hotel occupancy levels.
We are going Aug. 16-23 and I know it'll be busy and there is nothing I can do about that except have a good plan. Worse comes to worse we can always stay in our lovely DVC resort for more hours per day.

I have heard this before about park hours, but for the life of me, I don't see any added park hours. They look exactly the same as they were when I started planning in earnest in January. Can anyone confirm or deny this?
 
I have heard this before about park hours, but for the life of me, I don't see any added park hours. They look exactly the same as they were when I started planning in earnest in January. Can anyone confirm or deny this?
They extended hours at MK and DHS for our dates (8/20-8/29) but that was a while ago. When the hours first came out, MK was closing at 10 and HS at 8:30; both got extended by an hour and they added a second MSEP at MK. But as I said, these changes came out at least a month ago so I doubt that's what's causing the crowd level updates now.
 
/
I have heard this before about park hours, but for the life of me, I don't see any added park hours. They look exactly the same as they were when I started planning in earnest in January. Can anyone confirm or deny this?
For our August trip they have added hours to the following:
HS (every day of our trip has seen hours added)
AK (Two of the seven days has seen added hours)
MK (Four of the seven days has seen added hours)

Only Epcot has remained the same. What that tells me is they are expecting huge crowds.
 
It's important to remember these are crowd predictions. In order to get a sense of what these predictions mean in terms of crowds and lines and how the days crowds actually were Touring Plans posts on their crowd tracker page "How we did" for the previous day. They report crowd levels and wait times and compare it to their predictions.
You may need to be a member to see this but I am not sure about that.
I applaud the fact that they are updating their systems and if helps me streamline my plans a little bit more than I expected - that works for me.
 
For our August trip they have added hours to the following:
HS (every day of our trip has seen hours added)
AK (Two of the seven days has seen added hours)
MK (Four of the seven days has seen added hours)

Only Epcot has remained the same. What that tells me is they are expecting huge crowds.

Time to recheck my park hours.
 
I've just been digging into this a little more, trying to better understand what the numbers mean, and am finding this page helpful: http://touringplans.com/walt-disney-world/crowd-levels

If you read the explanation of how the crowd levels are determined and look at the wait time charts for each park linked at the bottom, the difference in average wait time between a crowd level '5' and a '7' or '8' is fairly small for most attractions. It's a matter of ~5 minutes per increase in level. Also, the charts show the range of wait times for the hours of 10am-5pm. Some have a really wide range regardless of crowd level (BTMRR & Splash for example range from 8-56 & 8-73 minutes respectively for a level '7' day), which indicates to me that we should ride those at or before 10am to get the low end of that range. Other attractions wait times only vary by 10-15 minutes for that 10am-5pm time period, so the ones of those with comfortable-to-us wait times we can save until after 10am and expect to see fairly consistent wait times throughout the day. And then there are those extremely popular attractions that will always have a wait of an hour or more during peak hours, even in a crowd level 1.

Basically the more I look at all of this information the more its clear that getting to the parks early and having a good touring plan is more important than crowd level predictions. As they say, if you are 'zigging' while most other people are 'zagging' you won't be affected by the crowds.
 
Basically the more I look at all of this information the more its clear that getting to the parks early and having a good touring plan is more important than crowd level predictions. As they say, if you are 'zigging' while most other people are 'zagging' you won't be affected by the crowds.

This. I know it isn't for everyone, but if your #1 priority is crowd avoidance, you still can't beat RD. Even on an 8 day last year, the first 90 minutes, everything in NFL except SDMT and Tomorrowland were walk on.

As for the difference in wait times, it can be marginal even with a disparity of 3 digits. The difference is the crush of the crowds away from the ride. PP may be 30 on a 5 day and 40 on an 8 day, the difference is on a 5 day it should take you 5 minutes to walk to say Pooh from there, on an 8 day that same walk can take 10.
 
This. I know it isn't for everyone, but if your #1 priority is crowd avoidance, you still can't beat RD. Even on an 8 day last year, the first 90 minutes, everything in NFL except SDMT and Tomorrowland were walk on.
I had never made a rope drop before last year, but after experiencing it I'm a total convert. And we weren't even using TP then, just my own plans somewhat based on the cheat sheets from easyWDW. I'll never forget walking right through the massive queue area of Under the Sea. I think it took us longer just to walk through than the time we waited to board once we finally got to the front. On another RD day at MK we were the first family to meet Tink; the CM told my DD that Tink was waking up just to see her. ;)
 
We get there the day before thanksgiving and are there for a week; it's a mixed bag of higher and lower crowd levels depending on park/ day. The day before thanksgiving at MK went from a 7 to a 4! I hope it stays that way, but I'm sure it'll get adjusted back up before November.

