As our trip gets closer, I’m keeping up w CLs, wait time, etc. How often are CLs as off as they were yesterday? It seems like it wasn’t just Magic Kingdom, but the entire park as well. We have decided to make best of any situations, but have dropped meals in order to take advantage of low CLs. Any input is greatly appreciated.
I don’t follow the predicted/actual CLs closely enough to say, except on our trips. But I’m getting nervous about our MK day. (Sunday, 11/3) It’s predicted to be a 5, but Iooking at FP availability compared to other weekend days has me worried that it’s going to be higher. Could everyone have put too much stock in the low September attendance? Now that the busier parts of the fall season are here, will we see something closer to the chaos they originally expected when GE opened? I’m thinking we’ll know a lot more when Disney updates November park hours (hopefully this Friday).
In 2018 we had 5 park days. For most the predictions were within 2 CLs of actual. But we did have 1 Epcot day that was predicted to be a 3 or so. During our trip they updated the prediction to a 5, and actual CL was a 9. So it definitely happens, I just don’t know how often.
FYI – A common misconception about Crowd Levels is that they are an indicator of the number of people in each park. However, they are an indicator of average queue waits at the rides in that park.
A CL 1 can feel like a CL 4 in terms of park capacity, but the queues may be moving quickly. Conversely, you can be in a CL 9 park that feels like a CL 5 because the streets aren’t packed. However, all the queues are super long.
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I think the crowd predictions might be based on the lower crowds in the parks this fall? Usually, non party days at MK during party season are crazy! Maybe the crowds are coming back?
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I think most of us spend WAY too much worrying about crowd levels, particularly in that 3-6 range. If you are on this website, you are probably a planner. A good plan and a patient attitude go a long way in making a higher crowd level day enjoyable.
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I’ve heard some people speculate that a lot of people re-scheduled due to the hurricane, and we might be seeing a lot of those people now.
We had a day like this on our trip last fall. Expected CL of 4, actual CL of 9. It happens. Most of our other days were pretty spot on.
I agree. I’ve only been during CL 10 and have been able to do all the things we wanted to do b/c of my planning. I wish we could come during a different time of year but we can’t so we make the most of it.
I think that is right, but I also think folks had reason to question Monday. From what I see, it was predicted as a 3 but ended up as a 10
The CL prediction may have been off by a lot for the day but the month is not trending far off from Oct of last year. The first weekend in Oct last year was also in the 7-10 range for all parks.
I’ve done one spring break trip and one early November trip. I agree with you that we still did most of what we wanted to on the more crowded trip, but some of that was because of the longer hours. When a 9 am-9 pm day (or 9-8, for AK or HS) is unexpectedly a CL10 and the park isn’t staffed to handle it, I suspect it impacts people’s experience more than going during the expected CL10 times.
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Those are the current expected hours for my trip for Thanksgiving week but I’m expecting them to extend. In the past for the same week they extended a lot, although I saw on TP historical data on this they didn’t extend hrs as much the past few yrs as they did when we went in 2014 and 15.
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We experienced random higher than expected crowds the year of Irma as well (we went in November that year and had 2 days where CLs were predicted to be 2/3 and wound up being 7/8) and the CMs commented that lots of people had cancelled and rebooked, so it seems to me that could be at play here too, since the storm caused lots of flight interruptions even though it wasn’t a huge deal for Orlando.
That, plus parties being way more popular all of a sudden could be what’s causing MK to have bigger crowds on party days. Maybe a lot more people are buying a party ticket and actually going to MK on a regular ticket that day as well.
Pure speculation here. Any chance that as a result of the less than expected crowds this fall, WDW has cut back on staffing like WDW did in the past (which resulted in longer lines even when crowds were lower)?
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I wouldn’t be surprised.
Last week was Rosh Hashannah on a Monday. A lot of schools had off. Our district even had an in service on Tuesday making it a 4 day weekend. If other districts do this, that could explain crowds too.
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Awhile back someone posted asking if the random high CL prediction for 10/9 could be correct (so it would appear that something in the algorithm knew ther would be larger crowds sometime this week, anyway) and I suggested that it might have something to do with the Jewish holidays. I think something may have gone wonky in the system, though.
This week, with many schools having off for Yom Kippur on Wednesday (tomorrow), many may be piggy-backing from this past weekend and traveling home on Wednesday for an extended early fall break (?)
Keep in mind that the first weekend in November is Wine and Dine races with the half marathon being 11/3. That might be impacting FP availability.