Category — p. News and Changes

DISNEY WORLD CROWDS FROM LATER DECEMBER 2018 TO EARLY JANUARY 2019

Disney World sees its highest crowds and prices of the year in the later third of December and the beginning of January, in the weeks around Christmas and New Year’s Eve.

This is for a pretty basic reason: kids are out of school then.

However, not every school district has the same break schedule.

In 2018, as always, there’s more kids out the week between Christmas and New Year’s than before or after.

Because of the Tuesday Christmas, there’s not a lot of kids out the week before Christmas. However, waits will build that week even so compared to earlier in December, as folks not worried about school breaks come then to try to beat the crowds later in the month.

Crowds will be massive by December 22, 2018, and will be at their worst between 12/23/2018 and 1/1/2019.

As in 2018, the week after New Years in 2019 has many kids on break, so I expect Disney World to be heavily crowded through January 6, 2019.

SCHOOL BREAKS AND DISNEY WORLD CROWDS

Most years, there two typical sorts of breaks:

• Long breakers–districts that take at least 2 full weeks (and three weekends) off
• Short breakers–districts that take off as close to only December 25 to January 1 as they can

As a result, the period Christmas-New Years is always mobbed at Disney World, as everyone is out of school then, but the periods before and after vary from year to year depending on what day of the week Christmas falls.

In 2018, the Tuesday Christmas put long-break districts in the position having to pick when to schedule their second week–before Christmas weekend, or after New Years. Enough put it after New Year’s that I expect to see heavy crowds that week.

My review of school breaks (explained more here), along with co-author Josh’s work on easyWDW.com. on waits, has not led to any material changes in my December 2018 or early January 2019 crowd forecasts. However in a minor change, I’d now expect the week beginning 12/1 to be a 3, not a 4, and the week beginning 12/8 to be a 4, and not a 3.

As always this time of year, it is critical through December 21 to visit the right park on the right day, and this will be especially true the week beginning 12/15. Pick the right days to be in each park, and you will see moderate-minus crowds; pick the wrong days, and you will see high crowds.

ACTUAL 2018-2019 CHRISTMAS SEASON SCHOOL BREAKS

The chart above illuminates how 2018/2o19 holiday breaks work.

It’s based on data from a weighted sample including more than 270 of the largest relevant US public school districts with almost a third–more than 15 million–of total US school kids included.

The holidays are red, the weekends black, and weekdays blue.

You can see that breaks begin Friday the 14th. More kids go on break beginning the 19th, and by the 22nd everyone is on break.

Pretty much everybody stays out of school through January 1, 2019, and while many go back to school January 2 or 3rd, more than 50% of US schoolkids remain on break through January 6, 2019.

Over the period, I have crowds the weeks beginning 11/24, 12/1, and 12/8 in the low range. Crowds the week beginning 12/15 I have as moderate–if you are careful picking your days (or use my itinerary) you will see moderate-minus crowds, and if you pick bad days, you’ll see high crowds.

Disney World crowds will peak between Christmas and New Years. I have the week beginning 12/22 as having the highest crowds of the year, and the week beginning 12/29 as having high crowds–worse earlier in the week, a little better later in the week.

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FALL BREAK CROWDS IN 2018 AT WALT DISNEY WORLD

One of the things you’ll see now and then on the web is the claim that “fall breaks from school create big crowds at Walt Disney World.”

“Fall breaks” are multi-day school holidays before Thanksgiving, and, if material, would have an effect on Disney World—because Disney World is most crowded when it’s easy for kids to go.

If you check the facts, though, you’ll find that fall breaks are both uncommon and scattered across October and early November—they don’t much matter other than Jersey Week and two October weeks, the one includes  Columbus Day and the one the week after.

You are much more likely to run into trouble in the fall by choosing to go to a park on a bad day—

• Epcot on a weekend during Food and Wine,
• The Magic Kingdom on a day when Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party or Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party is not showing, and evening hours and entertainment offerings are thus more extensive.
• Any park other than Magic Kingdom on a day it has Extra Magic Hours, and when Magic Kingdom closes at 6p for a holiday party

The effect of picking bad park days can be quite profound, and is why you’ll see some people report that “October is the new July,” while other people have easy and delightful visits in October.

But all that being said, there are in fact better and worse weeks in the fall.

