Saturday Feb 8th Magic Kingdom was shoulder to shoulder

[mom2rtk]

yep! And I believe Disney will continue to improve how they manage the crowds, from opening new rides and maybe even a new park, to simply improving the fast pass system.

New Universal park may help in the near future? (Might make it worse, lol...)

Anything but just adding more park hours, right?

 

[mom22boys]

Honestly I don't even care if I can still get the same number of rides done. The magic just disappears when walkways are shoulder to shoulder.

Me too! I don't care how many rides I get on. I am definitely there for the magic. And I agree, crowds can make it more difficult to find the magic. It definitely takes a a different approach and mindset. One thing that works for me is to find little spots where I can step away from the crowds for a bit. Although, that too, is getting harder to do.

 

[GADisneyDad14]

Friendly request - let's move on from the economics topic. That is not something that will be solved within the confines of the Theme Parks Attractions & Strategies board.

Thank you.

 

[amylevan]

Ugh, I’ve been watching the crowd calendars because we are starting to plan our 2021 trip and we are trying to pick our week. We haven’t been since 2018 and don’t really know if/when we’ll head back, so just going to “feel the magic” and not care about how many attractions we do is not the point. It’s too expensive of a vacation to be frustrated with not being able to do the things that make us want to go there...

If I wanted to deal with crowds of 9 or 10, I’d go at Christmas with longer hours, more Christmas-y special details and not having to take the kids out of school.

 

[TiggerBouncy]

I always avoid MK on Saturdays regardless of how busy the park meters are or the time of year. Problem is a lot of the locals are free on Saturday, so travel to the parks, and MK doesn't handle the crowds as well.

Usually i try to make Saturdays a resort day. Failing that, I try for other activities like Disney Springs, Mini Golf, or even the water parks. If all else fails, I try to hit up Epcot or AK which can handle the increased crowd levels more smoothly (as long as you are not gunning for Avatar).

 

[CastAStone]

Ugh, I’ve been watching the crowd calendars because we are starting to plan our 2021 trip and we are trying to pick our week. We haven’t been since 2018 and don’t really know if/when we’ll head back, so just going to “feel the magic” and not care about how many attractions we do is not the point. It’s too expensive of a vacation to be frustrated with not being able to do the things that make us want to go there...

If I wanted to deal with crowds of 9 or 10, I’d go at Christmas with longer hours, more Christmas-y special details and not having to take the kids out of school.

Early September remains the least busy time of year because no one wants to pull their kids out of school right after it starts. Other than that I’m not sure there’s a lot of softness to be found on the calendar anymore, particularly January through mid August.

But I’ll even caveat that September -if you go with small children you will find that the small child rides have normal lines. It’s just the headliners whose waits fall in September.

 

[Hisgirl]

So here are the numbers from last week (Monday Feb 3 thru Sun 9th) from Touring plans:
Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Hollywood studios & Animal Kingdom

Monday: 8 5 9 8
Tuesday: 7 8 6 6
Wednesday 4 6 6 6
Thursday 7 4 7 6
Friday 7 5 8 7
Saturday 10 10 9 10
Sunday 9 9 9 10

Looks like trying to avoid the weekends is the key. We're taking our grand down at the end of March and if I had not already purchased his e ticket, I would seriously consider going to Busch gardens and the space center instead. I'm not kidding. It just wasn't fun.

 

[SuJo]

We also just got back from our week at Disney and I was surprised at how crowded it was. Most of the popular rides had over 100 minute waits which is usually what I will see during spring break week. The cheerleader crowds were out in force, kept wondering when they were competing because they were always at the parks. As well as band groups, didn't know there was a band competition going on as well. Luckily everything went according to my plans so we had a great time, it was just difficult to get around the parks with all the people or do any of the easy rides as those had lines as well. Next time I will try and book a busy time at WDW and see if no one goes because it is supposed to be crowded

 

[SaintsManiac]

Yep, it's always busy at WDW now. I always tell people this and they hate hearing it.

 

[Tribe]

What about attraction down times? I haven’t seen any threads lately about bad days where 2 or 3 big rides are down at the same time for large parts of the day. Is Disney overall been doing a good job of keeping things running? This of course would make a crowded day even worse if rides were shutting down unexpectedl.

 

[midnight star]

Thank you to those in this thread giving honest accounts of the crowds and the experiences this week. I think it's helping me temper my expectations for my Spring Break trip. Honestly reading some of the FP threads you almost get the idea that it's easy to refresh your way onto all the rides you want, exactly when you want to ride them. This thread has been a bit of a reality check for me. I haven't even been able to book FPs yet b/c I'm staying off-site, so I'm keeping my expectations low and will try to just enjoy the overall experience instead of being disappointed that I can't ride everything I want and get 10 FPs a day

Something else that helped us a lot on our trip was taking advantage of when rides were down. For example, SDD was down for 4 hours on our HS day. Our fastpass for it converted to a multiple pass. That allowed us to choose another tier one! And we got a near instant return time for toy story mania. So we technically had 4 fastpasses all at once. When we used all of those, we refreshed and got more! And this was all before 1pm, and the park closed at 8pm that night. So it is possible to get a lot done with short hours

 

[mom2rtk]

I always avoid MK on Saturdays regardless of how busy the park meters are or the time of year. Problem is a lot of the locals are free on Saturday, so travel to the parks, and MK doesn't handle the crowds as well.

Usually i try to make Saturdays a resort day. Failing that, I try for other activities like Disney Springs, Mini Golf, or even the water parks. If all else fails, I try to hit up Epcot or AK which can handle the increased crowd levels more smoothly (as long as you are not gunning for Avatar).

