We are planning a trip Thanksgiving week, and our first day of park touring will be Saturday, Nov. 22. The Magic Kingdom is listed as a “2” on the crowd calendar for that day, which surprises me since it is a Saturday and the MK is also open late for EMH. Is this number correct? We are planning ADRs and touring the MK that day based on this number, so I just want to make sure it is not an error!
What was is the Sat prior last year?
Maybe its low because it would be a travel day for people coming for the week, so they might not be in the parks that day?
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I went to Disney World the weekend before Thanksgiving a couple years ago and it was fairly empty. I’d say a 2 is a fair ranking for that weekend. I think the Thanksgiving crowds increase later in the week since most schools are in session the Monday and Tuesday of the week of Thanksgiving.
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Yes, it makes sense that crowds would be lower the weekend before since many schools do not have the entire week off. According to the historical crowd calendar, MK was a 7 last year and a 5 the year before, so a 2 seems rather low. I wonder what is different about this year that is driving that prediction?
It was a 4 same time period last year w/o magic hour. So, a 2 maybe isn’t unreasonable? Does EMH bump crowds by as much as 2?
I don’t believe it but I hope so, I’ll be there!
Free Dining ends the thur before that on 11/20 and it was a very popular date so there may be a lot hanging out over the weekend that booked FD.
Just rechecked the crowd cal which says it was a 3 last year now. Could swear it said 4. 
Either way, you could be good! Thinking a bump of 1 for am EMH makes sense.
Sam2071…I think you may be looking at the wrong weekend for 2013. The Saturday before Thanksgiving was a 7 according to the Historical Crowd Calendar on this site. We must be looking at different things.
MK does have evening EMH this year for the Saturday before Thanksgiving (Nov. 22). Even not considering that it is the weekend before Thanksgiving, I would expect the EMH to drive the crowd index higher, and I thought that Saturdays were always the busiest MK days.
It looks like our dining options might be influencing which parks we visit on which days now anyway, so I am going to keep my fingers crossed and hope for the best!
Nov 23 2013 was a 4 at the MK. WDW was a 3. Maybe you’re looking at what was predicted while I’m looking at ‘what we saw’?
This is the page I am looking at, the Historical Crowd Calendar:
Is there another one?
We overestimated last year. I think part of the lower estimate this year, too, is that Fastpass+ is moderating crowds at headliners. It’ll probably be somewhere in the 2 to 4 range, i.e., below average.
Thanks for the explanation, Len. Sam, thanks for tip about the actual vs. predicted crowd levels. I missed that. If I would have drilled down a little more on the historical page, I would have found it. Very helpful!
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Texas has week before thanksgiving off. I would think that would raise the numbers.
I spoke with Fred about this on Monday. One of the things that we think caused us to be off last Saturday (Nov 15) was that there were two party nights (Thu and Fri) followed by an EMH evening on Saturday, and our model had never seen that combination of those 3 things before.
The model knows how to adjust for 2 consecutive party days, and it knows how to adjust for evening EMH at the Magic Kingdom, but apparently it’s those 3 things together that presented a challenge for the model.
I mention that because the same thing is scheduled to happen this Saturday. Fred’s looking at re-running the models with last Saturday’s data, to see if the model updates the crowd levels. As soon as we know more, we’ll post it.
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Awesome, thank you!!! 
Either way, I’m hoping that if we arrive for 8 AM RD and leave around noon, it won’t make that much of a difference…