Share Positive Experiences with Current Crowd Levels

[wilkydelts]

Lets try this again with a different approach. Due to predictable reactions the other thread had to be locked and I understand why the moderators had to do it. Maybe this thread can avoid getting derailed by others who can not accept counter discussions. Please allow this thread to execute its intended purpose and ignore it if you have issues with it. This will also cause the moderators less stress because they do not have to worry about editing constantly in order to keep it civil.

Please post on this thread strategies and techniques you have used to have positive experiences fighting these current crowds levels. There are many people on these boards who have plans scheduled who can use your advice. Planning Disney is tough so adding additional stress and anxiety regarding crowd levels can really freak people out. Help these people have realistic expectations and hopefully they can be pleasantly surprised as their day unfolds. Please add as much detail and context to your post as possible so people can see how your experience relates to their plans and group size.

Hoping this thread can provide a positive voice to the current difficult situations in Disney.

 

[Lisabev]

Thank you for this. Hoping to hear some positivity as we arrive Tuesday and my stress level has been through the roof.

 

[edk35]

We arrive next Friday and would love to hear people's advice since all I ever hear is how crowded it is currently.

 

[PrincessWithABlaster]

Go to shows in the afternoon when there are a lot of people. Everyone is saying that HS is super crowded with nothing to do. Which is true in the morning but it has a lot of shows that let you escape the crowds in the afternoon.
Try to get 4th+ FPs.
Take an afternoon rest break at the resort and come back. AK and DHS seem to clear out in the evening which is nice. Wait times drop.
Schedule late lunches at TS or go to lounges in the mid afternoon to find some quiet.

 

[Mome Rath]

Day of, don't give up on getting new FP's or moving around ones you already have; the earlier you can run through your first 3, the quicker you can try for new ones. If you get wore out with the crowds take a break, either at your own hotel, or jump the Skyliner and hit up Boardwalk or Y/BC.

 

[westie55]

Go to shows in the afternoon when there are a lot of people. Everyone is saying that HS is super crowded with nothing to do. Which is true in the morning but it has a lot of shows that let you escape the crowds in the afternoon.
Try to get 4th+ FPs.
Take an afternoon rest break at the resort and come back. AK and DHS seem to clear out in the evening which is nice. Wait times drop.
Schedule late lunches at TS or go to lounges in the mid afternoon to find some quiet.

Are you able to get into the shows easily despite the crowds? Or do those have loooooong waits as well? I don't mind the huge waits on the other rides; I'm using fast pass over multiple days. But I won't have fp left to use on shows and I've never needed to before. I hope at least they are still easy!

 

[Mermaidtails1323]

Today was our last day. Animal kingdom. We had a FP for FOP so decided to take advantage of EMH. We rode EE 5 times, dinosaur, and the triceratops by 9am. We decided to try for the 10am FOLK show, and walked up to a long line. As we were walking up, a CM approached us and brought us to the front row!! Both of my girls were in the show (parade at the end) and so ecstatic!! Went back to EE for our FP and time #6, and the CM there laughed and asked if we had enough yet.

For us, having sit down meal reservations helps break up the busy-ness. We also spent more time this trip enjoying our surroundings. One of the CM took awesome pics of my girls dancing outside of Akershus, and the girls loved dancing at AK today too. We also sat in front for the parade in MK yesterday.

Also, our best “luck” days were both days where my girls found pennies on the way in. I’m a big believer in “find a penny, pick it up...” and we just went with the flow.

Finally, spend the extra couple of minutes refreshing. I kept giving my girls options til we found something we liked (not headliners, but still good options).

 

[disneyinthespringtime]

Just expect it will be crowded and plan accordingly. Below is a possible outline...

1. Rope drop and get in 2, maybe 3, rides before line are nuts.
2. First fast pass
3. Show
4. 2nd fast pass
5. Early lunch or show (depending on opening time) then the opposite
6. 3rd fast pass
7. Play zone area (eg Boneyard Or Tom Sawyer Island). if needed so this before 3rd FP
8. Parade
9. Break at hotel
10. FP “lottery” - ride what comes up
11. Evening show

 

[vetrik]

We added one day at HS to our cruise/Universal trip, and we had a wonderful day on Thursday 2/20 despite the high crowds. We were so happy to be there. We’ve never been at the holidays, so they were the biggest crowds we’d experienced.

