January 11th Crowds In Bottom 10%, Studios Even Lower
We often get requests to translate the crowd calendar into real life language. “What does a 1 really feel like?” our readers will say. We try to express how the one to ten scale feels when you are in the park using our crowd level page but it can be difficult to really get a sense of what it is like.
The best way is to think back to your last trip to a Disney park and look up the crowd level on the day you visited. You can do that by entering your dates on the historical crowd level page. Make sure to compare to the individual park that you were in, the resort level is a combination of all parks.
If you happened to be in the parks yesterday, January 11th 2011, you experienced crowd levels that hit level 1. That is, the wait times in the parks were in the bottom 10% of all days on record. If you happened to be in the Studios, you experienced wait times in the bottom 1%! Just about as low as they get.
But how low is the bottom 1%?
You may get images of tumbleweed blowing across the animation courtyard but that isn’t really the case. Except in cases of natural disaster even the slowest of days has people in line.
Yesterday, Toy Story Mania peaked at 60 minutes, Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster at 30 minutes and Tower of Terror maxed out at 20. Comparing those maximums with all the days dating back to 2006, that is as low as it gets.
We predicted that the Studios would be a 0.8 (in the bottom 8%) and that the resort would be a level 1. Not bad. Typically, our estimates are within 1 index point 90% of the time.
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Don’t be misled by “peak wait times”. I went on a recent day rated a “1” and it was much much much more crowded than in my past visits this time of year. . It doesn’t matter really if the wait for TSM is “only” 60 minutes if you don’t like waiting in hour long lines but the fastpasses were sold out at 11am and you can’t drag your wife on Tower of Terror with a team of mules. It doesn’t matter if it’s a “1” according to their criteria if when you wander over to Epcot at 330pm there are no fastpasses for Mission Space, Soarin, or Test Track left. Or if it’s simply crowded with bodies and annoying to walk around. It may only be a 50 min wait to get on a ride, but if you get a fastpass for it and the return time is over 2 hours later, you’re left cooling your jets instead of doing what you want to do (at these prices return visitors expect more than tedious time killing)
Maybe more people are using fastpass now, but my “eyeball” appraisal was that the crowd calendar number did not match my own experience with a low crowd day. Just because some maniac was willing to wait 4 hours to ride RnR coaster this summer, that doesn’t mean a 24 min wait is a “1” to me. To me a “1” is walking on anything but the biggies. This is just not the case many days.
The best indicator of crowds (and a much simpler one) is still an experienced visitor telling you of his personal rating for the park. Sample volunteers with real life experience there, not ride times only.
The crowd calendar concept is a great one, but my observation after over 2 years is that it does not reflect the entire “experience” at a park, only the specific wait times at the big boys. I don’t really care how quickly I can get on a ride if I have to wait 15 minutes in a throng to get a fish dinner. : )
I think maybe touring plans just had a bad estimate for the days I was there. Still, I suggest using experience as well as just the wait time numbers to forecast, if not already doing that.
Thanks for this explanation Fred! As a first timer I’ve been wondering what to expect at the Studios at the end of March when .4 is predicted!
We were at the Studios yesterday and even when ToT said 20 minutes wait time, we didn’t even wait 10 minutes (in our experience).
Today we were at MK and it was amazing – we walked on everything…even space mountain at 1pm…no waits about 15 minutes that I saw. We only waited 5 minutes for all the rides…I should come in January more often!
Wow! 60 minutes peak is as low as it gets for Toy Story? I feel very thankful that I only waited 40 minutes – my longest wait on my last trip.
You guys are awesome!