Spring crowd levels at the Disney parks vary from year to year. This variation is largely driven by school schedules. Crowd levels are inversely related to the percent of children in school: when most schools are on a break, high wait times are found in the parks. We track the school schedules for the 100 largest school districts, and these schedules goes into our Crowd Calendar predictions.

Different school districts use different rules when scheduling their spring breaks. Some school districts have a fixed week each year, and others adjust spring break based on Easter. In addition, some school districts have the Friday before and/or the Monday after Easter off. In 2013, Easter is early (March 31), so the spring break season is going to be early. In fact, only 30% of schools will be in session the week before Easter Sunday. This suggests to us that the parks are going to be more crowded that week than in prior years.

School Schedule 2011-2013

The above chart shows the estimated percentage of students in school. The dates for Easter are notated. We use a smoothing algorithm to adjust for weekends. Looking at the chart, it’s interesting to notice the effect a late Easter has on mid-March spring breaks. This year, with an earlier Easter the spring break season is early and condensed. Looking forward to 2014, Easter is April 20, so we expect the school schedule patterns will look like 2011.

Spring Break and Crowd Levels is a post from the TouringPlans.com Blog. Signup for a premium subscription today! Or get news via Email, Twitter, & Facebook.

February can be a great month to visit Walt Disney World, but it can be a reasonably busy month, depending on the week. Here’s a quick view of Walt Disney World’s February 2013 Crowd Calendar:

And here are a few specific days that I would like to bring to your attention:

• February 3, 2013 is a holiday for many Americans…Super Bowl Sunday. Traditionally, we have not seen much change in wait times on this day, although we do not recommend going anywhere near the ESPN Zone at the BoardWalk during the game.
• February 11-17, 2013: As part of Disney’s Limited Time Magic, this is “True Love Week.” There will be many love-related decorations and photo opportunities, as well as special character meets. This will most likely increase the crowds slightly, although we do not expect it to adversely affect wait times.
• February 12, 2013: Much like Super Bowl Sunday, we have not seen much, if any, change in wait times due to Mardi Gras.
• February 18, 2013, is the only holiday in February: President’s Day. The long weekend increases crowds significantly and keeps the crowds higher than average for the entire ensuing week. If you do not need to utilize that extra day off, any other February week will be significantly less crowded.
• February 22-24 is the weekend of the Princess Half Marathon, which is a very popular event. As this weekend also bookends the weekend of President’s Day, higher than average crowds are expected through the weekend. Much of the crowd disperses following the race, so wait times will lower significantly starting on Sunday.

As a reminder, here’s how to interpret the crowd calendar:

• Crowds are rated on a scale from 1 to 10, with 10 indicating the highest crowds.
• The crowd rating is based on attraction wait times, not the number of people in any given park.
• Ratings are generally comparable with previous years, so if you visited Disney World in 2010 on an “8″ day you can expect an “8″ day in 2013 to be similarly crowded.
• Ratings are not comparable from park to park. A “6″ at the Magic Kingdom is not necessarily comparable to a “6″ at the Animal Kingdom. Why? The Animal Kingdom has fewer rides and shows than the Magic Kingdom, handling different numbers of people per hour. The number of people that make the Magic Kingdom a ’6′ would overwhelm the Animal Kingdom’s rides.
• Some rides, such as Soarin’ and Peter Pan’s Flight will still have a wait of around 60 and 30 minutes, respectively, even on the crowd calendar’s “1″-rated days. A “1″ simply means that it is one of the least busy days, relative to all other days.

If you are fortunate enough to be traveling on a day with low crowds…enjoy! If you find yourself going on a day that has a higher crowd rating…you have no worries, either! Why, you ask? As a TouringPlans.com subscriber you have access to thousands of Touring Plans (which are now optimizable) and our Lines mobile application which will guide you through the parks and keep you from waiting in long lines. Arriving at park opening and following a Touring Plan is the best way to totally negate the crowds.

Hopefully this shed some light on our Crowd Calendar ratings. Feel free to ask questions!

Thanks!

Looking over the February Crowd Calendar at WDW is a post from the TouringPlans.com Blog. Signup for a premium subscription today! Or get news via Email, Twitter, & Facebook.

