Will FP+ change touring style/best park days/crowd prediction?

[edk35]

We used to ALWAYS use Tour Guide Mike's recommended park day strategies.... and he has not updated his site in months. Not sure if that has to do with the new FP+system or not. So will all the sites that predict crowd level be changing things up too?

I get that we can get ressies for 3 rides per day. I know people luv that they can now BOOK Soarin and Book Toy Story without having to get there at rope drop.....but what about the least crowded park strategies that so many of us have used in the past. I wonder how that is going to play out. I still feel like we will have to do rope drop to ride things because of all I am reading online about the standby lines being really long for rides that they used to not be long.

 

[JimmyV]

I'll pose a question that you can answer yourself, (because if I answer it, people will jump in and tell me that I am wrong!)

Say you are going to the MK, and you want to do the following all in the same day:

• Space Mountain
• Buzz Lightyear
• Pooh
• Enchanted Tales With Belle
• Under the Sea
• Peter Pan
• Small World
• Haunted Mansion
• Pirates of the Caribbean
• Splash Mountain
• Thunder Mountain

Not an unusual list by any stretch. Now, you enter the park with FP+ for three of those rides and you are going to do the rest by waiting in the Standby lines.

Would you rather:
Go to the MK on a "least recommended", crowded day or a "most recommended" day?

Would you rather:
Show up at Rope Drop, or show up at 10:30?

 

[edk35]

I'll pose a question that you can answer yourself, (because if I answer it, people will jump in and tell me that I am wrong!)

Say you are going to the MK, and you want to do the following all in the same day:

• Space Mountain
• Buzz Lightyear
• Pooh
• Enchanted Tales With Belle
• Under the Sea
• Peter Pan
• Small World
• Haunted Mansion
• Pirates of the Caribbean
• Splash Mountain
• Thunder Mountain

Not an unusual list by any stretch. Now, you enter the park with FP+ for three of those rides and you are going to do the rest by waiting in the Standby lines.

Would you rather:
Go to the MK on a "least recommended", crowded day or a "most recommended" day?

Would you rather:
Show up at Rope Drop, or show up at 10:30?

Well that is pretty much common sense....but I guess what I am asking is...the days that USED TO BE RECOMMENDED as lower crowd days at MK...will they still be considered that now...or "are times a changing" LOL?? We have always avoided MK on Sat. and Sundays and gone mid week.

 

[kerriemiller]

Im not familiar with the site you are using. I use touring plans. And yes they have changed their touring guides. But crowd levels are crowd levels. That's not going to change. Individual wait times for all the rides is the heated topic of many discussions.

 

[ArwenMarie]

I think the park to park crowd calendars will become slightly evened out, especially if onsite gets prebooking. People will naturally switch park days around from home if they can get a better schedule. Will still be somewhat important. I think general crowd calendars will become more important.

 

[siskaren]

We used to ALWAYS use Tour Guide Mike's recommended park day strategies.... and he has not updated his site in months. Not sure if that has to do with the new FP+system or not. So will all the sites that predict crowd level be changing things up too?

TGM has been having personal problems for a long time (several years, I think) and I read in another thread that the site will be shutting down in a few weeks. I recommend checking out easyWDW.com and in particular, the cheat sheets (there's a link on the right side of the page) which take FP+ into account. I really don't see what FP+ has to do with predicting crowd levels and which park to visit on which day. Those things are dictated by things like time of year and which park has EMH.

 

[JimmyV]

Well that is pretty much common sense....but I guess what I am asking is...the days that USED TO BE RECOMMENDED as lower crowd days at MK...will they still be considered that now...or "are times a changing" LOL?? We have always avoided MK on Sat. and Sundays and gone mid week.

As noted above, crowd levels aren't likely to change. Touring Plans uses years of historical data to predict the future insofar as park choices are concerned and the impact of things like EMHs, Fantasmic shows, parades, etc. What will have to change are the estimated wait times for Standby lines. When we were there on days with crowd levels of 7-9, the SB wait time predictions on TP were way low after 11:00. Since this was the first truly crowded weekend since FP+ was fully implemented, their site hadn't quite accounted for the impact of FP+ on Standby lines. But I'm sure they will catch up. They have people "on the ground" at the parks every day and can see what is going on.

 

[edk35]

As noted above, crowd levels aren't likely to change. Touring Plans uses years of historical data to predict the future insofar as park choices are concerned and the impact of things like EMHs, Fantasmic shows, parades, etc. What will have to change are the estimated wait times for Standby lines. When we were there on days with crowd levels of 7-9, the SB wait time predictions on TP were way low after 11:00. Since this was the first truly crowded weekend since FP+ was fully implemented, their site hadn't quite accounted for the impact of FP+ on Standby lines. But I'm sure they will catch up. They have people "on the ground" at the parks every day and can see what is going on.

We used TGM a lot for BEST PARK days and it always worked out great. We knew that MK was best on Wednesdays and even Tuesdays but to avoid it on Mondays....now I think all of that goes out the window.