Yeah, I’m one of those DVC people with points to burn. Luckily I had used up my points with big family trips in 2019/2020 and then kept booking/postponing trips in late 2020 and thru 2021. I booked a few weeks for January '22 to burn points and saved up vacation time, thinking it would be “January busy,” meaning busy but not swamped, with most kids back in school. We’ll see.
I double booked some beach time at Vero, and have a couple of weeks to make a final decision about how much time to spend at WDW vs Vero.
I was looking at the local school calendars in Illinois, and in the orlando florida area. Many of them are back at school on 1/3/22 or 1/4/22. I would think this would cause 1/4/22 to not be as busy as the Marathon has not started but as stated touring plans rates this as 10 which surprised me. I see other sites have this much lower rated like 6-7.
FYI – A common misconception about Touring Plans Crowd Levels is that they are an indicator of the number of people in each park. However, they are an indicator of average queue waits at the rides in that park during 11am – 5pm - the peak ride times. This is different from other “crowd calendars” that try to predict attendance. TP only cares about waiting in line.
A CL 1 can feel like a CL 4 in terms of park capacity, but the queues may be moving quickly. Conversely, you can be in a CL 9 park that feels like a CL 5 because the streets aren’t packed. However, all the queues are super long.
The queues these days are still really long as WDW isn’t staffing at pre-COVID levels. So, the park may not feel as packed, but you are going to have higher than average queue waits for January.
8-10 CL’s are the norm for these dates, looking back at previous years. But that was pre-covid. These projections for next month are probably inflated just for the fact that covid is dragging on, which affects many people’s plans.
Our Walt Disney World Crowd Calendar is a researched measure of how many people are visiting Walt Disney World on a particular day. For Disney World as whole and for each individual theme park (Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Animal Kingdom, Hollywood Studios), we give a rank for every day of the year, from those that are the least crowded (Level 1) to those that are the most crowded (Level 10).
You can use this information to make informed decisions about what time of year to plan your Disney vacation and to help decide which day to visit each theme park during your trip.
This page also lists how they define a crowd, which includes how hard it is to walk around the parks, how hard it is to book hotel rooms, and how crowded it “feels.” So, I disagree that TP simply measures wait times.
Using their own description, I think their calendars have been off, at least in terms of some of their measures. I was just at Disneyland, and their predictions were 2 and 3. I’ve been to Disneyland MANY times, and it was not a 2 or 3. Maybe a 5 or 6, both for feel and for wait times. Now, some rides were down, which adds to the crowded feel, but I would think that this would feed into their “look back” analysis.
Anyway, I now have no idea what a 3 or a 10 mean if they vary across the year. TP states that days are ranked across the calendar year, from least crowded (1) to most crowded (10). Having a 10 for the first 8 days of 2022 suggests that these will be among a handful of busiest days of the entire year. I guess we will find out.
What are these other crowd calendar sites? Maybe I should start using those instead of subscribing to TP.
I am sure UT has improved over the years. I think it was around 2007 when I downloaded the then UT app on my first smart phone. I switched to TP when UT continued to post wait times for attractions closed for refurbishments (not for days but for weeks/months). I think they took the app down a couple of years later but I just can’t get past that.
OK, I see that now, but their info at the top of the crowd calendar suggests something else by saying that their crowd calendar is a measure of visitors.
I was looking at their data for CA for December 9th, and here’s what they use and how it leads to their crowd level numbers. I have a few comments.
ATTRACTION
AVG. WAIT TIME PREDICTED
OBSERVED
CROWD LEVEL PREDICTED
OBSERVED
OFFLINE
Grizzly River Run
6 min
5 min
1
1
6%
The Little Mermaid ~ Ariel’s Undersea Adventure
10 min
5 min
5
1
0%
Mater’s Junkyard Jamboree
15 min
20 min
5
7
0%
Monsters, Inc. Mike & Sulley to the Rescue!
