Why are the parks so busy now?

jklakeview

jklakeview

Well-Known Member
RiGoRmOrTiS said:
Ive been coming to florida and the disney parks since i was 9 years old (32 now) and we have always come in october to avoid the crowds but this doesnt seem to work anymore.

This past week especially all the parks including universal have been unbearbable. whats going on? what changed? ive noticed this getting peogressivly worse year on year.

rides breaking down (pirates). 45mins - 90mins on literrally every attraction except living with the land in epcot and omg the brazilians, so many brazilians. i never knew how loud they were until they started filling the parks

at universal this past thursday, 80mins minion mayhem, 60 mins transformers,60 rip ride and rocket etc.. etc..

shoulder to shoulder in epcot, face to face in MK, urgh.. is there any month better now? november perhaps?
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I'm here right now this week too. So after talking to a lot of guests it seems that Tennessee and Kentucky along with small parts of Ohio are to blame for the bigger crowds. This apparently has become Fall Break for most if not all of Tennessee and Kentucky. I myself have met tons of people from Kentucky here. Also a few people from Ohio said they are testing year round schools. This is one of their 3 week breaks. Also I've met a bunch of people here on conventions. The only slow time I really know of is that last week of January and first week of February. The first week of December used to be good but I've heard that changed too
 
erstwo

erstwo

Well-Known Member
I recently re subscribed to Touring Plans after a two year break. To my surprise, gone were all the 1's except a very few days in September.
I remember planning my family's first trip in early December 2010 and having one day that was a 1, and three days that were 2's. That is no longer the case by a long shot. No more 1's in January (could be wrong, but memory says the runDisney events have bumped them all up to 2's & 3's), February or November either.
No matter what any of the nay sayers on this forum say, no matter the problems (or non problems) Disney parks may have, no matter the 'lack of magical CM's, or 'new rides', or 'proper upkeep' bemoaned and discussed at length, people are pouring through the gates of WDW in droves and many of them are eating it up.

Our school district had Fall Break last week. I knew 22 (twenty two!!) families either at WDW or on a Disney land/sea package. 4 had never been before. Three of those have already booked their next trip. The kool aid is alive and well folks. The hard part is seeing all those photos on social media and not being there yourself! :)
 
englanddg

englanddg

One Little Spark...
Endor Sightseer said:
There is a Disney addiction virus that is inhaled from The Haunted Mansion, Spaceship Earth, popcorn carts, Pirates water, etc. This virus is spread to everyone they infected subsequently encounter. Therefore, everyone in the world is now addicted to Disney.
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AEfx

AEfx

Well-Known Member
G00fyDad said:
Correct. If you work it right you can get along with no problems. I don't like to see people get up at the crack of noon, and go to the parks then gripe about the crowds. :rolleyes:
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Oh, that's always the case. The #1 thing about any time of the year, even the busiest, is to be there at opening. It's foolproof. You've seen half the park by the time most folks start strolling in, and you stay ahead of them until the afternoon - where you go somewhere and relax as folks are just making their way to the major stuff.

I'll never forget a few years ago when a friend of mine emailed me the week before Xmas. I'm the "go to" person when folks are planning WDW vacations (though, less and less seem to be going these days). She emailed me because her SIL was going Xmas week and wanted to know if I had any advice.

I got a lump in my throat and wanted to say, "pray?" LOL. Oh, they also had never been before and had 3 kids under 5.

But I gave them the one piece of advice above, and you know what? They had a great time. Raved about it. They were glad I had told them to get there early because although they are early risers, and used to getting everyone up and out early in the AM, they had thought they'd hang around the pool and stuff early in the day and go to the theme parks later. They ended up being at every park at like 7:30AM, and during that week even if they don't announce early openings, they open early - and they were in a park before 8 every day and after lunch when they had done all the rides the kids could handle, they headed out to relax, coming back for the night shows.

I already knew it was effective, but that to me was the ultimate validation of the theory - pretty much worst case scenario (They were at the MK on Xmas day!), and it gave them a great trip without waiting in line for hours.

Conversely, I know some folks who I later found out were there the same week in Oct I was once (back when Oct was slow) and had a horrible time and said they barely went to the parks because of the lines. I didn't wait for almost anything. The reason? They slept until 9 or 10. Lazed around for an hour (they were a couple of girls who like to primp LOL), and they usually walked in around noon time/1PM. They said most days they only spent a few hours because everything was so busy. Just being there at opening that week, I never waited more than 15 minutes for anything and saw everything multiple times.
 
