Touring Plans vs. EasyWDW

[Disney Sheri]

I ALWAYS stress about crowd levels before I get there. BUT once I am there-all of that simply goes away! That being said-I have had more success with Easy WDW. Happy planning!

 

[Cyrano]

For the record I am a long time subscriber of Touring Plans.
However flirted with EasyWDW and other resources to help trip planning.

Now this bashing and slagging off other website owners stops now. By all means give planning reasons why you would recommend your favourites. Those deleted posts have had their cards marked

 

[maxiesmom]

To wade into the this one vs that one fray, I had both crowd level predictions listed out for a trip a couple of years ago. And the one time we didn't follow Easy but followed Touring Plans, we regretted it.

I have to say too that one of the people who runs TP can be pretty aggressive when it comes to reading anything negative about their site on the Dis. Running into that has turned me off of their site a bit. I doubt either site is 100% accurate, but are good as guides. But I do choose Easy over Touring Plans.

 

[MsSweet]

Easywdw was awesome. We were able to ride everything! We even rode the 7Dwarf Mine train with no wait last year.

 

[xray2001]

I used to love Easy WDW but recently Josh has been rude and full of himself. Apparently he is threatened by Kenny the Pirate because I just mentioned his name and they blocked me from the site and the forum, but guess what, there are ways around that, so I can still access everything :0 I really am not even interested in the site anymore, I'm just stubborn and no one bans me! I have moved on to Kenny the Pirate. He is more accurate and more on top of things than Josh AND he is really nice and answers any questions you have right away! Josh will never answer your questions. He only answers his friends.

 

[notfrostyjosh]

I used to love Easy WDW but recently Josh has been rude and full of himself.

Not sure that's a recent development.

 

[PrincessWithABlaster]

We have the situation on our trip where one day at MK looks very good per TP and is the red not recommended park at Easy and vice versa the next day. We're going to be at MK both days so I'll plan to report back which of the two days was more crowded in our experience (and thus which site was 'right'). It will be a single data point, anecdotal situation but I'm definitely interested in the outcome.

 

[xray2001]

Not sure that's a recent development.

Nice to see you Josh. Hope you find this thread interesting.

 

[HappyGrape]

Josh's cheatsheets are good

 

[dres40]

Love Josh and EasyWDW! I find his advice always spot- on. My husband and I love his humor. But I have to admit ..... sometimes if my DH or I tell a joke we are the only two laughing

 

[HappyGrape]

I had a look for a last year October last week info. Josh's recommendation vs actual crowds from how did we do report in touringplans

http://www.easywdw.com/oct15-v1.jpg

http://blog.touringplans.com/2015/11/03/disney-world-crowd-calendar-report-october-25-to-31-2015/

Easywdw were spot on Sunday Monday, Tuesday
Not as much Wednesday, Thursday or Friday
Partially on Saturdays

However this is during Food and Wine - Thursday and Friday the waiting times touring plans uses may be correct and not very high but this may not be reflective in the crowd levels in Epcot due to Food and Wine. Same applies for Saturday - touring plans have Epcot as lower but in reality many locals may be mainly interested in the festival. If you take that into account he may be correct on 6 days out of 7.


It's actually pretty good prediction!

 

[HappyGrape]

I like tourinplans a lot too. I find the book better read and includes things as restaurant ratings, age specific recommendations, I like the touringplans plans app, they have good blog posts. Easywdw - good Food and Wine overview every year, good restaurant reviews.

both are good in their own way.

 

[agavegirl1]

I use both. Touring plans for customizing and easywdw for my initial park choices and crowd calendars. I am not a "typical" visitor so I like having customization available. However, I am an obsessive planner and have no problem devoting a lot of time to my spreadsheet plans.

 

[Keyser]

I have been comparing these for a while (and asked a similar question not too long ago), but I'll tell you a few things I found:
- It seems some of the TouringPlans data is based on the day of the year rather than the day of the week in the previous year. Sometimes that's better ("best park on July 4"), but sometimes, you want to know "what's the best park on a Sunday in July". EasyWDW relies more on a model of behavior and traffic patterns, and as a result, is maybe a little better at modeling than TouringPlans (which might slightly over-rely on data).
- This could be a positive or a negative: Touringplans will update their predictions over time (not sure how often). For my upcoming trip, they changed the Universal crowd levels from the 5-7 range into the 9-10 range(!!!!). Fortunately, it was not too late for me to readjust my thinking, but that's not a small "adjustment" - the earlier estimates they had were complete garbage, and I'm lucky I hadn't counted on them. On the positive side, though, they did adjust them once they had a better estimate, and still did so well ahead of time.
- I've definitely seen the TouringPlans "optimizer" give some not-optimal plans. If it plans something that you know seems wrong, try adjusting the inputs a bit.
- This will depend on your style of touring, but I think TouringPlans actual plans work better in a "commando-style" touring mode, while EasyWDW is better in a "enjoy the experience" touring mode. If you want to maximize what you can see in a given time, I think TouringPlans wins out. If you want to just have a good set of principles that will help you have a nice day in the park, EasyWDW wins out. I find I want different types at different times, so I've found value in both of them.
- TouringPlans offers more detailed estimates and tools than EasyWDW, for sure.

