Here Now & Just Back WDW Reopening Experiences Including Park Hopping

[Leigh L]

The shopping pirates arrived at MK the day after they announced the change to the theming from Brer Rabbit to Princess and the Frog and wiped them out. One of the bloggers - Disney Food Blog I think - showed people leaving with BAGS AND BAGS of stuff.

That was crazy. DDs and I were watching a live stream back in July and they were showing people sitting on a bench with a large number of bags and others carrying it out. Insane, it was pretty bare.

We were at MK in the 2nd week of August and it was all gone. When we were there a few months later, the shelves were more stocked, but with the generic Disney stuff.

 

[lynzi2004]

But on the other hand... No?

Bahaha! Whoops! The reply didn’t work the way I meant for it to regarding the empty Splash merchandise! I’m blaming it on 3 kids and a snowstorm that we NEVER usually get

 

[Chris Ehlers]

The shopping pirates arrived at MK the day after they announced the change to the theming from Brer Rabbit to Princess and the Frog and wiped them out. One of the bloggers - Disney Food Blog I think - showed people leaving with BAGS AND BAGS of stuff.

this is where it ended up......

https://poshmark.com/listing/Disney...lRjDoZZ4kihkN8gEgTZYXP6MMUD8WydMaAnnqEALw_wcB

 

[cjlong88]

Magic Kingdom is a joke today.

Your post got me curious so I just pulled up MDE to glance at wait times. 100 minutes for PotC.

 

[rockpiece]

There might be some truth in that they weren’t prepared for the crowds. Lots of people getting flight cancellations and “forced to stay” due to the impending snowstorm. My guess is tomorrow (and maybe even Wednesday) will be the same with people there that weren’t originally planning to be. We are going over Easter. Hoping this weekend helps them “work out the kinks” in managing the crowd flow, but I fear that is wishful thinking.

I didn’t even think of people getting stuck here because of the storm. That could have let a lot people stranded here. Well you can certainly pick a lot worse places to be stranded than Disney.

 

[TexanInTheMidwest]

My SIL was supposed to leave Fort Myers Beach for Chicago tomorrow and her flight has already been cancelled.

 

[Betty Rohrer]

I didn’t even think of people getting stuck here because of the storm. That could have let a lot people stranded here. Well you can certainly pick a lot worse places to be stranded than Disney.

this happened years ago but my girls baton group was stranded at MCO when their plane home was snowed out. unlike a family group they were stuck at airport as no one had money for 12 rooms. so it is not always fun and games

 

[Marthasor]

There might be some truth in that they weren’t prepared for the crowds. Lots of people getting flight cancellations and “forced to stay” due to the impending snowstorm. My guess is tomorrow (and maybe even Wednesday) will be the same with people there that weren’t originally planning to be. We are going over Easter. Hoping this weekend helps them “work out the kinks” in managing the crowd flow, but I fear that is wishful thinking.

Except there is a set capacity and you have to have a park reservation, so, one would hope, Disney would prepare to manage the crowd flow they, themselves have set. Because of the park reservation system, even if people are stuck there, Disney knows exactly how many people are showing up at the park based on the reservations. If Disney isn't staffing up to handle the reserved park guests, that's on them. Disney has been in this business long enough to know how many CMs they need on hand to handle the exact number of people who have made reservations for a park on any given day and should expect to reach their set capacity over a holiday weekend. If it's the case that they set park capacity for 35% and then didn't staff accordingly on a holiday weekend, that's just bad management on their part.

 

[haPevraftr]

I agree that Disney should be planning for the capacity, but I know that many people found out last night that they needed to reschedule today’s flight and might have added a park reservation last night or this morning. Many aren’t able to get out until Thursday now. Watching the crowd levels and Disney’s response over the next few days is something I am interested in hearing about. Glad people are posting what they see on the ground. It’s like reporting the wind chill. The “feels like” is often more accurate.

 

[SouthFayetteFan]

Seems like this 11 day span (2/11 - 2/21) is going to help revenue tremendously in what will otherwise be a very soft Q2 of Disney's fiscal year. This year was always going to include the February trifecta: Valentine's Day + President's Day + Mardi Gras in a 4 day span. (For reference, the last time this happened was in 2015). Nothing I saw out of the wait times today surprised me - if anything there were encouraging signs with lower waits than are typical for this holiday.

I think it's easy to confuse what it looks like and feels like, vs. what the actual data shows. Here are wait times from President's Day 2020 vs. President's Day 2021 (the blue line is today). The major factors that are different are socially distant lines which take up more space, and lack of FastPass to ensure 3 short waits.



As some have said, people hear 35% capacity and think - "oh man, Disney will be dead, I want to be there!" not realizing what 35% really means. What those people really want is Disney at 15-20% of capacity which is what it seems like we're getting on weekdays through much of Jan/Feb (outside of the major holidays).

 

[skuttle]

Disney is actively working on handling the crowds. We were at studios Thursday and again today (Monday). We noticed they changed where certain lines would line up. I assume due to crowds.

