Happy New Year Crowd Watch
Wait times in 2011 at Walt Disney World and Disneyland have been higher than expected. Our Crowd Calendar predicted the week after New Year’s Day to have below average crowds but wait times, particularly at Animal Kingdom and Hollywood Studios have been average or above average.
As always, this could be caused by a variety of factors and is likely due to a combination of them all. Free dining, Marathon weekend and good weather could all be contributing. The most likely cause however is the fact that some school boards don’t resume until January 10th. Since Christmas day occurred on a Saturday it meant that some school boards chose to break from School on December 24th. For those families, the Christmas break doesn’t conclude until Monday the 10th making this week a great week for a Walt Disney World vacation.
Whatever the reason it does not seem to be having as strong an effect in Disneyland where crowds are only slightly higher than expected (one or two points – within the normal error rate of the crowd estimates).
On average, our crowd calendar estimates are correct within one index point 90% of the time.
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You might consider trying to find a mole at Disney resorts who can give you some heads up if bookings are out of the norm for the time of year. Something of that nature could be invaluable in avoiding bad estimates due to unforseen causes.
We unfortunately seem to have gone on the two days that were the most off from your forecasts. Oddly, the resort itself (polynesian)was rather quiet and uncrowded. And I know that place is usually nearly booked up. Maybe it is indeed a different kind of visitor that in the past. One who stays off-site, or in a value resort, and hits the parks hard all day long because he flew 12 hours to get here and will never be back.
I was happy to see this post about the higher crowds in the parks. It assures me that I wasn’t losing my mind when we visited during the first week in January! Boy, the parks sure seemed a whole lot more crowded than what was predicted! It seemed that a good portion of the crowd consisted of international travelers. There were people all around speaking other languages. We still had a great vacation, but it’s true that we’re spoiled to short wait times and low crowds during that time. So we were a bit disappointed with the crowded parks and some of the longer ride wait times.
I was interested to read this because we were in HS on Thurs the 6th and I thought crowds were quite heavy. FASTPASSes and a touring plan helped, but overall my personal experience at the Studios was a disappointment–the park was too small and too crowded. Who wants to spend 90 minutes of his day waiting for a show to start (Fantasmic)? That’s a huge chunk of time to commit. However, we went to AK on Friday and found the crowds much more manageable. To me, HS was just claustrophobic. Perhaps crowds were just as heavy at AK, but the park didn’t “feel” as crowded. In retrospect, I would have preferred 2 days in AK and to skip HS altogether. Just my opinion.
Great crowd review! Thanks!
I love these posts that get into some of the detail behind the projections. While I’m aware that you may have miscalculated the numbers because of the extended winter break shouldn’t you have been able to see there were additional bookings at off site hotels earlier in the process or is free dining driving more people to Disney resorts and skewing those numbers?
This analysis is based on what we observed the previous week at the resorts. We’re pretty sure it is a result of the extended holiday season for some schools which means that it will not affect any estimates going forward.
I will be in the world for Presidents day week. Do you think this will have any effect on that week? Great job as usual!
Do we think this trend will continue with MLK coming up and later?
Fred – this is great – looking forward to your 2011 forecasts
You guys are great but I do think you missed the holiday break situation in my area (Chicagoland). I really think that’s the reason for the crowds.