Category — p. News and Changes

My friends at Destinations in Florida are continuing to offer (while supplies last) a FREE copy of our new book, The easy Guide to Your First Walt Disney World Visit–the best-reviewed Disney World guidebook in the history of the universe–just for booking your trip through them!

Get this free gift on top of the many FREE services that Destinations in Florida Travel already offers such as Dining Recommendations and Reservations, Free Itinerary Planning, MousePerks, autographed Mickey Mouse photos for the kids, discount watching and much much more.

Click the link to request your Disney World package quote today!

And don’t forget–Josh and I will be meeting and greeting and signing copies of our book (or anything else you bring) next Saturday and Sunday!!

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DISNEY WORLD NEXT WEEK: AUGUST 9 TO AUGUST 17, 2014

The material below details operating hours, Extra Magic Hours, parades, and fireworks.

The same stuff is in the image, but organized by park, not by topic.

For more on August 2014 at Walt Disney World, see this.

The biggest deal next week, of course, is the meet ups and book signings with me and Josh!

[Read more →]

Every year I publish in the fall a draft Disney World crowd calendar for the year starting 15ish months from then.

I then update it in the next summer based on analysis of US school calendars–which are more varied than you’d think, and also come out in many cases a lot later than you’d think.

I’ve finished this year’s school calendar analyses–see this for an example–and have now published the resulting slightly modified 2015 Walt Disney World crowd calendar.

When I worked on it last year, 2015 looked like a pretty straightforward year to forecast–no late Easter, no World Cup affecting the summer. And the results of the schoolkid analysis bear this up. Only four weeks had their crowd ratings change, and none changed enough to shift categories–that is, none shifted from “low” to “moderate,” or from “moderate” to “high.”

You can find the 2015 Disney World Crowd Calendar–final except for typos (less common in my math than my writing, thank God) or unexpected changes–right here.

Based on it and the 2015 price seasons that came out last week, I’ll next be turning to the 2015 Week Rankings, and should have a revised version of them out soon!

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Josh and I will be meeting our fan (if he or she can make it) and signing copies of The easy Guide to Your First Walt Disney World Visit August 16 and 17!

We’ll be at Epcot on Saturday August 16 at 2p, at the outdoor tables near the Liberty Inn counter service at the left of the American Pavilion in Epcot’s World Showcase.

Then we’ll be at the Magic Kingdom at 5p on Sunday the 17th. We’ll be in or near the Tomorrowland Terrace.

Though we are both shy, even so we’ll chat and sign copies of The easy Guide you bring with you, or anything else for that matter.

We’ll have some kinda giveaway–details TBD, but likely a few easy Guides we’ve both signed–and, possibly, break out into parody versions of Frozen songs– e.g. “Buy our Book” to the tune of “Let it Go.”

Despite rumors to the contrary, we are not expecting Anna to read aloud from The easy Guide…

…nor Elsa to be there and add her signature, too.

But even so, hope you can come!  After all, I am getting a haircut and everything…And if you can’t come, hope you can help spread the word!

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The latest WDW Magazine is out, themed around “Back to School.”

In its “First-Timers Corner,” I write about how school breaks are more varied than you might think, and that you may be able to find a break where you can go to Disney World without taking your kids out of school, but still find reasonable–or even better!–crowds.

You can see some of how this works from items I’ve recently published coming from my analysis of 2014-2015 school schedules:

• End of summer crowds
• Fall break crowds

(More is coming on this series starting tomorrow–Christmas crowds, spring break crowds, and beginning of summer crowds!)

Otherwise, taking your kids out of school is the best move.  See this for more on how educational Disney World is.  After all, I skipped a ton of high school for Disney Word…and ended up as a published author!

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Disney World released 2015 resort prices Wednesday, and the updated 2015 resort price seasons are here.

There were only three differences between my projections and actuals:

• The January value season begins two days later than I’d projected, on January 4
• The August value season at the moderate and value resorts begins two weeks later, on 8/16/15
• At the deluxes, there’s a change to how later December unfolds.  After the fall season ends on 12/10/15, instead of a week of peak followed by two weeks of holiday pricing, 2015 sees a week of regular season pricing starting 12/11, a week of peak starting 12/18, then holiday pricing starting 12/25

The latter two are the big changes.

The shift to later August value pricing at the values and moderates is a reversion to how Disney did this just a few years ago.  Just as the switch to early August was a surprise a couple of years ago, so is this switch to mid-August.

The December switch is a bit of a backing off on Disney’s new (higher) approach to mid-December pricing that also started a couple of years ago.  I suspect that too much peak pricing so early was dropping demand for the highest-priced deluxe properties, and hence the slowdown in increasing deluxe prices that we’ll see in 2015.

I’ll publish a detailed analysis of price changes in a bit–right now I’m focusing on updating the 2015 crowd calendar, which I’ll have complete within a week!!

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