March 1st to March 8th - What happened ?!

Walt Disney World Crowd Calendar
1

Hi !

I paid a membership in order to properly plan my Disney World trip.

At my 60 days I booked all my FastPass for March 1st to March 8th. Most parks were 5 or 6. I used the TouringPlan schedule to book efficiently.

However, this morning I receive updates saying that the crowd levels have changed. I look at most days are now 8 to 10.

What happened ? I’m not really happy as the days I selected HS and AK had the lightest crowds so I booked FP for FOP and Slinky. Now both of these days are 10s !!!

I went during this exact period last year and crowds we’re actually low. What is going on during this period that has changed from last year ?

Thanks

2

This year it is Mardi Gras week meaning all of New Orleans will relocate to WDW.

The calendars are ALWAYS guesses. If you have your FP+ already, don’t worry about it. Make your plan and go with the flow. You cannot control crowd levels any more than you can control the weather.

3 Likes
3

Hi ! Thanks for your kind reply.

I find it strange that they radically updated the charts based solely on Mardi Gras ? I am sure Mardi Gras we’re widely available prior to yesterday ?

The main reason I paid for this membership was for the crowd calendar. I booked all my FP at my 60 days mark and then a few days later they completely change the crowd calendayr

Oh well…

4

I wouldn’t be surprised if part of their model has to do with FastPass availability, so if they see less availability than normal after the 60 day mark, they have to adjust.

Disney has been changing a lot of things lately - the move to date-based ticketing, the addition of special events (After Hours/Early Morning, etc). They’ve also been adjusting staffing levels.

It’s also quite possible that this is a glitch - it’s happened before where the crowd levels adjusted automatically, and then they found and fixed a bug a couple of days later. We’ll wait and see. Usually when there’s this kind of adjustment, they write a blog post about it, so watch for that.

As far as the site, the best thing you can do is learn and make Touring Plans. If you have a good plan, the crowds won’t matter all that much. Use the people here to run your plans by, we’re all happy to help. :grinning: Learn the tips to get additional FastPasses and avoid most lines (@OBNurseNH has done a great writeup on this, but for some reason I can’t find it at the moment). Knowledge is power with Disney - many of us here never wait in line more than 30 minutes for anything, and are able to see pretty much everything we want.

5

Your membership does come with a money back guarantee, so if you are that unhappy I would send an email to ask for a refund.

1 Like
6

Here you go!

2 Likes
7

You should try to get that link pinned!

2 Likes
8

@len posted on another thread that they will soon have a blog post explaining the recent CL changes.

1 Like
9

@SpykeYs, I saw the same thing over night with my March 7-14 trip. Many of the parks went 4’s and 5’s to 10’s… Not sure why. But our FP day is two days away…

Having used Touringplans since 2012, I must say, I’ve seen crowd predictions rise and fall as we got closer to our trips, although I’m a little nervous of seeing them go to 10’s, but I’m not freaked out yet…

That being said, in the past, as long as I make a personalized plan for each park, for each day, and properly populate it with start/end of day, my fastpasses and table service dining reservations, then add additional rides/attractions we want to hit, I haven’t been let down.

NOTE: When I make the personalized plans, I add the rides we want to go on that day, any scheduled fastpasses or table service dining, BUT no “lunch” or other breaks. When we arrive at the park, I call up the plan on my phone, hit Optimize, wait a minute and refresh and go where it tells me… From there, as I am leaving the ride, I mark it done, optimize, wait a minute, refresh and go to where it says to go next. If we are stopping for a break (potty, shopping, quick service, snack, etc), I just don’t touch my plan, instead I wait until we are ready for the next ride/attraction, then pull up the plan, optimize/wait/refresh and go. Oh, and once our initial 3 fastpasses have been used, we try for more and add them to the plan if we get any.

Also I usually try for 7-10 rides per day. It seems to work out best for our plans, unless the park is open like 8am to midnight and we plan to be there open to close. Using our plans with crowds as high as 6-8 we often have time left in an 8-10 hr day that we can try for more.

4 Likes
10

I had the same surprise this morning! We are going the 4th to 11th and the week went from crowds levels of 4-6 to 8-10. Felt like someone punched me in the stomach.

11

Same here. Our dates were very flexible and I used the early crowd calendar projections 6+ months out to book our trip. Mardis Gras isn’t something that comes up out of the blue and I assumed it was taken into account in those early projections.

I’m very interested to see what Len and his team have to say.

12

At least you have 60 days notice. I am going in a WEEK, and got similar email this morning. Paid for membership to plan for low low crowds. Had been 2 and 3. Now 5-7. Unhappy with Crowd Calendar!

13

I think the FP availability definitely has something to do with it. I knew we would have to book at the 30 day mark, so I checked in on FP availability often over the last few months to get an idea of what we could expect to book and what we would have trouble booking. Then when it was time to book them, I was really surprised at how difficult some of the FPs were and how quickly some of them completely booked up. Like there are some FP attractions that I had never seen completely out until day of that are already gone 3 weeks out.

14

January and February went up a lot too, so it’s not just Mardi Gras related.

15

I was just going to say the same thing, Cgerres - we’re going 1/23/19-2/1/2019. 1/24/2019, a Thursday, HS went from a 4 to a 10. I’m hoping someone from TP chimes in here soon with an explanation that makes some sense.

16

When we first booked our trip, our CL were in the 5-8 range, and then they went down to the 2-5 range. Now they’re back up and a little higher. It’s a bit of an emotional rollercoaster, but there are a ton of variables and Disney obviously isn’t telling TP what they’re up to. I wouldn’t blame them and the week you picked is still probably a really good choice compared to the rest of the year. There are a lot of great parts of TP other than the crowd calendar. (Which actually, I think you can get for free.)

1 Like
17

I was wondering the same thing! My trip is scheduled from March 3 - March 10 and every day was like a 4-6 WDW Crowd Level and now some days the parks are a 10?! I wonder what happened. I hope it’s a mistake.

18

My guess is reality is somewhere in the middle - changing conditions will probably level it out at 6-8 (instead of 4-6, but it won’t be so high as a 10…

19

Literally 1 hour after I decided to book a “last minute” trip in March the CL went from 3s/4s to 10s!!! (March 11th to the 18th)
And the week following lowered!!! (17th to 24th)
Should I switch my plans and go with the second week???
I still have a few days until my FPP day…

20

Ditto that. Going same time - Jan 24 AK went from 2 to 8 and on 29 from 2 to 7, Jan 31 HS from 3 to 8. All set to go and now TP’s all need tweaking - very disappointing. :frowning: