Comparing Plans Across different Crowd Calendar Days

Walt Disney World Crowd Calendar
#1

I was conducting an experiment using Touring Plans to see what the difference would be in wait times for a given Magic Kingdom plan on a CL2 day and CL10 day.

I created a plan on the low crowd day, and had TP “evaluate” it. I copied the same plan to a different date that was a high crowd level, and had TP “evaluate” it.

But there was no difference in estimated times between the two plans. Can anyone speak to why this might have been the case? Does TP not take crowd level into account for those wait projections in the plans? Or maybe there is something I would need to do differently to be able to compare a plan across different crowd levels?

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#2

So, CLs are average wait times across key rides during the busiest times of the day. But, this is where TP can find an optimal plan by assigning you to ride certain rides when they are at their lowest waits. This can mean that you don’t really have significantly longer waits on a high CL day versus a low CL day.

This is why people say over and over here a good plan trumps a good CL day.

There is a caveat though. From what I have seen, a high CL day is more likely to suffer from messing up your day IF you are delayed. Shifting the arrival time for a ride by fifteen minutes might move the ride times for everything else after that up by quite a bit. So, there is still some advantage to a lower CL day in that it is more forgiving, generally.

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#3

How long in the future are your plan days? I have noticed that for plans several months in the future, timing shifts noticeably if I reevaluate starting about 1 month out, even if the actual crowd level number hasn’t changed.

#4

May 3 and May 4