The Disney World park hours were recently updated for the month of January 2013, with operating hours extended for the Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Disney’s Hollywood Studios, and Disney’s Animal Kingdom. There are now a handful of days where the Magic Kingdom is open later with a second Main Street Electrical Parade added.

Hollywood Studios also had quite a few days changed, and will now stay open until 9 or 10pm occasionally. Those days will also see an additional showing of Fantasmic!. Animal Kingdom had many closing times adjusted as well.

The chart below shows all current park hours with changes in red.

You may notice changes to our Crowd Calendar involving some of the changed dates. We recently began using our own internal projected park hours to give you the most accurate crowd ratings available. Using these projected hours has made our long-term crowd ratings more stable, but we are not perfect (well, some of us). Should any major changes occur to our Crowd Calendar, I will update this post with explanations. If you have questions, please feel free to post them in the comments below.

One period that may change is the first few days of the new year. While we expected larger crowds still hanging around from the holidays, the very late hours for the Magic Kingdom and the 3 Fantasmic shows on the 1st and 2nd indicate even higher crowds are expected. If you are going to be there during that time, make sure you get to the park before it opens and use a Touring Plan.

One last important point regarding evening Extra Magic Hours (EMH): Starting on January 4, with an Epcot EMH, Extra Magic Hours will only last for 2 hours in the evening rather than the previous 3. That means that Epcot will remain open to Disney resort guests from 9pm until 11pm on that particular evening.

If you are curious about how Disney updates their park hours, check out this blog post. Thanks for using Touring Plans!

WDW Park Hours Updated for January is a post from the TouringPlans.com Blog. Signup for a premium subscription today! Or get news via Email, Twitter, & Facebook.

The Disney World park hours were recently updated for the month of December, with operating hours extended for the Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Disney’s Hollywood Studios, and Disney’s Animal Kingdom. There are now a handful of days where the Magic Kingdom is open until 12am and even 1am with a second Main Street Electrical Parade added.

Hollywood Studios also had quite a few days changed, and will now stay open until 9 or 10pm occasionally. Those days will also see an additional showing of Fantasmic!. Animal Kingdom had many closing times adjusted as well.

The chart below shows all current park hours with changes in red.

You may notice changes to our Crowd Calendar involving some of the changed dates. We recently began using our own internal projected park hours to give you the most accurate crowd ratings available. Using these projected hours has made our long-term crowd ratings more stable, but we are not perfect (well, some of us). Should any major changes occur to our Crowd Calendar, I will update this post with explanations. If you have questions, please feel free to post them in the comments below.

One period that will not change is the period around Christmas. It was expected to be very busy as always, and the updated hours indicate that will come to pass. If you are going to be there during that time, make sure you get to the park before it opens and use a Touring Plan.

Another day of note is Wednesday, December 5 at the Magic Kingdom. The official opening of the Fantasyland expansion is the following day, December 6, with the media preview on the 5th. Because of this media preview, the Magic Kingdom has actually done a rare thing and shortened its operating hours, now closing at 7pm. In another rare move, it has rescheduled Wishes, the fireworks spectacular, to the odd time of 6pm on December 5.

Thanks!

WDW December Park Hours Updated is a post from the TouringPlans.com Blog. Signup for a premium subscription today! Or get news via Email, Twitter, & Facebook.

Well, the first few Annual Passholder previews of the new Fantasyland have passed, and the effect on crowds at the Magic Kingdom has been underwhelming–significantly less than our crowd level predictions had suggested.

That’s good news for theme park visitors but bad news for us stats guys. We don’t like estimates that miss the mark, but we stand by our choice to be conservative with our estimates. Predicting crowd levels during new events that have no history can be very difficult. Without historical data to comb through, estimation starts to enter into the realm of guess-timation.

As we do every day, we will still be watching crowds at the Magic Kingdom very closely to see if the crowds remain manageable during the Passholder previews. In the meantime, watch for reductions in our estimates for Magic Kingdom crowds on November 13 and 14.

Report On Predictions For Magic Kingdom Crowds During Fantasyland Previews is a post from the TouringPlans.com Blog. Signup for a premium subscription today! Or get news via Email, Twitter, & Facebook.

Here at TouringPlans.com we spend a lot of time honing our predictions to make our Crowd Calendar the most accurate available. One of the many methods we employ is projecting park hours for all of Disney’s Florida theme parks. You may be wondering why we bother since Disney World publishes its park hours for all to see. Well, Disney does not always make things easy (as outlined here).

