I just got a crowd level update for my trip (Aug 20-28) and the crowd levels for every park pretty much dropped to 1 or 2. What I like to see! 
1 Like
Isn’t that great! It is just a prediction, but I certainly like predictions like that. Just hoping that if we go, those predictions are correct. Heck, I’d take even close and not complain!
will
1 Like
I need to update my earlier comment Not every park went to 1 or 2 but they did all decline for my week at WDW. They still have HS and AK as pretty busy (by which I mean 5 or so). I was surprised that MK was down to 1 or 2 crowd level, though! I thought that was interesting.
1 Like
Cowabunga! Another crowd level drop! The reasons for the drop are clearly bad, but wow! I’ve been in a funk about all the pay-per-ride stuff which has made me even more committed to this September trip to avoid that mess. It may be my last trip for a while too because of that, but that belongs on other threads. If the predictions do become true, it is going to be a great trip. COVID numbers for FL are finally dropping and hoping they keep on doing so. Whole family is vaccinated and we don’t have any close relatives who aren’t, so feeling not so bad as long as numbers keep declining.
I shuffled park days around based on the last update, but with only MK at 2 some days with all days at all other parks 1’s for the whole trip, nothing to optimize!
Whether this ends up being true or not, this update was a good jolt out of my funk about no future trips to get excited about this upcoming trip.
NO MORE UPDATES PLEASE! That’s because with these latest numbers so low, the only possible direction for any update is up. 
will
5 Likes
Seeing low numbers is great for those going soon. I think the numbers will go up starting 10/1 though. The lower the numbers, the less people, so more spread out.
2 Likes
Laura60: Yep, suspect things will start going up post Oct 1 too. That was why I decided for this trip to be before that and just visit for the 50th celebration later. I didn’t expect many of those changes to be not so good and cast doubt on another trip any time soon! I feel for the folk with trips later that are getting huge costs for Genie+ getting retroactively tacked on to their existing travel plans, ouch.
Weird part is there must be some lag between announcing new crowd levels and them being factored into touring plans. I’ve tried re-optimizing my touring plans for a couple days where crowd levels dropped from 3 to 1 but the wait times haven’t budged by a single minute. I’ll try again in a few days.
will
I wouldn’t be surprised to see numbers rise for the next few weeks. School just started in Central FL a couple weeks ago and a number of schools in the area are seeing spikes in covid cases already.
1 Like
AltaD:
You do have a valid point and others have made that too. I have already decided that we will be staying inside the Disney bubble the whole time which I hope is going to be a bit safer than Orange County in general. You have to rationalize something! One place I’m still on the fence about is Disney Springs. That may not be quite “inside the bubble” enough. That is a call I’ll make during the trip.
If anyone knows where to get “real-er time” Orange county data, that would be nice. The places I frequent only post updates every Saturday for the previous week.
will
1 Like
As of yesterday, it was the highest number of new cases in Florida EVER. So, no, things don’t seem to be going down just yet.
1 Like
Ugh, bummer. The website I look at pulls from CDC, so will likely see that tomorrow. Florida numbers had been steady and even declining a bit for the past week. Even though Orange County only reports weekly, they seem to be in lock step with the rest of the state lately, so they’ll probably be going up too when we see the data Saturday.
By the way: Tonight finally optimizing our touring plans reflects the crowd update several days ago. Weird it is many days later, but in general I gained another half hour of touring per park per day! Only exception was MK as it’s crowd levels were already low before this latest update, so MK was mostly the same.
will
1 Like
For folk traveling soon, I’ve been tracking how well the actual crowd levels have been tracking the predictions and so far. They have that report each day showing how they did with predictions the day before. Even with CLs of 1 and 2, the actual wait times have been consistently lower than predicted. Very hopeful signs that indeed the crowds are as low as being predicted. Let’s hope that continues up until Oct 1st.
Only potentially worrisome news today is the Annual Passes going back on sale Sept 8th. Hoping that doesn’t create a spike of attendance ahead of Oct 1st.
will
4 Likes