Category — p. News and Changes

I’d noted more than a month ago that Fantasmic was not listed on Disney World’s calendars for most of January after January 4 until late in that month.

It is now on through January 8, but off the calendars at the end of January and for the first part of February as well.

It reappears on February 13.

I’d speculated that this might be a closing for rehab or redevelopment, and continue to think that’s the most likely reason it’s off the calendars.

I introduced updates to my ranking of the weeks of 2012 at Walt Disney World a few weeks ago, and promised I’d get back with a little more detail on what changed and why. Here it is.

CHANGES IN RANKING OF BEST AND WORST WEEKS AT DISNEY WORLD

47 weeks had their rankings change.

Changes came from analysis of final school calendars and resulting changes to the 2012 Disney World crowd calendar, and from analysis of final 2012 prices.

They also came from some new policies to make the rankings even more helpful.

While only 6 weeks had no change, of the rest, 36 weeks changed their rankings only +/- 3 weeks, and only two weeks had a ranking change of more than 10 weeks.

POLICY CHANGES AND THEIR IMPLICATIONS

Here’s the new policies built into the revised 2012 week ranking:

Have no recommended weeks that aren’t low crowd weeks.

This moved the week beginning 12/15 out of the list of recommended weeks entirely, and the 14 week change in ratings was the biggest of all changes.

For those who picked it based on its old rating, I haven’t changed my view of the week–low crowds and prices at the beginning, high at its end, and moderate levels on average.

It’s still a sound week to go, but with the change to no moderate crowd weeks on the recommended list, its ranking has to drop a lot.

Make sharper distinctions on summer crowds, which moved some late May and early June weeks well up in the rankings—these were the next biggest ranking changes.

Pay more attention within groups of like weeks to ranking lower-priced weeks ahead of higher priced ones. This moved the recommended fall weeks ahead of the recommended spring weeks, and caused minor shifts in a number of other weeks.

Pay more attention to the fact that Pop Warner week is typically excluded from deals and discounts.

Carl (“Dad”) at Dad’s Guide to WDW has been advocating that I do this for years.

I had some reasons for not doing so, resolved by moving from one suggested week in my home page and When to Go points of view to three suggested weeks.

This shift resolved my reasons for disagreeing with Carl, who really does know WDW. It also led to a new number one ranked week for 2012! Thanks, Dad!

The 2012 week rankings begin here–or you can just click the image.

MORE ON WHEN TO GO TO WALT DISNEY WORLD

• For when to go to Walt Disney World, see this
• For the next best dates, see this
• For the best and worst times to visit, see this
  • For 2011 weeks to visit, ranked in order, see this
  • For the 2011 Week Picker, see this
  • For 2012 weeks to visit, ranked in order, see this
• For forecasting crowds at Walt Disney World, see this
• For seasonal pricing at Walt Disney World, see this
  • For 2011 price seasons, see this
  • For 2012 price seasons, see this
• For weather at Walt Disney World, see this

Disney World has a new free dining deal that covers many dates from October 2011 through March 2012.

The deal needs to be booked by October 29, 2011. Update: for 2012 dates, the book-by window has been extended to December 17. See this for more.

According to this post on the Disney Food Blog, available arrival dates are as follows (updated 8/26–those who have already booked the old dates will still get the free dining; new bookings must use the new dates)

2011 FREE DINING AT WALT DISNEY WORLD ARRIVAL DATES

• October 1-6
• October 22-November 3
• November 12-17
• November 26-December 1
• December 10-December 15
• October 2-8
• October 23-November 5
• November 13-19
• November 27-December 3
• December 11-17

2012 FREE DINING AT WALT DISNEY WORLD ARRIVAL DATES

• January 8-12
• January 21-February 2
• February 11-16
• March 3-8
• March 24-29
• January 8-14
• January 22-February 4
• February 12-18
• March 4-10
• March 25-31

I recently published my Walt Disney World Crowd Calendar for 2012 and, based on it and other factors, revised the list of 2012 weeks to visit Disney World ranked in order.

I’ve also published details on 2012 crowds during key periods–

• Crowds during the Christmas-New Year’s season 2011-2012
• Crowds during 2012 Spring Break
• Summer 2012 crowds, and
• The lowest crowd weeks of 2012 at Disney World

In this post, I’ll be explaining how my Disney World 2012 Crowd Calendar is different from those I’ve been publishing for the last 3+ years (e.g. this one for 2011) but also how it’s the same!