The published hours are available for the next six months (currently through May), but they are simply preliminary hours. Disney doesn’t create an operational schedule for its employees that far in advance. Using things like hotel occupancy rates and dining reservations, Disney reviews all hours for a given month approximately two weeks prior to the start of that month (for instance, December’s adjusted hours should be released on or around November 12) and makes changes to its park hours.

How often are park hours changed two weeks before the start of a month? This post will give you idea of what to expect when February hours are adjusted. And the chart below shows what the final park hours were for Walt Disney World in February 2012.

The numbers in red are February 2012 dates that changed when park hours were adjusted in mid-January last year.

There are a few things you should notice about this chart:

• As mentioned above, these are the final park hours from last year (I want to make that very clear); final hours for this February (2013) have not yet been released.
• The third week (or so) in February (16-23 in 2013) is President’s Day week and tends to be quite a bit busier than the surrounding days. The park hours are expected to reflect this.
• The opening times for all parks change very rarely (with the obvious exception being during the busy President’s Day week).
• Epcot times change very, very rarely (which is why they are not listed).
• Wishes is performed once per night, and changes are very rare, so we have not listed Wishes because of this.
• The days that have Extra Magic Hours almost never change.
• Closing times for the Magic Kingdom, Disney’s Hollywood Studios, and Disney’s Animal Kingdom, as well as the number of performances of the Main Street Electrical Parade and Fantasmic!, are the most variable.
• Fantasmic! and the Main Street Electrical Parade were both undergoing refurbishment in February 2012, which is why there are big periods of inactivity. Barring something unforeseen, that will not be the case in 2013.

So the real question is: what you should expect for this year? Since we started actively tracking park hour changes, we have noticed that the previous year is quite a good predictor of the upcoming changes. We do make some adjustments for our internal calculations, but the chart above should give you a good idea for planning purposes.

One thing to remember is to compare days of the week rather than numerical dates. For instance, if you are traveling from Saturday, February 9, through Saturday, February 16, 2013 you would look at the second Saturday through the third Saturday from last year (February 11-18, 2012). Please also keep in mind that this chart is one of many references for you to use in planning your trip and is not necessarily the exact operating times.

I hope you find this information useful. As you may have guessed by now, this is going to be a regular feature. I am still in the process of “catching up” to the currently available Walt Disney World calendar (currently through May). Once I have caught it, I will post these as the new preliminary hours are released.

Thanks!

WDW Park Hours: What to Expect in February 2013 is a post from the TouringPlans.com Blog. Signup for a premium subscription today! Or get news via Email, Twitter, & Facebook.

November is a fun month at Walt Disney World, even if we are a little late with this post.  Here’s a quick view of Walt Disney World’s November 2012 Crowd Calendar.

And here are a few specific days that I would like to bring to your attention:

• November 6, 2012 is a strange day for us here at Touring Plans. Along with November 7, 8, 13, 14, and 17, the operating hours at the Magic Kingdom were recently extended to 8am through 1am. The reason appears to be due to the Annual Passholder previews of New Fantasyland, but it leaves us in a bit of a pickle as far as crowd ratings are concerned. As Master Statistician Fred Hazleton addresses on our blog, we at Touring Plans have chosen to be conservating in our ratings, so you will notice higher ratings for those days.
• November 9, 2012:  This is the day that starts many of the holiday festivities. This is the first Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party, which will also be held on November 12, 15, 16, 25, 27, 29, and 30. Advance-purchased tickets range from $58-65 for adults and $54-60 for children ages 3-9, plus tax. Same-day tickets range are $65 and $60, plus tax (purchase Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party tickets here). The Magic Kingdom closes at 7 pm these nights, which has its good and bad points. The bad is obviously that you have less touring time. The good is that many people stay away due to the shortened park hours. Since many do avoid the park on those days, we expect the Magic Kingdom to have very low crowds on all of the party days.
• November 9, 2012:  The date so nice we mentioned it twice! This is also day of the first lighting of the Osborne Family Spectacle of Dancing Lights. This daily extravaganza can make the area around Disney’s Hollywood Studios’ Streets of America very congested.
• November 10, 2012 is the day of the Wine & Dine Half Marathon, which is a popular event ending at Epcot. This weekend also includes the Veteran’s Day holiday and is the final weekend of the Epcot International Food & Wine Festival. Expect all of this to bring some extra people to the resort.
• November 17, 2012 is the start of Thanksgiving week, which is one of the busier weeks of the year. Make sure you arrive early and use your Touring Plan!