See the chart, which shows the weighted percent of US school kids in my database with a three-day weekend or longer break in 2018 in later September, in October and in November before Thanksgiving week. (For how it’s built out of ~276 school districts and 15.3 million kids, see this.)

In it, weekends are in black, and Columbus Day and the day Veteran’s Day is celebrated are in red. Everything else is blue.

The first conclusion you can draw is that the only time when a lot of kids have full-week fall breaks is the week that includes Columbus Day–the week beginning 10/6 in 2018. The much-lower midweek bars (especially on Wednesdays) the other weeks indicate how few kids have full week breaks in other weeks.

The second conclusion is that many kids have long three, four and even five day weekends pretty much every weekend from just before Columbus Day to just after Veterans Day. These long weekends do provide more convenient opportunities for families to go to Disney World, and do contribute to extra crowding, particularly to the week beginning 10/13 and the week beginning 11/3.

On the other hand, the week beginning 9/29 in is showing many fewer kids on long weekends than I had thought. I have it marked as 5/moderate-minus crowds, but in retrospect it looks more like a low crowd week, especially before its ending weekend.

I am comfortable with my other crowd forecasts for this period–although those who follow one of my itineraries will see much better crowds, and those making particularly bad park day choices will see worse ones.

Note: none of this is about Thanksgiving week, which is quite crowded and a lousy time to go!

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This site’s Disney World crowd calendars always show crowds dropping off in later August.

For example, in 2018, crowd rankings go from 8/high-minus at the end of July/beginning of August down to 2/lower in early September.

This page both explain how that comes about and also reviews how the site’s crowd calendars are built.

END OF SUMMER 2018 CROWDS AT WALT DISNEY WORLD

The highest-crowd periods at Walt Disney World all have one thing in common: they are convenient times for parents to take their kids to Orlando. That is, they are times that kids are out of school and that parents traditionally can take off of work.

What’s not so clear until you do the numbers is that actual school vacation dates are much more varied than you’d think.  And there’s no good source you can go to that explains what all these varied dates are.

So usually every year about this time one of my nieces goes to hundreds of school district websites and captures all the key vacation dates for the upcoming academic year.

(This time of year because you’d be surprised many districts don’t put their calendars up for the upcoming year until June, even late June–looking at you, New Jersey…)

This year we collected data on 274 school districts with 15.33 million kids–about a third of the US school-age population. These include the 100 largest school districts in the U.S., plus 170+ more of the next largest school districts mostly in the more highly-populated states east of the Mississippi–that is, the states from which in particular Walt Disney World draws its visitors.

I then create a database that shows based on district enrollment every kid who is off on every date, and weight each district based on that district’s state’s proportion of total US visits to this website (because Disney won’t tell me actual visitation by state!). See the image above for a screenshot example.

Finally, I calculate percentage of total weighted kids on break by date and use that to inform the crowd calendars.

Above are the results of this for when kids go back to school in 2018.

So you can see that

• Kids don’t start going back to school in real numbers until Wednesday 8/8
• More than a third are back in school by 8/15
• About half  are back in school by Thursday 8/23 and
• More than 70% are back in school before Labor Day (noted in red)

In 2018, pretty much all kids are back in school by the Thursday after Labor Day.

Moreover, vacation patterns typically don’t have people returning from their vacation the night before school begins, so the effect of these back-to-school dates is offset into earlier August by around a week.

Thus, in the 2018 crowd calendar, the week of 7/28 and 8/4 are rated 8/high-minus crowds, the week of 8/11 7/moderate+ crowds, the week of 8/18 6/moderate crowds, and the week of 8/25 3/low crowds.

As I turn to revising my draft 2019 crowd calendar, I’m also adjusting for some small shifts based on co-author Josh’s work on easyWDW.com. In retrospect, in the summer of 2018, the week beginning  8/11 should be an 8/ high-minus, 8/18 should be a 5 moderate-minus, and 8/25 a 2/lower.

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Note: on March 7, Disney announced that Galaxy’s Edge will partially open on August 29, 2019.

There’s four questions to answer:

1. What will it be like in the new land itself?
2. What will it be like in the rest of Disney’s Hollywood Studios?
3. What impact will the opening have on the rest of the Disney World parks?
4. When will it actually open?

