Oh wait, let’s not forget that Disney is inflating wait times on their app.
Last year, The Lunching Pad had two lines allocated to mobile order, and one line for walk ups. The walk up line was exactly one person in front of me. Mobile order wait times were like 15 minutes out. So it definitely can happen!
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I’m here and I can tell you those times are pretty accurate. I’m sure inflated somewhat, but not by tons.
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We just ate at Pecos Bill and only had one person in front of us for walk up ordering. It was very fast. I think mobile order would’ve still been good here, but at a small place like Aloha, I wouldn’t mobile order.
So do you guys think I’m screwed for HS tomorrow? Do most vacationers do MK first day and HS the second day?
oh, good to hear!
Are you getting Genie+? Are you buying ILLs? Are you eligible for early entry?
I believe typically the variance by weekday is less noticeable than at MK. and given that it’s by all measures a very unusual time there right now, I’d say it’s impossible to predict. If overall crowds throughout the resort are indeed higher, then it’ll probably be higher too. But fingers crossed it’s not as bad as MK today…
As for why this is, I have no idea either… I’ve seen on some vlogs that apparently Universal was unusually crowded last week too. Maybe people postponed (those who could) their holiday trips due to the omicron scare and now that it’s proven to at least not be a more deadly version, some are deciding “f it”, we’re going now. Just random guesses…
Yes to all. We’ll be early entry with Genie+ and will ILL for Rise of Resistance.
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Thanks for the feedback. You’re right very hard to know. I wish there was a way to see the resort capacity right now.
Will tell you tomorrow.
Saw several bloggers here today. For a live stream of what it was like, Ear to Ear Disney was streaming live on YouTube from rope drop for about 5 hours.
You will be fine then. We did HS last week with early entry and Genie+ but no ILL and we were fine. We got LLs for every ride there.
I was there on Monday expecting a crowd level 4 and was pretty shocked. After the night time show, at one crossroad, there was so many people going in 4 different directions, it was actually scary. Almost everyone was stuck and couldn’t move with more and more people coming in adding to the pack. I would love to know why it was so crowded. I was feeling a little bad for my group because we were getting to do as much as we usually do so I felt validated when I saw the next day that it was actually a crowd level of 10!
Also, I found the genie + didn’t help much beyond getting us 3 rides which some may say is good but I expect more. The worst moment was looking at TP expected wait for buzz light year which was 35 minutes as compared to posted wait of 55 min. I refreshed several times thinking the TPs wait would be adjusted. After waiting in line for 25 min, it got adjusted to 55 min. We were already half way there so we stayed. The wait was 75 minutes! 
That was a low point because I usually would not wait that long for that ride.
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So I guess here’s my question:
Do any of the Disney experts (whether TP folks or otherwise) have any solid information as to why these crowds are so unexpectedly high all of a sudden?
The theories so far include:
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Disney opening up another one or two dates for Annual Pass holders this week? (No idea how AP system works or if that would cause a huge rush of people).
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South America tour groups are showing up en force since it’s nearing the end of their summer breaks & are now making up for lost time due to COVID in 2020/2021. (No idea if this is true or if it’d make a big marginal difference)
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Cheerleading/Dance Team competitions. (Doesn’t this happen every year around this time, so why would it be different now? Ditto for marathon weekend).
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Disney intentionally keeping CM levels/ride capacity low to save cost/boost profits thus creating artificially long waits. (Again, no confirmation any of this is the case).
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People pushing holiday plans into late January/February due to Omicron. (Again, no idea if this is true. Plus, weren’t the holidays crazy busy? If a whole bunch of folks bailed from those weeks into late Jan/Feb, wouldn’t those crowds have been smaller?)
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Some series of highly popular park merchandise releases, thus creating a mass of profit seeking 3rd resellers & vBloggees to clog up the parks & resell all the merchandise on eBay and/or create crummy YouTube content featuring all that activity.
*”Genie+/LL/Chapek”. (Although if true, wouldn’t the November & December numbers be similarly insane? Pretty sure they were somewhat high, but not several standard deviations higher than the norm).
Bottom line: right now it seems like a lot of unfounded speculation. Some of it might be legitimate reasons, but my questions are:
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Has anyone with true insider knowledge or data analytics insight gotten any firm proof to back up any of these theories? If so, what is it?
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Whatever the reasons in #1 are, is there a discernible root cause & pattern such that we can know if these are random and/or temporary, or if not either of those, at least something that can be predicted with reasonable reliability?
As others have mentioned, our family specifically picked Feb 4-11 because it was expected to be a lower time of year. Not holiday residuals, not marathon or MLK or President’s Day weekend, not the first few weeks of FARTs or when AP blackout dates end & theres likely to be an initial rush of those folks for 1-2 weeks, but still before the early spring break crowds start showing up in late February.
If 100,000 additional random people show up at WDW for a variety of reasons that week, I can’t control that. But at least I can prepare & maybe even adjust my plans if I know it’s a big group that will be traveling in packs to certain parks certain days, or all attending various parks at certain times of day, etc.
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My guess on the crowds is that people went to MK on Monday because they were avoiding the early closure on Tuesday. It seems like Disney’s systems either didn’t work, or the rumors that all capacity caps have been eliminated are true. Since it was reported it was the first “10” day since pre-Covid it seems like it was unexpected by everyone.
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Yep I’m seeing crowd relief posts on WDW Chat. Reports of yesterday being lower crowds at MK are nice to see. My parents leave Friday.
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Looks like the 4:30pm close yesterday might have had something to do with the MK crowds earlier in the week. Yesterday, a 4 was predicted and it was a 1. I have park hoppers and the other 4:30 close is a park day for us so I made that day a MK reservation. Looks like that was a good plan. The other parks were more crowded than expected so overall was a 4 on a 4 predicted. That is reassuring.
This is the first thing I do every morning lately. Check yesterday’s crowd levels.
Wow, that’s quite a day to day variance!
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And yesterday was the early close hours?
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I wonder…if this is true, this might be good information when planning…if a park is closing early, that might be the best day to visit it (because everyone else is avoiding it). I’d love to see more data on that…what happens to average crowd levels for any given park when their hours are shortened.
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