I don’t have the hourly ride/queue capacities for the Paris park, but if lines are long I’m sure there are well over 5,000 people inside the various buildings across the park at any point in time in total. People are leaving and re-entering different buildings, presumably with different groups of people each time they are in another building. This feels like they are staying open on a technicality to me.
Perhaps…on the other hand, what they trying to limit are large GATHERINGS, which implies situations like sporting events, concerts, etc., where you have people sitting in VERY close quarters with one another over long periods of time.
I think the case of transient lines, while definitely similar, isn’t really the same thing.
Ultimately, I’m not sure it will matter in the end, either way.
Agreed. Also my timing on that post is really boneheaded as I just read they reopened the Lourve today.
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Wow, I’m an awful parent. We will drive 900 miles in 15 hours with three kids ages 11, 10, and 2, stopping one time for breakfast on the go and and one time for a fast food dinner. The rest of the time is drinking from from a cooler and packed snacks. You will use the bathroom when we stop for gas, and if you need to use the bathroom at another time you will hold it until we get to a rest area.
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I make everyone try to go to the bathroom every time we stop (even DH!). I have no patience for stopping 20 minutes down the road.
We didn’t do road trips for a while when our youngest was a in a scream-in-the-car-at-all-times phase.
There is no way I would sign up for a road trip instead of flying with a screamer. No way.
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My kids are remarkable at road trips. We do them a couple times a year and our drive to grandma’s house is about 10 hours, so we don’t have time for extra stops (that said, we sometimes take it in two days with a stop overnight in Vegas). We stop about an hour each for lunch and dinner, and 15 minutes for gas twice during the trip. Bathroom attempts are mandatory at each stop, regardless if they “don’t have to go.” I’ve only had to do an emergency pit stop once that I remember.
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We have six kids so it is always, always cheaper to drive than fly.
And the road trip is often the feature.
While we sometimes do all nighers of 24-28 hours, we also do days of 8-14 hours depending on our goals. The youngest I’ve done it with is 11 months. I guess I’m just blessed with great travelers. We have some bad days, but we’re always ready to pile in the next day.
The drive from our home in western NY to central FL is 21 hours.
We’ve been to Oregon, SoCal, through Maine to Prince Edward Island (that trip was only some of us), NOLA and, of course, many trips to FL.
I don’t know yet if we will have a trip this summer or not, but that is based on finances and household needs. The C-virus won’t stop us if we get a chance.
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Actually you sound like a great parent!!
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I am seeing in the “how did we do yesterday” that park crowds are much lower then they predicted the last few days 
I found this park to be especially interesting (given 5 hour waits for MMRR):
Hollywood Studios:
- We Predicted: 10
- Actual Crowds: 1
I think waits for everything else were low as a result.
I found this strange as well. I would love something from Touring Plans updating letting us know what is happening. Speaking for myself, one of the main reasons I bought touringplans.com was to get somewhat accurate idea of crowd levels. Predicting a 10 and having an actual 1 isn’t giving me any confidence in their data at the moment
Well, to be fair, this is pretty unprecedented. I’d love to hear from them though.
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Yeah…I take issue with TP only using data from 11 am to 5 pm to determine CLs. I don’t think that works, particularly with the state of HS right now.
I also wonder, though, if in this case there is a mistake. If the numbers for wait times I was seeing yesterday are considered a “1”, then I think I just need to give up now. I’ve been to the parks when they were a 1 years ago…everything was nearly a walk-on. Like, ToT was an average wait of 35 minutes yesterday, but they are calling that a 1. We waited less than that in 2016, and CLs were like a 4 or 5. And RnRC is listed as a 43 minute average wait yesterday. I’ve never waited for that coaster for 43 minutes in my life, but they call that a “1”.
I seem to recall them addressing this early last year when they made some internal adjustments to their processes. If I’m remembering correctly, they said that given the overall increase in crowds throughout the year we should expect the new level one (for example) to represent more people than we used to expect from a level one (and so on for each level).
I might be misremembering, but it is consistent with my own anecdotal observations.
I think this page might be helpful Hollywood Studios Crowd Levels. Looks like for CL1 average peak wait time for ToT is 23-70 min, so your 35 minutes falls right within TPs prediction.
Will be there in a week, so watching CLs and everything else like a hawk!
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I guess, then, I take issue with what they are calling a “1”.
There is no way to distinguish from a walk-on (10 minutes or less) 1 and a 70 minute wait 1? Really? It shouldn’t matter if there aren’t days in the year when it hits that level any longer…if they simply “re-scale” the CLs, then I’ve lost any practical use for their Crowd Calendar. (Okay, I’ll admit, I’ve not found their Crowd Calendar as useful as the Undercover Tourist one, in general…and this may explain why.)
Maybe it would be better to use “average wait time” for the Crowd Calendar instead of an arbitrary 1-10 scale. This would also help in distinguishing from a “spring break 10” and a “Christmas break 10”.
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Reasonable wait times and bbg available at 9:13
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This has always been my problem with basing population predictions on wait times. Too many other variables feed into wait times. I’m probably in the minority, but population density has a far greater impact on my ability to enjoy the parks than wait times.
I’ve never used the UT calendar. Have you found it to be useful as far gauging crowds?
To be clear, wait times is the only data, really, that TP or anyone else has to go on to determine actual crowds. It isn’t perfect, but there is a strong correlation between the two. It works best for MK, where is more attractions than anything. It probably works worst for EPCOT, where there can be a ton of people in the park, but mostly in WS. We experienced this when we mistakenly went during F&W. We were in WS, and crowds were as bad as I’ve ever seen by 1:00 in the afternoon. We were shoulder to shoulder. Finally, we bailed, and headed back to FW, where the rides were mostly walk-on.
Anyhow, HS and AK are somewhere in between.
I’ve used UT for years to plan when to go to the parks, and I’ve been happy with them. None of the crowd calendars are perfect, but each time, for us, the crowds just felt in line with what they had predicted.