Look,, if WDW is this crowded.. the OPEN A FIFTH PARK...

[Walt Disney1955]

Has anyone bothered to explain why a 5th park makes no sense yet on this thread?
It’s a formality…but always true

For Disney they'll say its money. Their shareholders might not like it right now either, who knows. There certainly is the space for another park. Plenty I would think. But what is the theme? I like the idea of a 5th park but the truth is I am not even sure if I have heard a great idea for a 5th park's theme even on this board. Disney isn't exactly brimming with original ideas anymore.

My take is when Epic Universe opens in a few years down the road on I-4 Disney will seriously need to consider opening a fifth gate

You very well might be correct. In 1989 when DHS opened it is largely thought that with Universal opening in 1990 that this was the reason for it Disney adding a 3rd park.

It could take them years to open it though. I would say 5 years is a best case scenario. Here is the funny thing, in 1956 Walt was on the "What's my line" TV show where guests try and guess the famous person's voice. When they took the blindfold off it was Walt and he was talking about Disneyland. He mentioned how they are building attractions right now that will be opening next year (not sure what that was, Alice in Wonderland opened in 1958, could be something else though). So it just got me thinking how quick they used to do things. Disneyland had ground broken in what, early 1954? Or was it mid 1954? Either way, in July of 1955 the park was open. Walt dies in 1966 and WDW takes 5 years to open after that. Give Roy credit for stepping up of course, but I think it just goes to show you that the man behind the prompt work environment was always Walt and it is missing today.

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

For Disney they'll say its money. Their shareholders might not like it right now either, who knows. There certainly is the space for another park. Plenty I would think. But what is the theme? I like the idea of a 5th park but the truth is I am not even sure if I have heard a great idea for a 5th park's theme even on this board. Disney isn't exactly brimming with original ideas anymore.

Nope…none of that.
It’s because most travelers are limited to one week.
So they hit that wall when they opened DAK. That’s what was learned internally.

So anymore parks and people decrease the usage of the ones they already staff and run overhead on.

That’s it…it’s the glass ceiling. They’ve already decided they’re not gonna run the extra overhead. And it makes sense

 

[esskay]

From a purely selfish (and unrealistic) viewpoint, I want a 5th park to lower crowds. But in reality it wouldn't have that effect.

Attendance at WDW is up orders of magnitude to where it was when the last park, AK opened. If you go by that metric then statisticlly we should be at about 7 parks by now, which lets face it would be awful.

There's room at all 4 parks for significant expansion and capacity increase still. Whilst thats an option it's obviously going to be the cheaper, and preferred route to go. MK has a number of areas that could benefit from major expansion (I'm talking adding 3-6 new attractions here).

Epcots got space for additioanal showcase attractions and countries, not to mention a bunch of unused decaying areas like WoL.
Hollywood Studios is the most constrained but still has a fair bit of space (e.g the empty area behind ToT/RnR), although this is the one park that probably doesn't need any extra space right now.
And AK, could be trippled in size and still have space left over. Again though, its probably not really needed here, they could get away with the simple solution of wiping out the crummy remains of Dinoland and reutilizing existing space more efficiently.

Maybe 30 years down the line when thats all done a 5th gate might make more sense, and whilst I would love it to happen I just dont see it ever being on the cards. Time will tell though, if anythings going to force them into any kind of drastic development projects it'll be Epic Universe, and I suspect the only reason absolutely nothing has been doing is because Iger doesn't plan on being around when it opens.

I have to say though whilst I understand the argument of the reason for not having a 5th gate is the amount of time guests stay its also fairly flawed. "Oh we didnt get a chance to go to <new park>". "Dont worry honey, we'll come back next year now!"

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

From a purely selfish (and unrealistic) viewpoint, I want a 5th park to lower crowds. But in reality it wouldn't have that effect.

Attendance at WDW is up orders of magnitude to where it was when the last park, AK opened. If you go by that metric then statisticlly we should be at about 7 parks by now, which lets face it would be awful.

There's room at all 4 parks for significant expansion and capacity increase still. Whilst thats an option it's obviously going to be the cheaper, and preferred route to go. MK has a number of areas that could benefit from major expansion (I'm talking adding 3-6 new attractions here).

Epcots got space for additioanal showcase attractions and countries, not to mention a bunch of unused decaying areas like WoL.
Hollywood Studios is the most constrained but still has a fair bit of space (e.g the empty area behind ToT/RnR), although this is the one park that probably doesn't need any extra space right now.
And AK, could be trippled in size and still have space left over. Again though, its probably not really needed here, they could get away with the simple solution of wiping out the crummy remains of Dinoland and reutilizing existing space more efficiently.