 

[Jedimom]

Thanks for the update on Magic Kingdom! Here now and had planned MK for today but thinking it might be better if we switch to Epcot today and do MK on Thursday. Maybe crowds will die down a bit by then.

 

[becauseimnew]

Seems like this 11 day span (2/11 - 2/21) is going to help revenue tremendously in what will otherwise be a very soft Q2 of Disney's fiscal year. This year was always going to include the February trifecta: Valentine's Day + President's Day + Mardi Gras in a 4 day span. (For reference, the last time this happened was in 2015). Nothing I saw out of the wait times today surprised me - if anything there were encouraging signs with lower waits than are typical for this holiday.

I hope this means they will start hiring back more CMs.

 

[#1hoosierfan]

Has anybody had problems hopping to your park of choice the past few days?

 

[Sbunit81]

Hey we are planning to hit Hollywood studios tomorrow (hoping to score a boarding group for rise in the morning). Fully plan to arrive well before opening to capitalize on early entry opportunity. We are trying to knock out all of the major headliners (of course working around rise boarding time) and based on the look of the weather tomorrow would try to get on as much as possible before possible rain. What is the first ride we should dart towards once entering the park? I’m guessing to focus on slinky dog, millennium falcon and MMRR. Can someone advise in what order should I do those three and then I plan to do tsmm and the other “major rides (tower of terror and Star Wars). Experiences and advise greatly appreciated

 

[TexanInTheMidwest]

Hey we are planning to hit Hollywood studios tomorrow (hoping to score a boarding group for rise in the morning). Fully plan to arrive well before opening to capitalize on early entry opportunity. We are trying to knock out all of the major headliners (of course working around rise boarding time) and based on the look of the weather tomorrow would try to get on as much as possible before possible rain. What is the first ride we should dart towards once entering the park? I’m guessing to focus on slinky dog, millennium falcon and MMRR. Can someone advise in what order should I do those three and then I plan to do tsmm and the other “major rides (tower of terror and Star Wars). Experiences and advise greatly appreciated

There's a great discussion about this very thing in this thread - including some live updates from today https://www.disboards.com/threads/dhs-help-planning-my-day.3826300/

 

[MomOTwins]

Hey we are planning to hit Hollywood studios tomorrow (hoping to score a boarding group for rise in the morning). Fully plan to arrive well before opening to capitalize on early entry opportunity. We are trying to knock out all of the major headliners (of course working around rise boarding time) and based on the look of the weather tomorrow would try to get on as much as possible before possible rain. What is the first ride we should dart towards once entering the park? I’m guessing to focus on slinky dog, millennium falcon and MMRR. Can someone advise in what order should I do those three and then I plan to do tsmm and the other “major rides (tower of terror and Star Wars). Experiences and advise greatly appreciated

I would suggest slinky and MMRR first since slinky is outdoors and MMRR has a largely outdoor queue, so you’ll want to get those in before it rains. MFSR is easier to do when it rains as it is largely indoor.

 

[skuttle]

Hey we are planning to hit Hollywood studios tomorrow (hoping to score a boarding group for rise in the morning). Fully plan to arrive well before opening to capitalize on early entry opportunity. We are trying to knock out all of the major headliners (of course working around rise boarding time) and based on the look of the weather tomorrow would try to get on as much as possible before possible rain. What is the first ride we should dart towards once entering the park? I’m guessing to focus on slinky dog, millennium falcon and MMRR. Can someone advise in what order should I do those three and then I plan to do tsmm and the other “major rides (tower of terror and Star Wars). Experiences and advise greatly appreciated

we did two studios days, Friday Feb. 12 and yesterday, Monday Feb. 15. We for boarding groups both mornings from our room at 7am. Group 79 (called around 2pm) and then 63 (called around 1pm).

First day we entered 30min early and walked on RnR and had minimal wait for ToT. After that, all the major rides were at least an hour posted wait times, but none actually took that long. Park cleared out a lot after the 1pm boarding group try.

second day we got there right at opening. Slinky was already 50min, which we waited in. Park didn’t clear out as much in afternoon, but about 1-2 hours before closing it cleared out a bit.

 

[ckb_nc]

Hey we are planning to hit Hollywood studios tomorrow (hoping to score a boarding group for rise in the morning). Fully plan to arrive well before opening to capitalize on early entry opportunity. We are trying to knock out all of the major headliners (of course working around rise boarding time) and based on the look of the weather tomorrow would try to get on as much as possible before possible rain. What is the first ride we should dart towards once entering the park? I’m guessing to focus on slinky dog, millennium falcon and MMRR. Can someone advise in what order should I do those three and then I plan to do tsmm and the other “major rides (tower of terror and Star Wars). Experiences and advise greatly appreciated

My suggestion is Slinky or Falcon. Bypass MMRR for later - everyone stops there as it right in front of you. We did Slinky first (bit chilly actually that early) then Toy Story (2x) - knocked them out before the park officially opened. Later in the day MMRR wait times were smaller actually than park opening. Seems to be a consistent trend.

 

[scrappinginontario]

Has anybody had problems hopping to your park of choice the past few days?

There has never been a report (that I'm aware of) of anyone unable to hop since it restarted last month. You should be fine.