C

cr3346

Active Member
I was down there last week 10/3-10/8, and the crowds were out of control. Last Friday, 10/3, Studio's was pretty empty. Basically walked on ToT and RnRC, and I thought wow, this is going to be a good trip. But we went to MK on Monday and it was out of control, worse than the summer time. Both Pirates and HM had lines of about 60 minutes. It was so bad we left, and we go down pretty much every summer and never really remember it being that bad
 
Tom Morrow

Tom Morrow

Well-Known Member
rct247 said:
There really is only about 4-6 weeks out of the entire year that the parks are not busy anymore. Labor Day to the 3rd week of Sept and a few weeks in January/February and that's it.
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Yep, this is pretty much dead-on.
G00fyDad said:
So why is it Disney doesn't spend some of that money updating and rehabbing the parks again....? :banghead:
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Because they are thinking short term and eventually people will catch on and stop bothering to go? In fact, they already are, and WDW currently fills this void with "one and done" foreign tourists.
 
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jklakeview

jklakeview

Well-Known Member
That is another reason why the park is so busy. I said to my wife yesterday "wow could you imagine if this place were only filled by people from America, it would be dead here". I just started going in 2004 regularly. Can anyone tell me when the last time was that it was MOSTLY only people from America?
 
MouseBait

MouseBait

New Member
Holy COW! I've been coming to DW for years in both May and Oct. I'm here right now for 10 days in FW and went to MK for the first time on this trip, yesterday. I've NEVER seen it like this before. I could not wrap my head around the crowds, the wait times etc. I made a rookie mistake though. MK was open until 3am with Extra Magic and because of being forced into making dining reservations so many months out, we were stuck in that park.

Anyway, i saw no trend aside from masses of people. Even the Haunted Mansion gift shop had a 20 minute wait until we finally gave up and left at midnight. 20 minute line for the gift shop!!!

I think this may be the last year for DW. This is the first year that fun seems secondary to planning. The stressed people running to try and make their reservations or their fast passes, 90 minute waits for Pirates (which we've always pretty much walked on but didn't even ride yesterday because no FP were available), We didn't even get close to riding the new mine train. I'm hoping things smooth out the remainder of this week. If it stays like this, I foretell many more hours spent at the RV than standing in lines.

Unbelievable here. Truly unbelievable.
 
DougK

DougK

Well-Known Member
jklakeview said:
That is another reason why the park is so busy. I said to my wife yesterday "wow could you imagine if this place were only filled by people from America, it would be dead here". I just started going in 2004 regularly. Can anyone tell me when the last time was that it was MOSTLY only people from America?
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It is still filled with people from America but now they are mostly from the South. Like Brazil. :D
 
Baldy

Baldy

Well-Known Member
I wonder if the crowds are just more spread out. We went in mid Aug. (as we have been doing for the last 6-7 years). We found this year the crowds were lighter than ever. At MK, we ended up riding everything at least twice (Buzz about 6 times - my son's favourite), left the parks for lunch (Downtown Disney) and dinner (Chef Mickey) and were still in the resort pool by 9:00 (We had arrived at MK just before 10am). We didn't stay for Wishes because we were done so early. In the afternoon, we got about 10 back to back fastpasses from the kiosk for any ride we wanted (except 7DMT) after we had used our 1st three. We usually need 2 days to get to every ride. Did we just get lucky?
 
draybook

draybook

Well-Known Member
Baldy said:
I wonder if the crowds are just more spread out. We went in mid Aug. (as we have been doing for the last 6-7 years). We found this year the crowds were lighter than ever. At MK, we ended up riding everything at least twice (Buzz about 6 times - my son's favourite), left the parks for lunch (Downtown Disney) and dinner (Chef Mickey) and were still in the resort pool by 9:00 (We had arrived at MK just before 10am). We didn't stay for Wishes because we were done so early. In the afternoon, we got about 10 back to back fastpasses from the kiosk for any ride we wanted (except 7DMT) after we had used our 1st three. We usually need 2 days to get to every ride. Did we just get lucky?
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Very lucky. Since 2008, we've gone in September 5 times. It's getting worse.
 
Kman101

Kman101

Well-Known Member
You can definitely see that the parks are busier. There isn't much of a 'slow season' left. Just a few weeks here and there. And some days, if you're lucky. It's a crapshoot. I went on a Tuesday in May, which should have been mostly dead, imo, yet it was packed like summertime (on that note, a few weeks later and I more or less never waited more than 30 minutes). Just awful. The crowds are getting really bad. It's why the other parks desperately need more things updated and new rides and things to do. Everyone flocks to MK.

But the fact is, get there by opening and you will see you can do a LOT between 9 and 12. Even as a [close enough] local I still try and make it to the parks by opening if my plan is to ride things.
 
englanddg

englanddg

One Little Spark...
Myamos said:
Lots of GA, Atlanta area schools have the break. Usually 2-3 days attached to a weekend.
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Odd that I live here, and never noticed, and I graduated from GA primary schools (though, I went to far more over the years).

Looking over the schedule, this must be a rather recent thing (as in the past decade)...
 

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