So, I’m looking over my TPs for our May trip for the umpteenth time, and I’m seeing something odd (again).
I tried to plan out which park days based on the crowd calendar among other reasons. Right now, I have HS on May 11, and Epcot on May 12. But I noticed that the CL for Epcot is a 7 on May 12, but a 5 on May 11:
The CL is the same either day for HS, so I thought perhaps I should switch them.
So, I copied my TP for EPCOT to Monday, May 11 and then re-evaluated it. Strangely, it now has us finishing up LATER than on May 12, with longer overall wait times. Not by a lot, mind you…but it is counter intuitive. Why would the day with the lower CL not be better, or in the very least, the same?
Here is the final step/summary for the May 12 date (CL 7 day):
I reckon theres a lot more going on under the hood than just basing these times on crowd levels.
As an example, the overall crowd level across all rides in Epcot may be the same on a specific wed and a sat, but maybe frozen ever after gets slightly higher crowds on a sat, because more kids are off school.
(I’m making this up off the top of my head as a for instance, I have no idea if it’s true).
A small increase in one ride can mean getting to the next slightly later, which may have a butterfly effect throughout the day.
Alternatively, the touring plan database is just a random number generator, and we’re all just kidding ourselves!
That would actually be a pretty funny social experiment.
Nothing that TP recommends is actually real, but just made up numbers, and we’re being studied to see if we’ll just follow along and insist it is making our days better in the parks.
What I can guarantee is that you’ve spent more than 12 minutes thinking and posting about this, therefore wasting the exact same amount of life that you would have done sat in a queue at EPCOT!
Oh, great. You’ve now proven that using TP is a waste of time!
But this gives me an idea. I’m going to come up with an app that helps a person schedule how much time to spend making plans in TPs to justify using it before it becomes cost ineffective. I’ll have to monitor on-going TPs people ultimately make and calculate how much time they actually save, etc. It’ll be so huge, I think I might be able to retire early…
If you want to feel better, factor in the cost per minute of being at Disney compared to sitting on the computer in your pants tooling around on touring plans.
The problem with that is that I consider making touring plans an extension of my Disney vacation- the more time I can spend making them, the better! Hence why I pay for the privilege, I suppose
Thinking about this a little. Are you making FP’s at 30 or 60 days? Will switching days give you more access to FP’s in HS? I’m more apt to go on a day when I can get the FP’s I want rather than a lower crowd day as hard as that is.
Unlikely. And, generally speaking, higher CLs would mean more difficulty in obtaining FPs because of more people. (Of course, since CLs are actually based on wait times, at EPCOT there is less direct correlation between wait times as CL levels…but then again, higher wait times suggests days when more people are trying to do FW rather than WS, so it still comes to the same end.)
Like they say, six of one, half a dozen of the other. I’d probably switch days though because in my mind lower crowd levels make me happy. I just don’t like bumping into people.
Before I was working in a M-F 8-5 position, I would often spend weekdays off while the kids were at school doing almost nothing BUT TP. It was horribly indulgent but I loved every single minute and it gave me so much information. Now that I’m M-F 8-5 I do feel a bit behind the 8-ball sometimes in terms of keeping up with things.
I have also been debating what days for which park for a future trip. I will probably be doing Epcot on a Monday as Historical crowds usually show that is a good day to go. I’m surprised you are considering a Tuesday for Epcot because of the bigger crowd risk from EMH. And if I remember correctly, you stay off-site.
For me, HS with all its craziness is definitely a Tuesday or Wednesday best bet. Better chance than not Monday CLs will be higher than Tuesday because a good number of people extend their weekend into Monday. And if they do, HS is the happening place to be in 2020.
Again I say, historical actual crowds overrides crowd level predictions and touring plan time predictions