I’m not sure that what made our day successful would work for many parties. We were solely focused on things we had never done at HS or hadn’t done in many years. We weren’t trying to ride SDD, TSMM, RNRC, or ST. We didn’t rope drop anything, we had breakfast with mobile ordering at Docking Bay 7 after getting our ROTR boarding group. We had fast passes for TOT, MFSR, and AS2 (the one TSL ride we hadn’t been on), and reservations for a table service lunch and mid-afternoon Oga’s. We also did Lightning McQueen, and got additional FPs for Muppets and Indiana Jones. We did a good amount of exploring Galaxy’s Edge. This led to as low stress a day as possible for us (after getting our boarding group of course!), but wouldn’t work for anyone trying to get on more rides.

 

[Remy is Up]

My wife was at mk today. Got there at about 2. She pulled a space mountain, haunted mansion, and btmrr without much effort walking over from the contemporary. While there she pulled buzz, jc, and poc. She did tell.me that stand bys were crazy but she just focused on refresh, doing best available, relaxing in a show like CBj or carousel of progress if she couldnt modify times and enjoyed herself. We generally dont do afternoons unless we are going to a night show. Old adage applies. Get there early. Do what you can. Refresh. Use drops. Grab drinks or snacks. People watch and relax. Midday break. Different evening park for a show after dinner

 

[wilkydelts]

My wife was at mk today. Got there at about 2. She pulled a space mountain, haunted mansion, and btmrr without much effort walking over from the contemporary. While there she pulled buzz, jc, and poc. She did tell.me that stand bys were crazy but she just focused on refresh, doing best available, relaxing in a show like CBj or carousel of progress if she couldnt modify times and enjoyed herself. We generally dont do afternoons unless we are going to a night show. Old adage applies. Get there early. Do what you can. Refresh. Use drops. Grab drinks or snacks. People watch and relax. Midday break. Different evening park for a show after dinner

Thanks for sharing. I know that is only one person so refresh is obviously different but to show up at 2p without an pre-plans on a Saturday to MK and pull that off is incredible to me. Maybe I don't know enough regarding parties of 1 and this is actually normal.

Could you actually break up a party of 4-5 into singles and pull off enough FP+ overlap to still ride together?

 

[etoiles]

We were at Hollywood Studios today. It was crowded. We tried to rope drop Millenium Falcon but the line was too long for my kids so we got boarding passes and did Alien Saucers. Then we did Toy Story (fast pass), Star Tours (fast pass), attemped ROTR and met Chewbacca instead, did Slinky (fast pass), then ROTR, Muppets. We had lunch and then met Mickey and left because my four year old was having a meltdown. It was not a terrible day but overall good. I wish a fourth fast pass was available but I checked for 2 and 4 people numous times at supposedly ideal times but nothing was available.

 

[Sarahslay]

Go to shows in the afternoon when there are a lot of people. Everyone is saying that HS is super crowded with nothing to do. Which is true in the morning but it has a lot of shows that let you escape the crowds in the afternoon.
Try to get 4th+ FPs.
Take an afternoon rest break at the resort and come back. AK and DHS seem to clear out in the evening which is nice. Wait times drop.
Schedule late lunches at TS or go to lounges in the mid afternoon to find some quiet.

DHS is my favorite in the evening/night because the crowd really does thin out as the day goes on. I went in the evening on my second DHS day on my last trip with a few FP back to back, and it had been pretty crowded since it was a Saturday, but I rode every ride in the park but Smugglers (I had ridden it the day before and didn't feel like doing it again solo) and really only waited a little bit. I got SDD twice right before park close after riding TSM and SS, had used a FP for RnR and ST, and got one ToT all within a 3 hour time frame. It was absolutely fantastic and completely beat out going in the morning and staying all day with the crowds. I had gone early to get a BG, and was off ROTR by 8am, but I left and went to AK for a few hours and it was pretty dead. I had a nap, dinner in in the CL lounge at BWI, and walked to HS. It was absolutely perfect, and no stress (aside from those moment trying to get a BG lol).

 

[DisLiss]

Now that our kids are older we really enjoy taking a break midday by checking out other resorts. I think it's a two-fer, so to speak--the resorts are quieter, which is obviously a nice break, plus, they are resorts we don't stay at, so there seems to always be something new or different to check out at them. And it just seems to be a nice way to relax and re-energize before heading back into the crowds.

Plus, as always, we love to hop. If the app is showing that a different park has significantly lower wait times than the park where we are, we're more than willing to take the chance of traveling there in hopes that the wait times will still be lower.

