I had a vacation to Disneyland planned for this week, but cancelled when touringplans.com changed their forecast only a few days ahead from a 2 to a 9!! This cost us several hundred dollars, but we are not interested in dealing with the huge crowds. We had picked the date based on the tourinplan.com information. The last minute change is obviously very disappointing since they knew months ahead about the opening of Season of the Force. This led me to question how well they look ahead for other planned events and changes. So, looking forward to a trip next year, and cautiously hoping that I could trust touringplans.com again, I decided to dig a little deeper on my own. Doing so I discovered that Fantasmic, and various other rides/attractions, will be closing for a year on January 10th, due to the construction of the new Star Wars Land. Yet touringplans.com has still shows that Fantasmic will be showing after that date. Why wouldnât touringplans.com be completely on top of Disneyland announcements and adjust their information accordingly??!!?? Not only do these closures potentially have a direct affect on clientâs choice of dates, they likely impact crowd levels as well.
We are not impressed with TP consistently predicting weekends to be 3, 4 and 5 crowd levels when it is ALWAYS busier. Crowd levels jumped quite a bit for our trip in 2 weeks. Since weâre staying at the Grand Californian, weâre going to use the busy weekend days to take advantage of the resort and hit the parks during the weeks. If you look at the historical crowds, TP has been way off lately predicting DLR crowds. Iâm not renewing my membership once it expires. WDW crowds are also way off as well. There is no slow time at WDW anymore now that anyone can get online and google âslow time at WDWâ and find sites that tell them to go in early September or January.
It is nice to see that the site you reference does indeed show the planned closures correctly. However, this information does not appear to be reflected in the information related to the Crowd Level predictions. For example, see: http://touringplans.com/disneyland-resort/crowd-calendar/date/2016-01-21
I emailed TP about that. Their Customer Service is awesome, and Iâd bet they will fix it ASAP. DLR hasnât published showtimes for Jan either btw and- as the link you sent mentions- all times are âpredictions.â Oh, keep in mind that Small World and Mansion will go down in Jan too.
I have to agree about the cried prediction. We went on a Thursday in October and the crowd prediction calendar was a 4. In reality it was a 9 or a 10. Apparently, it was fall break for the states around Califirnia; Arizona, Utah, etc.
It was more crowded than a week in summer. I certainly think that is something that TP should be aware of. The resort hotels were all full as were most Good Neighbor hotels. This is something that TP should also be alerted to.
I am reluctant to renew my subscription because if the crowd planning is off, the entire touring plan will not work.
SAM2071, Thanks for the feedback and for getting TP to update that site. I very sincerely am hoping that TP can figure out their predictions. I would like to see them continue to do well as a business. I have recommended the site to many people, but I have had to start telling others that I am not sure if they will get their crowd predictions and list of planned shows correct in the future. The point here is that TP should NOT need to wait for customers to do their own research and then email TP about needed updates. They should be the experts. They need institutionalized procedures that help them make sure they are covering their bases. For example, when they first learn that a ride/event is going to be shut down for some time, they should immediately update, not one or two, but all pages on their site that show that ride/event for those dates. They could use a simple checklist to verify they have everything covered. Then they should immediately determine the impact, if any, on the predicted crowd levels. Same for big, new events like Seasons of the Force. There should be no excuse for last minute updates due solely to information that should have been known for a long time. Again, the bottom lines is that TP needs to be the experts and show that expertise in all they do.
I am equally as frustrated. I used TP in June for a family trip and it seemed accurate. I then booked a trip last week from Denver based on their information of it being a 3 the day I was going. The park was as crowded as June when I went. I checked the website the morning I left and the crowd calendar showed 3 for Thur 4 for Fri and 5 for the weekend. It had all changed after I looked the next day when I had crowds. It was double what it said before except the weekend which was 8 not 5. I wrote them a letter and heard nothing back . If anyone has a valid email address I can use please reply. I will not use this service again unless they can explain the errors and will be posting to any social media their lack of response and also incorrect information. I would normally blow it off as inaccurate however this is a paid service so it should be correct 100 percent of the time.
When I have emailed : webmaster@touringplans.com I have always received an almost immediate response.
That is who I sent my first letter to. Thank you for the help maybe I will try it again.
I apologize for the error. If you send me a quick note with your dates and the parks you visited, Iâll make sure the stats team addresses it: len@touringplans.com. If you send the email from the same email you used to register, weâll also provide a refund. Thatâs our standard policy.
That said, I encourage you to post your negative experience to social media. Part of making predictions is being wrong, and thatâs something we have to deal with.
As you can see I was offered a full refund. I was glad to finally hear from them. I was asked to send the date of my park experience and have done so and they are checking with the stats department to see what went wrong. I told them I will be keeping my eye on the forums to see if this occurs again. I refused the refund based on my June trip which was accurate but let them know I will be renewing based on what happens and what I see from here on out.