Reasonable way to pick our schedule?

Walt Disney World Crowd Calendar
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Ok, bear with me folks. This may be a long one.
Now that I’ve got DVC rentals figured out for our March trip, I want to look at which park on which days, so I’ll be ready for ADRs in a month.
It looks like we’re right on the corner of spring break, so the first few days have low-ish crowd levels compared to the last few days. And by low-ish, I mean 7’s, not 10’s. This scares me. We’ve gone in the past when it’s more in the 4-6 range.

Anyway, one of the things we’ve been looking to do is reduce travel time. We really like using the provided transportation. I don’t think we’d even opt for an Uber.
Also, we have a 3-hotel split stay. Poly - AKL - Caribbean Beach.

So, there’s a lot of moving parts here. I’m trying to find a good way to determine where to go every day. For example, AKL to MK is a long trip, so I probably should do MK on the Poly days, not on the AKL days.

Here’s what I’ve come up with. Does it seem reasonable to look at things this way?

First, I picked some decent looking schedules. HS at the end of the trip, AK in the middle. MK and Epcot could kind of go wherever. (That’s the bold hours)

Second, for each schedule I looked at CL and travel between hotel/park for our plans. I multiplied CL by 10… assuming a bump in CL would result in a 10-minute longer wait, total. CL*10 + travel time gave me an approximate “wait” number. I know a CL of 7 doesn’t really meant 70 minutes of waiting, for example, but it gives something to compare against.

Surprisingly, they were very close. I suppose that’s why I was having such a hard time deciding. The number I came up with, for each plan, is in the upper right. You can see, plan #1 has the best CL, total, at 68. It’s got the longest amount of travel, though. Plans 2 and 3 have less travel, but higher crowds.

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Anyway, you numbers people, what do you think? Granted, this is all going to change when the next CL update comes out, but at least having a “number” gives me some way to balance travel and CL.

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This is quite impressive. I would go with less crowds. The travel to and from parks is really not all that bad in reality, and it’ll only impact you for a short period of time at the beginning and end of your day. This is assuming you will not be taking mid-day breaks. Whereas the crowd levels will affect your whole day.

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I never take travel time to the parks into account. Of course it makes sense to go to the MK when staying at the Poly, and AK when your’re staying at ALK, but otherwise I’ve never really seen that much of a difference - certainly not more than 5-10 minutes. And if your TP is so unforgiving of 5 or 10 minutes, then you are setting yourself up a lot more issues later in the day.

I think this is WAY overthinking things. Trying to create an algorithm using “best guess” data - that will probably change at least a few times before your trip - seems like an exercise in fuzzy math.

Personally, I find being there for AM EMH to be a much bigger factor than saving a few minutes on travel time - or even CL (some previous experiences have left me very skeptical as to how accurate/valuable CLs are in planning).

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Thank you! This definitely puts it into perspective. We’re talking about a few minutes either way. I don’t have to obsess about that - especially 7 months in advance!
I guess I’m just looking for something to control while waiting for actual, real information to come out.

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Wow. It is hard to wait isn’t it? I have 26 days till time to pick fast passes, and I am reading through the forums to fill the time. Meals are planned, but I check everyday to see if they have decided about early morning magic in November, even though I do not expect them to make that decision in time for us to really change anything. Still, I want to know if it happens. That was probably unnecessary, except for showing that I feel the pain of being done with all I can do for now. That is an impressive piece of work. I actually think it is pretty cool, and I know that just to keep it easiest I would be going to Animal Kingdom while staying at that lodge. Sort of a theme thing. Then I would be doing Hollywood studios while at Caribbean beach and could ride the Skyliner. Then Epcot during either poly or Caribbean beach or Polynesian. Of course MK from poly, and could also do Epcot from there. But I am staying at Pop Century so that we can limit bus riding to only 2 days. It is just a thing about me, but I would rather ride any transportation than a bus. Not that the busses are bad. They just remind me of times on busses that were not good. I love the ferry, and the monorail. I would do it like that just because I think it would be cool to do it that way. Not because of saving time. It would just make me happy. Have a great trip!!

1 Like
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Until this upcoming trip I picked park days based on morning EMH almost exclusively. Picking parks without morning EMH even if we’re on property.

If a tie appeared I might go with the park with the lower CLs.

Or more likely the tie breaker would be which park do we like better or which park is more fun to get to. Like walking to Epcot thru the back door.

Last two trips - 4th July and Thanksgiving week - pretty well proved the point that a good touring plan beats most everything else.

However, I’m geeking on your great work !

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I’m right there with you! We’re 33 days from our FPP day and I’m also reading forums and re-thinking plans to fill the time. My family is considering an intervention:rofl:. Also constantly checking on the possibility of early morning magic for November, but I think that’s kinda hopeless with the opening of SWGE. Best of luck in your planning and waiting!