Based on feeback we’ve got around the new version of the Crowd Calendar, I’m starting this thread to ask “What Do You Want to See?”
Before we begin, some mandatory things:
The #1 complaint we get about the crowd calendar is that the numbers aren’t accurate. This is true even if we’re spot on. I (len) think this is becase we don’t go a good job of explaining that a crowd level of ‘2’ can still mean an 80-minute posted wait for Seven Dwarfs Mine Train. Any new design has to address this issue.
The #2 complaint we get is that the site “doesn’t look modern.”
We’re willing to consider new features, especially those that use existing data.
Our average user is a college-educated woman between the ages of 25 and 44, living on the US East Coast, with a household income of at least $150K.
Most users view the calendar on a mobile device (60%) instead of a desktop (40%), but desktop users are more likely to subscribe (52% vs 48%). So crowd cal mobile view is important.
The “best” design is the one that generates the most revenue
I’m willing to sacrifice some incremental revenue to make some incremental number of existing users happy (For example, I’d sacrifice $X in incremental revenue to make Y existing users happy, for some values of X and Y.)
For reference, here’s a screencap of the current and new crowd cals: (Existing)
I’m a long time user and my biggest issue with TP over the years is there is too much information on the screen. It can be so daunting to newer users and so cumbersome to familiar users. I’m so glad to see a more streamlined look.
Everything I’ve enclosed in purple is an example of information that is useful, but presented in a way that overloads you visually and with too much info at once.
If you can click on each individual attraction and then get to the individual waits times, it will be so useful. New users have no idea that TP offers these graphs. You have to know how to dig around through all those pages overloaded with text to find how to use many of TPs features.
I like the current “big picture” view of the CL’s for all dates, with separate columns for overall and for each park, plus the column of “what to look out for” special events. It helps me identify trends. To me, the CL of each park is much more important than the overall CL. The trends help me understand things better, such as whether all parks are uniformly busy each day or if only a specific park has widely swinging highs and lows (e.g. MK on party days). This view works for me. As you redo pages and try to simplify or modernize the look, I hope you keep a link to this type of chart.
I’m not your average user. I’m 65+, use a laptop as my preferred way to interact with sites vs phone, and get to WDW every few years. But I try to stay current since we can suddenly decide to go to WDW (often related to a cruise).
I would still like to see “how we did yesterday”, AND to be able to use the back button for historical crowds instead of having to search for a separate page.
I’m pretty close to average! Live in MN, so not exactly East Coast, and I mostly use desktop.
So, here are my thoughts. I definitely like the new look better. I like the month-calendar overview. I like the way you’ve presented the “overhead” information. I even like the pulldown per-day. (I missed the R/T definition at the top - maybe a hover-tip there would be helpful)
However, I really like the table of days/parks/events that you have now. I don’t know that it has to exist in it’s current form, but when I’m planning my trip, I want to see all of those values, for “my” days, at once. I don’t think there’s a way to do that with the new Crowd Calendar view. (Oh, but the header needs to not scroll with the data. Sometimes I forget which column goes to which park)
Also, I really want to be able to click on a park, on a day, and go to the predicted (or historical) wait times. I don’t think that worked, yesterday, when I tried it. Should it?
Thank you for these updates! They are definitely a plus.
I’d like to have a detailed view for historical CL’s where you can see individual park CL’s for multiple dates at a time, without having to hover over each individual date.
The old historical view worked fine for this, but if you want to update to a more modern look that’s OK, as long as I can get at the data for multiple days easily.
I am exactly your average user. I agree with others, I want to see my dates and the crowd predictions for each of the days.
What would add value for me is an easier way to look at a specific time selection, dates and crowd levels. Often my vacation dates have some flexibility to them, so I’ll pick based on crowd levels.
I do love the new look! It’s very pretty and clean!
I’m also not your average user but the things I couldn’t find the other day (but maybe they were coming soon) were the “how we did page” and “what’s going on”. As a local I use the CL differently and if I know it’s race weekend what park to avoid
Can there be less overlap of wait times between CL’s. Especially the higher levels. In the example you show 7Dwarfs, a 150min wait could be a level 6,7,8, or 9. Also I do like to follow the CL of individual parks and like to be able to see them at a glance. Like @mkmuzzy I don’t follow the overall CL.
For me, accessing historical data is as (more!) Important than predictions because, well, predictions are just that and constantly change. I can’t count on your predictions you show today to even match that you will predict for the same dates in two weeks…but the historical data is fixed and doesn’t change. I find myself using it more often.
Also, the part that @darkmite circled? I will admit…that information highlighted at the top of the page always makes me instantly skeptical. I don’t mind that you show that info if I “ask” to see it, although probably better to be part of the historical data rather than the page making predictions. How accurate you were yesterday doesn’t tell me much.
I get it. You are trying to gain the trust of folks to be willing to pay for a membership…so self promotion is part of that. But I think we live in a world of so much self promotion that when it is so up front and in your face, it can (for me at least) backfire. If you have the data, but don’t throw it in our faces first thing, I see that as being more trustworthy.
The method of jumping to an individual date historically was a bit clunky in the old interface. Maybe if I can just tap on the month/year, it pulls up a date selector to get there faster, that would help while look cleaner.
I really love the original layout. The “days you’re tracking” screen is very helpful in seeing variations in crowd level per park throught my trip to help determine which day to visit each park. I had played around with the new site when it was available the other day and had a really hard time trying to get the info that I wanted.
The overall calendar is nice in deciding which times of the month or year are busier than others, but being able to compare park to park each day and all day to day for the same park is very important to me.
I agree the old one was too wordy and could be difficult to understand, but the new one took this experienced old timer a while to figure out as well.
I echo the importance of keeping all of the historical data available. Not just crowd levels, but including past park hours, events, weather, predicted CL’s, wait time graphs including the green dots or similar (user submitted waits), basically everything currently available in the historical sense.