To some, the answer to the first three questions will be “horrible,” and to the fourth “August 29th, sorta.” But by looking at roughly analogous openings, you can develop a more nuanced set of forecasts.

In September 2017 when I published my first draft 2019 crowd calendar, I noted the following

“There’s no formal opening date for this land — “late 2019” is the rumor. I expect it to unfold much like Harry Potter did at Universal–with crushing crowds in the actual land, but not a huge spillover effect on the other parks–or even the rest of Hollywood Studios. If I’m wrong, expect to see an increase of a point or two in the crowd levels after it opens.”

What’s new since then is a better sense of the astonishing impact of Pandora on Disney’s Animal Kingdom.

So here’s my current forecast for Galaxy’s Edge.

1. WHAT WILL IT BE LIKE IN STAR WARS: GALAXY’S EDGE?

This is the easy one to forecast. Galaxy’s Edge itself will be crushed with those interested in the Star Wars setting and its Millennium Falcon and battle rides for quite some time. I expect longer hours, daily Extra Magic Hours, and the use of FastPass+ or some other mechanism to restrict access to the actual land, not just the rides, but there will still be more demand to visit the land than capacity to serve it.

2. WHAT IMPACT WILL STAR WARS: GALAXY’S EDGE HAVE ON THE REST OF DISNEY’S HOLLYWOOD STUDIOS?

Here I need to revise my September 2017 forecast a bit. I now expect the other “adult” rides in the park (e.g. Tower of Terror, Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster, Star Tours) to see longer waits than I had initially thought. Visitors avoiding both the thrill rides and the new Star Wars rides should be OK, but everyone else will see substantially increased waits at the Studios.

Based on what has happened at Pandora, I now expect an annualized growth in attendance at the Studios after Star Wars opens of on the order of at least 4 million more visitors, bringing the park to (after what I expect to be the impacts of Toy Story Land and Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway, another million visitors*) to an annualized run rate of about 15.5 million visitors, or almost 50% more than it saw in 2017.

Where does my four million come from? Well, here’s the increase in the relevant park’s attendance for the 12 months following** some recent major openings:

• Pandora (2017): 2.75 million
• Diagon Alley (2014): 2.4 million
• Hogsmeade (2000): 2.65 million
• The Animal Kingdom itself (1998): 8.6 million

So I am forecasting for Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge basically an opening near the scale of the Animal Kingdom’s opening, but divided across the two North American parks.

This makes the opening of Star Wars at Hollywood Studios almost a 50% larger opening than Pandora, and 60% larger than the average opening of the Harry Potter parks. Star Wars itself is a much more popular property than Pandora, and it will offer two world-class rides, rather than Pandora’s one world class ride and one also-ran.

On the other hand, Disney World Galaxy’s Edge attendance will be diminished by first the fact than an equivalent land will open earlier in California, drawing off some potential attendance, and second by the horror stories I expect to come out of Disneyland, leading some to defer attendance until later years.

Hollywood Studios park hours can fairly easily be expanded to the 14.5 hours/day we see this summer at Animal Kingdom, or more. Assuming its shows can have the number of times they are offered increased proportionality, this can add depending on the time of year 20-30% to its capacity, absorbing a couple million of the new visitors.

At that level of operating hours, the five new rides that will open at Hollywood Studios between now and then (the two Toy Story rides, the Mickey and Minnie ride, and the two Star Wars rides) will open additional capacity of about 100,000 individual rides a day. On average this equates to either 2+ rides for all 15.5 million visitors or about 7 rides per day for each of the 5 million new visitors. So on the math, the park can take this level of increased attendance.

The problem will be mismatches between supply and demand at individual attractions—especially at the two Star Wars attractions.

I get about enough capacity for every visitor to the park to see just one of the Star Wars rides on an average day. If more than half of park visitors want to see both of them, lines will skyrocket, and some of the Star-Wars aimed folks will balk at waits for those rides and go elsewhere in the park. And since I expect a fair proportion of the dedicated Star Wars visitors to not be interested in equal measure in the new capacity at the Toy Story Land rides or Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway, the result will be heavy lines at the rides most popular for adults—Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster, Tower of Terror, and Star Tours.

