In order to say the parks are running at or below capacity requires one to first define the capacity. We know attendance was still being restricted with reservations. Even before the pandemic and the introduction of reservations, the maximum capacity was determined by Disney.An 11 million guest drop for all 4 WDW parks comparing 2019 with 2022. The 2 Uni parks were up about 500k.
(Waits for people to claim “the parks weren’t running at full capacity!!!!1!”, which is a lie)
In order to say the parks are running at or below capacity requires on to first define the capacity. We know attendance was still being restricted with reservations. Even before the pandemic and the introduction of reservations, the maximum capacity was determined by Disney.
What this really clearly demonstrates is how crowding is not a measure of visitation, but is something can be shaped to create a desired outcome. Despite attendance still being below still rather recent peaks the parks feel just as if not more crowded.
Despite attendance still being below still rather recent peaks the parks feel just as if not more crowded.
Reservations filled out with enough frequency to know that limits did exist. Disney was also not secretive about trying to increase per capita spending. They were restricting attendance, but not really for what most would assume meets the criteria of guest satisfaction. I think the big issue isn’t people not visiting but the lack of staffing to support greater visitation.I don’t for a second believe that the parks were restricting attendance with the park reservation system in 2022. But this is absolutely true - Crowding was bad because of manipulation, not actual sets of feet in the parks. And crowded parks leads more to buy extras like Genie- and LL and AH tickets. But they’d never do that…
I think the big issue isn’t people not visiting but the lack of staffing to support greater visitation.
An 11 million guest drop for all 4 WDW parks comparing 2019 with 2022. The 2 Uni parks were up about 500k.
(Waits for people to claim “the parks weren’t running at full capacity!!!!1!”, which is a lie)
Just IOA, US is down.Whats interesting is universal orlando seems to be the only parks in the top 25 that are above 2019.
Reservations are so WDW can forecast labor and consumables for each park. Guest Reservation System is more properly called Supply Chain Optimization.Yup - the "park reservations are implemented to increase guest satisfaction" is nothing but a corporate gimmick.
It would be interesting to know how often the individual parks filled out their reservations to get a sense of what impact these limits may have had on the attendance figures of each park.Reservations filled out with enough frequency to know that limits did exist. Disney was also not secretive about trying to increase per capita spending. They were restricting attendance, but not really for what most would assume meets the criteria of guest satisfaction. I think the big issue isn’t people not visiting but the lack of staffing to support greater visitation.
Just looking at Universal, the only Uni park above 2019 worldwide is IoA. USJ, USF and USH are all still down which I think proves what we all already knew, IoA is a HUGE draw. It even looks like the pull of IoA has caused USF to recover faster as it is closer than any of their other parks to hitting 2019 levels again.An 11 million guest drop for all 4 WDW parks comparing 2019 with 2022. The 2 Uni parks were up about 500k.
(Waits for people to claim “the parks weren’t running at full capacity!!!!1!”, which is a lie)
Just looking at Universal, the only Uni park above 2019 worldwide is IoA. USJ, USF and USH are all still down which I think proves what we all already knew, IoA is a HUGE draw. It even looks like the pull of IoA has caused USF to recover faster as it is closer than any of their other parks to hitting 2019 levels again.
It would also be interesting to see a breakdown in where the guests are coming from, my guess is locals account for a large chunk of the increase for a variety of reasons.
As for Disney, no they have not recovered as much attendance wise but honestly, is that a bad thing? We all want them to start doing things right again but do any of us really want a return to 2019 crowd levels? Keep the levels where they are while addressing the issues we all see like quality, maintenance, lack of service, closed rides and stores, etc. Once that is done start adding more capacity so those overall crowd levels can increase without it turning the parks into the hellscape that was 2019.
I know most of us don't have a ton of faith in current management to do that, or at least do it well, but we can hope numbers like these make them pause and look at some of those areas.
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