Hello all;
I will be heading out to WDW and UOR the week of Jan 21, 2019. I am trying to look at crowd levels to plan my visit (and get fastpasses). I see that the crowd levels for the week I will be there are moderate, but last year’s actual crowd levels were much higher for the same week. Can anyone explain why we are expecting lower crowds this year?
@len has said elsewhere that last year Disney was experimenting with adjusting staffing levels for the slower Jan/Feb months. It turned out to be a complete disaster, and their sources don’t expect it to be repeated this year.
I have read what Len has said about what happened last year, but I went during that time and it honestly just seemed like there were more people there. Not only were wait times long, but the parks were crowded. That means that even with many people in lines for rides, there were still just a lot of people there. I don’t think that can be explained with only staffing issues. I am interested to see how it plays out this year because I am doubtful that we won’t see the same issues again.
We have a January Crowd Cal update coming out in the next week. It should increase AK crowd levels a bit (based on recent history) and keep most other parks roughly the same.
@mikejs78 is correct about last January and February. Disney told us in the fall that those crowds were the result of capacity and staff cutbacks. We ended up having to count people coming through the ride exits to discover this in February, so it was nice (but late) to hear it from Disney too.
Looking forward (I think) to the update. I just saw the cheer/dance comp MLK weekend. Does this event not tend to affect CLs much? Surprised that with that and the holiday, levels aren’t higher.
Well, the lower the staffing, the lower the capacity of the rides and the less people are going to be standing in line for a given wait time. Those people will probably end up on the midway instead of being in the queue.