News Walt Disney World theme parks increase capacity but see longer waits and less physical distancing

[legwand77]

Who is claiming no one is traveling?

Pretty much the ones who like your post

 

[DisneyMusician2]

I honestly believe both are true. There are people traveling, but AP holders and locals are most likely a majority of that 35% capacity. If transportation crowds are any indication the population of the parks is not mostly resort guests. Even on the weekends I was riding buses alone more often than not.

 

[Jrb1979]

Pretty much the ones who like your post

I've never said people aren't traveling. I've said that it's been advised that people don't travel.

 

[TrainsOfDisney]

I've never said people aren't traveling. I've said that it's been advised that people don't travel.

Which is a fact. Obviously we all know people are traveling. I have friends and family that have traveled international this year. I’ve thought about visiting Disney a few times myself, but in the end don’t feel like the risk is worth it.

 

[legwand77]

Just to be clear , since Train obfuscated it a bit with all travel, I was/am only talking about travel from out of state, country to Disney and the shaming of that.

 

[GoofGoof]

There are posters constantly claiming no one is traveling, no one should travel etc etc. Only locals are going to Disney, only AP holders etc. The facts are that is not true, no matter how many time they say it. It is not just me saying that, news reports, blogs, trip reports, and photos etc etc. Still with all that they still deny people are traveling. Of course like I have said before travel is way off from normal but to claim no one is traveling to Disney is just not true. Just in the article I linked they profiled families from St. Louis, Alabama and Vegas who was even an ER nurse. Even the parks are increasing ride capacity to keep up with demand.

I haven’t seen anyone say no one is traveling. People have said no one should be traveling, but that’s a different argument for another thread. Nobody said only locals and only AP holders are at WDW. You are creating that straw man argument and then trying to prove it’s not true. What people have said is that the Disney parks are not getting anywhere near a regular level of out of state travelers and that’s still a fact and still very much true. Posting a picture and claiming it’s all out of state tourists or a story with several anecdotal accounts of people traveling to WDW from out of state is not proof that travel Is returning to normal.

It is what it is these days. WDW is open and people are going and hopefully having some fun. That’s the best we can hope for at this point. If all goes well maybe we will see an actual uptick by the Spring and a return to something that at least resembles normal. We are not there yet, not even close.

 

[Miss Bella]

When I was there in August the resorts that were open were not empty. I don’t know what the capacity was, but I know the line for the sky liner in the mornings at pop, Riviera and CB were long. The pool at Riviera and CB were packed every afternoon. The crowds were lower then they are now.

 

[legwand77]

When I was there in August the resorts that were open were not empty. I don’t know what the capacity was, but I know the line for the sky liner in the mornings at pop, Riviera and CB were long. The pool at Riviera and CB were packed every afternoon. The crowds were lower then they are now.

exactly, same here , when I went in November. sure not near what it is last year but not empty.

 

[legwand77]

I haven’t seen anyone say no one is traveling. People have said no one should be traveling, but that’s a different argument for another thread. Nobody said only locals and only AP holders are at WDW. You are creating that straw man argument and then trying to prove it’s not true. What people have said is that the Disney parks are not getting anywhere near a regular level of out of state travelers and that’s still a fact and still very much true. Posting a picture and claiming it’s all out of state tourists or a story with several anecdotal accounts of people traveling to WDW from out of state is not proof that travel Is returning to normal.

It is what it is these days. WDW is open and people are going and hopefully having some fun. That’s the best we can hope for at this point. If all goes well maybe we will see an actual uptick by the Spring and a return to something that at least resembles normal. We are not there yet, not even close.

Your steady refrain is the majority of crowds and increase in crowds is local AP holders. I disagree, especially these two weeks. Much more out of state travelers than you are saying. Plenty of evidence showing that.

 

[lazyboy97o]

Who is claiming no one is traveling?

Claiming that travel is going strong and not causing any spread seems to be the latest way to deny the pandemic.

