Why are the parks so busy now?

[G00fyDad]

I don't think anyone is attributing the October crowds as such to MM+. The argument is that MM+ has caused documented increases in standby waits for what were once short-wait-time attractions. October busyness exacerbates this phenomenon.

(look below) You were saying.....?

A line to get into a store now. In October. Sad, sad, sad.

And on the MDE app I'm seeing an 80 minute wait for Haunted Mansion and 100 for POTC right now. What the heck is going on????? I know it's a "holiday" weekend, but these numbers are just off the rails crazy. Starting to wish I hadn't booked in 3 weeks. This is absurd.

Edited to add:
105 mins for Dumbo at the moment, 40 for It's A Small World. This is beyond the peaks of summer. I don't get it. At all. FP+ must be ruining everything. You never saw these kinds of waits for HM, POTC or IASW ANYtime before this nonsense. Hoping I can at least sneak into Hall of Presidents or CoP when I'm there.

(This one is even from YOU.)

Early-mid September crowds were fairly light this year, at least on the days I visited. But this month seems to have been extra busy. I was at the MK on Friday and it was miserable, with summer-level crowds. Pirates hit 50 minutes at 11:30 in the morning, and HM was close to an hour by lunchtime. Part of this is surely the holiday weekend, but it almost seems as if something else is at work this month. MM+ is certainly a factor.

Yup, it's all down to Fastpass+. Almost overnight standby line lengths increased, and because people have to wait around for return times instead of being in a line it makes the streets feel more crowded too. People don't realise that the system may make their wait for Space Mountain 20 minutes instead of 60, but they're spending way more than 40 minutes longer in other attraction lines. It was designed to spread crowds around, and that's just what it's done.

I was there this week last year and I never saw anything even in the ballpark of 100 mins for Pirates. But MM+ was still in testing and you could still get paper fastpasses. We're starting to see just what a disaster this is going to be.

I get that ghosthost, but 100 minute waits for Pirates today? Unless the MDE app was wrong, I saw that a few times today. Did it ever even get that bad on Christmas day? I can't ever recall wait times like that for Pirates, ever. Splash or PPF or some others? Sure. But not POTC. Only since the arrival of FP+.

 

[JediMasterMatt]

Why is it whenever I see one of these "Why are the parks so busy?" threads, I secretly hope to open it and find a slightly different and more important conversation - "What are the parks so busy when TDO keeps doing so little?".

Oh well, there's always the next time.

Until then, insert the normal responses of South American marketing, year round special events, and the number one reason why the parks feel like they are so full - FP+ on everything.

 

[hth1917]

(look below) You were saying.....?


(This one is even from YOU.)

Every one of the posts you quoted is about wait times, which was my point. Sure, October is busy for lots of reasons, and MM+ can't be blamed for the overall busyness. But for many attractions, wait times are higher this October than they have been since...basically ever. And that IS at lease in part because of the addition of FastPass to high-capacity rides like HM and Pirates. This is a well-documented phenomenon (Google "fastpass+ wait times"). And it shouldn't be surprising, since this is one of the basic ideas behind the whole system: to redistribute crowds away from the headliner attractions to attractions that were once walk-ons or had very short waits.

 

[disneydudette]

Ehh Almost 90% of October was excluded from free dining. So it wasn't that.
And just because the parks are packed, doesn't mean the resorts are... lots of offsite guest too.

Apologies if my post implied Free Dinning was to blame... I was just trying to show how 'difficult' our experience was trying to find a discounted room on property for late October.

Our dates just happened to overlap with what little Free Dining was offered... which I'm sure also contributed to it selling out so quickly!

Given the lack of discounts and select availability for October... I guess I'm not surprised at 'higher than expected' crowds. Not because certain resorts may be booked 'solid'... but rather because Disney clearly felt confident with guest demand and occupancy levels to offer less discounts.

If Disney's that comfortable... I'd assume the overall park crowds are likely to be higher than one would expect for October. Considering that Fall FD was released back in early May... seems like they 'knew' the crowds were coming... whether or not they booked on-site.

 

[draybook]

Apologies if my post implied Free Dinning was to blame... I was just trying to show how 'difficult' our experience was trying to find a discounted room on property for late October.

No need to apologize, you are correct. FD has helped bring in the crowds.

 

[PrincessNelly_NJ]

Apologies if my post implied Free Dinning was to blame... I was just trying to show how 'difficult' our experience was trying to find a discounted room on property for late October.

Our dates just happened to overlap with what little Free Dining was offered... which I'm sure also contributed to it selling out so quickly!

Given the lack of discounts and select availability for October... I guess I'm not surprised at 'higher than expected' crowds. Not because certain resorts may be booked 'solid'... but rather because Disney clearly felt confident with guest demand and occupancy levels to offer less discounts.

If Disney's that comfortable... I'd assume the overall park crowds are likely to be higher than one would expect for October. Considering that Fall FD was released back in early May... seems like they 'knew' the crowds were coming... whether or not they booked on-site.

I'm sure they knew.
I saw a while back that disney was sending out people mailers that listed their childs school breaks and invited them to come visit during those dates.
With columbus day, canadian thanksgiving, many UK visitors on break, Brazilian tours groups, and quite a few conventions that weekend.. had them confident.

 

[FigmentJedi]

It's so easy to forget about that

 

[pumpkin7]

Because everyone wants to be able to ride everything they want to ride before FP+ only takes over.

