touringplans.com crowd calendar

[xcrashx15]

I'm going to WDW with friends in 9 days; usually I go with family and since they prefer to sleep, I've never been able to take advantage of the EMH. This time, due to other obligations there's only one day where we CAN go to EMH (Saturday morning at DS) so I was semi-planning our trip around that. The friends have either never been there or haven't been there in the last decade and I know they're going to want to see and do everything so I'd like to maximize our time in the parks. Due to the aforementioned obligations, Saturday is our only full day for the parks so I was going to go to DS for EMH and then go to another park later.

I checked the crowd calendar on touringplans.com, which I've heard is fairly reliable. The calendar lists every park with EMH as a "park to avoid" for that day. If I followed the calendar's best park suggestions, I would end up avoiding DS and AK and going to MK or Epcot on Saturday. However, "conventional wisdom" has generally led me to avoid the MK on Saturdays.

Have others that consulted the crowd calendar found its predictions to be accurate? I'm trying to figure out whether I should take advantage of the DS EMH and then go to the MK, go to the DS EMH and then go to Epcot, or just go to the MK or Epcot all day. However, I don't want to base my plan on the assumption that the MK will be a 5 on the crowd calendar only to get there and find it's more like a 7 or 8. Any thoughts?

 

[PlaneJane]

take avantage of all EMHs they add more value to you staying in an on property resort.

 

[CAPTAIN HOOK]

Do your EMH at MGM - then, if the crowds get heavy, hop (assuming you have the park hop feature on your tickets)

 

[jasondiff]

If DS is the park you want to go to the most, then do the EMH there and hop to another park later. However, is DS is not the park you want to do most, then I would use Saturday to go to the park you want to do most. As long as you get there at opening the crowds will be very small.
Keep in mind that if you are planning to do MK in the evening, because of the halloween parties, the non-party evenings that MK is open tend to get more crowded than you would expect, since people have half as many opportunities to see wishes, etc.

 

[xcrashx15]

ok, thanks everyone!

 

[mousermerf]

The crowd estimates for the Unofficial Guide (and thus touringplans.com) are tested and retested. They are based on several complex variables and about as accurate as possible.

Check out the crowd blog feature on the website - it even acknowledges when the calendar has been wrong and by what margin.

It works best if understand what the calendar actually is - a measure of peak wait times at peak attractions at the MK.

The current system works to recommend each park once per a common trip cycle, so even if MK is a 5 all the days you're there, it tries to put you at the other parks on the days it feels special events will make those other parks the most pleasent, etc.

The calendar is extremely accurate.

 

[PlaneJane]

so why should we avoid the EMHs ? Those are times when you can take advantage of being an on property guest

 

[nibblesandbits]

so why should we avoid the EMHs ? Those are times when you can take advantage of being an on property guest

Well, I've heard that the Evening EMH are pretty crowded.

However, it is very wise to avoid the park that has EEMH because the park with EMHs are usually most crowded that day because people aren't buying the PH option anymore, so they go to the park with the most bang for your buck. This, in turn, means that more people are going to be in the park, which means that wait times increase.

Truthfully, what should be done now (and I don't know if this is a factor that touringplans.com uses, but I would assume it would be.) is to visit the park that had EMH the night before. For example...say MK had EMH on Monday, on Tuesday is the day you should visit there...because the majoritiy of people visited MK the day before. Then if you have a PH, (which I suggest to get nowadays) you can go to the park w/EMH later that night.

 

[spaceghost]

so why should we avoid the EMHs ? Those are times when you can take advantage of being an on property guest

It really depends on the time of year, but during periods of moderate to heavy attendance, EMHs actually draw more people to the parks because people are trying to "take advantage of being an on property guest." As previously noted, its often best to go to a park the day after it has EMHs. In periods of light attendance, it probably doesn't matter and EMHs can actually help. Morning EMHs are typically better than Evening EMHs. The "Morning EMH - Park Hop to another park" strategy is a valid one as well. The other additional part of this is that the EMHs at one park also reduce the number of people at the other parks, lowering attendance in those places, thus making those parks better bets to visit...

 

[spaceghost]

I'm going to WDW with friends in 9 days; usually I go with family and since they prefer to sleep, I've never been able to take advantage of the EMH. This time, due to other obligations there's only one day where we CAN go to EMH (Saturday morning at DS) so I was semi-planning our trip around that. The friends have either never been there or haven't been there in the last decade and I know they're going to want to see and do everything so I'd like to maximize our time in the parks. Due to the aforementioned obligations, Saturday is our only full day for the parks so I was going to go to DS for EMH and then go to another park later.

I checked the crowd calendar on touringplans.com, which I've heard is fairly reliable. The calendar lists every park with EMH as a "park to avoid" for that day. If I followed the calendar's best park suggestions, I would end up avoiding DS and AK and going to MK or Epcot on Saturday. However, "conventional wisdom" has generally led me to avoid the MK on Saturdays.

