How the crowd calendar works
What the 1–10 levels mean, where they come from, and how sure we are.
Past days and today: measured
For each park we follow a fixed set of headliner rides. Each ride's posted waits during park hours are compared with that same ride's own past year, as a percentile, once the ride has at least 14 days of our data. The rides' percentiles are averaged and turned into a level with fixed cut points: each tenth of the range is one level. At least 3 rides need data. Today is compared with the same hours of earlier days and labelled "today so far".
Future days: forecast
A small linear model over signals anyone can check: the day of the week, the month, our holiday table, the park's published hours, Extended Evening, a separately ticketed evening event (the regular day ends early, so it is lighter) and the Lightning Lane Multi Pass price for the date against the park's usual price. Its starting values (version v1-prior) were set by hand, not fitted to data yet. Once we have 60 days of measured levels, the model is re-fitted toward these values and its version changes. When we have measured levels for the same weekday in recent weeks, the forecast is blended half and half with them.
| Signal | Change in level |
|---|---|
| Base level | 5 |
| Day of the week: Sunday | +0.3 |
| Day of the week: Monday | +0.4 |
| Day of the week: Tuesday | 0 |
| Day of the week: Wednesday | −0.3 |
| Day of the week: Thursday | −0.2 |
| Day of the week: Friday | +0.2 |
| Day of the week: Saturday | +0.7 |
| Month: January | −0.5 |
| Month: February | 0 |
| Month: March | +1 |
| Month: April | +0.5 |
| Month: May | −0.3 |
| Month: June | +1 |
| Month: July | +1.2 |
| Month: August | −0.5 |
| Month: September | −1.5 |
| Month: October | 0 |
| Month: November | −0.3 |
| Month: December | +0.5 |
| Per holiday weight point (1–3) | +0.8 |
| Per hour of opening beyond 12 | +0.25 |
| Early Entry | 0 |
| Extended Evening | +0.2 |
| Ticketed evening event | −1 |
| Lightning Lane price, per 100% above usual | +4 |
| Weight of recent measured levels | 0.5 |
What the labels mean
- Measured from posted waits
- measured
- Today so far
- measured
- Based on park hours and Lightning Lane pricing
- forecast
- Seasonal estimate
- forecast
- Seasonal estimate, lower confidence (past our holiday data)
- forecast
Holidays we model
US federal holidays through 2027-12-31. School breaks for Orange County Public Schools and Miami-Dade County Public Schools (Florida) and Los Angeles Unified (California) through 2027-07-31: the 2026–27 school year only, because later calendars are not approved yet. Each holiday has a weight from 1 to 3 that we chose. Easter and other states' school breaks are not modelled yet. Days after 2027-07-31 are labelled a lower-confidence seasonal estimate.
Accuracy scorecard
We'll publish how close our forecasts were once we have 60 days of measured levels. So far: 0 days.
Wait times come from ThemeParks.wiki, collected about every 5 minutes. We never show a raw feed, only levels we work out ourselves.