Busy Day Guides

brody-maddison · 8 Jun 18, 04:03 PM

I've been looking at the busy day guide on here and on TouringPlans to try and draft an itinerary for our Oct/Nov trip.

I know how TP collate their data but am curious, how the Busy Day Guide on here is collated, what sources are used to determine crowd levels for the day?

Has anyone actually used a touring plan? In theory they seem like a good idea but when you're actually in the parks, are they easy to stick to?

Romanoff13 · 9 Jun 18, 11:53 AM

I've looked at undercover tourist too. Don't know which is going to be best...

brody-maddison · 11 Jun 18, 10:14 AM

They all seem to differ 🤔

bex85chelt · 11 Jun 18, 10:53 AM

I think a full touring plan can be a step too far sometimes - i don't think you should feel like you need to be keeping to a strict plan and timeline but its super helpful to have a plan for where you are going first and where your fast passes / ADRs fit in as well as knowing your 'must-sees' for each park so you don't miss out

Nimbus · 11 Jun 18, 01:09 PM

Originally Posted by brody-maddison

I know how TP collate their data but am curious, how the Busy Day Guide on here is collated, what sources are used to determine crowd levels for the day?

Ok, I don't have anything to do with the DIBB's Busy Day Guide but here's my educated guess on what the DIBB does.

To determine the crowd level on previous days, the DIBB uses the wait times posted by Disney (or Universal or Seaworld) themselves. It collates the wait times posted each day, works out the average and peak wait time for each day and then assigns each day a score compared to the maximum and minimum wait times in the last year.

However, the historical wait times are a completely different thing to the forthcoming recommended parks in the Busy Day Guide. The Wait Time scores only apply to past days, not future days. The DIBB does not predict crowd levels.

The Busy Day Guide uses the published park calendars and park hours plus a number of rules to determine which parks to recommend on which days. It uses rules such as "If a park is due to have EMH on that day, then put it in the least recommended column" and "If a park had EMH on the previous day, then put it in the most recommended column". Plus other rules as well, such as ones relating to when a park has special events or ones based on historic trends in data (eg. waterparks have been historically busier at weekends therefore they are not recommended for future weekends).

Every busy day guide will use slightly different rules and hence will come to different conclusions. All of them will be correct some of the time and wrong some of the time.

Also, have a read of the following page on the accuracy of busy day guides:

https://www.thedibb.co.uk/forums/Bus...acy-p-992.html

To quote the above:

"It is all just a guess"
"We feel that, in reality, no one can tell you that one guide is more accurate than another... if someone tells you that a particular guide is the most accurate, we would recommend that you take that assessment with a 'pinch of salt', as they say".
"In our opinion the DIBB is the most accurate Busy Day Guide".

Romanoff13 · 12 Jun 18, 12:16 PM

It's also worth factoring in parks which have extra magic hours for on site guests. We stay off site so try to avoid visiting the parks with EMH as they are always busy

Nimbus · 12 Jun 18, 07:42 PM

Originally Posted by Romanoff13

It's also worth factoring in parks which have extra magic hours for on site guests. We stay off site so try to avoid visiting the parks with EMH as they are always busy

The DIBB�s busy day guide takes EMH into account.