Touringplans website?

[lilsassymom]

Can anyone look and see what days April 18-22 look like crowd wise? This is when we will be in the parks. I am worried it will be during spring break. Is that website pretty accurate? Thanks much

 

[mom2rtk]

You could just buy a subscription.

 

[sherilaine]

April 18 is a 4, 19th is a 3, 20th is a 2, 21st is a 3 and 22nd is a 7.

Easter is very early this year so that will likely have lower crowds mid April than is typical. These have to be taken with a grain of salt and remember that just because they say something is a 3 or a 2 does not mean it won't be busy - it is all based on ride times - and even when the park is a 2, that still means you'll be waiting in a good long line for RSR and other popular rides. It just might not be as crazy as other times.

 

[lilsassymom]

You could just buy a subscription.

I was going to, but we aren't able to go much. We haven't been since November 2014. Before that it was May 2011.

 

[lilsassymom]

April 18 is a 4, 19th is a 3, 20th is a 2, 21st is a 3 and 22nd is a 7.

Easter is very early this year so that will likely have lower crowds mid April than is typical. These have to be taken with a grain of salt and remember that just because they say something is a 3 or a 2 does not mean it won't be busy - it is all based on ride times - and even when the park is a 2, that still means you'll be waiting in a good long line for RSR and other popular rides. It just might not be as crazy as other times.

Thank you SO much. That's very helpful

 

[goooof1]

I have read previously on this forum that the crowd estimates are NOT really accurate at all. You can take a look at the DLR app for wait times, etc and there are lots of "guess-timates" about different dates in many threads, but they are just that - guesses.

 

[grelca]

just so you know, though, you can look at their predictions for dates more than 30 and less than 60 days out without a subscription. which those dates are in that range.

 

[lilsassymom]

just so you know, though, you can look at their predictions for dates more than 30 and less than 60 days out without a subscription. which those dates are in that range.

I didn't know that. Thank you

 

[figment_jii]

As noted, it's probably best to look at multiple crowd calendars to try to get a sense of what the park crowds are going to be like. Two other commonly mentioned crowd calendars here on the Disboard are IsItPacked and RMH Travel. If all three are indicating it'll be crowded, it'll probably be crowded. If they're split, it probably means it's hard to know and could go either way (although, lately, it seems like Disneyland is always crowded).

In terms of Touring Plans specifically, like most crowd calendars, they aren't going to be 100% accurate. They did recently try to re-do they statistics to do a better job of estimating crowds, but they did have a tendency to under-predict crowds in DL and over-predict crowds in DCA. I do like that they present "after-the-fact" comparison so you can get a sense of how well they are doing. Basically, I would look at TP's crowd numbers and use a margin of +/- 2.0 to get the range of crowds you might experience. I think the biggest issues with Touring Plans are: 1) they only use attraction wait times to predict crowds, so it doesn't necessarily work well for large event days when there might be a lot of folks in the parks, but not necessarily riding attractions (e.g., marathon weekends), 2) they use past crowds to predict the future, so if there are unexpected events or things that are different from the past, their statistics don't always capture that well (e.g., when new events debut in the parks), and 3) they crowd numbers skew towards the higher end of the spectrum rather than being distributed (i.e, there are more days above 5 than below 5).

While on the older side, this post still has a pretty good explanation of the skew issue with TP:
http://www.disboards.com/threads/wh...ing-plans-website-dlr-crowd-calendar.3196851/

 

[sheetz]

Another problem is that TP only calculates crowds based on daytime wait times and doesn't take into account the "after work" crowd that sometimes descends on DL, especially on Friday evenings. DL probably has the most complex visitation patterns of any major theme park in the country and it's really hard for them to fit it to a mathematical model.

 

[sherilaine]

As I said - I think the biggest problem is what people's idea of a 2 or a 3 vs. an 8 or a 9 are - and no matter how much TP tries to explain it, people still have that perception and there is no changing them. Even when it's a 3, it will still be busy at the esplanade before park opening, moving around DL will still be busy, but the wait times might be less - on the opposite end it might not fill up until later in the day for a day that is an 8 or 9 so it might not be dreadful - it is complicated and there is no DOWN time anymore. We hit that sweet spot back in 2012 on our first visit where the park was almost empty a few days we were there and we hit it when we visited in the rain back in 2014 - but all the rest of the time it was busy - you just have to do the work, show up early, get your fast passes and know where you are going and what you want to do and then when the crowds fill in later in the day, you slow your pace and enjoy it while others scramble. I think that is the only recipe for success there.