Live Chat 1-7-19: Crowd Calendar Chat + Video
Hi Everyone,
One of our TouringPlans.com statisticians, Fred Hazelton, and I chatted about the recent crowd calendar changes on our Facebook page today. We also answered several questions.
See if we answered yours by clicking the video below!
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Angela, you seem to be in a mood to respond, so let me float another inquiry out there. The levels all jumped for the foreseeable future, but stayed pretty level further out. Is that because there just isn’t enough data that far out to accurately predict more crowd level shifts, or can we expect shifts upward every few months similar to what we just saw for January and February.
When the Dining/Room discount dropped last week, we booked for late August/early September. Put us firmly in the “Crowds Should Be Lower Late Summer Because People Are Going To Hold Out For Star Wars” camp. The crowds indicated on this site certainly look promising, but if there is anticipated “rolling readjustment” moving forward, it will affect the nature of my planning. Its going to be a great trip either way. Thanks again for TP.com continued insight.
Sorry I kept you waiting, Mike!
I spoke to Fred and Steve (our Stats guys), and they wanted me to wait until this blog post came out addressing your question as well as providing a January update.
I hope this clears things up for you!
https://blog.touringplans.com/2019/01/17/january-crowd-calendar-status-update/
– Angela
So bummed. Planned and paid for my trip and the crowd levels jumped by 3-4 points I think. 🙁 Oh well. Going to take a patience pill and have a good time. Thankfully we have been a couple times before so this is to hit what’s new and our favorites.
Pamela,
I know it wasn’t what you were expecting for your trip and for that, we apologize. I hope you still manage to have a good time!
– Angela
Having painstakingly put together dozens of touring plans over the past four years (in order to incorporate restaurant reservations and nap breaks), I’ve found the OPTIMIZE feature to be very problematic. It may, for example, have me arriving 30 minutes late for my lunch reservation, or it might suggest I go on a ride that obviously will cause me to miss the afternoon parade that I indicated I planned on watching. There have been times when I seem to remember that it put my 1:00 p.m. leaving-the-park rest break after, say, 5:00 p.m. A recent video you posted (with Brian McNichols, I believe) showed him encountering similarly screwy steps with the Optimize feature. And if one optimizes an Optimized plan, it will often spit out a whole new series of screwy steps! That’s why I’ve had to rely exclusively on Personalized Plans which, when I click “Evaluate”, always end up being more time-saving and logical than Optimized plans. And if I should want to Optimize one of my Personal Plans while I’m in the park, I always make sure I do so with a copy of that plan, rather than take the chance of getting a set of steps that don’t make sense under the circumstances. What’s the story?
Steven,
I saw your comment on YouTube as well (I’ll post my answer there too), and talked to Brian about it. He said there tends to be more oddities if the plan is very full (he had one recently where someone tried to get 40 steps in), so maybe look at that. If you have a specific plan you would like us to look at, contact us at https://help.touringplans.com/hc/en-us/requests/new
– Angela
Thank you for making this video! Super helpful and reassuring! I know we will have a great trip no matter what! 🙂
Kendall,
I’m glad it helped answer some questions and ease some concerns. I hope you have a fantastic trip! – Angela