3. WHAT IMPACT WILL STAR WARS: GALAXY’S EDGE HAVE ON THE REST OF THE PARKS?

Everyone seems to think that the opening of a major land (or ride) has immediate spillover effects on the other parks. That simply has not been the case for Florida parks.

• When Disney’s Animal Kingdom opened, attendance at the other three parks remained flat for the next two and a half years. (Reasonable analysis covers only through 2000, as 9/11 makes comparison to 2001 too different. Attendance at the other three parks actually dropped substantially in 1998, but this was an artifact of Disney’s 25th anniversary celebration, which boosted all of 1997 but only bits of 1996 and 1998.)
• When Hogsmeade opened at Islands of Adventure, Universal Studios remained flat for two and a half years
• When Diagon Alley opened at Universal Studios, Islands of Adventure saw no increase the year it opened, and went up only 8% the next year
• When Pandora opened, the attendance in the other three Disney World parks remained flat

So my forecast for the impact of the Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge open on the rest of the parks: Very little, based on the historical record.

4. WHEN WILL STAR WARS: GALAXY’S EDGE ACTUALLY OPEN?

Note: on March 7, Disney announced that Galaxy’s Edge will partially open on August 29, 2019. No one yest knows when the land will be completely open. The material below may be helpful in establishing that…

The word from Bob Iger last September was that Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge would open at Disney World after the end of Fiscal 2019 but before the end of calendar 2019—that is, sometime in October through December. More recently the word is the Disneyland’s version will open in “summer” 2019 and Disney World’s version will open in “late fall.”

This last is more ambiguous than you might think, as there are at least four valid definitions of fall and no real meaning to the word “late.”

And the ambiguity is likely intentional, as it gives Disney some scope to be late in its plans. I would expect the Disney World version to open at least 120 days after the Disney Land version opens—to give Disney World time to learn from operating patterns in California well before it opens up FastPass+, which, given Annual Pass Calendars for Disneyland in June 2019 suggests no earlier than mid-October 2019.

By some of the four possible definitions of fall, that is also more than halfway through fall, so it suits the “late fall” concept. Mid-October is largely past the Columbus Day-focused fall break season at Disney World, and begins a period of two months when only one week—Thanksgiving week—sees really heavy crowds. While Disney has shown willingness to open rides during high crowd periods (Seven Dwarfs Mine Train and Pandora both opened over Memorial Day weekend, a period more crowded than any between October 15 and December 15 except Thanksgiving week), it is operationally simpler to avoid such periods for opening.

Winter begins, depending on which definition you are using, during the period from early November through December 22, 2019. Given the value of some lower-crowd operating time, I’d think the latest thoughtfully projectable date for opening would be soon after Thanksgiving 2019, so that for now creates an opening period of mid-October to late November, but not likely Thanksgiving week itself.

Note that Kelly can help you book your DIsney World trip-either aiming at Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, or aiming to avoid it.  Use the form below to contact her.

*I get the increment from Toy Story Land and Mickey and Minnie’s’ Runaway Railway by comparing them to the openings of New Fantasyland and Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, each showing an increment of about a million visitors, and then dividing by two for the Studios being a less intrinsically attractive park than Magic Kingdom.

**Annualized rates are calculated by taking first year increases, dividing by the number of open days, and then multiplying by 365. All data is from TEA . The numbers are above, and an excel version of them is here.

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I published this morning a completely updated review of Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort.

The review begins here, and in total includes the following pages:

• Overview and summary review of Coronado Springs
• The theming and accommodations areas of Coronado Springs
• A photo tour of a not yet refurbed room at Coronado Springs
• A photo tour of a refurbed room at Coronado Springs
• Amenities at Coronado Springs
• Dining at Coronado Springs
• The pools at Coronado Springs

The review is based on my six stays here–most recently in April–and while it covers everything, pays particular attention the the construction and refurb work going on at Coronado Springs.

Across the seven pages of the review there’s almost 7,000 words and nearly 150 images, but the first page is designed to be the summary of all my thoughts on Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort–the rest of the pages cover the details!

By the way, to keep up with changes at Coronado Springs, check out Mario’s Facebook group.

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The following items aren’t exactly news, as they’ve been known for a month or so now, but I have not yet posted about them, so maybe they are news to you!