Have others that consulted the crowd calendar found its predictions to be accurate? I'm trying to figure out whether I should take advantage of the DS EMH and then go to the MK, go to the DS EMH and then go to Epcot, or just go to the MK or Epcot all day. However, I don't want to base my plan on the assumption that the MK will be a 5 on the crowd calendar only to get there and find it's more like a 7 or 8. Any thoughts?

While I don't have enough in park experience to really be able to quantify whether or not the crowd level calendar is accurate or not, I can say that in all of the research I have done online and otherwise indicates that the calendar does seem to be fairly accurate. I've also found that the idea that MK is really busy on a Saturday appears to be somewhat of a myth. Touringplans.com and the Unofficial Guide explain it better than I do, but as it turns out local visitors aren't as big an impact as you'd think AND Saturday turns out to be a travel day for many people, so the park is not as busy as it would initially seem. So... I wouldn't hesitate to trust the calendar. That said, as mentioned elsewhere, your plan of visiting DS for morning EMHs and then park hopping once things get busy isn't a bad plan...

 

[5mins2disney]

We've used this site to plan our park days for our last 3 trips..and found the indexes and wait times to be VERY reliable! Last trip was Sept 06 and the parks we went to with a 4-5 crowd index...all I can say..is unbelievable..we walked right onto most attractions with no wait hardly at all! (5 mins for Expedition Everest in standby!!??) I recommend this site to people on my website all the time who ask where to go / when / why...and how crowded the parks will be at a certain time / date.

 

[5mins2disney]

Also, we found their statement that Sat is one of the BETTER days to be at MK is true! It defys conventional wisdom to avoid that park...and they list a whole rationale why they think this is true..that most people use Sat as a travel day. I can tell you though that in early September the weekdays in general were much less crowded than the weekends..but the site called for this too..so we think it's dead on accurate.

 

[xcrashx15]

Very nice, those are some good points that I wouldn't have guessed otherwise! I do have the PH option as do two of the other three friends in my travel party (the third hasn't purchased his tickets yet and thinks the PH is a waste of money). The crowd calendar does generally seem to suggest going to parks the day after they have EMHs, at least for the days I'll be there... except on the day after MNSSHP it suggests going to AK because the crowd level will be a 7 that day.

A five minute standby wait for E:E?! My last trip was in October '05 so I haven't been on the ride yet (although I did get a nice photo of it and everyone always asks what mountain range it's part of!)... I hope the wait is that short when I finally get to ride. Of course, I'm still going on either way!

 

[jasondiff]

I wonder if the "Saturdays at MK are crowded" myth is because, in the off-season, saturday nights are one of the only nights for Spectromagic, and I know personally Saturday is usually my travel day but I always try to hit MK Saturday afternoon/evening to catch Spectro. So maybe Saturday mornings and afternoons are not crowded at MK but Saturday nights are. Just a thought.

xcrash,
The PH option on shorter tickets is certainly more costly (on a per-day basis) than the longer tickets, but if you only have a few days in the parks but want to try to hit everything, the added expense is well worth it. Imagine, without the park hopper, they day you go to AK you'll be wishing you could go to Epcot for Illuminations or MK for Wishes, since AK closes so early. Not only do you get extra park time for your money, but you get the ability to beat crowds using the morning-EMH-then-hop approach.

 

[lentesta]

xcrashx15, thanks for checking out the site. As others have noted, the predictions are based on what we observed in the parks through more than 100 visits in 2005. For those visits, we wrote down the wait times at the major attractions every 30 minutes from park openign to park close. (We have an Excel fixation at the Guide - can you tell?)

Using those data, it was trivial to figure out which days were busiest. And in that respect, I'm really surprised that more websites don't do this - it's just basic math and science. Perhaps it's the cost of putting someone in the parks for that long, but I think we're the only ones to ever measure wait times systematically to come up with recommendations.

Is the system perfect? No, probably not. Special events like MNSSHP can throw things off a little, but we're working on that. The error rate seems to have stabilized at around +/- 8 minutes, and I think that's good enough for almost everyone.

Good luck with your trip.

Sincerely,

Len Testa

 

[Disneyfanman]

The Saturday thing is very true. I usually schedule my MK visits for Saturday for that very reason. It's just the opposite at Disneyland in CA. Saturdays are absolutely brutal there. I assume it's the local visitor factor.

The other thing is that I have ALWAYS avoided the Early Opening Days. Even when I stay on property. Sometimes I am with family and friends and they have gone to the EEMH, and when we have traded stories at the end of the day it's clear that I made the right choice to avoid them.

It probably doesn't make much of a difference in the off season, but I am going next week and will still avoid the EEMH parks.