I’m also confused by Higgs Bosons and people wearing flip flops in Manhattan, but those are for different forums.
We’re going to be in the Magic Kingdom on Tuesday 11/11 and Thursday 11/13 and getting my Donald ducks in a row, trying to tighten up the Touring Plans I’ve worked on before reporting back to my lovely commander in charge to make final decisions.
Touring Plans has Tuesday as a crowd level of 5, and Thursday as a crowd level 3. However, when looking at the Wait Times charts for each, the estimates on many attractions are equal or MORE on the crowd level 3 day. Huh?
Now, Thursday is a Christmas Party night - am I to guess those increased wait times might be due to the lesser 3 crowd getting compressed into less hours somehow? Doesn’t really make sense to me. My gut tells me if the crowd level is 20% less than another day, there should be less waits on that day.
I’ve put those charts side by side in a spreadsheet and uploading a capture for reference below.
I think that the wait times on 11/13 are affected by mEMH, so there is an extra hour of “line building” time on that day. The attractions that you have highlighted are ones that I feel would be most affected by the additional hour.
Thanks @brklinck - I had forgotten about the extra magic hour that morning!
But, I still feel like if it truly is a crowd level of 3, but the EMH ramps the wait times up early, they would release as the day went on. If not, then how is Thursday’s crowd level less than Tuesday’s 5?
Obviously, headliner attractions will always have beefed up wait times that tend to defy the momentum of changing crowd levels, overall. But, Less peoples is less peoples is less wait times, no?
An example of my concern: since Thursday was a lesser crowd level day and we could not get a Frozen Fastpass (sounds delicious) - I set us up for a standby wait for that attraction on Thursday. But, even with a higher crowd level on Tuesday, the estimated wait times for them that day are a solid 11 minutes less at all times.
That’s a 25% increase in wait times (11/44) on a day with 20% lower crowd levels (2/10 on the scale.)
Whatever the answer to my query, guess I just need to put both days of my touring plans on the table next to these charts and see what’s what.
(By the way, for anyone reading my post: the blue highlights weren’t me picking out the ones I thought were particularly indicative of my question, but are the ones that Touring Plans marked as “a better indicator of crowd level”. I find the blue background makes them easier to see than an *.)
Well, maybe @len or one of the Stats team can weigh in, but I think that the key here is to look at the overall line levels throughout the day in order to determine the Crowd Level for a park rather than the lines at a particular attraction at a given time. Also, I think that the A&E M&G is a bad barometer of crowd level - no matter what the crowd level is there will always a large number of people who want to meet coeds, and with a shorter party day this just crushes them into a smaller time window.
I may be geeking out on the numbers too much and heading down the rabbit hole.
(I also may be mixing metaphors, but that’s better than cocktails since it is only 930AM right now.)
I am also wondering about this as I will be there the same week. I’m especially wondering about the Frozen princess wait times. Will there be that much change over the next month? Today MK was a crowd level 4 and none of the wait times were (predicted?) below 70 min. Nov. 11 is predicted as a level 5 and the wait times are around 30 min. Can I really plan for this? And then, as the OP pointed out, the wait time is longer on the 13th… I don’t get it.
Noticed The TP Anna & Elsa wait times have now jumped from the 30-40 minute range to 180+ for both days. Ouch.
Still looks like the crowd level 3 day has higher waits, but need to look again when my brain is more awake.
That makes me very sad. Now I’ll have to completely redo my touring plan. at least I know ahead of time, though. I also noticed that MK is now open until 10 PM instead of 9 PM on 11/11. Just FYI…
Thanks @nuomonkey, I hadn’t seen the hours change for that day!
Looking at the official calendar for that week, it seems that on Sunday all except HS extended their closing time, MK added an hour on Wednesday, and AK added at least an hour every day!
As for A&E - I said in another thread: looking into my wife and I dressing as Anna and Elsa and having our daughter “meet” us on the 0-minute wait carousel.
