CLWatch - Keeping an eye on the new estimated Crowd Levels

Yes Len absolutely. Our family picked this time of year because of the “low” season.

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I am so confused why they would artificially inflate times that high. From a customer service perspective it is just terrible. If I weren’t on TP and just saw those times, I would be put off. A 10 min shorter wait makes a happy customer. Those times would mean we leave the park and hang out at the resort.

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Here’s a theory - maybe they are attempting to see the impact of inflating earlier times in the day in preparation for Galaxy’s Edge? With the idea that if lines are insanely high in MDE, they may be able to redirect some people to the other parks?

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This was my thought as well. The cynic in me also believes that they’re pushing folks towards EPCOT for the Art Festival and MK for Mickey’s Celebration. Both areas currently would have a lot of potential impulse buying types of food and merchandise. Basically, they get to test and make a profit.

Kinda like being a nanny in WDW. :wink:

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Well it seems that whatever shenanigans Disney were up to with HS and AK reported wait times the previous few days stopped yesterday (they probably found out @len was on the case).
Tue Feb 12: MK 4(3) EP 3(2) HS 2(2) AK 5(3)

That’s more like it. I suspect that’ll be a sigh of relief for many who have been confused by what’s been going on. Low crowd levels pretty much as expected, hurrah!

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This is a theory that Bob (Sehlinger’s) has floated too. They’re testing the point at which people balk at getting in line, in an otherwise “slow” time of year. (They know what happens during Christmas, but people who go during Christmas expect it to be bonkers.) How do people behave with consistent high, unexpected waits at every ride, in a park with not many rides?)

Also, Everest had technical problems yesterday for about 22% of our time window. That raised the overall park crowd level a bit.

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We’ll see what happens over the next few days. I still don’t believe Dinosaur’s wait times either.

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Very interesting Len, thank you for the regular updates. Good to see things were back to expectations yesterday - might the Everest tech issues might explain the slightly higher actual CLs seen there?

We’re coming up on President’s week though, where it actually will be busy… I’m leaving Saturday, I’ll try to submit a few wait times while I’m there… :slightly_smiling_face:

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Yes, we think so. It’s slight, but we weight the individual attraction CLs according to capacity, so it’s more than average.

Thanks for sharing all this info. I was at WDW last week and was very surprised at all the reported wait times. It was very off-putting. I assumed they did it so people would turn away and ride other rides with lower wait times and that was the purpose.

And I echo what others have said, I appreciate all the TP team does to help us plan smooth touring in the parks! It’s such a valuable service!

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I was at AK on Feb 9 and DHS on Feb 10. As an individual guinea pig in the mob of other hapless guinea pigs, I will say that the wait times drove us to the other entertainment options that we normally would not have done. Voyage of the Little Mermaid was filling the theater, and so was Indiana Jones. I don’t know if that’s typical these days or not. I’m not brave enough to hop in a 90 minute posted for ToT and hope it’s only 20 mins. We definitely balked.

More anecdotal info- I saw lots of CMs in training (new college and overseas kids, I’m assuming) and many CMs at the rides had crowd clickers in their hands, on rides I hadn’t seen it before, and random places, such as inside the pre-show room at RnRC. Wonder if Disney is trying to catch more data too?

I can’t fathom how someone planning a trip to Disney could look at those wait times on the app and still think it’s a good idea to go on vacation to Disney. I’m guessing by the time most guests get the app they are already locked in.

Am I reading the graphs correctly that at AK on Feb 9 there were a total of 10 reported wait times from in-park TP subscribers?

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If this is the case, I find it very off-putting. I’m usually a defender of Disney and am not disturbed by the ticket price increases, upcharges and special events that seem to bother some people. With price increases, upcharges and special events, my thinking is that Disney can charge whatever they want for their product and I can decide if it is worth it to me or not to purchase. But, manipulating paying customers by posting “fake” wait times whether for testing how crowds react (or other reasons) seems shady to me.

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Oh this is super interesting!

I’m of the same mind generally re upcharges, ticket prices, etc… This one does seem shady, but it doesn’t bother me too much personally because I never really rely on the posted wait times - I have my touring plan and use the Lines app… Disney’s always inflated their wait times (as long as I’ve been going there anyways), this just seems more extreme than in the past.

I would also say that if they’re going to test, do it on a smaller crowd so that the impact isn’t so bad. Also, these are folks who are going to be thrilled when they realized that they didn’t nearly as long as was posted. Resolve a problem for Galaxy’s Edge now before it becomes a headache for everyone later.

Was there ever a consensus on why Disney fiddled around with the TT FP for February? There was limited pre-booking availability starting mysteriously when Club Level people couldn’t book more than one per window at 90 days. This kept up until it hit the 60 day mark for a while, and then it went back to normal.

I wonder if this all ties in together some how. I don’t like being a guinea pig, either. I’ve never patronized an establishment quite as opaque as Disney. As @davej said, it’s one thing to deal with all their upfront changes, but being manipulated is another thing entirely.

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Nice and low figures yesterday with high accuracy on the estimates - all good stuff! Bit of a peak on HS but even with that it would have been a nice day to be at the parks!
Wed Feb 13: MK 2(3) EP 3(2) HS 4(1) AK 2(2)

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We underpredicted yesterday at the AK yesterday (we said “5”), but I don’t think it was an actual 10. The actuals at Safaris vs predicted:

Posted 35, actual 25 at 9:26 a.m.
Posted 75 actual 85 at 10:24 a.m.
Posted 105, actual 73 at 12:18 p.m.
Posted 75, actual 67 at 3:08 p.m.
Posted 95, actual 41 at 5:15 p.m.

It looks like the posted wait went way up, while the actual wait went way down, from around 3 pm onward.

We still underpredicted the wait, but not as bad as the posted shows.

Dinosaur sill looks suspicious too:

90 minutes posted to 20 in 15 minutes
80 to 55 in 7 minutes
20 to 65 in 18 minutes
70 to 25 in 6 minutes
15 to 40 in 7 minutes

Most of these changes aren’t physically possible. We’ll keep looking at them.

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