23 min
32 min
6
9
1%
Pixar Pal-A-Round - Non Swinging
23 min
17 min
6
2
0%
Pixar Pal-A-Round - Swinging
21 min
16 min
2
1
0%
Radiator Springs Racers
55 min
68 min
1
1
14%
Soarin’ Around the World
32 min
28 min
1
1
0%
Toy Story Midway Mania!
45 min
57 min
1
5
11%
Comments:
GRR is NEVER crowded this time of year so wait times are pretty meaningless right now. Maybe in summer.
Little Mermaid is high capacity, low popularity with locals
Pixar Pal-A-Round - not that popular with locals
68 minutes for RSR suggests a 1? I know it is popular, but that seems like a long 1.
Web Slingers eats a lot of people - wait times were usually 60-80 minutes and therefore pull people from other rides. I wonder if this is factored in.
The Guardians ride had really long wait times, but is not listed. Is it not predictive?
I get that they’ve created an algorithm for crowds based on certain rides, but I’m not sure it is accurate with the new rides, pandemic, holiday stuff in the mix. Wait times for popular rides, not listed in the chart, were significant. The “walking around” crowds were significant. There were lines at all of the food and beverage booths for the holidays.
Ditto for Disneyland – some rides were not that busy, and some had long waits. Haunted Mansion Holiday had fairly long waits at rope drop, and ROTR of course is a huge draw from other rides. But once all of those people are milling around the parks with limited other rides that they want to do (rides were up and down all day), it adds to the crowded feeling at the parks. Lines at HM and SW suggest an 8 or 9, other rides with shorter waits suggest a 1 or 2. Local crowds fill the parks, but do not hit every ride.
All of this is to say…for me, the crowd calendars are not as useful as I thought they were.
IME, while I LOVE TP it’s not perfect. On average I have to cut 2 - 3 attractions / shows every day of my visits. This is even with giving myself plenty of breaks in the plan. More often than not TP will greatly underestimate a couple of predicted queue waits. (Often an additional 30 - 50 minutes longer)
This was even before COVID, Genie + and ILL$, so I know it’s been harder for them to be even that good these days. I will say a lot of my TPs right now really go off the rails at WDW after lunch / Noon.
(I will say their Universal Lines App / Custom Plans have been rock solid in 2021 though. I guess without the major changes that Disney has been doing, it’s been easier to keep those up-to-date.)
I have kept my plans over the last three years and written out all the data. (predicted vs. actual waits)
IME - Touring Plans averages a -81 minutes longer than predicted each day. Again… I’ll never go to WDW / DLR / UOR without a personalized TP , but I’ve learned that you have to leave good amounts of unscheduled time & add in 10 – 15 minutes breaks every 70 - 80 minutes or after two attractions to be able to realistically accomplish all that I want.
A touring plan has been proven to save you up to four hours of time not standing in queues. With a touring plan you’ll be ahead of 90% of the people just wandering aimlessly asking, “What do you want to do next?” and then walking into a queue that is 90 minutes long. Later in the day that same queue may be only 15 minutes, but they won’t know that. However, you will because TP will have given you that data.
I totally see your point and understand your frustrations. Touring Plans isn’t how people should decide when to visit. Their purpose is to optimize your day when you get there. If you want to use a crowd calendar to decide when to go I’d look at historical trends. It’s usually slower when school is in session and before / after major holidays. I like to go in September, after Labor Day, and the week or so after Thanksgiving. (Late April / early May is pretty good as well and not too hot yet)
I’ve been using TP since 2013, so I’ve had to go through / learn the same things you are seeing now and how TP “really” works.
Fred from TP did admit that the crowd level scale needs recalibrated for each park. But it’s a little soon to get serious with it until everything opens back up in the parks and more time has passed using Genie+ and LL for data collection.
I completely agree with having a plan if your goal is to get as many rides in as possible. I don’t do that anymore. This just means I am not the target audience anymore, which is fine.