As a reminder, here’s how to interpret the crowd calendar:

• Crowds are rated on a scale from 1 to 10, with 10 indicating the highest crowds.
• The crowd rating is based on attraction wait times, not the number of people in any given park.
• Ratings are generally comparable with previous years, so if you visited Disney World in 2010 on an “8″ day you can expect an “8″ day in 2012 to be similarly crowded.
• Ratings are not comparable from park to park. A “6″ at the Magic Kingdom is not necessarily comparable to a “6″ at the Animal Kingdom.  Why?  The Animal Kingdom has fewer rides and shows than the Magic Kingdom, handling different numbers of people per hour.  The number of people that make the Magic Kingdom a ’6′ would overwhelm the Animal Kingdom’s rides.
• Some rides, such as Soarin’ and Peter Pan’s Flight will still have a wait of around 60 and 30 minutes respectively, even on the crowd calendar’s “1″-rated days.  A “1″ simply means that it is one of the least busy days, relative to all other days.

If you are fortunate enough to be traveling on a day with low crowds…enjoy! If you find yourself going on a day that has a higher crowd rating…you have no worries, either! Why, you ask? As a TouringPlans.com subscriber you have access to thousands of Touring Plans (which are now optimizable) and our Lines mobile application which will guide you through the parks and keep you from waiting in long lines. Arriving at park opening and following a Touring Plan is the best way to totally negate the crowds.

Hopefully this shed some light on our Crowd Calendar ratings. Feel free to ask questions!

Thanks!

Looking Over the November 2012 WDW Crowd Calendar is a post from the TouringPlans.com Blog. Signup for a premium subscription today! Or get news via Email, Twitter, & Facebook.

One of our readers sent us this email recently, asking for clarification on a significant jump on the crowd calendar. November park hours were recently updated, and they included extended hours at the Magic Kingdom to accommodate Annual Passholder Previews of the New Fantasyland. Whenever special events affect the park hours it creates a bit of a conundrum for the stats guys. Extended park hours historically indicate an expectation of large crowds, but special events such as passholder previews don’t usually significantly affect wait times at the other attractions. Usually, the increased attention is localized at the attraction being previewed.

What to do, what to do…

We had a similar situation on February 29, 2012, when the Magic Kingdom stayed open 24 hours for “One More Disney Day.” A regular day in late February would historically be an average crowd, but this day was packed, especially once evening hit. Wait times at the headliners stayed in the range of 70-90 minutes all night long. We had guessed that despite the special event, wait times would be normal. We were wrong.

This time we want to be conservative. We do expect the the wait times to be reasonable at most attractions outside Fantasyland, but the appeal of the official preview may be a big enough draw to cause a significant influx of people to the Magic Kingdom. So, we chose to keep the high rating. Like during the Food & Wine Festival at Epcot or Star Wars Weekends at Hollywood Studios, the wait times at the attractions don’t always tell the whole story of crowds at a park.

Regardless, we strongly recommend using a touring plan and taking advantage of the 8:00am opening whenever possible on these days. Think of it as your crowd insurance. If our estimates were too high, you won’t need to stick to it. But if it turns out to be a zoo, you will be prepared to survive one more Disney day.

“I know you guys know what you’re doing, but a 9.1 on November 14?” is a post from the TouringPlans.com Blog. Signup for a premium subscription today! Or get news via Email, Twitter, & Facebook.

October is a fun month at Walt Disney World.  Here’s a quick view of Walt Disney World’s October 2012 Crowd Calendar which, if you look today, you can see for free, without charge, sans-subscription (well, you get it)!

