Touring plans every really wrong

[GusGus77]

Is touring plans ever completely off with their crowd predictions or is it rare? We were looking at them for lower times in the spring and found the first week and a half in April to be green and yellow for most parks on most days which would make it the best time for us to go (we are usually fall people, so spring break just looks crazy to us!)

We bought touring plans specifically to look for lower crowd times. But on April 3, Touring Plans has Hollywood Studies at a 2/green. But according to Disney, there are no park reservations left for Hollywood studios that day. It sounds like there is a run Disney event that weekend which would definitely affect crowds, but I am not really seeing that reflected in touring plans crowd calendar predictions.

So do I assume touring plans may not be accurate here or are there other factors I am not considering? Once crowd levels hit about a 7/8 I don’t do well. Thanks!

 

[hedberg1661]

I haven't really relied on those calendars that much. I too subscribe but I subscribed more for the Lines App / Wait Times for attractions. I know people swear by their crowd calendars but I will say that I have gotten a bunch of emails saying they adjusted them again.

 

[Grumpy by Birth]

I love Touring Plans, but I do have to say that you can't really plan based on the crowd calendars. It's not really even a matter of them getting it "wrong" so much as the calendars getting updated a few days or weeks before your trip and suddenly the previously level 1-2 days that you planned around are now all 8s and 9s.

 

[gharter]

Touring Plans had EPCOT as a 1 today. Longer lines in rides and the kiosks than on Wednesday. Expected as much as it is a Friday. I don't put much faith in the crowd predictor now. Only Disney really knows what crowds will be like on any given day as they know how many park passes are taken. But, they don't know how many will Park Hop.

 

[2Lunds]

Something else to consider is that when there are fewer guests in the park, there are fewer CM scheduled - so even if the crowd volume is lower, you could still end up waiting in long lines.

 

[ucf_knight]

Is touring plans ever completely off with their crowd predictions or is it rare? We were looking at them for lower times in the spring and found the first week and a half in April to be green and yellow for most parks on most days which would make it the best time for us to go (we are usually fall people, so spring break just looks crazy to us!)

We bought touring plans specifically to look for lower crowd times. But on April 3, Touring Plans has Hollywood Studies at a 2/green. But according to Disney, there are no park reservations left for Hollywood studios that day. It sounds like there is a run Disney event that weekend which would definitely affect crowds, but I am not really seeing that reflected in touring plans crowd calendar predictions.

So do I assume touring plans may not be accurate here or are there other factors I am not considering? Once crowd levels hit about a 7/8 I don’t do well. Thanks!

Disney is back to always being busy. So just pay up and skip the lines with genie+ and don’t worry about crowds

 

[emonade8]

Disney is back to always being busy. So just pay up and skip the lines with genie+ and don’t worry about crowds

Is that you again, Bob?

 

[DisneyOma]

We've used Touring Plans before, and found them to be off as much as on for the crowd sizes. It's a prediction, not an actuality.

 

[StageTek]

Fastpass has always disrupted the wait times. Sorry; Lightening Lane.

Crowd levels are difficult to predict. I think TP's algorithm is pretty good but people's travel habits are changing drastically. More and more people are going at the last minute as they feel safer - or are just over being cooped up.

When I was there in late September TP was predicting 4's and 5's but wait times were well below what I have experienced in six previous September trips when the predictions were all in the 1's and 2's.

 

[Leight19]

I’d also add with the current situation I’d imagine their model needs to be updated. As others said Disney now has exact crowd calendars so can and will scale back staff which will make slow days longer wait times then you’d expect. They also don’t know full impact of how LL will distribute or ratio of use so hard to predict how long standby will change. Add in genie free may impact crowd distribution there’s likely a lot of updates to assumptions to give wait time predictions in future.

 

[Ermise]

The key is in the name. They would be the first to tell you not to plan around or worry about the crowd calendar. Plan on having solid touring plans. By the spring they will have great plans for how to maximize your days at the park whether utilizing Genie+ or not.

 

[PaladinButters]

Have you used them before? I wonder historically how my previous trips would have been labeled vs what it felt like to me personally for a crowd level.
If you’ve never been to MK on a holiday where they do start the partial-level closure, do you even know what a 10 is? Is my personal 10 somebody else’s 7 just because it’s the biggest crowd I’ve been in?

Everyone is saying not to lean too hard on a calendar and they are right. We all plan so far in advance. Maybe Disney drops a sweet discount for your trip week and it fills up what was going to be a low crowd. Maybe they announce that’s the opening weekend for Guardians. How quickly did it seem to flow that Fall is the new Summer and how long does it take them all to change that anomaly into a pattern of attendance?

But to go back to your question - they would to the best of their abilities have things like Run Disney factored in. And since every single day the whole year is green for park reservations except for that one - Has Disney restricted them for something not yet announced? Is there a weird system issue with just that one day? Did a private party of 50,000 people already reserve the day? Nobody knows but Disney.

 

[Happy_2_B]

I have used them for many years. During our early visits when we did 'commando-style' touring we used their plans and never stood in a line longer than 15-20 minutes even when the park was packed. Nowadays we enjoy the parks casually- and use them mostly for the lines app and automated room requests. We have never found their wait times to be off by much IF you stick to the plans, but don't expect to show up at 11 AM and have things work out- because they won't. We have a trip that starts the weekend after Thanksgiving this year, and we are expecting crickets based on their predictions- but my guess is crowds will be larger than they anticipate. Hopefully they are right- but this is an unprecedented time and their computer models can only do so much to estimate crowd sizes because they cannot rely on historical data as much as when it is business as usual.

