A lot of my plan for my trip (12/15 - 12/21) hinges on the closing time for DHS on 12/15 which is currently predicted to be 6:00pm, presumably for some special event. That would preclude Jingle Bell Jingle Bam or Star Wars Spectacular, so I’d leave DHS early that day and return some other evening. If it’s a regular closing time, I’ll just stay through the end of the night. But, I won’t know when making ADR’s whether that closing time is accurate and I’ll need to go eat in a different park or if it’s going to change back to a regular time and I should stay.
Anyone have any thoughts or advice on how to book ADR’s when my whole plan could be thrown out the window by changing park hours and schedules?
Or will the reservation program just tell me if/when I try to book something at 6:15 that the park is expected to be closed at that hour?
Check out KtP’s monthly calendars, which are generally released well before 180+10 days for the month. He must have inside sources, as his park hours are pretty much spot on with what WDW first releases.
And any thoughts on the relative accuracy of the KtP crowd calendar vs. the TP? In particular, I assume that some of the TP predictions are based on their prediction of a 6:00 closing time, which KtP doesn’t have.
For crowd predictions I go with TP - they are very transparent with their predictions and follow up with analysis on how they did and what went right/wrong. I do not see anywhere near that level of rigor with KtP.
In terms of hours, yes. KtP does not make Park hour predictions - I believe he had an inside source that leaks the hours to him, as the time frames match the old release schedule for the TA calendars.
One thing to remember about the TP predicted hours is that they are predictions of what the final park hours will be, not the initial park hours that WDW releases on day 180. KtP’s calendar shows the initial or current park hours.
You think it’s worth it for me to join his site for additional info. I used it when it was free, but was reluctant to pay and was just going to rely on TP for our November trip.
The predicted hours for 15th of December may be a historical one.
That was the day of a couple of Star Wars movie release dates, if memory serves, which isn’t the case this year afaik. However it could also be a CM recognition event, there’s one at MK in early November for example.
It also marked the day that the evening schedule switched back to showing both Star Wars and Jingle Bells, Jingle Bam. Both were scheduled as of the next day.
At the moment no one is within the timeframe for booking ADRs for that day. By the time they are, Disney will have published park hours for that day. If DHS is to close early, you won’t be able to book a later ADR that night. However those initial published hours will get extended nearer the time, around the middle of November and also likely even later than that.
It looks like Disney publishes 180 days in advance, which means I’ll be waking up, checking the published hours and then immediately trying to figure out which ADR’s to book.
Edit: Went back to brklinck’s original post on KtP and saw how to peek ahead to 180+10 on the official calendar. That should be plenty of time to figure out my ADR strategy if I come up with two separate plans (one for early closing DHS, one for regular closing DHS) before hand.
Yeah, I thought about that, but that change will actually affect two or three full days of my plan. I’d much rather not make all those ADR’s and cancel half of them if I can avoid it.
No idea - I don’t know what additional info you get with a paid subscription. The only data he has that I am interested in are the park hours in advance of Day 180 which are free.
