Hi,
I was looking at the crowd Calendar for Oct 17-23 and I noticed that on a Wed at the MK on Oct 17 you are giving it a 10 out of 10 for the crowds. This seems extremely high as it is basically the same as going Christmas day. I was just wondering if you could tell me why this is that high. My wife will be there with my 2 year old by themselves for the day and I am trying to determine where they should go. This does not seem like it would be fun for them on that day. Thanks.
Jon
I think it is because that week they have the Halloween party on the other nights and they close early. Those days are not as busy so it is probably better to switch to one of them? Especially if your wife is going with a two year old a shorter day would be better anyway.
Not all 10s are created equal. A Christmas 10 can be twice as crowded as an October 10!
Using the Undercover Tourist Crowd calendar (the best one that I’ve found), they rate the same day a 7 out of 10, and MK is actually not the park they list as busiest. The week of Christmas/New Year’s, however, they are giving 9s and 10s.
I was wondering why there were 10’s that week also. I can see it is for the 3 days that week with no party, but it looks like there are just a lot of high days in October -which just seems odd to me. I can see it would be busier that other days - but 10 does seem very high
I don’t understand this. Why would a 10 be different at different times of year?
I guess I could see that the park would ‘feel’ more crowded at Christmas - as in more people just in the park - but wouldn’t the wait times that generate a 10 be the same regardless of when it is?
It is the way Touring Plans does things. I’ll be shunned for saying so, but I don’t like the way TP calculates crowds at all.
But the gist of it is that anything where the wait times for key rides go above a certain amount of time, they call it a 10. So, if that wait time boundary is set to 100 minutes, then it will be a 10 whether the actual wait time is 100 minutes or 200 minutes. It is all ranked as a 10.
As I mentioned, the Undercover Tourist Crowd calendar, for me, is a better indicator since they have a broader sensitivity to such things.
ahhhh! Thank you so much. The 10’s completely confused me!
That being said - I try and not go in a week where any park is going to be higher than an 8 
Once I hit 6 I get twitchy LOL
Now I’m looking at the Undercover Tourist crowd calendar and I don’t get it. It seems to have one number for all theme parks for the day. It gives a green check for a less busy park and an exclamation point for the busier ones, but how can you tell the difference in CL predictions for each park?
They don’t do it that way. I like their way better, though.
It makes sense, though. The top number gives the overall busyness across all parks. Then, they rank each park individual in that context. A green mark means it is the lowest choice of the day, red is busiest. Neither red nor green would just be average.
In the case of Oct. 27th, then, we see that overall it is a 7/10 for the parks. Of those, Epcot is the most busy (for Disney parks) and none of them are green, but average.
When making my plans, then, I would know not to plan to hit Epcot that day. By comparison, on the 26th (which is a 4 out of 10 overall), the best park to choose would be AK, etc.
Hi All,
Thanks for the insight. I understand how Len and the TP team get there info and actually listened to the podcast of him explaining it and I do understand it is based on statistics. The thing that really is confusing is I have been there during Merry Christmas parades in beginning of December and they were not ranked that high. I am positive that lines got above 100 mins on attractions, so maybe it is a combo of such. I guess that is what was throwing me off. Anyway, maybe they will just do Epcot that day.
Well, UT has two of my days in December at CL3 and TP has them at CL7. Who to trust? That’s not a small difference, you know? It makes me question the UT method…why would two days in early/middle December be so low when surrounded by much higher on all sides? It is what it is so it doesn’t really matter, it’s just confusing.
Well, based on my experience with Universal Studios in February, the crowd calendar for UT was much more accurate to reality than TP. But, I can’t speak for Disney, which is a different beast.
All I know is that, to date, I have found UT to be reasonable.