SAME PURPOSE: HELPING FAMILIES FIND THE LEAST CROWDED TIMES AT WALT DISNEY WORLD

The new crowd calendar has the same old purpose–to help first time family visitors, unsure if they will ever return, to find the more and less crowded weeks at Walt Disney World.

It’s not mean to give precise day by day crowd forecasts–the best source for those is TouringPlans.com.

It also uses the same data sources I’ve always used–greater and lower operating hours, the exact dates of kid’s school breaks, and my own inferences based on experience, knowledge, and research.

I’ve incorporated even more school breaks than I had in the past, where my focus had been solely on sharpening up the Spring Break crowd forecasts.  My school calendars now cover all the major family vacation periods.

What’s different is how I bring all this to a label.  In the past, my crowd “number” came from a normalized index of excess operating hours, which I then adjusted based on school break info and inferences.

However, this approach no longer works so well.

The biggest problem with it has been that Disney has lately been frequently changing its operating hours–usually adding to them–which caused my crowd calendar to both look funny—crowded later dates don’t look as bad as they will be because hours have not yet been added–and to change month to month in ways that actually aren’t important.

So what I’ve done in the new 2012 Disney Crowd Calendar is, using the same analytics as before, to re-label every week from 1 (lowest crowds) to 11 (highest crowds).

This makes it both more accurate and more stable. So weeks that I know will be crowded, and that will thus have operating hours added, are just indicated as high crowd weeks now…

MY DISNEY WORLD CROWD CALENDAR GOES TO 11

The choice of 1-10 as the ranking would have been easier–it would have followed the traditional TouringPlans.com model.

But what TouringPlans.com currently groups together as “10” weeks seems to me to mask among these really bad weeks some really nightmarish ones.

I’d recommended to them (see this comment and the one that precedes it) that the distinguish these nightmare weeks, but they haven’t taken me up on this advice 🙂 .  So I took it myself, both as a source of additional crowd precision and as a tribute to Spinal Tap!

The final changes are that the layout of the Crowd Calendar is now horizontal rather than vertical, which gave me room to add the dates of every week, and I’ve now color-coded the bars.

Check it out–it’s here.

MORE ON WHEN TO GO TO WALT DISNEY WORLD

• For when to go to Walt Disney World, see this
• For the next best dates, see this
• For the best and worst times to visit, see this
  • For 2011 weeks to visit, ranked in order, see this
  • For the 2011 Week Picker, see this
  • For 2012 weeks to visit, ranked in order, see this
• For forecasting crowds at Walt Disney World, see this
• For seasonal pricing at Walt Disney World, see this
  • For 2011 price seasons, see this
  • For 2012 price seasons, see this
• For weather at Walt Disney World, see this

Disney World’s calendars are showing some unusual features for next week beginning July 18, features that are usually associated with enormous crowds.

For example, the Magic Kingdom’s afternoon parade, normally at 3p, is scheduled for both noon and 3.30p the 18th and after, which one only sees on the days of the year Disney expects to be among its busiest.

Moreover, Epcot is open the 23rd until 9.30p, and Illuminations is on at 9.30 that night–in both cases, 9p is typical for this time of year.

These changes appeared on Disney’s operating calendars late last week.

Assuming these changes aren’t errors, my guess is that  Disney World is projecting crowds coming to Orlando in quantities even higher than already typically high July crowds to celebrate the final film of ArryHay OtterPay and an associated convention.

If so, keep your eye on these calendars for possible further changes–e.g. 8a openings and addition of more Extra Magic Hours.

TWELVE TICKETS IN TOTAL AVAILABLE FOR DISNEY MILITARY SALUTE

Steve at MilitaryDisneyTips has posted here that the discounted Disney World Military tickets are not unlimited, as we previously thought, but limited to a total of 12.

Only 6 can be “purchased/activated/utilized” per day for the life of the deal, which ends September 30 2012.

I apologize for causing more than my usual confusion on prior posts about how many total tickets are available!  (I probably should have a separate category on this site called “apologies.”)

Disney World’s military discounts site still does not have details of 2012 up, but Steve’s got all the core stuff on this page and its links.