This site is my go-to for our first time in forever 
visit to DisneyWorld. We are coming from France and today marks the 180 days until our trip and I am going to book our dining reservations. I have a question, how accurate is the crowd calendar 180 days in advance. Especially, since that our days planned for Hollywood studios went from a level crowd 1 to a 4 to 7 from Sept 2 to 10, which is when our trip is scheduled?
Thanks for your help.
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HS right now is hinging on when Star Wars opens. There is a chance this Thursday they will announce an opening date. If it turns out opening is before or during your stay, expect crowds to increase.
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Agreed on Star Wars. In our experience, this far out they serve more as general guidelines to give you an idea of how crowds will be as a whole. However I wouldn’t recommend using it to micro-plan each day of your trip at this stage. For example, if MK is a 4 one day and a 2 another day, don’t go out of your way to plan a BOG ADR on the 2 day. Plan your trip based on convenience for you, and expect the numbers to change.
You are going during, historically, one of the lowest-attended time periods for Walt Disney World. So, regardless of accuracy, you’d likely not find a better time to go crowd-wise. We’ve done first week in September, and it was gloriously empty. Only reason we didn’t pick that time period for another visit because of weather.
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Thank you all for your help.
We are used to Disneyland Paris which is pretty crowded all the time, but I don’t know if Disneyland Paris crowded is the same as DisneyWorld crowded, if I make sense.
I haven’t changed my plans around our dining reservations but Hollywood studios in Paris is our favorite park so I am really hoping to enjoy it in Disney World with low or acceptable crowds. We do plan to take mid-day breaks every day when the weather gets too hot or too stormy.
Moreover, I’ve heard that Star Wars was most likely to open at the end of the year, definitely not early September but who knows.
So if I understand correctly, the crowd calendar is anticipating the opening of Star Wars and that is the reason that the crowd levels went up?
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I think only @len or one of the TP folks could answer that for sure. But all we know is that SWGE will open in fall. Since fall doesn’t officially start until closer to the end of September, I would not expect it’s opening to affect crowds.
But here in the United States, that first week after Labor Day (first Monday of the month) pretty much all schools are back in session. As such, crowds are low because most parents aren’t willing to take their kids out of school so soon after they started. Of course, Disney tries to offset this by offering deals for this time, but it still is quite light in terms of CL levels.
I think the best you can do is figure out which day is the best choice for HS during your stay.
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Thanks for the information and help. I really appreciate it. We are lucky our children go to school in Luxembourg and only go back to school in mid-September, that way we get deals and low crowd. It is worth it even if the weather gets complicated.
The crowd calendar can change from what you see 180 days out. It has happened on every trip. Most recently this happened on March 3rd for our trip March 9 - 16. Some went up, some went down. It has happened different months since we started this.
A good touring plan is much more important (its either 4 or 5 times more important) than the Crowd level. What you see are what is predicted based on all the data points they have at the time. Things do change, disney changes hours, adds or takes things away, refurbishments take place and they make changes based on this and what is happening with how things change. Also they can only make the real predictions based on the information and data they get, so for completely new lands, such as the new Star Wars land, they don’t know as of yet.
DHS went up, because right now TP is anticipating the new Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway to open Sept. 1. The new CL’s take that into account.
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Like pp said, they think the new Mickey ride will be open then.
Our dates are the exact same as yours! Not super worried about the CL. But really excited to experience that ride!
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We’re anticipating Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway to open on 1 September at DHS. That’s causing some crowd increases around that time. We don’t have any special information to say it’s going to open on that exact date. It’s the ballpark consensus of the people we ask about these things, and we have to have something.
Similarly, we have December 1 as a ballpark date for WDW Galaxy’s Edge.
When Disney announces these opening dates, we’ll adjust the calendars. Fred’s on standby for today’s news drop.
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The ride does indeed look great to be doing with my 9 and 5 year olds. Fun we will be there on the same dates.
Thank you for the clarifications and help, I will be sure to check the calendars when the adjustement is made.
Opening Date announced: August 29th. So it WILL be crowded
There it is. So much for not being worried about the crowds…now I’m very worried.
Yep, me too. I am planning 2 days to visit DHS. Do you think it will influence all of the other ride’s crowd level?
Yes. The whole park will be packed.
It will influence crowds at the entire resort, sadly.
Hi Beauguitte! We will be in Disney World the same days you are. So much for us hoping Star Wars wouldn’t yet be open, eh? Ugh.
Touring Plans will become so much more important for our visit now!
Hey I’m a bit confused, is it only mickey & minnie runaway railway opening on August 29th or Star Wars Galaxy Edge as well?