Our trip is coming up next month, and I’m confused about the heatmaps… yes, I know crowd calendars are useless now, and I know we should just expect wall-to-wall pretty much all the way through March, but can someone explain this?
One of our park days in March is marked a Level 10 day, and the heatmap posted for MK up to 2/23 was very red and dark orange.
On 2/24, the heatmap changed. Same day, same park, still a Level 10, but oranges to greens - no red.
I also saw a Level 10 for a different park, different day, but it’s all yellows and greens!
I scrolled through and I see bizarre heatmaps. Days with red and dark orange labelled “8” and THE SAME DAY, different park, all green and yellow also labelled “8”. This used to be pretty logical - lots of red = 9 & 10, lots of green = 3-5 (not that that means anything anymore).
I’m not changing any plans at this point. But I’m thoroughly confused how TP expects people to use their tools when they make no sense. A flat estimate of Level 6 or Level 10 is helpful, but to change the heatmaps so drastically and not change the Crowd Level… either there’s a major glitch, or they’re recalibrating their entire system to not show solid red every day for the next 6 months, or… I don’t know. Does anybody here know what’s going on?
@bebe80 likes the heatmaps I think and might have some insight. He likes all the more nerdy ends of this whole scene (which is fantastic - because my brain doesn’t work that way so it’s good to have someone in the group whose brain does)
I assume you are talking about the TP Crowd Calendar prediction hourly heat maps?
TBH, I never thought that they were that important enough to look at or use. It’s common sense that waits will be shorter at the very beginning and very end of a park day. It’s hard enough for TP to predict a crowd level for a given day, let alone an hourly crowd level. I have no idea why the colors are not consistent with the same CL. My guess is that there is just not much time spent on it as far as a human reviewing after the initial data drop by the TP computer algorithms.
I always recommend digging into real past data from a similar CL as your forecasted CL planned days. It’s much more helpful. Let me know if you have questions about this.
I use every tool I can find. I have used TP and thrill-data to loosely map our path each day, but of course all the LL options make it impossible to actually have a firm plan. So the hourly heat maps are helpful. Right now, they make NO SENSE for my days. On Tuesday, my CL 10 days were all red and orange - as expected. On Wednesday, they changed to yellow and green, but they still say they’re CL 10’s! But it seems no one knows why, or if the TP folks are in the middle of an update or calibration of some kind.
Just look at the calendar. Today at MK is an 8, and there’s lots of red.
But Wednesday at MK is ALSO an 8, yet the heat map is much cooler.
All of these changed this past Wednesday. Tuesday, the maps made sense compared to the CL levels, then Wednesday, they went wonky. Now all my CL 9 and 10 days are yellow and green. It’s so weird.
Well that’s the last time I do that! 
Thank you!