WAY Crowded for end of January, plus the "get there at rope drop" secret is out!

We’ve been in Disney World in January a few times. It’s NEVER been as crowded as it is this week! Also, we’ve never seen so many people at the parks for rope drop.

The TP crowd calendar showed very low numbers this week. They have been wrong. I think the pandemic has completely thrown off their estimates! And it sucks.

Our TPs have been fairly useless.

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A few months ago I postponed our trip from starting this week, to next week. So, I am closely watching the crowds. Who would have thought? I had been scared that it would super crowded, but last week seemed encouraging.

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I looked at the crowd calendar and yesterday at MK was a 10!
I don’t blame TP, since who could have predicted that?

I do throw some blame on Disney though. They have park reservations, they are able to restrict the attendance to match the staff that is available.

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I thought that was the whole point of park reservations - I can’t see any other reason to have them.

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Maybe in Disney’s plan Monday’s 10 crowd level was the appropriate (or even targeted???) attendance/staff ratio. Not good for guests, but perhaps good for profits.

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I saw that too.

This is crazy but Universal was a 2 and 3 yesterday :hushed:

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In December we postponed our upcoming WDW trip planned for the end of this week and beginning of next week, but when that trip was planned, I picked those days because I thought the crowds would be lowest in the couple week period post-MLK/races and pre-Valentines Day. Maybe lots of people had the same idea.

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You could be right.
Grumble, grumble. Bad Genie! (My new name for Cheap-ek)

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Of course, it could be that park attendance wasn’t that high, but Disney “successfully” managed staff by reducing CMs working, artificially driving up the wait times. Driving up the impression of crowd levels and wait times drives more people into buying G+/ILLS, while still paying fewer CMs. It is a win for everyone! (Well, except guests…but what do they matter?)

Ha! I should have read all the way through before posting.

Good point.

Have the South American tour groups returned? I know that this is a school break for most SA countries, and the 15s and their groups have been a majority of park goers in years past for late Jan / early Feb.

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I hadn’t noticed a big impact in 2020 when we were there this time of year. We just left the land when they arrived there. But, then now there will be two years worth.

And that my friends is about the closest thing one can get to a “Heart” from @ryan1.

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It’s kind of exciting- last year was ghost town and made us a tad sad. (Although I really did enjoy the sweet spot of vacant spaces, walkways and walk-ons, during our summer 2020 trip right after the parks reopened.)

Thank you so much for your RD reports and such!

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I was in MK yesterday and the sea of people was insane. Thought I had missed an event happening or something. Glad I didn’t have any real plans because I think they would have gone out the window if I had.

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Posts like these make me need a paper bag to breathe in and out of. I totally rely on accurate crowd calendars and it is seeming more and more likely they won’t be accurate for my trip the first week of April. I blame Disney, and Covid, and Disney, and G+, and Disney, and $ILL, and Disney, and all you people who won’t postpone your trip so I can have less crowded parks :rofl:

And of course, Disney.

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Like others we chose this week because it was supposed to be the lowest crowds— not just on the TP calendar but all the calendars we could find. We try to pick the park with the lowest crowd ratings to go to. It has been packed, even today in the cold rain. I’ve talked to a few CMs who said this was about the crowd level they had at Christmas! Not what we were expecting at all but trying to make the best of it.

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Last week was the same for us. We kept saying “This is not normal January crowds.”

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As much as I think Disney controls everything they can, ride wait times were definitely not because of lack of staff. I was there and rode alot and the staff was hustling and The rides seemed seamless. Train in, load, out immediately. Food on the other hand.

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