I always plan our days in Disneys, even before Touring Plans was around, just like things planned. Anyway, we are suppose to go in September I don’t get how this virtual queue is going to work. Will you only be able to get one at a time? If so what if you’re not called for hours? Will you need one for every ride? If that true your ride experience is going to be seriously cut down. Also I don’t want to be criss crossing the parks all day. What are you suppose to do in between just wait? I guess I am not understanding it.
VQs will probably only be used for some rides, very popular ones &/or those with not much queue space.
But until more details are announced, then a plan is very difficult to make. At this point, I would plan what park you want to visit on which days. And watch for more information.
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Have you noticed this comment under the AP Update for WDW?
https://disneyworld.disney.go.com/experience-updates/annual-passes/
Please note that:
- During the limited capacity period, it may be difficult for Annual Passholders to get park reservations to visit on certain dates. To help manage capacity, total reservation days held at one time will be limited. More details will be shared in the coming weeks.
- Some pass benefits and features will not be available during periods of limited capacity. Also, park experiences and offerings will be modified and subject to limited availability or even closure.
- Annual passes are subject to blockout dates. Guests should ensure their pass type is valid for park entry prior to making a park reservation.
If you read the first point, it looks like you might be limited as to how many days you can actually visit a park during your stay, even if you have a resort reservation and are an AP Holder. Is that your understanding of this verbiage?
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It sounds to me like an AP holder who does not have a Disney Resort reservation may or may not be able get a park reservation during the initial reopening period.
Edit : A Disney on site hotel reservation does not guarantee theme park admission either.
Might be a first come(or first to reserve a park on a specific day), first served scenario. AP holders and on site guests will have to fight it out for the limited number of park reservations initially being released. Then, last will come the rest of us who have neither.
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This sounds like the way the Flex Pass works at Disneyland. You can reserve only two days at a time. Once the first day is used, you can reserve a third day. Generally that hasn’t been an issue at Disneyland because they weren’t limiting capacity prior to the pandemic and rarely hit their actual capacity. But that could cause APs at WDW to be excluded from going more than 2 (or 3 or 4 or whatever limit they place) days in a single trip.
That said, with no international visitors and many domestic visitors unwilling or unable to come, they may never hit their capacity anyway and so it will be a moot point - instead it will just cause stress for those APs as they wait to find out if they will be allowed to reserve those extra days.
ETA: Also at DLR, some days do not require a reservation. Maybe WDW will be able to do that if certain days are less crowded (weekdays?) so for example you would be able to have 3 weekdays without no reservation needed, 2 weekend days with a reservation, and then 3 more weekdays with no reservation needed. You’d only have a problem if your stay straddled two periods where reservations were required. (Again, only hypothetical assuming they have some days when reservations aren’t required.)
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I don’t think this is new. Disney has always stated that holding a ticket or having a resort reservation never guaranteed entrance to the parks… although I’ve always been able to enter any park while staying on property. I think this is more important now since they are limiting access through resort reservations, halting all ticket sales etc.
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No, that will be for an offsite AP Holder. Just like they were limited to 7 days worth of fastpasses.
An onsite reservation over-rides the normal AP limitations.
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Honestly I think reservations are going to be needed for some time.
Even at 50% capacity at the resorts, there are too many guests for 30% capacity at the parks. And increasing by 5% a week will take a long time to meet demand.
The non-DVC resorts could open up very slowly to mitigate this. But if I was looking for a last minute booking, I would wait to see what happens with park reservations first, if parks were important.
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Are there? I haven’t seen the total resort capacity numbers for a while, but I recall the far bigger driver for park attendance was off-site guests. Does anyone here have the current resort and park capacity numbers?
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At normal park capacity perhaps it wouldn’t be a problem. but 5hey’re shooting for 25-30% at the start.
Resort is 35K rooms but that includes DS resorts which aren’t included in the initial priority group for booking parks.
Let’s say 30K total rooms.
Park capacity is a closely guarded secret.
But typically at NYE, MK can reach 100k. I have seen guesses of 60-80K initially across all 4 parks from some sources.
Quick back of an envelope calculation:
50% of rooms, 15K. Average of 4 per per room gets to 60k people. But then there are the DVC 2&3 beds which push figures up. And with DVC at nearer 75% capacity, instead of the usual 90%, and you have a problem with reservations.
Touring Plans have numbers and someone did some maths a few days ago. Without knowing how many resorts are opening, and what capacity there will be, it’s an impossible calculation though.
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I did the calculations. 30% capacity in the parks can be achieved at about 85% room capacity filled, averaging 4 guests per room. (I actually think this is a tad high…some rooms will have more than 4, while others will have less. Personally, I think 3.5 guests per room is likely more accurate. Regardless, I think on site guests will fill the 30%.
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My guess is that (up to October) there will be enough capacity for off-site guests with park tickets to make their reservations, there will be some limits for APs without an onsite stay and they will end up selling additional park-specific, date-specific tickets. International guests will be considerably reduced (they either aren’t allowed to enter (Brazil) or will have to quarantine for 2 weeks after returning home (Europe)), most major conventions at OCCC were cancelled, a bunch of people will prefer to postpone their trips until after they can get a more normal experience and another bunch will have to cancel due to health or economic considerations.
Did you mean to say on-site guests?
I found the 2018 total attendance figures at Disney extends its lead in global theme park attendance
| Park | Total 2018 | Daily Avg |
|---|---|---|
| MK | 20,859,000 | 57,148 |
| AK | 13,750,000 | 37,671 |
| EP | 12,444,000 | 34,093 |
| HS | 11,258,000 | 30,844 |
| Total | 58,311,000 | 159,756 |
:WARNING - SWAGs follow:
So if the peak MK figure of 100K is accurate, the parks on average operate at 57% of capacity with 160K people total. Therefore at 30% park capacity we would have around 84K people, which should be able to accommodate the 60K from your base 50% resort capacity estimate.
This makes sense to me. WDW is not going to want to turn away resort guests from the parks, so I would think that all of their planned restrictions take that into account. The PR nightmare from turning away resort guests would horrendous. They are also not going to want to have to turn away non-resort AP guests as they still have park capacity to fill, but they want the restrictions to be clear so that if they do turn away people it would be less of a problem (“we made it clear that you might not be able to get in without a reservation, but you took your chances anyway”).
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Nope, off-site as well. There are people who bought date tickets (that now converted) before all this and have hotel/house reservations (sometimes non-refundable) at off-site locations. I am betting there will be enough capacity for them to enter the parks, at least until October.
I have my doubts on that. I think in September and October, maybe. Not convinced about July and August.
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What figures did you use for each park capacity?
And what %age did you assume they start at?
This is stressing me out - 
lol! How/when do you think you will make the park reservation?
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Around 60 days out, once it opens, because that’s when ADRs will open. Obviously the first few weeks will have less lead time. But onsite guests will get priority and will be told. Keep an eye out here, people will post when it opens. And there be blog posts everywhere detailing how to book.
I imagine it will look very similar to booking FPs, step 1 - “Select your park”. And you will select from your friend and family either before or after that.
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286000 guests is 100% capacity across all four parks.
Using 85% occupancy rate across all resorts, taking out CSR and Jambo. At about 4 guests per room average (which I think is a tad high), you got almost exactly 30% park capacity.