Expected park attendance numbers?

[techgeek]

My point (which I forgot to make) was that even on those days with the same or shorter hours, everyone is not in the park at once. And even when they are 15,000 will not saturate the MK.

There’s a very limited number of local AP’s that consistently rope drop to close (no less in July... in masks). AP’s are the only ones with a dicey reservation calendar. Standard ticket and resort guests are in good shape.

This is perhaps another reason why the 'balanced bucket' method of reservation allotments. If you mix in a decent percentage of APs, maybe you can eek a few more resort guests in overall because half the AP's will show in the morning and be gone by afternoon, and the other half won't show up until after lunch.

As a local AP, I picked up a MK day pretty much just for the novelty of it. We fully intend to breeze in when we get around to it, hit a few favorites, get the vibe of the place and then disappear. Especially in July / August there's no reason to spend a full day for us at all, and Disney doesn't seem to be offering any motivation to hang around. I'm sure many other Central Florida residents feel the same. My true local colors will come out in saying that the most time we'll probably spend in the parks in the next few months will be a lap or two around Food and Wine at Epcot, definitely after the afternoon heat... and maybe a morning or two visiting animals at AK.

 

[AugieMorosco]

They may “short change” themselves and err on the side of caution at first. They don’t want a PR problem. I’d expect the number to start ramping up after the first couple to few weeks if things go well. No inside knowledge, just stating what I would do in their shoes.

I completely agree. I think the absolute lowest numbers will be in the first few weeks, as they watch crowd flow, ride turnover time, queue times, etc. That, combined with desperately needing to avoid bad PR of long lines or huddled crowds, will keep the capacity super low. Use that to make adjustments and determine how to ramp up over time. Seems very logical to me.

 

[AugieMorosco]

Disney will also only have standby queues in order to promote social distancing. I think this is a mistake, and there has to be a better way, because where is everyone going to go when the park first opens? Everyone will head to FoP, 7DMT, RoTR/MMRR, etc. Anyone who has rope dropped before knows this, so I think the capacity will seem far worse for parks that are supposedly capacity restricted. Assuming from earlier posts that the capacity of 15k (in the case of MK) is what a normal 9-10am morning is like, a large majority of those people will be heading directly to those rides. And if that is normal, that is still a lot of people. And when you consider that park hours have been reduced, guests (especially resort guests) are more likely to spend more time at the parks then they might otherwise. I think people are going to be disappointed when they discover that waits will be longer then expected.

Assuming they open, I'll be at DHS on the 15 & 16 and I've thought about this alot. I've never been on ROTR or MMRR and I'm more excited about those than any other attraction right now, but I don't think I'll be part of the rope drop group. I did a Toy Story magic morning and I'm hoping it's more like that - SDD had a big line until it didn't. The last 30 mins it was walk on and I rode 8 times. I don't think Rise or Railway will be walk on, but I think the initial crowd surge will die down and it'll have reasonable wait times most of the day. I'd figure most of the crowd showing up in those first days will be somewhat Disney savvy and, once those lines get lengthy, take advantage of walk-ons everywhere else in the park and come back later. Maybe it'll be a stampede, but I hope not.

 

[rle4lunch]

Good time to ride RotR a few times in a day. lol.

Hopefully the crowds are still culled by my December trip. I remember the days walking the parks where it was actually enjoyable. Then came the FP+ and ADR 10,000 day out future booking fiasco's. And then, the pointless mulling around the parks where you wait for your turn on a 30 year old ride that is only 25% of what it used to be. Yet the parks are full, overfull.... But the rides, they only get minor planned maintenance...

Then they release 1 amazing (some are way too short) ride that everyone flocks to for a decade... Then they realize that maybe they should actually do something to draw those crowds away from that park, but only by taking 4 years to build a ride in another park.... Then, whoops, that one is WAYYYY too popular, so they should probably take out a proven people eater (albeit old and in need of an overhaul/refresh), and drop something in its place.... Then, they're like, "Eureka!", MK needs another coaster shoehorned into it! Let's spend half a billion dollars on something completely new instead of replacing dormant show space that's 'seasonally operating'... And while we're at it..... record scratch

Meanwhile as COVID-19 watches from afar: We've had enough of your changes Disney; Por favor manténgase alejado de las puertas ...

 

[marcel54]

I don't know how Disney is going to do the numbers. Here are a few examples of crowds at Epcot from a few years ago I got from a friend. New Years Eve 86K, 12/29 50K, 12/25 48K, Food & Wine avg 35 to 45K, July 4th avg 45K and normal days 27 to 35K. So are they going to take the max capacity or the normal attendance and cut it in half? We'll just have to wait and see.

 

[djkidkaz]

Right it has to be based on 25% of their average daily attendance. What is Epcot capacity where they actually have to close? Like 100,000? If so that’s 25,000 guests which is about what they normally average so they wouldn’t really be changing anything if that was the case.

 

[toolsnspools]

I just booked 6 days in the parks for late July and had my pick of parks every day. I'm hoping for light crowds, but don't really know what to expect. The fact that they are not allowing park-hopping has our options locked in for each day. If it's too busy, we'll go chill at the resort. May need to do some of that anyway with the masks.