Sorry if this has been asked to death. I did a search and didn’t find anything. What is up with the crowds this summer. I keep hearing attendance is way down but noticing up to 8/9 crowd levels this week. For those there now or just came back, are the crowds really as low as they say? Or are the staffing less, shutting queues down making the wait times just as long? We leave on Sat and was hoping to take advantage of quieter parks. 
Thanks!
I believe TP crowd levels are based on wait times? When attendance is down Disney reduces staff and wait times increase.
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PCDev just noticed yesterday the SDD wait at 120 minutes, but the queue wasn’t full. Is that normal guys?
Screenshot of the video when SDD was posted 120:
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Unless you have a time machine, short waits aren’t much of an option anymore because …
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Ok Thats what I was figuring. So lines will still be just as wretched. Thanks.
Thats interesting.
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I keep wondering how much the wait times are inflated right now. After the word of low crowds, they me trying to make it look more crowded.
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That’s my concern. And in turn skewing TP’s historical crowd levels.
Question for any other data nerds. I can’t remember, are TP’s historical CL’s derrived from actual wait times (based on past submitted user waits) or Disney’s posted wait times?
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It does look like things popped back up a bit last week.
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Thanks for pointing that out.
Comparing TP’s crowd levels (based on wait times) from month to month or year to year, may not be best measurement of “crowds”.
Perhaps attendance levels are the best way, but of course that’s always lagging data so hard to really know. The best guage is probably the local regular attenders, who will know if crowds are above or below normal.
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I have been stalking the historic crowds in TP the past few months and like this article mentions, this week for sure increased in CL! Praying the weekend continues to stay lower. I have noticed for a while now it starts to die down around Friday and amps back up again on Monday, which I cant for the life of me understand.
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Same. We are off to WDW in a couple weeks.
I think the weekends are lower because they are travel days for many. Although this summer seems to be exacerbated.
I’ve been concerned about @PrincipalTinker theory since lower crowds were first reported. Crowds are lower - YEA! Let’s cut staff hours - BOOOO!
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I believe I first heard this years ago from Len on either the Disney Dish or maybe even wdwtoday?
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Isn’t this more than a theory? Wasn’t there sufficient confirmation that this was done at least in Jan/Feb 2019 which made the typical “lower” crowd levels still have long waits?
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Yes. I think it was Jan 2020 though.
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They are probably inflating the wait time considerably. That said, if it is this big a discrepancy between what you see and the wait time, it’s usually because the LL is really backed up so very few guests are being drawn from standby.
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Not suggesting because I said it’s a “theory” for this summer that it’s not true. I just don’t know if we have any proof yet that they’ve started doing that already this summer. Or maybe we do? Regardless, I guess it wouldn’t surprise me.
Yes, you are right. I think I’ve blocked out the year 2020 in my mind.
The former, per TP’s the description on the historical crowds page.
" The crowd levels listed in our “historical” section are actual measurements using data collected from Walt Disney World Lines or from our own research team."
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Thanks, that’s good to hear!
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