News Disney Park Pass System announced for Walt Disney World theme park reservations

HauntedPirate

HauntedPirate

Park nostalgist
Premium Member
Sirwalterraleigh said:
Unprecedented demand…all the cool defenders are saying it 😂
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Indeed. 2 days with some parks unavailable is not indicative of a flood of APs into the parks. IMHO.

6 months ago you had to get park reservations well in advance of your planned dates or you ran a significant risk of not getting into most parks those days. Today? You can book any park for 6 of 7 days next week. Easter week? Wide open.

So what is it? Are APs not going, or are capacities so "back to pre-Covid levels" now that the reservation system has become a tool to allow TDO to only have the bare minimum of CM's working on any given day in any given park based on reservation numbers?

And if they start losing people out of the AP pool... who will they run to when they need people in the parks if when the next economic slowdown happens? Or when they price more people out and fewer start booking WDW vacations?

So many questions. 😂
 
Sirwalterraleigh

Sirwalterraleigh

Premium Member
HauntedPirate said:
Indeed. 2 days with some parks unavailable is not indicative of a flood of APs into the parks. IMHO.

6 months ago you had to get park reservations well in advance of your planned dates or you ran a significant risk of not getting into most parks those days. Today? You can book any park for 6 of 7 days next week. Easter week? Wide open.

So what is it? Are APs not going, or are capacities so "back to pre-Covid levels" now that the reservation system has become a tool to allow TDO to only have the bare minimum of CM's working on any given day in any given park based on reservation numbers?

And if they start losing people out of the AP pool... who will they run to when they need people in the parks if when the next economic slowdown happens? Or when they price more people out and fewer start booking WDW vacations?

So many questions. 😂
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My guess is the answer is hidden in your question
 
D

DCBaker

Premium Member
According to the AP Park Reservation calendar, here are the parks currently unavailable around the holiday next week -

2-19 - MK, AK, EPCOT
2-21 - All Parks

IMG_98F37881DE9D-1.jpeg
 
Patcheslee

Patcheslee

Well-Known Member
DCBaker said:
According to the Park Reservation calendars, here are the parks currently unavailable for Ticket/Resort guests -

2-18 - MK, AK, DHS
2-19 - MK, AK, EPCOT
2-20 - All Parks
2-21 - All Parks
2-22 - MK, AK, DHS
2-23 - MK, AK, DHS
2-24 - MK, AK, DHS
2-25 - MK

View attachment 621893

Here's a look at the AP calendar -

View attachment 621895
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Yeah, for some reason it won't let you pick multi day tickets if any of the days fall on no availability. Keeps saying pick another day. i.e wouldn't let me pick multidays starting on the 19th even though there are enough days overall.
 
jasminethecat

jasminethecat

Well-Known Member
Question-
Does anyone here actually know what these recent attendance caps are set to and has park attendance been really close to the max for weeks now?

It seems like chapek talks out of both sides of his mouth on attendance. It’s easy to say attendance has been down and is a problem before quarterly financials are released, then the numbers come out and “ooh it’s record profits per guest, thanks genie+! Oh yeah and we’re capped on attendance in February.”

Next he will blame worker shortages since park attendance is capped.

Then he will blame inflation and talk about how Disney is still such a great value even with higher multi day ticket prices.

And by then the next quarter financials will come out and show more money being taken overall and more per person, and they’ll need to figure out how to keep even more money flowing.

Maybe they could have a system where really rich people pay cast members to walk their groups to the front of the lines of the bigger group of somewhat rich people who paid extra to ride rides in lightning lanes. Because that group is now waiting an hour or more and Disney had to shut down the standby line for the massive number of poor people who could only afford a $6000 family vacation while 98% of the country just watches other peoples vacations on social media. Oh crap, we do have that already. That, and people who can afford the most expensive resorts get two extra hours in a park once per week.
 
T

Touchdown

Well-Known Member
They desperately want park reservations to run out 2 months in advance (like what happens at DLR) so they can micromanage staffing, but thus far they have been unable to create the false demand/FOMO to cause everyone to do it. Further, I predict that they massively upset a lot of Magic Key Holders and they will see a large chunk of them drop or downgrade their weekend passes, more so then they actually wanted, that it will effect their weekend numbers.
 
ToTBellHop

ToTBellHop

Well-Known Member
jasminethecat said:
Question-
Does anyone here actually know what these recent attendance caps are set to and has park attendance been really close to the max for weeks now?

It seems like chapek talks out of both sides of his mouth on attendance. It’s easy to say attendance has been down and is a problem before quarterly financials are released, then the numbers come out and “ooh it’s record profits per guest, thanks genie+! Oh yeah and we’re capped on attendance in February.”

Next he will blame worker shortages since park attendance is capped.

Then he will blame inflation and talk about how Disney is still such a great value even with higher multi day ticket prices.

And by then the next quarter financials will come out and show more money being taken overall and more per person, and they’ll need to figure out how to keep even more money flowing.