Which is why a 10 PM Saturday close is so ridiculous. A 10 PM close with a crowd level of 10 is nuts and makes the problem worse.

 

[havoc315]

Booming is a stretch. Husband is a senior economist so I get more info than most I guess. But I digress. Domestic attendance is barely up. WDW is just doing a good job at spreading it throughout the year.

Also I believe I’ve seen that 1/4 of crowds are international so American economy is not the only driver of crowds.

Remember, those announced attendances numbers are trailing indicators. Attendance was barely up, end of 2019. It's possible that attendance has taken a sharp rise in early 2020. We just don't know.

Other factors certainly making the parks *feel* more crowded, maybe especially now:
Epcot may be a park not drawing much resort attendance. It's basically a construction zone, with several fewer attractions than even recently. Test Track is down for the month. Energy is gone and not yet replaced. Innovations are gone. Character Spot is gone.
So attendance typically taken by Epcot *might* be going to other parks.

Disney's budget cutting -- operating with fewer hours, including fewer extra magic hours, is certainly making things more crowded. Spreading people out over 10 hours instead of 13 hours, etc.

And even if attendance is only rising slightly, we start to see more issues of "critical mass."
Look at it this way --- If a given ride can handle 200 people per 10 minutes.. and 180 people get in line, every 10 minutes, then the line should keep moving with minimal wait. If 195 people get on line every 10 minutes, the line should continue to be minimal.
But if 210 people get in line every 10 minutes, although it's only slightly more, it can cause an ever expanding wait time.
Attendance has been increasing year by year, but Disney World has actually done very little to ADD CAPACITY. Literally, to add more physical room to spread people out, and to add more attractions to soak people up. Animal Kingdom added some capacity with Pandora. DHS replaced only rides with new rides -- to attract more people, but DHS didn't really add physical or ride capacity. In fact, some high capacity attractions are long gone, replaced with lower capacity. (Backstage Tour, Lights Camera Action, Great Movie Ride -- could all soak up TONS of people). Magic Kingdom's capacity has been pretty stagnant for a few years now -- the Tron coaster should help in terms of ride capacity. But with reductions in entertainment, you're actually currently at reduced capacity. No night time parade to soak up people. No Muppets in Liberty Square.

Compare the 4 parks down to 2015. In 5 years, how many of the parks have actually added attraction capacity and/or physical space? AK added a little with Pandora. DHS lost a lot of capacity during all the construction, but I'm not sure they are actually sure whether their current capacity is any better than circa 2014. Epcot WILL add some capacity over the next couple years, but right now capacity is REDUCED compared to previous years. And Magic Kingdom is stagnant.
So even slight increases in attendance can overwhelm the parks without increasing capacity.

 

[CastAStone]

DHS lost a lot of capacity during all the construction, but I'm not sure they are actually sure whether their current capacity is any better than circa 2014.

They have added about 40,000 rides/day vs 2014 (roughly a 33% increase; based on a 12 hour day). They closed 2 rides to open 5; MMRR will have about 15% lower capacity than TGMR, MF:SR has roughly the same capacity as Backlot tour did in the last 5 years of it's operation, and ROTR, SDD, and AS2 are all incremental capacity, as is the 3rd track they added to TSM.

As far as shows, that capacity is expandable at most shows based on number of performances a day, but I will point out that they also added Lightning McQueen's Racing Academy, which runs continuously.

I think Disney knows they have a capacity problem and is tackling it one park at a time.

 

[CoffeeKitten]

For my upcoming trip in May, we planned one day at MK for a Saturday. I don't want to redo my whole trip plan (rest days and such). We'll try to get our FPs and we have lunch at BOG. So I guess I'll have to keep my expectations low.

 

[yulilin3]

Never seen this on a Monday morning in February, as I was leaving mk at 11am they were running both ferries, each one of them arriving almost to capacity (500 per ferry) every couple of minutes. I ask ther cm about the number. The monorails were operating btw. It's definitely busier

 

[emilyrachael]

I'm curious what the weather was like. We went the previous week, and yes, crowds were high. One thing I noticed was that because the weather was nice (70's) but not quite swimming weather, we were spending more hours per day in the park. If it had been warmer, we probably would have taken a pool break.

 

[yulilin3]

For my upcoming trip in May, we planned one day at MK for a Saturday. I don't want to redo my whole trip plan (rest days and such). We'll try to get our FPs and we have lunch at BOG. So I guess I'll have to keep my expectations low.

If you can, rope drop. I stream every Monday morning and arrive at 8am at main street and it's very enjoyable. I knock out several of the not so popular rides in about 2 hours, Dumbo, barnstormer, winnie the pooh, tea cups, peoplemover, iasw

 

[CastAStone]

Never seen this on a Monday morning in February, as I was leaving mk at 11am they were running both ferries, each one of them arriving almost to capacity (500 per ferry) every couple of minutes. I ask ther cm about the number. The monorails were operating btw. It's definitely busier

Magic Kingdom, DHS, and AK look bananas based on wait times today. Epcot looks manageable (65 minutes for FEA and 50 for Soarin with TT still closed for refurb).

 

[SaintsManiac]

For my upcoming trip in May, we planned one day at MK for a Saturday. I don't want to redo my whole trip plan (rest days and such). We'll try to get our FPs and we have lunch at BOG. So I guess I'll have to keep my expectations low.

We rope dropped Saturday after Thanksgiving. Left at noon. Got about 7 rides in (including FPs). It was getting busy and we had to leave for the airport, but it was a fantastic morning.