And here are a few specific days that I would like to bring to your attention:

• October 1, 2012 marks 30 years since Epcot (then EPCOT Center) officially opened to the public. As of this writing there has been no major celebration announced, but you may still want to avoid Epcot due to the possibility of large crowds celebrating the anniversary.
• October 4, 2012: As you would expect, October has several Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Parties at the Magic Kingdom. Other October dates are October 5, 8, 11, 12, 14, 16, 18, 21, 23, 25, 26, 28, 30, and October 31, Halloween. Advance-purchased tickets cost $56 for adults and $51 for children ages 3-9, plus tax. Same-day tickets are $63 and $58, plus tax (purchase Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party tickets here). The Magic Kingdom closes at 7 pm these nights, which has its good and bad points. The bad is obviously that you have less touring time. The good is that many people stay away due to the shortened park hours. Since many do avoid the park on those days, we expect the Magic Kingdom to have very low crowds on all of the party days.
• October 8, 2012 (Columbus Day): Like many holidays, Columbus Day will bring in some extra people. The entire weekend will have higher crowds, so sticking to a Touring Plan is highly recommended.

Finally, a couple of other observations on October 2012:

• Weekends at Epcot: Epcot’s annual International Food & Wine Festival continues through October and into November. This is becoming an extremely popular event. World Showcase‘s walkways can get choked with people on Fridays, Saturdays, and (to a lesser extent) Sundays as the tourists and locals converge. While the wait times for the Future World attractions do not climb as much as might be expected, the crowds at the food kiosks and the roaming groups of drunk college kids can make walking through World Showcase unpleasant. We recommend avoiding Epcot on Fridays and Saturdays during Food & Wine unless there is no other option.
• Extra Magic Hour Days: October is considered a “shoulder” month, meaning that it is not busy like the summer but not as quiet as September either. This makes the Crowd Calendar a little more variable. One of the major contributing factors to crowd flow is Extra Magic Hours. Throughout the entire month you will notice higher ratings at the park with Extra Magic Hours. Here at TouringPlans.com, we are big fans of Extra Magic Hours, but only if you can make full use of them by arriving early or staying late. If you cannot, we recommend you choose a different park or at least switch to a non-Extra Magic Hour park during the busy part of the day. It is an odd social experiment, but it seems that many people will visit the park with Extra Magic Hours regardless of whether they are there during the extra time.

As a reminder, here’s how to interpret the crowd calendar:

• Crowds are rated on a scale from 1 to 10, with 10 indicating the highest crowds.
• The crowd rating is based on attraction wait times, not the number of people in any given park.
• Ratings are generally comparable with previous years, so if you visited Disney World in 2010 on an “8″ day you can expect an “8″ day in 2012 to be similarly crowded.
• Ratings are not comparable from park to park. A “6″ at the Magic Kingdom is not necessarily comparable to a “6″ at the Animal Kingdom.  Why?  The Animal Kingdom has fewer rides and shows than the Magic Kingdom, handling different numbers of people per hour.  The number of people that make the Magic Kingdom a ’6′ would overwhelm the Animal Kingdom’s rides.
• Some rides, such as Soarin’ and Peter Pan’s Flight will still have a wait of around 60 and 30 minutes respectively, even on the crowd calendar’s “1″-rated days.  A “1″ simply means that it is one of the least busy days, relative to all other days.

If you are fortunate enough to be traveling on a day with low crowds…enjoy! If you find yourself going on a day that has a higher crowd rating…you have no worries either! Why, you ask? As a TouringPlans.com subscriber you have access to thousands of Touring Plans (which are now optimizable) and our Lines mobile application which will guide you through the parks and keep you from waiting in long lines. Arriving at park opening and following a Touring Plan is the best way to totally negate the crowds.

Hopefully this shed some light on our Crowd Calendar ratings. Feel free to ask questions!

Thanks!

Looking Over the WDW October 2012 Crowd Calendar is a post from the TouringPlans.com Blog. Signup for a premium subscription today! Or get news via Email, Twitter, & Facebook.

September should be one of 2012′s least busy months at Walt Disney World.  Here’s a quick view of Walt Disney World’s September 2012 Crowd Calendar.