Maybe 30 years down the line when thats all done a 5th gate might make more sense, and whilst I would love it to happen I just dont see it ever being on the cards. Time will tell though, if anythings going to force them into any kind of drastic development projects it'll be Epic Universe, and I suspect the only reason absolutely nothing has been doing is because Iger doesn't plan on being around when it opens.

I have to say though whilst I understand the argument of the reason for not having a 5th gate is the amount of time guests stay its also fairly flawed. "Oh we didnt get a chance to go to <new park>". "Dont worry honey, we'll come back next year now!"

Travel is up across the boards. Everywhere.

It’s nothing they’re doing in reality

 

[esskay]

Travel is up across the boards. Everywhere.

Yup

It’s nothing they’re doing in reality

Didn't say it was

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

Didn't say it was

Granted…
It’s been a tradition (for 10 years) to say attendance is up as “validation” of the management - which hasn’t been good.

They really haven’t been doing anything right…they’re just there.

 

[yensid1967]

I understand and would welcome a 5th park, BUT Disney needs to fix the current parks and expand those parks with other lands! Disney needs to go back to the basics of TRADITIONS and care about the way parks are!(overcrowded, genie+ sucks!)

 

[Goofyernmost]

In my opinion, even if they just did something, anything with all the empty buildings it would help considerably. Oh, also... lose the damn Fastpass, Genie+ and Lightening Lane. The crowd would, like it once did, spread itself out and all would settle into a reasonable wait times. In 1987 the attendance was 21.7 million. The anticipated attendance for 2023 is about 58 million. 1987 WDW had two parks, MK and EPCOT. They now have four parks. Twice as many parks and that works out to the following when it comes to dispersion per park. In 1987 (2 parks) it was 11 million per park. In 2023 (4 parks) it is 14.5 million per park. That's a difference of 3.5 million per year or 2398 per park per day. Those numbers seem like a lot, but when you factor in that is over a 37 year span, it isn't all that huge. The biggest problem is that MK remains the most wanted park because it has the most desirable attractions. In order to move those people out one needs to add attractions to the three other parks that people would be drawn to like they are to MK. Than you run into those that get upset if the more popular stuff gets put into those parks that need more variety and MK like attractions to compete. It's between a rock and a hard place. We all want Disney to maintain the distinction between all the parks, but without stuffing in many more things in EPCOT, DHS and DAK, DAK being the most needy. If they were able to expand DHS and DAK and fill them with attractions that appeal to everyone the problem might be solved. One of the parks with the most room to expand is EPCOT, but would run the risk of being MK.2. Something that might go along way to easing the crowds, but also one that would get the most pushback.

What is also different is back then, unless it was being revitalized every building had something in it and it also had more Omni-mover rides. EPCOT had almost nothing but Omni-movers, real people eaters. There are also a lot of unused or underused places now that they didn't have then. A new park wouldn't really change anything because of, first, as said before, unlike Europe which is more often than not allowed 4 weeks time off, this country is hard to even get one week off for a vacation. Why? Mostly because corporations are greedy and also stupid to not realize that people need a rest, but that's another topic for another thread. Second the number of highly popular attractions still remain in MK, even though DHS has stepped up a bit. The majority of the crowds are at MK and the other three do not have enough things or enough popular things to draw them in to the degree of MK. So building yet another park in and of itself will not automatically mean that droves of people will just head to it, instead of MK.

The only thing I can think of that could go into a new park and make a difference would be a nostalgia park. One where Disney reproduced all the best attractions that they closed down in the past. Reproduced with recent technology and all hail the Omni-mover.

 

[THEMEPARKPIONEER]

I think they need to make another Disneyland somewhere else in the US, maybe 2 other locations. I wouldn’t mind seeing a Disney ski resort with a Disneyland or castle park on property.

 

[Brer Panther]

I've said something similar before, but do we even want to see what a fifth park built by Iger and his team would be like?

 

[BlakeW39]

I've said something similar before, but do we even want to see what a fifth park built by Iger and his team would be like?

Hell no.

 

[Scott B]

we are all complaining about the disney Greedy and Bob Cheapskate.. and ol' Bob says.. hey if you are gonna come then you are gonna pay for it.. Well if you want to relieve OVER CROWDING. OPEN ANOTHER PARK.. if you start today.. it can be open in a year.. IF YOU WANT TO DO IT.. Epcot was built in just over a year.. Magic Kingdom, in a year.. in the past.. it was we can't build it, its a recession.. we couldn't build it last year. it was covid.. well guess what.. no recession and covid has cut way back, and you have more money then GOD...and they are bringing more in ..in dump trucks each and every day.. BUILD ANOTHER PARK.. No excuse now..