• The main pool at Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort, the Lost City of Cibola pool, and its surrounding amenities at the Dig Site, will close for refurb from ~September 4, 2018 to mid-December 2018. The three smaller pools here will remain open.
• The main Uzima Springs pool at Jambo House at Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge will close for refurb from ~September 4, 2018 to early December 2018. The Samawati Springs pool at sister resort Kidani Village will remain open to all Animal Kingdom Lodge guests
• In a more positive development, guests at Four Seasons Resort Orlando have access to FastPass+ at 60 days for the balance of 2018.

THE CLOSURE OF THE DIG SITE AND LOST CITY OF CIBOLA POOL AT DISNEY’S CORONADO SPRINGS RESORT

Most of the Disney World resorts have more than one pool, typically one main pool with the most amenities, which Disney calls the “feature pool,” and one or more smaller pools that create more capacity and limit walks that Disney calls “leisure pools” and which many others refer to as “quiet pools.”

The Lost City of Cibola pool, to close for refurb in September

At Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort, the main feature pool is the Lost City of Cibola pool, and it and the set of amenities—ranging from a bar to a volleyball court—surrounding it are collectively called the Dig Site.

All of the Dig Site, including the Lost City of Cibola pool, will be closing for refurb in September 2018, and re-opening in December. The most reliable source suggests the dates of the closure will be 9/4/18 through 12/12/2018. (Take the re-open date with a grain of salt, as construction can be unpredictable.)

Coronado Springs includes three smaller, simpler leisure pools, one in each of its room areas, marked with green circles in the image (the Cibola pool is marked with a red “X”).

There is not remotely enough capacity in these three smaller pools for all the guests at Coronado Springs who might wish to use them, so if access to a pool is a key part of your vacation and you are traveling during the affected dates, I’d suggest not staying at Coronado Springs.

THE CLOSURE OF THE UZIMA SPRINGS POOL AT DISNEY’S ANIMAL KINGDOM LODGE

The main feature pool at Jambo House at Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge, the Uzima Springs pool, will also close for refurb later in 2018.

The Uzima Springs pool, to close in September

There’s not as definitive a source (yet) for the dates, but the assertions I’ve seen mark the close as from 9/4/18 through 12/4/2018. (Take the re-open date with a grain of salt, as construction can be unpredictable; you’ll find some claiming an earlier September 1 close date, but I find it unlikely that Disney would leave a pool open the Friday before a holiday weekend, and then close it the Saturday of that weekend.)

The Samawati Springs pool at Kidani Village

There are no leisure pools at the Animal Kingdom Lodge, but sister resort Kidani Village has an equally nice option in its Samawati Springs pool, and (as always) Jambo House guests are welcome there.

It’s a bit of a hike—the two pools are about half a mile apart*—so the already-existing shuttle service between Kidani and Jambo House will be a good option. However, Samawati Springs may well be full when you get there, as both pools already commonly run near their lounging capacity.

On the other hand, a room refurb project is also reported to be kicking off at Jambo House in August 2018. Depending on how many rooms at a time are out of inventory for refurb, crowds at Samawati Springs may be less pressing. But my best guess (assuming a floor at a time is refurbed) is that Jambo capacity will be down at any moment no more than 25%.

So, like at Coronado Springs, if access to a pool is a key part of your vacation and you are traveling during the affected dates, I’d suggest not staying at either Jambo House or Kidani Village.

FOUR SEASONS RESORT ORLANDO NOW OFFERS FASTPASS+ BOOKING AT 60 DAYS

Between December and January all the on-property but not-Disney-owned resorts gained access to FastPass+ at 60 days except for Four Seasons Resort Orlando.

In mid-April 2018, Four Seasons joined this group, and guest staying there can now book their FastPass+ at 60 days. This removes the principal reason why before then I would have suggested that first-timers avoid Four Seasons Resort Orlando.

As is the case with the other resorts that gained 60 day FastPass+ access in late 2017 or earlier 2018, this perk is explicitly labeled as available through December 31, 2018, and “subject to change without notice.” And note that with just 443 rooms and suites, there aren’t enough folks at Four Seasons to make a material incremental difference for the ability of other folk to get FastPass+.

*To put this into context, the much-complained-about walk from the furthest Pirate rooms in Trinidad South at Disney’s Caribbean Beach Resort to its feature pool is just a hundred yards shorter.

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