 

[JCornell]

Is touring plans ever completely off with their crowd predictions or is it rare? We were looking at them for lower times in the spring and found the first week and a half in April to be green and yellow for most parks on most days which would make it the best time for us to go (we are usually fall people, so spring break just looks crazy to us!)

We bought touring plans specifically to look for lower crowd times. But on April 3, Touring Plans has Hollywood Studies at a 2/green. But according to Disney, there are no park reservations left for Hollywood studios that day. It sounds like there is a run Disney event that weekend which would definitely affect crowds, but I am not really seeing that reflected in touring plans crowd calendar predictions.

So do I assume touring plans may not be accurate here or are there other factors I am not considering? Once crowd levels hit about a 7/8 I don’t do well. Thanks!

Keep in mind that Touring Plans crowd calendar is a measure of attraction wait times from 10am to 5pm, not how busy or full the parks are or how they feel all day long.

 

[spot28]

I have used and relied on for years and it worked like a charm...until this year. It had EPCOT at a crowd level 1 Thurs and Fri last week and both days were crowded. I think is was based more on ride lines than crowd feel as Soarin was a ' 30 min wait which is actually quite good, but I also waited 30 mins in line for several food items and felt a lot of people around us the whole time Between F&W, the limited space in "future world" due to construction for people to walk around, the whole park did not seem like a 1 at all, as a matter of fact one of the busiest EPCOT days I experienced in a decade.

 

[Upatnoon]

Is touring plans ever completely off with their crowd predictions or is it rare? We were looking at them for lower times in the spring and found the first week and a half in April to be green and yellow for most parks on most days which would make it the best time for us to go (we are usually fall people, so spring break just looks crazy to us!)

We bought touring plans specifically to look for lower crowd times. But on April 3, Touring Plans has Hollywood Studies at a 2/green. But according to Disney, there are no park reservations left for Hollywood studios that day. It sounds like there is a run Disney event that weekend which would definitely affect crowds, but I am not really seeing that reflected in touring plans crowd calendar predictions.

So do I assume touring plans may not be accurate here or are there other factors I am not considering? Once crowd levels hit about a 7/8 I don’t do well. Thanks!

If you bought touring plans specifically to look for "yellow" vs. "green" crowd times you've wasted your money.

If you use touring plans for an actual "touring plan" to reduce the time you spend waiting in line and get more done at the parks, then you spent wisely.

There are always a lot of people at the parks and how you tour them makes a huge difference,

A green day, yellow day or any other color isn't going to matter if you roll into a park at noon. They will all be crowded.

 

[rmclain73]

Just to add with what everyone else is saying. Crowd calendars are not that accurate, and they get updated often so I wouldn’t look too far out. However, their line app and wait times are very accurate. It’s very worth it for accurate alone. If you plan on purchasing Genie for your future trip having accurate wait times will help you decide which line to book a lightning lane for, and which you can wait standby in.

 

[Nutmeg2016]

OP, we were in the same boat as you, i.e. looking for the best possible week in spring 2022 (weighing a variety of factors including crowds, weather, our kids schedules, etc), and ultimately settled on the last week in April.

We do subscribe to touringplans, but their optimistic predictions for that week weren't a major factor in our decision . Similar to what others have said, I think it's fine to use crowd calendars like touringplans as a general guide, but taken with a grain of salt. For example, I find their rather measured predictions for the week after Easter (April 17-23) extremely hard to believe (we are deliberately avoiding that week, which coincides with our spring break here in MA and I believe many other disctricts in the northeast that tie spring break to Easter and Passover).

We did consider the first week in April, but be aware that there are still some districts off that week (e.g. Atlanta, which is probably close enough to Orlando to move the needle). And if "revenge travel" from overseas plays out now that borders are opening, I wouldn't be suprised to see hoards of British travelers show-up (UK spring break appears to kick off around April 3). . . although that's definitely more of a wild card.

In any case, I hope you have a great trip!

 

[Chami]

The crowd calendar got changed right before we left, so it was not a great way to choose time of year. The touring plan piece was fabulous. Each day ran smoothly, thanks to their planning tools.

 

[GusGus77]

Thank you everyone! It was suggested we purchase touring plans in another thread, which is why I did. We have always been go with the flow at the parks and have only made rope drop once in maybe six trips (and that was only so I could say we’ve done it ), but we have also always gone as lower crowd times- September, a week or two before Thanksgiving, etc. as we homeschool. We have always ridden everything we wanted, but that was because I knew how to utilize the fast pass system. We really can’t justify getting Genie+ for more than a day or two as we are really pushing the budget going at all. I get anxious with large crowds and the whole Covid thing definitely doesn’t help that. I was just hoping to find a time that was maybe a bit less crowded among the spring break crowds. We went to the MK one year on the Tuesday of President’s Day week. We did ok because of FP+, but I can’t imagine having done the park without it or dealing with crowds like that for 10 days, which is why I am thinking we may just have to wait until we can go during a different time of year.