We have a trip planned for May 7-9 to Disneyland and DCA. When we originally planned the trip we used the calendar as a guide. However, when Disney first published their event schedules there were no fireworks and limited shows during our weekday trip. A couple days ago they updated the schedule to include fireworks each night (still no Fantasmic) and the same time they published refurbishments for Casey Junior and Storybook Land Canal Boats. So I’m sort of confused, adding fireworks makes it seem they are expecting higher crowds but closing additional rides normally means more “off-season” feel. It seems like mixed-messages about the potential crowd, any ideas?
The fact that they are scheduling fireworks on a weekday when school is in session and without Fantasmic also being scheduled is very odd to me. Usually when they are adding fireworks it’s for crowds. However, without Fantastmic I don’t think that’s the case. I do know that the new Mickey’s Mix Magic show can run on reduced fireworks or without them even at all at that they built it with the ability to be able to shut down the fireworks element at any point but still run the rest of the elements (projections, lasers, music) so that they weren’t bound as in previous fireworks shows by the pesky Santa Ana winds that frequently cause fireworks cancellations (even as much wind as 5 MPH depending on the direction can shut down the ability to run fireworks).
So maybe they plan in advance to run less of the fireworks elements??? I’m not entirely sure. But I am fairly certain that with F&W having already ended & SWGE coming just a few weeks later and going on weekdays, I would be surprised if you had high crowds at all. It is DL’s last chance to get any last minute refurbs done before SWGE so I think the addition of rides down for refurbishment is not surprising at all. But usually 2 weeks is most they push it to announce something will be down, unless there’s an emergency refurb that comes up. So I think over the next few days you’ll be able to see the schedule finalize for your dates & like I said, I’d be surprised if you got anything higher than 4-6 crowds.
Is it possible that perhaps the crowd levels are less predictable due to the approaching SWGE opening in June? I have noticed the past couple of weeks there have been sorta big discrepancies between the crowd calendar predictions and the historical data recorded. For example, Easter Sunday was predicted to run an average of 5, but was logged in the historical data as a 1. There have been MANY days like this over the past month or so with much lower historical crowd levels being recorded than predicted on the crowd calendar. I totally understand the calendar is a prediction based of statistical data but I am not used to seeing such a big gap between the predictions and logged data in the historical section. Perhaps I just have not been watching it enough and it is normally like this???
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In general DLR crowds are more difficult to pin down than WDW due to the fact that the larger percentage of local crowd goers that have less predictable patterns of ebbs & flows than a more tourist-based location like WDW. The CLs as of late have been INCREDIBLE and I think it’s in very large part due to a lot of people holding off on their annual/every few years trip for after SWGE to be able to see it as well.