Thanks for that update - really hoping for you and all of us going soon that it was just a holiday weekend blip. Fingers crossed!
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Updated figures in, and above is the whole of the MLKJr holiday weekend. Those AK figures especially are pretty frightening, along with the report from @kkinnell above.
To give some perspective here’s 2017 actual figures (I’ve skipped last year due to the Disney messing with capacity)
Figures in this order: Overall MK EP HS AK
| Sat, January 14, 2017 | 8 | 8 | 7 | 8 | 8 | Festival of the Arts at EP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sun, January 15, 2017 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 9 | 10 | Festival of the Arts at EP |
| Mon, January 16, 2017 | 7 | 6 | 8 | 8 | 8 | Birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. |
| Festival of the Arts at EP | ||||||
| Tue, January 17, 2017 | 5 | 5 | 6 | 4 | 4 | Morning Magic Fantasyland at MK |
| Wed, January 18, 2017 | 3 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 3 | |
| Thu, January 19, 2017 | 3 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 3 | |
| Fri, January 20, 2017 | 4 | 5 | 3 | 5 | 5 |
Compared to 2017 then most days are 1 or 2 CL higher this last weekend. That’s interesting but not terrible.And in 2017 we see BIG drops the rest of the week. It’ll be interesting to compare what happens today (and hey, copying and pasting keeps layout, who knew?!!!)
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True dat - a good TP can handle that sort of increase with minimal additional wait time.
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I agree with you in one respect. The TPs certainly help get you on most if not all of what you want, though they do seem to falter when the CL is much higher than predicted.
However, the number of things you do isn’t the only metric, and overall CLs also speak to how enjoyable the parks are to be in. EP and AK were diminished in our eyes due to the crowding.
We were in HS today. It also seemed crowded, but it didn’t have the over-crowded feel. We had a blast and saw more than we’d planned (including SDD which was worth the 40 min wait). I’ll be interested to see what the numbers are for today. Maybe it just wasn’t as crowded, or maybe it has to do with the number of rides and shows available.
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Here’s the figures, and thank you, your actual park experience updates are so helpful!
Tue Jan 22: MK 9(7) EP 6(5) HS 6(8) AK 7(7)
So HS was a 6 yesterday. MK at 9 is still really high historically, 2017 it was a 5.
Fingers crossed we get back down to some more of those overestimated predictions we love so much! The Wednesday after MLK was a 3 overall in 2017 so I hope you have a calmer day today!
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So this is where the CLs can be a little misleading. At MK today, both Big Thunder and Space Mountain were down for a significant portion of the day… Since TPs crowd levels are based on line length, that skews the actual number.
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It’s interesting how different people have different perspectives. I talked to a friend who was at Epcot on Saturday and asked him how it was. He said that the lines were ridiculous, but the crowds themselves werent bad at all. Busy for sure, but manageable and nothing like Easter/Christmas/New Year’s…
I’m not questioning your experience - just pointing out how different people can have different experiences or perspectives, even on the same day.
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This is absolutely true. We live close to a Six Flags theme park, so my " crowd normal" is usually based upon what I am used to at that park. Someone else would have a total different “crowd normal” based on the places they may frequent.
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We were there from January 10-19. The new numbers came out right before we left home and were seriously scary. Some of our park days jumped from CL2 to CL9! We rushed around an re-ran the optimizations for all our plans and took both copies on the trip with us.
Turns out the new numbers were NOT accurate for most of our trip. We found that our original optimized plans worked better most days (they often started the same and we kept an eye on the times for both plans). Some of the days, we were looking around and wondering at how far off the predictions were.
On Saturday the 12th we were at the MK. The original CL number for that day was a 5, the new prediction was a 9. It was supposedly a 6, but it sure didn’t feel like it. I would have guessed it was a 3 or 4. We had lunch at Columbia Harbor House at Noon - we ate upstairs and there were only maybe 3 or 4 other tables in use up there. Even the downstairs had plenty of open seating. Walking around the MK, it just felt very open and uncrowded. We had no problem completing our entire touring plan early.
Crowds did build up as the week went on, but didn’t start feeling crowded until Friday the 18th. I will believe the actual 7 for the MK that day (original prediction 5, new version 6) although part of the problem was that both Space & 7DMT were down when the park opened. (Splash might have been also… I can’t remember for sure - it was down a few times during our trip).
Friday evening (18th) at Epcot felt far worse than the actual 4 - probably because of the festival first-day crowds. They are there, but not waiting in lines for rides. World Showcase was packed. Saturday we were at Epcot until around 4pm - it was somewhat crowded, but no where near as bad as Friday night.
Photo taken at Noon at Columbia Harbor House on January 12th.
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This is so helpful, thank you!