 

[BrianLo]

When I was there in August the resorts that were open were not empty. I don’t know what the capacity was, but I know the line for the sky liner in the mornings at pop, Riviera and CB were long. The pool at Riviera and CB were packed every afternoon. The crowds were lower then they are now.

It’s definitely a bit artificial when it comes to the sky liner. I’m currently at a ski resort (in fact staring at a gondola currently) and the bottle neck is definitely the gondolas... which by virtue of social distancing are likely averaging 30% of their capacity or less.

 

[GoofGoof]

Your steady refrain is the majority of crowds and increase in crowds is local AP holders. I disagree, especially these two weeks. Much more out of state travelers than you are saying. Plenty of evidence showing that.

So you are saying that the majority of people at WDW are out of state travelers and not people who drove in? Where are they all staying? Crowds are much larger on weekends than during the week so why are out of state guests who flew in choosing to go to the parks on the weekends but not as much on weekdays? Seems unlikely but I guess we don’t know for sure either way.

 

[tommcp516]

This is just anecdotal, but it appears to me that over the course of this week more rooms across numerous resorts have now become available to book for April (Easter week) as compared to last month when I originally booked our trip. After our initial booking, we decided in the beginning of December to add an extra night's stay. I wanted to try out the Contemporary, but for the first few weeks that I was looking only Garden Wing rooms were available. This weekend I was able to modify our reservation to add an extra day at the Contemporary in a Tower-Lake View room. I kept checking availability daily in the hopes that someone in the Tower might cancel, and sure enough a Lake view room popped up one day and we booked in.

Out of curiosity, I've kept going back to check availability, and now there are Lake View and Park View rooms available for the entire week. I did a quick check for the same week and noticed quite a bit of availability across multiple categories at many of the resorts that weren't there when I first started looking in early November. Perhaps coincidentally, this uptick in availability seems to have started after the recent approval and initial distribution of the Covid vaccines.

One possibility is that numerous bookings across multiple resorts are being cancelled by guests more or less at the same time, or, more likely, that Disney is making more rooms available to book across many of their resorts in April. If the latter is the case, hopefully the fact that they appear to be encouraging more bookings is a sign that they are planning on increased attendance/park capacity, and with that increase may offer more across all parks in the way of additional restaurant openings, EMH, or possibly even entertainment/fireworks.

Of course, this just might be eager speculation on my part...

 

[GoofGoof]

This is just anecdotal, but it appears to me that over the course of this week more rooms across numerous resorts have now become available to book for April (Easter week) as compared to last month when I originally booked our trip. After our initial booking, we decided in the beginning of December to add an extra night's stay. I wanted to try out the Contemporary, but for the first few weeks that I was looking only Garden Wing rooms were available. This weekend I was able to modify our reservation to add an extra day at the Contemporary in a Tower-Lake View room. I kept checking availability daily in the hopes that someone in the Tower might cancel, and sure enough a Lake view room popped up one day and we booked in.

Out of curiosity, I've kept going back to check availability, and now there are Lake View and Park View rooms available for the entire week. I did a quick check for the same week and noticed quite a bit of availability across multiple categories at many of the resorts that weren't there when I first started looking in early November. Perhaps coincidentally, this uptick in availability seems to have started after the recent approval and initial distribution of the Covid vaccines.

One possibility is that numerous bookings across multiple resorts are being cancelled by guests more or less at the same time, or, more likely, that Disney is making more rooms available to book across many of their resorts in April. If the latter is the case, hopefully the fact that they appear to be encouraging more bookings is a sign that they are planning on increased attendance/park capacity, and with that increase may offer more across all parks in the way of additional restaurant openings, EMH, or possibly even entertainment/fireworks.

Of course, this just might be eager speculation on my part...

They could be ramping up resort capacity in anticipation of larger crowds or it could be that people are cancelling and moving trips back a few months into the late Spring/Early Summer in the hopes that vaccines are more widely available and maybe some covid restrictions are rolled back...or a combination of both.