I would love to see it stay a 4 at MK on the day before Thanksgiving since we will be there November 18-November 25th :banana: but there is no way that I will believe that the day before Thanksgiving at MK with evening magic hours will be a 4. I normally use the historical data TP offers to help choose my parks along with current predictions. Last year the actual crowd level on that Wednesday before Thanksgiving MK was a 7 without magic hours. The other parks were 9's and 10's. MK was definitely the best park but far from a 4. Check out the historical data, it shows what they predicted and what they were actually.
 
Although I get the frustration in changes, especially from a pay site (I had the same frustration in October) if all the parks and resort-wide estimates all go up, it really doesn't matter a whole lot. Unless you have the ability to totally change your vacation to a different week, you're already going to be there. Whether you will see the levels at 3-5 as you originally hoped, or 5-7 now, it's the whole water level rising at once. At least that's how my numbers went - I guess you may be seeing a 3 step increase at DHS and only 1 point at MK,thus changing your "best" park.

As a PP noted, your touring plan is at least as important as park selection (if not more so). Touring Plans' site even says so. Of course tests easy for me to say, as I always use recommended parks and have a very loose tour plan! Imagine how well I'd do if I could follow my own advice (of get my family to agree to follow a touring plan!) ;)
 
we were planning on being there from Oct 9-17... the crowd level differences are crazy... I can see a 5 to 6 or 6 to 5 etc but 2 to 5 and 4 to 7 seems a bit extreme. I planned our trip for the timeframe I did because of the estimated low crowd level... now many dates are 8 and 9... and again those are jumps from 5-9... rethinking our trip... we will be traveling with my then 4 year old grandson with SPD and long waits in lines are not an option :( ...
 
Although I get the frustration in changes, especially from a pay site (I had the same frustration in October) if all the parks and resort-wide estimates all go up, it really doesn't matter a whole lot. Unless you have the ability to totally change your vacation to a different week, you're already going to be there. Whether you will see the levels at 3-5 as you originally hoped, or 5-7 now, it's the whole water level rising at once. At least that's how my numbers went - I guess you may be seeing a 3 step increase at DHS and only 1 point at MK,thus changing your "best" park.

As a PP noted, your touring plan is at least as important as park selection (if not more so). Touring Plans' site even says so. Of course tests easy for me to say, as I always use recommended parks and have a very loose tour plan! Imagine how well I'd do if I could follow my own advice (of get my family to agree to follow a touring plan!) ;)
My levels all went up 2-3 points for the first half of my trip. In a couple of instances my "best" park changed but I like my ADRs so I'm just going to stick with my park plan as is. Also I feel like "best park" is somewhat relative, since MK is always going to be more crowded than AK (for example) and parks with EMH are generally more crowded but can be a good choice if you are utilizing the EMH. My criteria is if an individual park crowd level is at or below the total resort crowd level, it's probably an okay choice.

Maybe you could get your family to follow a touring plan for the morning, and then go with the flow in the evenings? That's sort of what I'm doing. I'm making touring plans where I think it's necessary but for some days/chunks of time the schedule is more loose. Like for Epcot, I've just blocked out time to tour WS. There's no specific plan, we'll just make our way around and stop when we see something that interests us. And on our last night in MK, we have a dinner at BOG and then plan to see MSEP & Wishes but there's no plan for attractions. I'll probably get FP+ for 7DMT and 2 others that I think we may want to re-ride, but there won't be a set plan. Hopefully these bits of "free time" interspersed with TPs will keep my family from mutiny. ;)
 
I'm so sad about this! We always plan our dates with low crowd levels, none of us like crowds. That is the most important thing for us!

We booked for November 11th-17th and almost every single one went up by 2. Some went up by 3. That's a lot of large jumps. I completely expected a few park days going up one or two levels, but all of them?!

I emailed Touringplans.com in regards to this, but haven't heard back yet.
did you get an email from TP, cause I never received anything?
 
Going to guess they revised the levels based on park hours being added and hotel occupancy levels.
We are going Aug. 16-23 and I know it'll be busy and there is nothing I can do about that except have a good plan. Worse comes to worse we can always stay in our lovely DVC resort for more hours per day.
16th to 23rd here too....I guess we just have to suck it up and like you said..head back during the day to cool off and enjoy the pool ( CBR here )..the Florida kids/AP holders go back to school on the 17th so we might get lucky :)
 
did you get an email from TP, cause I never received anything?

I did get an email, I think a couple other people on here mentioned they did also. Maybe you are not set up to get emails for some reason, did you check your account?

Edited to add
Did you mean an email from them in response to me sending them an email? Or we're you just asking if I got the initial email about the changes.

I got the email about the changes. NOT an email in response to mine however.
 
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