I am curious then what were the multiple factors that caused TP to be so off on their predictions. I had just wondered if it was the cheerleaders, as thought that is what threw TP off.
There are many unpredictable things that can come into play here, for example weather (both on the day and on surrounding days) and high capacity rides going off-line (even briefly). These sorts of things can affect both the number of people going to the parks and the distribution of those people within a given park.
I looked at the predicted/actual CLs for your days, and you are right that 2/9 was definitely way off, by an average of 3.25 points per park. I can’t spot any obvious reason, other than the fact that these are predictions which can sometimes be wrong.
However, for your other two days the predictions were quite good - off by 1 or fewer points in either direction for all of the parks except for HS, which is a bear to predict right now because of the new Star Wars stuff.
Out of curiosity, were you using optimized plans and did you re-optimize them when they started to go wrong? This is where the true strength of TPs comes into play, as the optimizer is using the latest “live” data to help you find the best way to complete your plan.
Pam, I had the same experience of crowd estimates being way off from Feb 5-11 inclusive. The problem wasn’t unique to TP, I used multiple crowd estimators to plan the trip, and they were wrong for the most part on every park but Epcot. We talked to people at Disney about it too, who were also surprised at how crowded it got. Most of the crowds we saw weren’t cheerleaders, who were fairly busy with their competition. We saw an absolutely massive influx of Argentinian tour groups - it was their school break (their school year runs March-December), and according to people at our hotel, there were triple the usual groups this year. The evidence this year might be anecdotal, but the lines at the airport were also all full at South American airlines. It made for exceptionally crowded and loud experiences on buses throughout the park, and at most parks.
Appreciate the info!
If TP doesn’t look at similar weekdays and not just the same date, I would be shocked. I also believe they look at when tour groups are there (like cheerleading comps), school district vacations, and the economy of not just the U.S., but Europe and South America (among other factors).
I have only been to Disney World a few times (each time in the summer), thus making for a smaller sample size, but I have never had issues with the crowd calendar or touring plans. The Lines app and its ability to adjust plans quickly has made it even better than in the old days when all I had was the plans from the back of the Unofficial Guide (which also worked extremely well).
What is going on with TPs CL predictions? Is this just an automated process that is not looked at by humans? Here are this years actual crowd levels around Presidents Day, and the 2021 forecast for the same week:
Does anyone believe next year will be 7’s and not 10’s?
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This definitely seems crazy. Sometimes there are real reasons for CL discrepancies between years but President’s Day and Mardi Gras in the same week–oy vey! I cannot imagine it will be less than 10s. I suspect when school calendars are finalized in March/April of this year, these dates in 2021 will see a huge bump.
I’m starting to panic a bit. My ADR’s open in less than 10 days and TP has not updated their CL’s. I know they tweak it up until the day of but this time last year they had numbers up. We will be there over Labor Day and right now they have crowds listed as 1 of 1 and I know that’s not right. Is there a schedule of when they update CL’s? I would think it’s before the ADR window.
Welcome paulandtoby! Labor Day Monday 2020 they currently have a 3 resort crowd level. I would look at September 2018 Historical Crowds because last year that Hurricane around Labor Day lowered the CLs
Although Monday was supposed to be a 6, but it rained. So weather was a big factor for the 2 on Labor Day
Good advice! I went back to Sept 3 2018 and they had predicted level 6 crowds but only got 2 of 10! I’m hoping this holds true! lol… So should I assume that TP has already updated their predictions? Their numbers are just a lot lower than other calendars so I assumed they hadn’t updated it yet.
I had added to my post, if you click on the day for details…it rained. That’s why it was a 2. Don’t rely on TP predictions too much!
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