I agree as well. Look at all the DVC hotels that have been built. And another one being built at The Poly. Why not put another country in at EPCOT. Tear out the whole Dinosaur part (Except Dinosaur ride) and put something else in there. I realize that Disney has put Billions in the parks in the last decade but they have not expanded as they should have given all the new lodging at WDW. I saw the Disney Villians clip on this site last week, as there has been talk about a Disney villians park. My vote for Disney villians would be Captain Barbossa, Davey Jones or Lord Cutlet Beckett! Bob Iger should build a new park at WDW expeditously.

 

[MickeyLuv'r]

WDW wants the parks to always feel crowded, to help keep the perception of very high demand and manipulate guests into buying tons of add-ons like G+, DAH, holiday parties, onsite, deluxe, dessert parties, etc. People typically rationalize these extra costs as a premium to avoid the worst crowds. Sure WDW is actually a high demand destination but I’m convinced they finagle park operations, staff, park hours, and discounts to keep WDW in a very consistent ‘feels crowded‘ pattern.

This was my sense just a few days ago.
On a busy day, the safari didn't open until after 9am. As soon as it opened, the posted standby was already 85minutes, and appeared to really be that long of a wait (not inflated). Now possibly they had an issue that morning getting the animals to cooperate.

But it occurred to me that it doesn't take much to manipulate late morning wait times. If the safari has an 85 minute wait, that is a lot of people being held up in 1 queue.

The day before, we noticed that Slinky was also not running at park opening. I mean it was not running for the entire early entry, so enough people to create a 120minute back-up spent all of the early entry stuck in one spot.

Since both attractions started the day that long, they stayed that long. (for as long as I watched wait times).

One other thing we noticed though- all week - was how light late night crowds were. I recall a great many times in the past when MK was packed up until midnight of later in the days of paper FP. A good number of times we had MK FP that were time-stamped at 1am or later! This year, MK was pretty empty by 9:30pm.

 

[hsisthebest]

Not to beat a dead horse here, (ok maybe a little)- a 5th park would not help capacity in any significant way. If all WDW had equal attendance, it would only increase capacity by 20%. It is similar to the diminishing returns of adding lanes to a highway - to go from 1 to 2 lanes can add 100% capacity a day, thereby doubling traffic, 2 lanes to 3 lanes only increases capacity 50%, when it fills up, the highway will have 250% of the traffic it originally had, adding a 4th lane only increases capacity 25% and so on.

The "5th park" was supposed to be RFID and magicbands- a billions of dollars program that would create a utopia in the parks where lines and "wasted" time would be a thing of the past- people would be spending money in gift shops and at restaurants instead of standing in line and we'd all be happily giving WDW our money. With the epic failure of magicbands as they were intended, we now have Genie+ and a thousand upsells- and my first trip to DL, a park with actual ride/attraction capacity to meet demand.

 

[Andrew25]

This was my sense just a few days ago.
On a busy day, the safari didn't open until after 9am. As soon as it opened, the posted standby was already 85minutes, and appeared to really be that long of a wait (not inflated). Now possibly they had an issue that morning getting the animals to cooperate.

But it occurred to me that it doesn't take much to manipulate late morning wait times. If the safari has an 85 minute wait, that is a lot of people being held up in 1 queue.

The day before, we noticed that Slinky was also not running at park opening. I mean it was not running for the entire early entry, so enough people to create a 120minute back-up spent all of the early entry stuck in one spot.

Since both attractions started the day that long, they stayed that long. (for as long as I watched wait times).

One other thing we noticed though- all week - was how light late night crowds were. I recall a great many times in the past when MK was packed up until midnight of later in the days of paper FP. A good number of times we had MK FP that were time-stamped at 1am or later! This year, MK was pretty empty by 9:30pm.

They do manipulate wait-times to help distribute crowds around the parks, and I 100% believe they exaggerate wait-times to convince guests that they must purchase Genie/Lightning.

I think late-night crowds decreasing are a potential result of guests arriving earlier in the park for rope drop, plus the combination of passholders being restricted.

 

[MickeyLuv'r]

Sure, but how much time are you spending in the great outdoors in freezing weather. You might ice skate but you don't do that for hours on end. Going in and out, coat on, coat off nor are you paying over a hundred dollars for the privilage. I was born and raised north of New York City and I would not find anything in a Disney park worth freezing for.

sorry... I didn't pay attention to how old this thread was before I quoted you.