And here are a few specific days that I would like to bring to your attention:

• September 3, 2012 (Labor Day): Unlike many other holidays, Labor Day does not bring huge crowds with it. Sunday and Monday will be slightly busier (both days are a 6 resort rating on our scale of 1 to 10), but still manageable.
• September 7 and 8, 2012: The Magic Kingdom hosts two Night of Joy parties on this Friday and Saturday in September.  These events feature contemporary Christian music, and run from 7:30 p.m to 1:00 a.m.  One- and two-day tickets are available, with the one-day tickets priced at $53 in advance and $63 the day of, plus tax (purchase Night of Joy tickets here).  We expect Magic Kingdom crowds to be lower on these days because of that park’s 7 pm closure.
• September 11, 2012: September starts the run of Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Parties at the Magic Kingdom.  Other September dates are September 14, 18, 21, 25, 28 and September 30.  Advance-purchased tickets cost $56 for adults and $51 for children ages 3-9.  Same-day tickets $63 and $58, plus tax (purchase Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party tickets here).   The Magic Kingdom closes at 7pm these nights, which has its good and bad points. The bad is obviously that you have less touring time. The good is that many people stay away due to the shortened park hours. Since many do avoid the park on those days,  we expect the Magic Kingdom to have very low crowds on all of the party days.
• September 28, 2012: Epcot’s annual International Food & Wine Festival starts on Friday, September 28, and continues into November. This is becoming an extremely popular event.  World Showcase‘s walkways can get choked with people on Fridays, Saturdays and (to a lesser extent) Sundays as the tourists and locals converge.  While the wait times for the Future World attractions do not climb as much as might be expected, the crowds at the food kiosks, and the roaming groups of drunk college kids, can make walking through World Showcase unpleasant.  We recommend avoiding Epcot on Fridays and Saturdays during Food and Wine unless there is no other option.
• September 29 at the Magic Kingdom: The Magic Kingdom’s operating hours shorten in September as compared to its summer schedule.  Perhaps in an attempt to draw families away from the opening of Food & Wine, or perhaps to make up for the early park closures from Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Parties, September 29 is one of only 2 days after Labor Day that the Magic Kingdom is open until 11pm with two Main Street Electrical Parades. The late closing and extra parade are the reasons for the higher crowd rating. This and the Food & Wine festival at Epcot are the reasons for the 8 resort rating.

Finally, a couple of other observations on specific dates in September 2012:

• Mondays at Hollywood Studios: Mondays are our highest crowd ratings for the Studios in September (average of 7.6). That is due to the Evening Extra Magic hours held at Hollywood Studios on that day. Also, each Monday has a second showing of Fantasmic!, which is not a given for September as it has been during the summer.
• Touring Plans meet in Epcot on September 7: We have increased the crowd rating at Epcot to a 6.7 due to the expected thousands of people lining up to meet Master Statistician Fred Hazleton at the Morocco pavilion. Okay, so maybe it is actually because of the Evening Extra Magic Hours, but I’m sure Fred will draw a crowd nonetheless.

As a reminder, here’s how to interpret the crowd calendar:

• Crowds are rated on a scale from 1 to 10, with 10 indicating the highest crowds.
• The crowd rating is based on attraction wait times, not the number of people in any given park.
• Ratings are generally comparable with previous years, so if you visited Disney World in 2010 on an “8″ day you can expect an “8″ day in 2012 to be similarly crowded.
• Ratings are not comparable from park to park. A “6″ at the Magic Kingdom is not necessarily comparable to a “6″ at the Animal Kingdom.  Why?  The Animal Kingdom has fewer rides and shows than the Magic Kingdom, handling different numbers of people per hour.  The number of people that make the Magic Kingdom a ’6′ would overwhelm the Animal Kingdom’s rides.
• Some rides, such as Soarin’ and Peter Pan’s Flight will still have a wait of around 60 and 30 minutes respectively, even on the crowd calendar’s “1″-rated days.  A “1″ simply means that it is one of the least busy days, relative to all other days.

If you are fortunate enough to be traveling on a day with low crowds…enjoy! If you find yourself going on a day that has a higher crowd rating…you have no worries either! Why, you ask? As a TouringPlans.com subscriber you have access to thousands of Touring Plans (which are now optimizable) and our Lines mobile application, which will guide you through the parks and keep you from waiting in long lines. Arriving at park opening and following a Touring Plan is the best way to totally negate the crowds.

Hopefully this shed some light on our Crowd Calendar ratings. Feel free to ask questions!

Thanks!

Looking Over the WDW September 2012 Crowd Calendar is a post from the TouringPlans.com Blog. Signup for a premium subscription today! Or get news via Email, Twitter, & Facebook.