It was a long and stormy night. The seas were mighty I tell you!
2023? I was in 3 parks that week and the crowds were low and quite pleasant.
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Who was it that had such a good explanation for how the crowd levels follow the wait times in line, not necessarily how crowded the park is? @bebe80 or @ryan1 ?
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Well, I’ve spoken about it…not sure if it was “such a good explanation” or not! 
But, yes…TP calculates crowd levels based on wait times. It isn’t actually a measure of the number of people in the parks. Rather, it is based on how long people are waiting, on average, for certain rides at a subset of the day.
But crowds, as you “feel” them, are based on what you see OUTSIDE of the lines…people in the walkways, or how backed up getting your Mickey bar is taking, etc. As such, the TP formula for CLs is trying to map wait times.
In general, using wait times gives a decent enough estimation…but things can throw off the calculation. Also, your personal time of day, and where you are in the park at various times can skew your perception of CLs.
Personally, I hate crowds. I hate fighting through people to get from one place to another. I don’t, however, mind waiting in lines (for the most part).
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Same. I was in Epcot on Friday, Jan 20, and HS on Saturday, Jan 21. Both felt like very manageable crowds. Maybe it was MK that was the issue? Could be Splash drawing in folks for a last ride?
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Oh yeah maybe that’s it. I didn’t go to MK that week.
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Then, from the deep it came.
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MK was positively LOVELY on Friday 1/20. I had the nicest day there I’ve had in a long time, especially in the afternoon. Plenty of room to move and breathe and not be on top of people
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The Almighty disney gods!
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That’s probably a solid plan.
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I read somewhere else where you wrote about hub grass lunch, and I wondered what you meant (but forgot to go back and ask). I like this. Simple idea, but I think a great one.
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I finally got my family to do this last April and it is DIVINE! You can just hear the pianist ever so slightly in the background, you see that castle in front of you, the sun is warm. And in that moment there is no doubt at all that Life Is Good!
I opted for the 50th Anniversary (pastrami 
) spring rolls and some corn dog nuggets (which don’t come without the fries 
) It was wonderful. And relatively peaceful too! Not a lot of people take advantage of that space!
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That sounds amazing.
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Those wait times are a 4 crowd level at MK, unfortunately.
Large tour groups from South America have been a part of WDW crowds for a long time, that’s not new.
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Maybe it was Jehovah?!
I was there last week too, and noticed the same about the elbow to elbow crowds. Never seen such crazy crowds in january.
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I’m sad your trip was annoying. I’m thinking that there are secrets to enjoyable Disney touring but that one person’s perfect is another’s misery.
Good example is the hub picnic of@OBNurseNH. It looks inviting tho we’d likely need a crane to get me back up on my feet.
Regardless of crowd levels my goal is to be waiting for lunch food by 11:15. Every trip I mess this up once which always serves to confirm/remind that 11 am is a deadline.
I love character meals at 10:30 am. The ambiance suits me better than a pre-official opening time.
If my table service meal isn’t breakfast my two preferred times are nearly 5 pm or after 8:30 pm. One of my favorite things is waiting in a quiet park for the departing crowds to thin.
Hmm. It seems most of my touring secrets are food related. 
Guess it’s time to start supper. 
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While I agree that wait times for different CL’s has gone up, that table is confusing to me. Is it me or have they added at least 30 minutes to all the time ranges compared to what they actually are?
It says a CL9 is 150-180 minutes for 7DMT - I don’t think thats true. If you look at recent CL9 days from for example dec-jan, the average wait time is usually around 100-130, even the highest peaks rarely reach 150 mins on a CL9. At least according to TP data, and I haven’t observed such times either. The time ranges for BTMR seem equally off.
Those times seem as far off as their predictions vs reality recently 
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I’ve noted that wait times seem large for what I perceive as low crowd levels. I figure the wait times are for times after we’re done riding rides and have moved on to other fun stuff.