OK, I had a Touring Plan made for a visit to Epcot on July 19. I recently received an Email from TP.com saying that the crowd level for Epcot on July 19 changed from a 7 to a 3–that seems like a pretty significant drop. Everything that I’ve read in these forums says that TP crowd levels are based on Wait Times, correct? Yet, when I hit evaluate on my Epcot Touring Plan for that date, none of my wait times changed, even though the predicted crowd level changed from a 7 to a 3. I’m just wondering why…
This thread may be helpful:
Small short-term update because recent predictions have been a little high.
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Thought I’d share…good info on wait times.
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Looks like Team “FPP Doesn’t Help Overall” is winning.
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Yeah I think so. Waits do not sound bad. Although, it seems like a lot of visitors post-trip seem to miss FPP. 
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I think if you went early July or earlier you probably had moderate to low waits, but since the most recent park pass dump waits have gotten longer. My trip saw average waits of 30+ minutes for nonheadliners and considerably longer for headliners. I missed fpp terribly and did not ride nearly as many attractions as I usually do. I’m also not the only one who has had this experience in the last 2 weeks. I am soooooo ready for fpp to come back.
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I wanted to follow up with @rgandillon and your article on wait times, focusing on Pirates of the Caribbean as an example. My question/concern is the way the collected data is presented.
Here is that part of the article:
Wow, a 23 minute wait during prime hours! That’s the data I would like to see clearly posted in the historical data.
But here is the TP historical data from the same day:
It appears that the average predicted wait time (first column) of 31 minutes is very accurate to what the actual waits were. But to be clear, does the average ‘observed’ wait time (second column) mean the WDW posted wait times? This is the confusing part. “Observed” sounds the same as “actual.” Now look at the effect that 51 minutes has on the crowd level. It elevates it to 7!
So that implies that the 51 minutes is the real actual average wait. Can you explain this please?https://touringplans.com/walt-disney-world/crowd-calendar/date/2021-07-20
And the graph:
This presentation with the green dots (actual waits submitted by users) seems like the important data that needs to be presented somehow. (Which would be similar to the predicted waits.)
I always appreciate the graph so I can see the actual submitted waits. But it would be so much easier to just look at the first image to get accurate information than to scroll through all the graphs.
Thank you for your patience and help Becky 
Eta:
The “what we saw” CL is the same as the predicted CL, which is expected. But why is the “observed” CL posted for individual attractions and why is that applicable to anything, since that number would be obviously higher than 6? Perhaps 8 or 9.
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I 100% agree. The word choice is sometimes confusing. Like in the bottom graph the “average wait time we saw” is the Disney posted wait time I believe, but could also be misinterpreted to mean those are the actual average waits for the day. Obviously that’s not true when you see the green dot reported waits, but without those green dots it seems possibly confusing.
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Yep that’s a great point too. “What we saw” and “Observed” are the same I guess.
I’ve been touching on this for over a year now, and I just can’t seem to get an understanding response. I know all the data is correct, but unless you’re a data junkie and investigate yourself, it’s not going to make sense and not even be helpful to use
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I’ve seen this discussed before by staff and I believe “observed” (and “what we saw”) is posted wait times. They don’t get enough submissions from users for most rides to have a consistent and reliable observation based on that, whereas posted waits in the app are always available for data collection.
I agree this is a little confusing and you have to make a mental adjustment whenever you see the data presented without user submitted wait times.
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Oh ya’ll, don’t even get me started. Those actual, in-the-past data-filled pages drive me CRAZY. Don’t tell anyone I said that - I didn’t design them. I’m in the data every day, and those pages confuse me. I have to assume they confuse everyone else. But you’re right - observed is “posted” (we need to unify our language across posts/pages/platforms). The green dots are really what’s important, and how that compared to what we predicted.
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Something else that is weird to me. Why does TP put so much importance into that 51 minutes if it’s not the actual average wait: (This appears very deceiving to me 
)
https://touringplans.com/blog/another-busy-day-disney-world-wait-times-for-tuesday-july-20-2021/
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Thank you for understanding! TBH if this presented data is not helpful, why even post it at all!
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It’s a combination of things. Posted times used to be a lot closer to actual than they are now. Crowd control tactics are more important in the pandemic era.
But also, we don’t get a million actuals for every ride every day. So sometimes the posted data is all we have to work with. We don’t have a person entering every line at every ride in every park every 10 minutes. But we can get the posted time for every ride in every park every 10 minutes. So it’s not accurate, but we get a lot of them. It’s better than nothing.
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I can agree with that, the problem is it should be presented as: predicted/posted, not predicted/observed.
Thanks again Becky. Maybe you can put a bug in someone’s ear to change the wording. 
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This is going to be controversial…but what this says is TP doesn’t really save you as much time as you think. Rather, they tell you up front better what the wait will be. But if you weren’t using TP, you would still save that additional time by simply ignoring the posted time! On average, the actual wait time will be less than posted. Using TP doesn’t change that.
Now before I am burned at the stake…TP offers another advantage in that it can direct you to when to get the shortest actual waits. That is, when each ride gives you the best advantage. But it isn’t fair to compare time saved using TP to posted wait times without TP. Time saved should be only compared to actuals.
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Great point, and I think this wait difference was enhanced (percentage wise) since there is currently no FPP and WDW is trying even harder to make waits seem much less than what is officially posted.
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