Is Touring Plans remotely accurate anymore?

Mickey2021

Active Member
Hi everyone,

I am usually a huge fan of using touring plans to optimize my time in the parks. They have always been extremely accurate but the times they are currently predicting seem way way off. Does anyone have any thoughts?

Here are a few examples that I am seeing that look crazy. Touring Plans lists Epcot as a level 8 out of 10 in their crowd calendar for July 4th. That makes sense to me. However, they list the wait time for Frozen Ever After at 1pm as just 21 minutes. From what I am seeing on YouTube Vlogs this does not seem remotely accurate. Another example; Today, Saturday May 15th they list the maximum wait time for Splash Mountain as 32 minutes at 4:00 pm. I know Disney's posted wait times are exaggerated but right now at 9:50 am the Disney app lists the wait time as 40 minutes and touring plans has it predicted for just 9! There is no way that the ride has a 9 minute wait right now. Am I crazy or are their predictions not even useful anymore?

Also, it seems they are changing the predictions after the fact to make their "how did we do" times look better than they are. Take a look at the charts below. The first chart is their predicted Splash Mountain wait times for today. Their chart for yesterday was almost identical to this with a max wait time of around 30 minutes. Now in the second picture the blue line is supposed to be their predicted wait times they posted the day before. But they are now way higher than they originally were. It looks like they changed their predictions after the fact to make it look like they predicted the wait times would be around 80 minutes when in fact the chart previously looked just like todays.

I am so disappointed by this because I can't see how I can possibly use this information in any meaningful way if it is this far off. Has anyone experienced their touring plans they made with the site to be drastically different from their experienced wait times in the park recently? Thanks so much everyone for the input.
 

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DryerLintFan

Premium Member
TouringPlans has historically been incredibly accurate with their times and their plans. I'll be honest and say that I didn't use TP for my last trip because Disney right now is an unpredictable free for all. For example, FoP had a wait of only 25 minutes when Navi had a wait time of 80 minutes. Nobody could have predicted that people works just join whatever first line they saw and camped out.

Think the real value of TP right now is the actual touring planning tool. We've been to Disney so many times so we know where things are, but that's an insanely cool tool, and wait times aside right now, that tool alone is worth the subscription for newer guests
 
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Mickey2021

Active Member
Original Poster
@Mickey2021, did Steve, our statistician, get back to you on this?
Hi Len,

It's been a while since my post. Yes, Steve did get back to me about the same question. I still see a lot of discrepancies between the wait times posted the day before and what the site says they posted. This wasn't really explained by Steve.

For example the site does something like this: On May 10th it might predict a max wait time of 30 minutes for Splash on May 11th. When looking at the chart on May 12th it will show the actual wait times with a max that occurred of say 60 minutes. It will also show that you predicted a max of 55 thus appearing that your prediction was close to the actual wait time. However up until the ride actually hits 60 minutes on the 11th the website never showed a wait time of 55. The actual prediction remained 30.

Steve also mentioned that due to Disney constantly changing attendance levels it is hard to accurately predict wait times. I completely understand and accept this as things are always changing in the park. My trip is for June 26th through July 4th. Of course I can always refresh my touring plan in the park and plan to do so, but how close to the trip do you think I need to be to make somewhat accurate touring plans on my computer? Would one week out be good or should I be making them on the 25th? Thank you so much for all of your work. In the past your site has made my trip immensely more efficient and enjoyable!
 
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lentesta

Premium Member
Hi Len,

It's been a while since my post. Yes, Steve did get back to me about the same question. I still see a lot of discrepancies between the wait times posted the day before and what the site says they posted. This wasn't really explained by Steve.

For example the site does something like this: On May 10th it might predict a max wait time of 30 minutes for Splash on May 11th. When looking at the chart on May 12th it will show the actual wait times with a max that occurred of say 60 minutes. It will also show that you predicted a max of 55 thus appearing that your prediction was close to the actual wait time. However up until the ride actually hits 60 minutes on the 11th the website never showed a wait time of 55. The actual prediction remained 30.

Steve also mentioned that due to Disney constantly changing attendance levels it is hard to accurately predict wait times. I completely understand and accept this as things are always changing in the park. My trip is for June 26th through July 4th. Of course I can always refresh my touring plan in the park and plan to do so, but how close to the trip do you think I need to be to make somewhat accurate touring plans on my computer? Would one week out be good or should I be making them on the 25th? Thank you so much for all of your work. In the past your site has made my trip immensely more efficient and enjoyable!

I'd refresh my plans the night before (or morning of) each park visit. And then I'd refresh after the first step and then every couple of steps after that. In a big park the like Magic Kingdom, with dozens of attractions, everything might not open (or run consistently) the same.

For the Splash Mountain example, is it clear that on May 10th we're predicting actual wait times there? And the chart on May 12 shows posted wait times we got (black dots), actual wait times we got (green dots), and then the actual and posted estimates?
 
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