 

[legwand77]

So you are saying that the majority of people at WDW are out of state travelers and not people who drove in? Where are they all staying? Crowds are much larger on weekends than during the week so why are out of state guests who flew in choosing to go to the parks on the weekends but not as much on weekdays? Seems unlikely but I guess we don’t know for sure either way.

These two weeks I would say so, staying at the resort, off site hotels DVC the usual places.

 

[legwand77]

This is just anecdotal, but it appears to me that over the course of this week more rooms across numerous resorts have now become available to book for April (Easter week) as compared to last month when I originally booked our trip. After our initial booking, we decided in the beginning of December to add an extra night's stay. I wanted to try out the Contemporary, but for the first few weeks that I was looking only Garden Wing rooms were available. This weekend I was able to modify our reservation to add an extra day at the Contemporary in a Tower-Lake View room. I kept checking availability daily in the hopes that someone in the Tower might cancel, and sure enough a Lake view room popped up one day and we booked in.

Out of curiosity, I've kept going back to check availability, and now there are Lake View and Park View rooms available for the entire week. I did a quick check for the same week and noticed quite a bit of availability across multiple categories at many of the resorts that weren't there when I first started looking in early November. Perhaps coincidentally, this uptick in availability seems to have started after the recent approval and initial distribution of the Covid vaccines.

One possibility is that numerous bookings across multiple resorts are being cancelled by guests more or less at the same time, or, more likely, that Disney is making more rooms available to book across many of their resorts in April. If the latter is the case, hopefully the fact that they appear to be encouraging more bookings is a sign that they are planning on increased attendance/park capacity, and with that increase may offer more across all parks in the way of additional restaurant openings, EMH, or possibly even entertainment/fireworks.

Of course, this just might be eager speculation on my part...

I would say the former, they wouldn't be announcing the opening of resorts in the spring like they have in the past few weeks if they were seeing a lot of cancellations. They are adding more rooms and opening more resorts.

 

[GoofGoof]

I would say the former, they wouldn't be announcing the opening of resorts in the spring like they have in the past few weeks if they were seeing a lot of cancellations. They are adding more rooms and opening more resorts.

Which resorts are they opening for Spring Break? I hadn‘t heard of any additional rooms for April, the latest I saw was a delay of the one All Star resort by 6 weeks from beginning of Feb into the end of March. BC and Wilderness were opening end of May and June with Poly in July.

 

[legwand77]

Which resorts are they opening for Spring Break? I hadn‘t heard of any additional rooms for April, the latest I saw was a delay of the one All Star resort by 6 weeks from beginning of Feb into the end of March. BC and Wilderness were opening end of May and June with Poly in July.

I said Spring, not spring break.

 

[GoofGoof]

I said Spring, not spring break.

Ok. @tommcp516 was talking about an increase in room availability at CR for Spring Break in the beginning of April. I don’t think opening resorts at the end of May or Jun/Jul has a lot of impact on that. My guess would be they likely unblocked some CR rooms that were taken out of service but there is also the possibility some people postponed to late Spring or early summer when the vaccine is more likely to be readily available and maybe covid restrictions will begin to ease.

 

[tommcp516]

Ok. @tommcp516 was talking about an increase in room availability at CR for Spring Break in the beginning of April. I don’t think opening resorts at the end of May or Jun/Jul has a lot of impact on that. My guess would be they likely unblocked some CR rooms that were taken out of service but there is also the possibility some people postponed to late Spring or early summer when the vaccine is more likely to be readily available and maybe covid restrictions will begin to ease.

I suppose the other piece of this anecdotal puzzle might come from people who have been checking room availability in late spring/early summer, to see if anyone has noticed a decrease in available rooms for that period of time--which would correspond to people cancelling their early April reservations and moving them back.

But if availability during that time has remained the same (or possibly even increased), then it would seem to point to WDW unlocking more rooms for a planned increase in capacity.

Is there anybody following this thread who's been in the middle of booking a late spring/early summer reservation and noticed any changes one way or the other?