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2014 RESORT PRICE SEASONS AT WALT DISNEY WORLD

The material below shows the different resort price seasons at Walt Disney World at different times of the year in 2014.

Resort prices, however, are almost twice as high during some periods as they are at others.

(For 2015 prices, see this, and projected 2016 prices, this.)

2014 DISNEY WORLD PRICE SEASONS

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Yesterday’s post about how to increase your odds of getting a Be Our Guest reservation got tons of comments and responses, both on this site and on the many Facebook pages that shared it (and thanks to all those who shared and/or liked the post and/or commented!!).

Rather than respond to each comment, let me group the key points into one place here, in no particular order.  (The links are to example comments on the point.)

• Some people do have no trouble getting a booking for 180 days out. (I saw this in particular in comments on the various Facebook shares)
• Many people do have success with the recommended strategy
• People do cancel their reservations, so rechecking closer to your dates—even the day before—can really pay off!
• It’s simply not true that Disney World holds back some reservations to guarantee 180 day availability—although it does sometime have technical difficulties that have a similar effect!!
• Walking up to the (counter service) lunch is an option—aim to arrive 1.15p or a little later

Thanks again to DisneyDiningAgent whose original comment kicked all this off!

Any key points I missed?

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GETTING A RESERVATION AT BE OUR GUEST

Among this site’s more than 4 million visitors are a lot of Disney insiders, who sometimes send helpful notes about various items.

One of the best is DisneyDiningAgent, who posted an important comment yesterday covering a lot of topics.

One of his (or her!) topics was why it’s so hard to get a table service reservation at Be Our Guest.

BE OUR GUEST IS BOOKING UP AS FAR OUT AS 190 DAYS OUT

Dining reservations at Disney World open at 180 days out, except for Walt Disney World resort hotel guests.  For these guests, bookings open at 180 days, but the window for booking extends from their arrival date through the next ten days.

This means they can book Be Our Guest up to 190 days out. And, according to DisneyDiningAgent, they are.

Now obviously not everyone is staying for ten days.

But what happens is that the people staying 5 days book it 185 days out, those staying 6, 186 days out, etc.  So when people call 180 days ahead and try to book Be Our Guest for the date 180 days in advance, the capacity 180 days out is often gone, so, if they are a WDW resort hotel guest, they then book it for later in their visit…and then people calling the next day have the same problem, and respond the same way.

There’s no great answer to this.

If you really want to do dinner at Be Our Guest (right now, until Fastpass+ emerges, the only reservable meal), your odds will be best if you stay at a Disney resort, aim to do Be Our Guest on the last day of your visit, and be on-line at 6a eastern the first day you can book.  If the on-line system isn’t working (all too common–more on that later), then start dialing the phone just before 7a.

What’s your Be Our Guest story?  Were you able to book 180 days out, or, if you stayed in a WDW resort, did you pick–or get stuck with–a date later in the reservations window?

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

For example, in 2013, crowd rankings go from 9/high at the beginning of August down to 1/lowest 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 2013 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 every year about this time one of my nieces goes to almost 200 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; this year, about 180 had their calendars out by the time we agreed to stop collecting data.)

These include the 100 largest school districts in the U.S., plus eighty more of the next largest school districts 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, sum these by state, and weight them based on the 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. (There’s about 12.6 million actual kids in the database.)

Above are the results of this for when kids go back to school in 2013.

So you can see that kids don’t start going back to school in real numbers until the week of 8/10; almost half are back in school the week of 8/17; almost 70% are back by the week of 8/24, and almost 90% are back in school by the week of 9/2.

Thus, in the 2013 crowd calendar, the week of 8/10 is rated 9/high crowds, the week of 8/17 6/moderate crowds, the week of 8/24 2/lower crowds, and the week of 9/2 1/lowest crowds!

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NARRATORS AND BOOKING DATES FOR THE 2013 CANDLELIGHT PROCESSIONAL AT EPCOT

Crack commenter DisneyDiningAgent has posted one of his—or her!—incredibly helpful comments here.

There’s a lot of “food for thought” there, which I’ll note more about later, but for now, focusing on the Candlelight Processional Dinner Package:

The Candlelight Processional Dinner Package starts booking tomorrow, 7/9/13 at 6a Eastern at disneyworld.com and 7a Eastern over the phone (407-939-3463).

And the Candlelight Processional 2013 narrators are as follows:

• TBD: 11/30-12/3
• Ashley Judd 12/4-12/5
• Whoopi Goldberg 12/6-12/7
• TBD 12/8-12/10
• Dennis Haysbert 12/11-12/13
• James Denton 12/14-12/16
• Edward James Olmos 12/17-12/19
• Trace Atkins 12/20-12/22
• TBD 12/23-12/25
• Blair Underwood 12/26-12/28
• TBD 12/29
• Amy Grant 12/30

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NEW LOGO; UPDATED 2014 STUFF; NEW PRICES; FREE DINING RUMORS

The top-secret “Lipstick on a Pig” team has been busy the past week or so developing the new logo at the top of the page.  Hope you like it!  The good bits came from a crack designer I’ve been working with and the weak parts from me.

Also over the weekend the final data set for 2014 school calendars at 180 US public school districts came in from my crack research staff—the older Test Niecelet (on the left). I’ve converted these into databases, and will be analyzing and reporting on the forecasted crowd results over the next week or so.  Based on this analysis, I’ll make any needed adjustments to the 2014 Disney World Crowd calendar.

Meanwhile, it’s widely expected that 2014 prices will come out mid-week from the crack Disney World revenue management team.  Based on these I’ll revise and finalize the 2014 Disney World price seasons, and will use both the revised price seasons and revised crowd calendars to finalize the 2014 Disney World week rankings.

Finally a number of crack observers have been predicting that Disney World will release free dining for October through December this week.  I still quite doubt it, but it is of course possible.  Major macro-economic indicators (especially bond markets, developing country currency markets, and the Lone Ranger) do suggest slight headwinds against overseas visits to the US and a slight increase in Disney’s need to more strongly drive later 2013 earnings…

And let me know what you think about the logo!!!!

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