Maybe they could have a system where really rich people pay cast members to walk their groups to the front of the lines of the bigger group of somewhat rich people who paid extra to ride rides in lightning lanes. Because that group is now waiting an hour or more and Disney had to shut down the standby line for the massive number of poor people who could only afford a $6000 family vacation while 98% of the country just watches other peoples vacations on social media. Oh crap, we do have that already. That, and people who can afford the most expensive resorts get two extra hours in a park once per week.
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Capacity varies based upon staffing. A ways out, they can increase staffing to raise capacity, but these Presidents Week dates sold out pretty recently and they can’t raise staffing this late in the game.

Still wouldn’t want to go right now. Crowds are literally at the maximum they can handle safely at this staffing level, so you won’t get trampled but you’ll wait for everything. Enjoy the new flowers sprouting at Epcot?
 
T

Touchdown

Well-Known Member
If I was to make one further prediction, I don’t think park reservations (or at least the 2 pm hopper start) will last once Fantasmic starts. The reason is Epcot restaurants. Right now, I currently spend half my nights at Epcot (3) because there are only 2 nighttime shows, when Fantasmic opens I will drop down to two nights, as I will switch around my days. However as it stands, while I will likely replace my MK evening I will lose to this with a morning, I have no plans to replace the Epcot night (I expect AK to gain another morning assuming Nemo comes back, if not likely stay at DHS) because of Epcots late start. I know I’m not alone and it has to be hurting lunch numbers, once Fantasmic opens, evening numbers will suffer too.

They will need to lure people to Epcot too, and I would happily comply with spending a few hours midday eating at one of the restaurants and doing a few other things but I currently can’t. At the very least they need to roll back hopping to noon, as Boarding Groups are currently not a thing. Once GotG opens that likely changes things but who knows when I’m summer that opens.
 
Sirwalterraleigh

Sirwalterraleigh

Premium Member
Touchdown said:
If I was to make one further prediction, I don’t think park reservations (or at least the 2 pm hopper start) will last once Fantasmic starts. The reason is Epcot restaurants. Right now, I currently spend half my nights at Epcot (3) because there are only 2 nighttime shows, when Fantasmic opens I will drop down to two nights, as I will switch around my days. However as it stands, while I will likely replace my MK evening I will lose to this with a morning, I have no plans to replace the Epcot night (I expect AK to gain another morning assuming Nemo comes back, if not likely stay at DHS) because of Epcots late start. I know I’m not alone and it has to be hurting lunch numbers, once Fantasmic opens, evening numbers will suffer too.

They will need to lure people to Epcot too, and I would happily comply with spending a few hours midday eating at one of the restaurants and doing a few other things but I currently can’t. At the very least they need to roll back hopping to noon, as Boarding Groups are currently not a thing. Once GotG opens that likely changes things but who knows when I’m summer that opens.
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They’ll never…ever…give up their predictability to control costs and predict revenue for your “flexibility”

people have gone along with the reservations. The ship has sailed. You can’t go back.

fantasmic? I assume you’re joking there.
 
T

Touchdown

Well-Known Member
Sirwalterraleigh said:
They’ll never…ever…give up their predictability to control costs and predict revenue for your “flexibility”

people have gone along with the reservations. The ship has sailed. You can’t go back.

fantasmic? I assume you’re joking there.
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You don’t think Fantasmic is going to drive more people to DHS at night at Epcot and MKs expense? MK would welcome the relief, but Epcot is going to be hurt by it.
 
mightynine

mightynine

Well-Known Member
I could see them tweaking or dropping the time limit start on park hopping at some point, but park reservations are here to stay, IMO. Something had to replace the data they had from FP+ reservations.
 
Patcheslee

Patcheslee

Well-Known Member
Sirwalterraleigh said:
It’s a 25 year old fireworks show…it’s nothing.

why on earth would TDO care at all?
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Admittedly we never stayed for Fantasmic during either of our trips in 17 or 19. It was partially due to just not being interested in what we hadn't done by around 4pm, waiting around a few hours vs hopping to Epcot for a stroll around WS was an easy decision. It might change next time we go considering SWGE, MMRR have opened since then.
 
Sirwalterraleigh

Sirwalterraleigh

Premium Member
Patcheslee said:
Admittedly we never stayed for Fantasmic during either of our trips in 17 or 19. It was partially due to just not being interested in what we hadn't done by around 4pm, waiting around a few hours vs hopping to Epcot for a stroll around WS was an easy decision. It might change next time we go considering SWGE, MMRR have opened since then.
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What won’t change is their operational mandates
 
Sirwalterraleigh

Sirwalterraleigh

Premium Member
Touchdown said:
It’s not, they are majorly reworking it.
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It doesn’t matter…it’s still 20 minutes

people fall for this all the time…forget the fireworks…always diversionary nonsense (like from actually adding to the parks that you can use all damn day?)

I’ll admit that it alters crowd flow…it will. But there is no way this excuse for management cares how happy you are.

I know…she’s gone…it’s hard for people to really grasp this. But we need to if we are to have any of the glory days left.
 

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