 

[HappyGrape]

Touring guides also have things as first times visitors with kids should visit Epcot as kids will appreciate it more before they see MK and have to opportunity to compare. This was good advise for us

Also some of easywdw plans have Everest or Space mountain first thing in the morning. If you travel with 5 or 6 year old, and you pick most recommended day on your first day it may impact your full holiday. You may save 20 minutes wait or do one attraction more, but if you have to skip 30% of the attractions as your child is too upset to go on rides .... Touringplnas will do more in my opinion to help a first time visitor with kids

 

[ckelly14]

I like both sites, but I am going from December 17-23rd and it looks like Josh takes a pass on those weeks in December.

Hand down, Josh is funnier.

 

[MickeyMinnieMom]

Just be forewarned- don’t ever question the author. Take a look at the front page post on the blog. Lots of fans over there who think a response like that is funny - seems arrogant and rude to me.

Also heard he has talked about closing the site soon.

Snark is fine, especially when pointed to Disney or just random things. But when posts, emails, and private messages are posted with full names attached and then everyone mocks and belittles that individual into submission or until they want to just leave...that's bullying at it's best and has completely crossed the line from snark to being just plain rude. It is this behavior that I can no longer condone and that has driven me to Touring Plans and wdwprepschool....as well as posting here (I've been lurking for quite a while now). At least these sites know that calling people out by name and publicly ridiculing them is inappropriate.

I used to love Easy WDW but recently Josh has been rude and full of himself. Apparently he is threatened by Kenny the Pirate because I just mentioned his name and they blocked me from the site and the forum, but guess what, there are ways around that, so I can still access everything :0 I really am not even interested in the site anymore, I'm just stubborn and no one bans me! I have moved on to Kenny the Pirate. He is more accurate and more on top of things than Josh AND he is really nice and answers any questions you have right away! Josh will never answer your questions. He only answers his friends.

^ These.

I used to use easywdw some. It was never my favorite because I like the more rigorous data-based approach at TP, and the fact that I can look at historical data and check how their predictions came in vs actuals.

I started to get turned off by how incredibly negative he seems to me to be -- about almost everything Disney. I had recommended his site to some friends, and they came back with the same feedback.

After an incredibly rude response from him on Twitter -- rude because I had the nerve to disagree with a really negative tweet of his -- I was really turned off.

I was surprised that I didn't see this kind of feedback on him here -- most were SO POSITIVE... about how funny and honest he is.

Dry sense of humor -- no problem! Snarky at times -- hey, it's the internet! But downright rude and nasty because someone dares question the great and powerful Oz?? No thanks. He has competition -- I don't need that.

At most, I check his crowd calendar (one of 4 that I check) when planning when to visit. And I wouldn't check it at all if there was a cost associated. If he closes down the site, it'll just be one less crowd calendar to look at, from my perspective.

I find TP to be a professional, data-driven, well-organized site. If I had to pick only one calendar to use, this would be it.

 

[MickeyMinnieMom]

For the record I am a long time subscriber of Touring Plans.
However flirted with EasyWDW and other resources to help trip planning.

Now this bashing and slagging off other website owners stops now. By all means give planning reasons why you would recommend your favourites. Those deleted posts have had their cards marked

It's ok to share if they have been rude and nasty, though, right? It was my experience with that site, so I think it's fair to share -- it affects what site I use, and what site I recommend to friends. Seems relevant. Just want to make sure.

 

[bltman]

It is possible to not like Josh as a blogger but still use his touring plans, crowd calendars and ride order recommendations.

For my last 2 trips, I used both TP and Easywdw. For the most part, I found easywdw’s crowd calendar (and which park to attend) and plans to be more accurate. TP’s data driven approach did not take into account the circumstances of the day. There was a day on my last trip when MK closed at 7pm (xmas party), AK closed at its usual early 5pm, and HS closed at 4pm (for a private event) – yet TP had Epcot (the only one open that evening and with magic hours too) rated as low crowd on the crowd calendar and HS rated as having the highest crowd (but then seemed surprised in their blog summary how off they were that day). The day in Question was November 17th. http://blog.touringplans.com/2015/1...ar-report-november-15-to-21-2015/#more-101482 If I had followed TP’s suggestions, it would have been a difficult day to navigate through Epcot. Just a quick look at the operating schedule that day along would have told people what parks they may want to avoid.


I do like building a touring plan in TP’s software for organization purposes but then not optimizing it (because it really does not produce optimum results). It creates a nice outline of my plans and is easy to follow.

 

[siskaren]

There was a day on my last trip when MK closed at 7pm (xmas party), AK closed at its usual early 5pm, and HS closed at 4pm (for a private event) – yet TP had Epcot (the only one open that evening and with magic hours too) rated as low crowd on the crowd calendar and HS rated as having the highest crowd (but then seemed surprised in their blog summary how off they were that day). The day in Question was November 17th. http://blog.touringplans.com/2015/1...ar-report-november-15-to-21-2015/#more-101482

And I would be willing to bet that Josh recommended HS and MK due to the early closures (since most people don't want to go to parks with shorter hours and no nighttime entertainment), and said to avoid Epcot, both because of the EMH and with it being the only park with nighttime hours.