That’s one of my worries with the inflated CL numbers for our time in March, that it is going to seriously throw off the usefulness of our TP and the Lines app on the day if it’s calculating for a CL10 when it’s not near that.
Anyway, figures for yesterday are reassuringly normal:
Wed Jan 23: MK 6(7) EP 3(4) HS 5(7) AK 6(6)
A little bit of overestimation on most parks, I’ll happily take that! It’s still high compared to 2017 figures, which were 4 3 2 3 but it means the chance of Disney rethinking capacity on rides is becoming less and less each day, which is good news for everyone. And average CL5 is a nice place to be from waiting time and TP optimisation.
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The lines app adjusts during the day based on real world conditions. So if the CL was predicted to be a 10 and is actually a 6, Lines will know that fairly early and adjust. If things change throughout the day (e.g. because of a ride closure) it will also adjust. So the wait times in Lines are real time based on current conditions, not static.
Also, when you are in the park, every time you hit optimize while in the park , it takes current conditions into account. So, for example, when in the park I select my touring plan as the current one, and as I finish each attraction I mark it as done. If I get ahead of schedule or fall behind, I hit optimize and it recalculates the best path to avoid longer lines. Sometimes that means changing the order of things a little. But it works well.
Finally, there will be at least one more update to the CC before your trip (maybe two) where they will likely take January results into account.
Optimize often. Even though they only publish the CC monthly, the models used for optimizing the TP are updated daily. I optimize at least once a week, and reassess my touring plan leading up to the trip. In the last week I optimize daily. And I even optimize the morning of before rope drop.
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That’s great to know, I’d hoped that was the case! Thanks Mike.
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I have found that this is not that big of a problem - if anything, you will be getting through things more quickly, which allows more time for “taking in the Magic” and raiding the gift shops. This makes things less stressful for the TP organizer, as less effort is spent on keeping the slackers and easily distracted members of your party focused on the goal. Also, as @mikejs78 points out, the TP wait time models are constantly adjusting during the day, so if you get way ahead of schedule you can always re-optimize (and even add additional attractions to fill the slack time).
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We were in HS again yesterday all day. It seemed busy but not crowded (there was a table readily available when we had a snack, for example). Overall it was quite pleasant and we did everything we’d planned and more. CL 5 is about my speed, I think. 
@mikejs78: what you said about different perspectives is of course true. I would not knowingly put myself in a CL 10 park, and it seems your friend doesn’t mind.
But mostly anything I didn’t love was outside TP territory (like a table when we were ready to eat). The TP did a great job for the most part. I think the trick, @SimonUK, is to be clear on your priorities. If the CLs are much higher than predicted, then your TP might steer you wrong because it doesn’t prioritize anything other than getting you to most things. Maybe make an additional plan with only your highest priorities, and then if wait times in reality seem to differ from your TP, you can switch plans. But if CLs are similar or lower, you shouldn’t have any problem at all.
We’re headed to MK for our last day here soon (packing while we wait out the rain). Will let you know how it goes.
That’s great if that is how you like to use the service, but we try to stay off our phones as much as possible while in the parks. I don’t want to have to stop and re-optimize on the fly. We have always created our plans at home, optimized and printed them about a week before our trip and it has been a decent system for us. My biggest complain right now is that after I had optimized/printed the new info suddenly hit. I had to re-optimize at the last minute (adding stress to a busy pre-travel time) and print out new plans which, ultimately, were not needed. Since we thought the new CL numbers were strange, we brought both sets of plans with us. The original plans worked better for us. Honestly, my faith in Touring Plans has taken a big hit. I’ve been using it for years for many Disneyworld and Disneyland trips. Not only were the new numbers just plain wrong for our trip (they may end up being OK for further out, but for those of us who were just about to leave, they were NOT accurate) but the last-minute update right before our travel was incredibly stressful.
Thur Jan 24: MK 2(6) EP 3(5) HS 4(10) AK 4(8)
Wowser - that’s a shift, right where we want it. Getting back to some major over-predictions yesterday with no park actually over a CL4, even though 8s and 10s were predicted. Those actuals are right back down to 2017 levels and 2-3 below 2018 levels where there was crowd shaping. Encouraging.
I’m going to be fascinated at what the next crowd calendar update does.
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Yesterday at MK was really quiet in the morning, walk on to little mermaid and posted wait of 15 min for Pooh (actual time about 5 min) at around 10 am. It felt really light in the park as well. Arrived for the mousekedance it party at 12:30 by walking back through the castle and we were in the second row right next to the Mickey float! Note that there were two weather warnings yesterday morning and a big thunderstorm went through at about 7:30 am. It called for 100% chance of rain. I think that may have made people stay away.
Thanks again for doing this!! I am watching every day.
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This is a great thread. I’ll be keeping my eye on it. Go 26th Feb 
Awesome, we’re the 27th!!!