Crowd accuracy question--Touring Plan or Kenny the Pirate?

I was looking at Crowd levels for 11/30 and Touring Plans has AK as Crowd Level 7 which is not bad for Thanksgiving week. Kenny the Pirate has it as the worst day to visit. Who’s more accurate?

I’ve been wondering the same. Touring Plans, Kenny the Pirate and Undercover Tourist are all wildly different crowd levels for my dates.

TouringPlans is definitely more accountable - they are more transparent with their methodology and are regularly updating their models based on the best available data. Additionally, they post what their predictions were and what actually happened on the day. KtP does not do this, and as far as I know his prediction methodology is “Thanksgiving week is always busy, so it will be busy again.”

As far as which prediction for a given day is more accurate right now, who can say? I’d say that overall TP is more accurate.

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That’s kind of what I figured/was hoping. I’ve been making all my plans using Touring Plans and the crowd levels have remained relatively low with the exception of HS. When I received my MNSSHP tickets from Undercover Tourist and it came with a slip to check their crowd calendar so I did out of curiosity and the crowd levels were insanely high for my trip. So then I checked KtP and he was split 50/50 but your thoughts above make sense. He had low levels on party days which match TP then high levels on others. One day that jumped out at me was he had low level day for HS on a Saturday, end of September. I’m thinking that can’t be right!

At this point, I’m probably just overthinking everything since I’m all planned and now have nothing left to do except wait! 44 more days :smile:

One more thing to add here - right now I do not think that anyone’s specific predictions are “accurate” other than showing overall trends, e.g. Thanksgiving week is busier than the weeks around it, Christmas week is insanely busy, etc. The Star Wars stuff is a huge wildcard, and no one really knows what its overall effect is going to be - there is even speculation that CLs are currently lower than what they would have been because people are holding off going until the new land is open. There is also speculation that current CLs are higher than what they would have been because of people moving their vacations up to avoid the initial chaos. Go figure…

Add on to this the fact that WDW has been monkeying around with staffing and ride capacity which has resulted in what should have been low CL days having longer waits than expected and the latest news that park attendance has been down (which will undoubtedly result in lower staffing levels), and you have a lot of uncertainty that no prediction model can easily cope with.

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You’re a Liner - that’s what we do.

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I can’t speak for Disney, but when I used Undercover Tourist and Touring Plans for our Universal trip, Undercover Tourist was hands down more accurate. I generally trust UT’s predictions. But I think it is as whole new game for Disney, where Touring Plans has much more data to work with.

Kenny the Pirate I’ve referenced recently, but I find it only confuses the picture. Sometimes all three give completely different recommendations. :confused:

What could be interesting is to compare the UT, KtP, and TP predictions against the TP actuals over the course of a year and see how accurate each ends up being! That would be a lot of work, though.

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I’ve always understood TP to be lines for rides and KtP to be how the overall park feels. So TP may have long waits for the rides but the park itself doesn’t feel that crowded (which could be capacity / staffing reduced during lower visitation months). I may be wrong.

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Kenny is looking at different things than TP.

He does have a set of criteria and he’s not wrong when factoring in that criteria.

TP has different criteria and they are not wrong when factoring in that criteria.

Kenny doesn’t rate parks the way TP rates them…he basically breaks it down as what’s the best and worst parks for each day. With his method, even if they are ALL crowd level 3 on TP, but MK had morning EMH, he is going to tell you that MK is the WORST park to choose to visit that day. That’s just one example.

Kenny is amazing at what he does with characters and TP is VERY lacking in that area.

Kenny’s Character Locator has been very helpful to us with listings for everything from Fuel Rod stations to pressed penny machines.

It’s apples and oranges and I like both so I buy both. I use apples when I want to make apple pie or TP when I want specific timing and order. I use oranges when I want to make orange juice or KtP when I want to know where characters are and what’s the best order to see them and where the penny machine is for my grandson.

Both have wonderful and helpful chat functions.

I don’t use Undercover Tourist at all because he only has an app for iPhone. And we’re an Android family.

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I just kind of look at all three (TP, UT and KtP). I know Kenny the Pirate says he has inside information and when he makes his crowd calendar for the year it’s set and he doesn’t make changes (“like some other sites do”) because he thinks his original intel is the best intel. However, he hasn’t changed it once this year and with all the changes that have been made since it was released (SWGE announcement, EEMH park hours, two new free dining releases, etc.) nothing has changed on which days are best to visit? That just seems unreliable to me.

So I just kind of look at all three and see which ones kind of jive and if I can’t get a consensus I roll the dice and go with TP.

Outside of the Characterpalooza locations, does Kenny tell people anything about characters that isn’t already available on the Disney app?

He gives detailed times when they appear (12:00-12:20 vs just 12pm in MDX) as well as tips on what to say for the best interactions. I was looking for Mulan today and it suggests seven interaction tips with her. It also has a map to the actual meet location - not just “China”. Added information on location based on weather too. It also says that this meet is very popular and her line is often cut as she arrives for a set.

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Hmm… It’s definitely an interesting idea. I wonder if anyone has done it before. I know TP is transparent about how accurate they were, but I’ve never used KtP or UT for their Crowd Calendars. Do they report how accurate they were?

@AlyQ already answered this but I don’t only use KtP for character information so that’s not my barometer.

Sorry! I didn’t notice it was directed to you. How embarrassing. :flushed:

It wasn’t really addressed to her. I just used her info to ask a general question to anyone who may know. I appreciate everybody’s responses.

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I think UT is one of the less-often recommended free calendars, though I don’t know what that necessarily says about their accuracy. I do know that for my dates next year, every other crowd calendar I’ve looked at (WDW Prep, KTP, TP, Dad’s Guide, Magic Guides, Your First Visit, etc.) - they all have my dates at moderate/average or below average and UT has them as 8-9/10. Also ticket prices and rack rates are moderate to low-moderate and historical crowds this same week are moderate to low-moderate (even despite some being predicted to be higher). So who knows…the UT calendar definitely has me scared but I’m also hoping that it’s just an outlier and is wrong :rofl:

Oh, no! I just didn’t want @bdware5 to think I was ignoring the question! I’m glad you did…we’re all here to help each other!

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What does UT stand for

The Undercover Tourist website.