Delay the hours but not say “sorry we are closed to park hopping today”? That makes sense and is aligned to the “check the hours, they might change”.
I think I am firmly in the camp “there is really no such thing as closed to park hopping but we will is the word ‘capacity’ to cover our asses”.
I think there will be days that it isn’t available at all parks, especially as numbers in general increase.
You do have to wonder what percentage of folks have park hoppers to begin with. This is something Disney knows ahead of time for ticket holders in any park. They also probably know what percentage of those with PH actually hop. Armed with this data, they can accommodate numbers pretty accurately without needing to worry too much about going above capacity.
APs would be the trickiest to account for, which might be another reason they aren’t yet selling new APs, to limit the variability factor during this time. As more and more APs expire, that pool of APRs can be shifted into the general pool, while better accounting for PHs.
… but they are allowing APs to renew. I just asked about mine and was told that I can renew 60 days before or 29 days after it expires. And my DH told me a workmate was talking to him about whether or not to renew all their APs (family of 5). They were waffling cuz they’ve had too much trouble get park reservations. He was asking my DH how I always get them.
A limited number, yes. But they let most expire without allowing renewals because they want them limited. For the APs out there, Disney has to treat them as PHs even if the stats on APs are different.
If you cap the initial entrance numbers for all parks, it would really depend on how they manage hours, wouldn’t it? If MK was open until 10 and all other parks closed at 6 I imagine that there would be an overwhelming shift to MK. BUT is the parks have about the same hours, and initial capacity is capped, those capped numbers in theory should remain within a certain distribution?
I think there will be some days when DHS doesn’t empty out as they might expect.
For instance, if Rise goes down in the middle of the day, so BGs are pushed back then people may either hang about longer or simply not turn up until later. That second group are easy to track, WDW will know they haven’t yet checked into the park.
Therefore lines at around 2pm could be far longer than normal. In which case then park hopping would be delayed until / if those lines drop. If the park is due to close at 6pm then it might not open to people without a reservation.
I feel like this is one step closer to back to normal. I’m hopeful this really will just be an issue for a few months. As they increase capacity, I think rules for park hopping will go to. Just a thought, who knows.
From what I have heard, bus drivers are letting you know when you board if the park is available.
What I do not know (probably because I guess it hasn’t happened that anything maxed out yet) is if they would be notified once they leave the park of origin if the new park has maxed out and the announce it mid-trip.
But do they have the data for people who leave for lunch/nap and return to their original park? Because that has to be figured into it as well.
Analysis of patterns from the last 6 months will provide a pretty reliable figure for that.
And at the end of the day, if park capacity is capped at 35%, will it matter if it gets to 38% because a whole bunch of people all decide en masse to return to the park in the late afternoon?
Also if a park has no on-the-day reservations in the morning, then they’ll be much more conservative when it comes to allowing park hopping.
I thought Disney’s 35% cap was self-imposed, that is not based on government regulation. If so, then their 35% cap can be in name only, and on the rare occasion that PH overrides the cap, then no big deal.
Why wouldn’t they have that info? They know when you re-enter the park on the same ticket, so they should have plenty of data to estimate how many people come back.
At this point if January 1st wasn’t an issue, why would we think any day would be?
Number of people with PHs might be very small at this point still. So Jan. 1 might not be a good indicator.
Still, I don’t foresee this being an issue at this point.
These were my thoughts exactly. FL didn’t create their cap limits; they’ve established them themselves and have also likely established the wiggle room, too.
Hoping to be able to have some time to update the first post this weekend.
The main things that need updated are:
Park hopping and how it works
Re-opening dates for more resorts
Links to threads on the forum
And a general tidy up.
Do you know if this is still the case? We are going May 8-15 and we have ADR’s and plan to hop to Epcot for some of our dinners. I suspect a lot of people will be doing the same?
So far hopping has gone on without restriction. The real test will come this week with Easter on the horizon.
ADR does not guarantee you entry into the hipped-to park. So do be cautious of that.
We hopped everyday last week and all park res. were full in all categories but we were allowed to hop to any park. Which was great b/c we couldn’t get a HS park res and hopping to it was the only way we could go there.