CL updates and Changing my Touring Plans

I am staying the course…however the reason I was questioning was not a 1 to a 2 CL…it was a 1 to a 4 CL. On my first day, the park I had scheduled to visit has moved to a 6 where another park had moved down to a 2. And that 2 CL was the best I am seeing for my entire trip now. A move of 1 CL point would not have been so bad.

I’d use UT instead for crowd levels. I’m seeing too many oddities with the TP CLs to take a lot of stock in the changes this far out.

For example, the email yesterday I received indicated that one of the days the CL for all of WDW would INCREASE from a 5 to a 6…but the only actual park CL that changed was for AK, which went DOWN. And this isn’t an outlier. I just don’t trust their algorithm for this kind of thing.

Thus far, my results from UT have been trustworthy.

What I DO trust from TP, however, are the wait time calculations for the rides in any given day. So, rather than plan based on the CLs specifically, you could take a plan you make for, say, EPCOT, on one day, copy it to another day and then reevaluate it to see how it compares.

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Thanks, I’ll try that and see what it shows for other days.

Oh, one more note: A couple months back, I had received an email about an increase in the CL for one of the park days I had. So, I went into my plan and reevaluated it for the same day. My overall waits for the day actually went DOWN, not up, because the TP itself already had a good arrangement of rides, having me avoid the rides when the lines were the longest.

But you have to remember that the TP CL’s are for wait times for rides. The difference between a 1 and a 4 CL is, according to TP, between 10 and 30 minutes wait time difference. The parks are going to feel crowded regardless, so I think you’re far better off with a good plan and good fastpasses than switching things up at the last minute.

I do t think UT and TP are predicting the same things with their crowd calendars?

Personally, I was a big UT fan. I actually used them before TPs. Then, I discovered they were reporting wait times for closed attractions. I know they shut down their app after that but I am hesitant to trust them again.

Yes…the same things, but I’ve found the UT crowd calendar quite helpful in deciding which days to go to which parks. The numbers I’m getting from TP seem to be very unintuitive.

I’ve never used UT for any feet-on-the-ground purposes, just as input in choosing park days. I’ve also looked at KtP’s crowd calendar. Sometimes all three (UT, KtP, and TP) will give opposing recommendations. Trouble is with KtP is he is applying some “common sense” choices that turn out to be invalid when you look at the data, so I’m not as keen on using his numbers.

Actually, at one point, I made an elaborate chart where I mapped all of the park days and plugged in all three site CLs to see if I could find enough consensus. It really was all over the place.

Then, I read a very long article about looking at days of the week, and which parks most likely have higher versus lower crowds, and used that information. It did seem fairly well in line with the UT recommendations.

In the end, though, after making a preliminary choice, I ended up making plans and copying them across different days to see which ones evaluated best in the TP itself. In the end, there was generally not a significant difference if you have a good TP in place anyhow. :slight_smile:

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I personally have stopped using any crowd calendar and just go with what park we want to do. KTP and UT have differing recommendations. For example, KtP usually has Sundays for MK as green (best park) and UT does not. I personally have done a Sunday at MK and the crowds were not bad at all. We did everything we wanted (and more) with minimal waits. But KtP has been wrong as well.

Crowd calendars are a matter of perspective. I wouldn’t switch around plans for them.

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I love TP but any CL # that is more than 60 days out I no longer trust. Wait and see… it’ll fluctuate. TP only updates about 60 days in advance and copies & pastes the previous years historical info into the farther away future dates.

Each crowd calendar has their own way of getting their number. I like to look at multiples to get a better idea of when it is a “slower” time to go. CLs for a specific date aren’t reliable .

As stated a good TP will put you ahead of 85%+ of the people wandering around asking, “Well… what do you want to do next?”

Sorry, but I’ve seen too many injuries and actual fights break out with people racing and arguing over paper passes. Let’s just eliminate FastPass all together and give everyone an opportunity to ride if they want to wait. The overall standby queues would drop by 25% - 30% by getting rid of FastPass.

Yes! :slight_smile:

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Just for comparison, the only times I’ve been able to go were mostly CL 10 days. So to me a 4 - 6 sounds amazing. If it were me I’d keep the plans intact unless there were a really good reason to change (like, a day that was supposed to be a 1 is now a 6 and the goal was to ride all the rides).

I live near a Cedar Fair amusement park…they have now added a program to pay for “fast pass” on the big ticket rides. Hate it!

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Sorry, poorly worded. I was referring to a 1 or 2 point change in CLs, not a change from CL1 to CL2.

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I see stuff like this posted a lot, but I’m not sure that’s true. If the SB wait goes down, then more people may get in SB line to ride an extra time (or 2) … ultimately pushing the SB wait back up.

For example - If I have a FP for 7DMT and SB is 90 minutes, I may ride with my FP and then be done with 7DMT for the day because I’m the type of person who won’t wait more than 60 mins for a ride. But if FPs no longer exist and SB is 60 minutes, I might ride twice. And if enough people do that, the SB line goes up until it reaches the threshold where enough people won’t wait in line for another ride.

We live near HersheyPark and we hate the paid Fast Track. They now have unlimited for $$$$ and it has created lines worse than a lot of the DW attractions. The new non-thrill ride, Reese’s Cupfusion, was over 2 hours long in August at the same time Millenium Falcon was 45 minutes a week after opening. Give me a break. At least Disney has theirs for free at this point.

But if everyone’s then waiting in line for another 7DMT trip, it means that’s less people waiting in line elsewhere. And that 7DMT line would be consistently moving, at least.

Of course I doubt there would be any change whatsoever to the FP system as the 60-day window ends up selling more on-site beds.

This is the same for Sesame Place. It’s unlimited. You can get off and right back on so the SB doesn’t budge sometimes. At least WDW has a set time window and you can only ride once. I don’t think they charge enough either for it.

The sad part is on busy days, the Fast Track is almost double the price of a park ticket at full price. I’m taking over $100 per person per day. People will pay it. We have been season passholders the past 2 years and have not renewed. Unlimited Fast track was one of the reasons, amongst others.

It is stressful planning a WDW trip. I’ve been there recently.

Allow me to inject some humor into your current CL stressing. I wrote this about my CL stressing this afternoon:

You will have an amazing trip. You have worked hard on your plans!

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stick with the plan - you’ll be fine. We go on days that range from 6-8CL and never have we missed out on anything. Rope drop and knock it out of the park!

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