 

[ratherbeinwdw]

Pirates of the Caribbean has 15-20% less capacity and now has Fastpass+. Until they fix the boat issue it's going to be towards the top of the wait times for the park.

It also didn't help that it was down for a minimum of an hour every single day we were there. It was closed the entire afternoon one day. It did open back up that night and, as would happen, we got stuck on the ride for about 15 minutes. Too bad we got stuck between two scenes and music from both scenes were playing really loud. It got very annoying after 10 minutes. The music would actually blare out very loud every few minutes, then go back to normal.

 

[ratherbeinwdw]

I get that ghosthost, but 100 minute waits for Pirates today? Unless the MDE app was wrong, I saw that a few times today. Did it ever even get that bad on Christmas day? I can't ever recall wait times like that for Pirates, ever. Splash or PPF or some others? Sure. But not POTC. Only since the arrival of FP+.

I think this was because it kept going down and people really wanted to ride it at least once. It took us four days to finally be able to get on it and then it stopped again. Luckily, this time it was back-up in about 15 minutes.

 

[NJDis]

Pirates has been down the majority of the time last night and most of today as well. It needs a long overdue refurb, and I dont mean a new hologram when the next movie comes out

 

[asialeigh]

Ehh Almost 90% of October was excluded from free dining. So it wasn't that.
And just because the parks are packed, doesn't mean the resorts are... lots of offsite guest too.

Except every resort except maybe Poly with it's construction is at 100% or near it in occupancy.

 

[AEfx]

Pirates has been down the majority of the time last night and most of today as well. It needs a long overdue refurb, and I dont mean a new hologram when the next movie comes out

I believe he can fill us in, but I believe at the time of the last "big" refurb when they added the first batch of Jack, @marni1971 reported that they did pull out and replace quite a bit of backstage stuff (I want to say audio?) but that the original budget got slashed and would have been a much more through overall refurb of other elements that would have gotten rebuilds/replacements had it gone through as originally proposed.

TL;DR - they cheaped out when they had the perfect chance to do some work to prevent longer term maintenance issues that are starting to show now.

 

[marni1971]

Pirates (which has no holograms BTW) did need a lot more work doing during the last overhaul when they added Jack. Audio in particular is a mess.

The current downtimes are due to ride system issues that are being resolved as soon as possible.

 

[RSoxNo1]

Pirates (which has no holograms BTW) did need a lot more work doing during the last overhaul when they added Jack. Audio in particular is a mess.

The current downtimes are due to ride system issues that are being resolved as soon as possible.

Any time frame for the boats no longer being an issue?

 

[Tom Morrow]

Why is it whenever I see one of these "Why are the parks so busy?" threads, I secretly hope to open it and find a slightly different and more important conversation - "What are the parks so busy when TDO keeps doing so little?".

Oh well, there's always the next time.

Until then, insert the normal responses of South American marketing, year round special events, and the number one reason why the parks feel like they are so full - FP+ on everything.

Well, those are the reasons (except FP+)? In addition to the past reputation of WDW making it a place people will continue to visit for years to come no matter how bad the quality drops, and WDW's role as a "rite of passage" of vacations.

 

[JediMasterMatt]

Well, those are the reasons (except FP+)? In addition to the past reputation of WDW making it a place people will continue to visit for years to come no matter how bad the quality drops, and WDW's role as a "rite of passage" of vacations.

FP+ is most definitely a reason why the parks feel busier. It does two things that the old system didn't do.

It steers guests away from the traditional "popular" attractions by giving them a quicker return time for attractions that weren't "popular". This means that attractions that use to have little to no wait - now do, which contributes to the perception of the parks being busier.

Also, with more FP's in the potential pool (since most everything has FP+ now), that means that less people are in the standby queues as they are FP+ attractions and there are now more cattle in the pasture instead of the corral.

Unfortunately, TDO is capitalizing on the WDW legacy and the long term effects of their lack of concern for protecting the brand has yet to be seen. To borrow a phrase from Joni Mitchell in relation to what's going on with WDW these days (especially true when it comes to the Hub refurb) - "They paved paradise and put up a FP+ corral".

 

[marni1971]

Any time frame for the boats no longer being an issue?

Until they build a better fleet? No.

 

[RSoxNo1]

Until they build a better fleet? No.

That's awesome. The new norm for Pirates of the Caribbean is 15-20% reduced capacity.

 

[George]

Numbers don't lie. And I'm really good with numbers.

The rack rate I'm paying for my room for 12 days over Xmas and New Years is indeed quite high -- about $300 per night with tax. But I get free dining for four adults with that. At $60 per day per adult, that's $240. No discount would have been 80% off the rack rate, which is what it would have taken for all things to be equal.

Now, you can certainly make the argument that the dining plan isn't worth $60 per person per day, and that without it, I wouldn't have spent that much. And you'd be right -- my Tables in Wonderland discount, combined with eating less, probably means that the free dining plan only saves me around $45 per person per day, or $180, meaning that I'd only have needed to get a 60% discount on the room to make it all wash out in the end. That's probably not anything that was going to happen either. There is no way "the total cost adds up to roughly the rack rate" in this case.

What if you got a free room, free tickets, and 6 months of mortgage payments made by Disney? Would you pay for dining then, Mr. Smarty Pants with all your fancy adding, subtracting, multiplying, and divisoring?