 

[TheMaxRebo]

One thing we did our last trip (which was just last week, Presidents week, was we decided to do the Early Morning Magic and forgo getting park hoppers (actually, saved a little $) in trade-off

During that time we did Peter Pan, Carousel, Mine Train twice, Winnie the Pooh, and the Tea Cups, and then rope dropped Space Mountain - all that then freed up using our FPs for other rides

I am not saying to go nuts and buy every extra "up charge" under the sun, but by trading off one thing for another you might get more done

 

[Isabelle12345]

We were there this week and crowds were much higher than we expected... 10/10 on most days for all parks except Epcot...
But we managed to have an awesome week anyways! We tried to rope drop (all parks except HS since we weren’t interested in RotR) and were usually able to fit in 2-3 rides before the end of our 1st FP window; then would go to an attraction with low wait times or straight to 2nd FP, then a snack, then a 3rd FP at the very beginning of the window and book the next one right away. We would then go to lunch and do one more FP before leaving for a resort break.
I could have gotten / got Space Mountain, Frozen, Soarin, ToT, RnRC easily with minimal refreshing for 3-5 people, and many more non headliners especially in MK. Never ran into FoP or SDD or SDMT however but wasn’t looking specifically for those.
We always did a resort break (except the day we stayed for the parade) and hopped to a different park in the evening
Go with reasonable expectations and a good plan of attack and a plan B (ex: when we were in Epcot we ran into a 85min line for Nemo (!?!) so even though we had a FP the line was just insane so we skipped it and went to other attractions - Gran Fiesta Tour walk on and meet Anna and Elsa 15 min wait)... just know the usual patterns and try to zig when everyone else zags!
The only park we did not enjoy due to the crowds was HS since it was walk to wall people and it was hard to manoeuver trough... but everything else was amazing (and we are not Star Wars fans or thrill ride people so HS was mainly for TSL... which does not handle crowds well)
Enjoy!

 

[LSUmiss]

My wife was at mk today. Got there at about 2. She pulled a space mountain, haunted mansion, and btmrr without much effort walking over from the contemporary. While there she pulled buzz, jc, and poc. She did tell.me that stand bys were crazy but she just focused on refresh, doing best available, relaxing in a show like CBj or carousel of progress if she couldnt modify times and enjoyed herself. We generally dont do afternoons unless we are going to a night show. Old adage applies. Get there early. Do what you can. Refresh. Use drops. Grab drinks or snacks. People watch and relax. Midday break. Different evening park for a show after dinner

I was at mk too. Pretty much refreshed all day & got nothing but what I had ridden (small world, little mermaid, etc) so lucky of the draw I guess. Sad we need a thread like this.

 

[DisLiss]

Also, I find engaging with others really helps when there's a crowd. Whether it's a cast member or someone else in line who seems to have a sense of humor about the situation. We've found that if a few people or groups in line start talking/laughing/joking with one another, the happier vibe kind of spreads out to more people in line. I always appreciate when we can find someone to do that kind of thing with, and I'm not terribly good about just starting up a conversation with random strangers, but it seems easier at Disney because you already have a pretty big topic of discussion that you both obviously have an interest in.

 

[pwmitch237]

Also, I find engaging with others really helps when there's a crowd. Whether it's a cast member or someone else in line who seems to have a sense of humor about the situation. We've found that if a few people or groups in line start talking/laughing/joking with one another, the happier vibe kind of spreads out to more people in line. I always appreciate when we can find someone to do that kind of thing with, and I'm not terribly good about just starting up a conversation with random strangers, but it seems easier at Disney because you already have a pretty big topic of discussion that you both obviously have an interest in.

A great way to do this in line is to play Heads Up! or some other similar app/games. Happily would welcome the strangers around me to play along, and helped pass the time, along with getting everyone together to play.

Also, in general, know that things will go off your plan, take a deep breath, and smile and relax while you're in the parks. The magic of Disney is there. Find the beauty and the magic of the moments off-script, and breathe. It's really quite manageable and still enjoyable.

 

[orangecuse]

Great post! Just copying from another thread on our day:
So...we just left and did DHS Friday 2/28. It was awesome IME. We got BG 6 so very lucky but we rope dropped TSMM (10 min wait - we were in line for rope drop around 7:40) and I was able to pull 4th+ FP for every single ride but SDD (didn’t take them all but saw everything come up). We did AS2 x3, MFSR, TSMMx2, RotR, ToT, LM show, Racing Academy, and had an ADR at Sci Fi for lunch and left around 7. Everything was fast pass (except racing academy of course). We also had 2 infants with us (1 tall enough for As2, one not so our toddler did AS2 6 times because we took turns taking him). It seemed like a LOT of the crowd did not know how to use refresh and so being diligent with that paid off big time. We also found mobile order for Woodys lunch box to be pretty quick (10 minute wait maybe?) for dinner. Were the walkways miserable? Yes. But it seemed like for us at least we still got a ton done and it was our favorite day.