Category — Disney World Crowds

Disney has posted some highly unusual operating hours 5/20 through 5/22.  These coincide with the first Star Wars weekend, and also with the opening of the re-imagined Star Tours.

Disney’s Hollywood Studios–where the weekend happens and the ride is located–will be open from 8a-midnight the 20th, 21st, and 22nd.

This is three or four hours longer than the first Star Wars Weekend last year, and makes sense–the new ride is not only an attractor itself, but has been conceptualized to encourage multiple rides by having dozens of different possible experiences.

Mark Goldhaber of MousePlanet.com is reporting here that “some within Walt Disney World management are predicting that May 20 will be the busiest day in the history of Disney’s Hollywood Studios.”

But a couple of things suggest Disney may be expecting much more than multiple Star Tours riders.

First, Fantasmic is rarely shown Fridays and Saturdays, but both the 2oth and 21st not only is it on, but is on for two shows.

In the last six months, Fantasmic has been shown 14% of non-holiday Fridays and 18% of non-holiday Saturdays, and on both the Friday and Saturday of a non-holiday weekend exactly once; on last year’s first Star Wars weekend, it had one show, on Friday.

Second, the Animal Kingdom not only has unusual Saturday morning extra magic hours the 21st, but also has an 8a opening Sunday the 22nd–almost unheard of outside the busiest holiday weeks. As a result, for Disney resort hotel guests, the Animal Kingdom will open at 8a both weekend days.

Finally, the Magic Kingdom opens at 8a the 21st.  Saturday 8a openings are becoming coming at the Magic Kingdom–they’ve been happening many Saturdays since early March–so I don’t let this influence my thinking too much.

If what was going on was just the extra hours at the Studios, and the Magic Kingdom early Saturday, I wouldn’t be thinking big crowds outside of the Studios and especially the Star Tours area.

But adding in the unusual Fantasmics–not added for the Star Wars crew–and the unusual hours at the Animal Kingdom, leads me to suspect that Disney is projecting large crowds resort wide May 20 through May 22.

DISNEY CROWD CALENDAR UPDATE

I’ve updated my Walt Disney World Crowd Calendar to reflect recently-released  November 2011 Disney World operating hours.

You can find the updated crowd calendar here.

A reminder–I always recommend checking another crowd calendar–preferably that at TouringPlans.com–before committing to a specific time to go to Walt Disney World.

DISNEY CROWD CALENDAR UPDATE

I’ve updated my Walt Disney World Crowd Calendar to reflect recently-released October 2011 Disney World operating hours.

You can find the updated crowd calendar here.

On a related note, I always recommend checking another crowd calendar–preferably that at TouringPlans.com–before committing to a specific time to go to Walt Disney World.

The folks at TouringPlans.com have recently added forecasts of operating hours going out twelve months.

You can read about this on Henry Work’s blog post here.

THE SPRING BREAK CROWDS ARE HERE…

Rick recently commented on this page as follows:

Dave – Good information on your website.

Maybe I missed it but Disney is good about extending hours during busy times.

If you are prone to getting up early you can enjoy small crowds, take a break and return later in the day. If you are only able to travel during busy times that has worked for us.

This is a really important point.

I address it in general–all this site’s itineraries include being at the parks before they open, and I posted some material on Christmas and New Years crowds here.

That said, there’s more to say, and now that we are fully in the incredibly busy Spring Break and Easter parts of the year, here it is!

HOW TO COPE WITH DISNEY WORLD MARCH AND APRIL CROWDS

[Read more →]

WALT DISNEY WORLD CROWD CALENDAR

The chart presents predictions for crowds at Walt Disney World through 2011.

(Last updated 9/28/10.) [Read more →]

OVERVIEW: TOURINGPLANS.COM’S “CROWD CALENDAR 2.0”

The crew behind the Unofficial Guide—creators, among other things, of TouringPlans.com, Lines, and The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World 2011, have released a new version of their venerable daily crowd calendar.

The new release takes a great resource and makes it even better.

While it has many new features, the most important one is that the crowd predictions on the TouringPlans.com daily crowd calendar now match the most typical reason people look for crowd calendars. That is, the calendar now represents an estimate of general Walt Disney World theme park crowds on a given day.

Users of this site’s guidance on when to go, or its crowd calendar, or its itineraries, don’t need the touringplans.com daily crowd calendar.

But even so, it is a great and very affordable resource to use to double check my thoughts, valuable for all, and especially valuable for those designing their own itineraries.

MORE ON CROWD CALENDAR 2.0

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