If Disney was going to build another park in a different location, it would not have to be the same as current WDW. They could have more indoor attractions/shows, and possibly even an option to walk indoors between attractions.

 

[MickeyLuv'r]

They do manipulate wait-times to help distribute crowds around the parks, and I 100% believe they exaggerate wait-times to convince guests that they must purchase Genie/Lightning.

I think late-night crowds decreasing are a potential result of guests arriving earlier in the park for rope drop, plus the combination of passholders being restricted.

I didn't say they don't lie about wait times, just that in this case the safari appeared to actually be 85minutes. The line was backed up all the way past Tusker House all the way to the Discovery Island bridge. It was pretty crazy.

I think the late night drop-off is likely related to people waking up for G+ and BG's. AP's are possibly another factor, but many AP's have long been flat out blocked out of Easter week, plus most AP holders with the ability to visit any week other than Easter usually tries to avoid Easter week crowds/price hikes. So Easter typically has a low % of AP holders compared to other weeks. (Or at least I'm pretty sure that's the case.)

I can also vouch that the Slinky line was really 120minutes long. I'm sorry to report that I waited in it. Well, that isn't quite true. Before I rode Slinky, I rode: TSM:walk-on (posted10), MMRR 10min wait (posted 15), ToT nearly walk-on (posted 13 min, then 55 when I exited attraction), then MF as Single Rider (was about 20min, posted for standby was 50), THEN I waited 125 for Slinky, which was posted as 120 when I got in line for it.

[So all in all, I think I did very well by riding most of what I wanted to ride before getting in the Slinky line.]


Mind, another night we got in line for HM, posted wait 45min, but it was 5min/walk-on. Other rides were also inflated that night. SO i can also vouch for inflated posted wait times.

 

[scottieRoss]

I didn't say they don't lie about wait times, just that in this case the safari appeared to actually be 85minutes. The line was backed up all the way past Tusker House all the way to the Discovery Island bridge. It was pretty crazy.

I think the late night drop-off is likely related to people waking up for G+ and BG's. AP's are possibly another factor, but many AP's have long been flat out blocked out of Easter week, plus most AP holders with the ability to visit any week other than Easter usually tries to avoid Easter week crowds/price hikes. So Easter typically has a low % of AP holders compared to other weeks. (Or at least I'm pretty sure that's the case.)

I can also vouch that the Slinky line was really 120minutes long. I'm sorry to report that I waited in it. Well, that isn't quite true. Before I rode Slinky, I rode: TSM:walk-on (posted10), MMRR 10min wait (posted 15), ToT nearly walk-on (posted 13 min, then 55 when I exited attraction), then MF as Single Rider (was about 20min, posted for standby was 50), THEN I waited 125 for Slinky, which was posted as 120 when I got in line for it.

[So all in all, I think I did very well by riding most of what I wanted to ride before getting in the Slinky line.]


Mind, another night we got in line for HM, posted wait 45min, but it was 5min/walk-on. Other rides were also inflated that night. SO i can also vouch for inflated posted wait times.

Annual Passes are not blocked out at Easter.
Incredipass No blackouts
Sorcerer pass Only blackout at Thanksgiving and Christmas
Pirate Pass Blackout at Easter, Thankgiving, Christmas and 3 day weekends
Pixie Pass Can only use on January5-15 and then again September 6-10. All other dates are blacked out </sarcasm>

 

[TrainsOfDisney]

Magic Kingdom needs some serious help, and the sad thing is, it’s so easy!!!

1. - They messed up with fantasyland forest, that expansion should have backed up to the train tracks with additional show buildings on the other side of the tracks. There would have been room for 3-5 more show buildings. Beast e-ticket attraction, little mermaid underwater land, tangled dark ride, fantasyland theatre, Alice dark ride, plus a Casey jr. train could all have been added. Plus another couple of flat rides.

2. - Main Street expansion with theatre.

3. - second entrance / exit - back door entrance and exit behind storybook circus - direct bus to / from TTC. This would pull some people away from the main entrance at park open / close.

4 - rebuild Tomorrowland with new attraction in stitch building, and new speedway that wraps around a 2-story building that houses 2 flat rides (baymax theme maybe?).

5 - add a show in the horseshoe and an additional circus show in storybook circus.

And that’s BEFORE you look at beyond big thunder. That’s how easy it is to increase capacity at MK if you try.

 

[MickeyLuv'r]

I don't know if anyone has posted about this yet, my apologies if I missed anyone sharing this, but a North Carolina State Senator filed NC Senate Bill 594, the “Mickey’s Freedom Restoration Act,” which will provide $750,000 to study ways the state could lure WDW to NC if it passes.

Go figure!