@amvanhoose_701479 @Jeff_AZ - I know they say the 30 minutes early thing is still coming, but from what I’ve been reading here with people’s experience arriving via car, it almost seems like they’re already letting resort guests in 30 minutes early. If you’re arriving via Disney transportation, you have access to the park before the parking lot opens. And that actually seems like one of the best ways for them to grant access without having huge lines of off-site guests outside each park clogging up the security area.
If this is how they decide to do it, onsite use of Uber won’t be helpful anymore though, which is a bummer.
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I thought buses were being held up like cars and Ubers and only Skyliner / walking was able to get to the different park gates quicker. Curious what others have to say.
They announced these hours today!
Edited to add: I’m going the end of May and have no idea how to plan soooo
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Actually they are letting ANYONE in 30-45 minutes early, not just resort guests.
I know everyone can get in before official park opening time. I was referring to anecdotal reports here that Disney transportation is opening before the parking lot, so the first groups arriving via Disney transportation (onsite guests) will beat anyone driving into the park by 20+ minutes.
@atinsley22 - I’m going 5/21-5/28. If you need any help, let me know.
@Cgerres - There was a thread I read where I thought they mentioned cars and Disney buses were being held up, so no advantage. Here is one of the posts from that thread. Feel free to read the rest. I tend to agree w/ @mkmuzzy that I think there is no advantage for resort guests right now which is a shame.
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Looks like I was wrong about the buses. Never mind then. 
@Cgerres The challenge w/ this stuff is that it could be different from day to day or park to park. I’m sure it won’t be a 180, but we could be reading about letting guests in 45 minutes before and get there and it’s right at park opening.
I was secretly hoping the 30 minutes early thing would be going on for my late May trip, but other than that, I’m just going to try and get there as early as I can w/ the most efficient transportation I can and let the chips fall where they may.
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Someone in the threads here did suggest that resort busses were being let through before cars. I’ve never seen any busses when I drive. Maybe busses have another entrance?
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Buses do have a separate entrance (yellow highlight below) to HS (car entrance in blue). Having not been recently I can’t tell you protocols for when they are allowed in, but it’s certainly possible someone in a car wouldn’t be able to see it when they did.
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I don’t see any changes to the WDW calendar for my dates?
Ok, now that I’m looking more closely, how are crowd calendars even a thing right now?
For instance, looking at the park availability calendar for the rest of March, the only days that even have any availability for AK are 3/26 and 3/27. But the AK crowd calendar for the unavailable dates ranges 1-3. Why wouldn’t they all be pretty much exactly the same?
I feel like I missing something. Do we think AK has different capacities being allowed different days?
Starting to work on picking park days and trying to figure out how much weight, if any, crowd calendar should play. (Of course, park capacity could change by then, I guess, if things improve significantly.)
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I have been questioning all this myself and last week, on local news for central FL, the news anchors all said something I just can’t get out of my head: They don’t buy the capacity limits. They were shaking their heads and said, “Nope! I don’t buy it!” Just sharing, they didn’t back it up with any data, but it’s been bugging me for a week now. And as I watch the availability calendar for March grey out I keep thinking about crowds and their comments.
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Any idea what they even mean? We know they exist, right? People have been unsuccessful in reserving the parks they want? Or they think they’re variable and they’re fluxing them according to…what? Why? 
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I inferred they thought the capacity limits were higher than what is being stated by Disney. As I said they didn’t back it up with data; it was an unscripted LIVE interaction between the news anchors.
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I think no one really knows exactly what is going on behind the curtain … BUT my impression is that Disney is rarely hitting the 35% capacity, even on days when reservations “sell out.” They are constantly adding passes and rebalancing between the three buckets so it’s hard to say for sure when a day is actually at capacity.
But your comment about next week does give me pause - because it is likely Disney actually will hit capacity during spring break. I have a couple of theories:
- Disney will have more staff scheduled and therefore more ride vehicles running, increasing ride capacity and decreasing lines. Since crowd levels are based on waits, not number of people, it’s possible to have more people with a lower crowd level.
- While waits can be high during Covid, they still aren’t approaching the highs pre-pandemic due to no fastpasses. SDD, 7DMT, and FoP would often get into the 90-120 min range on busy days. Nowadays it seems the average line is 30-40 min, with the very top tier attractions at 60 max. So that would register as a lower crowd level than anything pre-Covid.
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I have been wondering the same thing as the rest of you. We have a late May trip planned and looking at the hours they have posted now are very limited. Really hoping that they extend them the few weeks out like they have been.
I always remember that if they lengthen park hours it means they are expecting more ppl
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I totally milked the system on fast passes last year so am having to approach this trip completely differently. Where is the best place to see recent historical wait times throughout the day for each ride?
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There is a page on Touring Plans for wait times for each attraction that you can scroll through by day, both historically and in the future (with a subscription). For example, here is the page for yesterday at Big Thunder Mountain:
One thing that’s clear here is that for this attraction, Disney is vastly inflating reported wait times (actual wait times reported by Liners is the green dots).
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