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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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Welcome back to Fridays with Jim Korkis! Jim, the dean of Disney historians, writes about Walt Disney World history every Friday on yourfirstvisit.net.

TOY STORY MIDWAY MANIA

By Jim Korkis

The highly popular Toy Story Midway Mania! attraction opened at Disney’s Hollywood Studios on May 31, 2008 in the area labeled Pixar Place. It was John Lasseter’s suggestion that the archway entrance look like the entrance to the real Pixar Studios in Northern California, even using the same type of brick.

At the Studios, as park guests enter the attraction, they find themselves in Andy’s room from the 1995 Pixar animated feature film Toy Story which is strewn with board games, puzzles and other toys. The murals located in the load area are the biggest murals painted since Epcot was built.

The toys all look gigantic because the guests have “shrunk” to the size of a toy because the toys won’t come to life if a human is around. The area was designed so that a five foot six inch tall person would feel about fourteen inches tall.

According to the back story, Andy has received the Midway Games set for his birthday. However, before he can completely set it up and play with it, he is called away and Andy’s toys decide to set up and play with the set themselves.

The Mr. Potato Head Broadway Barker figure (the most complex audio-animatronics figure ever built by Disney) is actually not part of the set itself but an additional figure that was “sold separately” as can be seen by his boxy stand and backdrop. Imagineers spent more than thirty hours with comedian Don Rickles who was the voice of the character in the original films to record his dialog.

The idea for the eighty million dollar attraction began in May 2005, when Imagineers were working on the concepts for Cars Land at Disney’s California Adventure and thinking about how they could bring some interactive components to the area. They later discarded those ideas as infeasible for the new land but were still intrigued by the initial concept.

After some in-depth research at the local Los Angeles County Fair with classic midway games, the idea progressed. The pull-string shooter was inspired by the Pirate Adventure game at DisneyQuest. In order to create a show that responds not only to every pull of a guest’s spring-action shooter, but also every move their midway tram makes, there are more than 150 computers communicating over multiple networks throughout the attraction.

Imagineers Lori Coltrin, her brother Robert Coltrin, Roger Gould and Kevin Rafferty were the primary team on the attraction.

The look of the attraction was inspired by a game that one of the Imagineers had as a kid called Snoopy and the Red Baron which is why there appears to be cardboard backdrops, stickers, and pieces molded out of single color of plastic.

In their test group, the Imagineers saw noticed young children were reluctant to break the plates so they added the line where Sarge yells: “I am not your mother -break those plates!”

Typically over one million of the virtual China plates are broken every single day. The green army men work hard to clean up the plate shards as plates are shattered all around them, although most riders never pay attention to that action.

Toy Story Midway Mania is the first blacklight show viewed with 3D glasses, which made mixing the paint colors more of a challenge. The Imagineers involved in the art direction had to always carry 3D glasses around with them when they were working inside the attraction.

The attraction opened before Toy Story 3 was released, so in May 2010, Disney changed the mini game, “Bo Peep’s Baaa-loon Pop”, and replaced it with “Rex and Trixie’s Dino Darts”.  Trixie was a new character introduced in the new film, as was Buttercup who was added to the Hamm and Eggs game.

The attraction was so popular that a third track was added in May 2016.

*  *  *  *  *

Thanks, Jim! Toy Story Midway Mania will become part of Toy Story Land on June 30, 2018.

Here’s the review of attraction from The easy Guide to Your Walt Disney World Visit 2018:

And come back next Friday for more from Jim Korkis!

In the meantime, check out his books, including his latest, Call Me Walt, and his Secret Stories of Walt Disney World: Things You Never You Never Knew, which reprints much material first written for this site, all published by Theme Park Press.

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DISNEY WORLD NEXT WEEK: JUNE 16 TO JUNE 24, 2018

The material below details next week’s Disney World operating hours, Extra Magic Hours, parades, and fireworks.

For more on June 2018 at Disney World, see this.

OPERATING HOURS AT WALT DISNEY WORLD 6/16-6/24/18

The Magic Kingdom will be open from 9a-11p 6/16, 9a-10p 6/17, 9a-11p 6/18 through 6/21, 9a-12MN 6/22, 8a-12MN 6/23, and 9a-12MN 6/24

Epcot will be open from 9a-9p every day

Disney’s Hollywood Studios will be open from 9a-9.30p 6/16 through 6/23 and 9a-10p 6/24

Disney’s Animal Kingdom will be open from 9a-10.30p every day

EXTRA MAGIC HOURS AT WALT DISNEY WORLD 6/16-6/24/18

Saturday 6/16 Morning: Animal Kingdom Evening: none

Sunday 6/17  Morning: Hollywood Studios, Animal Kingdom Evening: none

Monday 6/18  Morning: Animal Kingdom Evening: none

Tuesday 6/19 Morning: Animal Kingdom Evening:  Epcot

Wednesday 6/20 Morning:  Animal Kingdom  Evening: Magic Kingdom

Thursday 6/21 Morning: Epcot, Animal Kingdom Evening: none

Friday 6/22 Morning:  Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom Evening: none

Saturday 6/23 Morning: Animal Kingdom Evening: none

Sunday 6/24  Morning: Hollywood Studios, Animal Kingdom Evening: none

PARADES AT WALT DISNEY WORLD 6/16-6/24/18

The Magic Kingdom: Afternoon Festival of Fantasy Parade: 3p every day

FIREWORKS AND EVENING SHOWS AT WALT DISNEY WORLD 6/16-6/24/18

Happily Every After at Magic Kingdom: 9.15p every night

IllumiNations at Epcot:  9p every night

Fantasmic at Disney’s Hollywood Studios:  9p every night

Star Wars Show and Fireworks at Disney’s Hollywood Studios: 9.30p 6/16 through 6/23; 10p 6/24

Rivers of Light at Disney’s Animal Kingdom: 9.15 and 10.15p every night

SHOW SCHEDULES FOR WALT DISNEY WORLD 6/16-6/24/18

See Steve Soares’ site here. Click the park names at its top for show schedules.

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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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Welcome back to Fridays with Jim Korkis! Jim, the dean of Disney historians, writes about Walt Disney World history every Friday on yourfirstvisit.net.

SCI-FI DINE-IN THEATER RESTAURANT

By Jim Korkis

The Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater restaurant at Disney’s Hollywood Studios is a huge soundstage with high, dark ceilings made to resemble the starry nighttime sky, and row upon row upon row of 1950ish convertible automobiles that serve as the dining area for the guests.

It is meant to resemble the classic drive-in movie theaters of the era. For those who prefer not to be in a car, just like in a real drive-in, there are a few picnic table and tables with umbrellas available along the back as well.

(c) Disney

All of the seating is aimed toward a massive movie screen on one side of the room. The forty five minute film loop compilation that shows there of coming attraction clips of 1950s science fiction films, cartoons, vintage news clips, and intermission/refreshment announcements was put together by Stephanie Keith of Theme Park Productions.

She spent hundreds of hours visiting film libraries and collectors as well as the National Film Archives in Washington, D.C. to review old news footage. “Some of the prints were pulled out from dusty boxes in the back of someone’s garage,” said Keith. Some of the film was in very poor condition that required extensive restoration.

“It was a challenge to make a piece of film look good but not too good,” post production supervisor Louise Gladden said. “We needed to keep some of the scratches, which add to the charm of the film.”

The film trailers include:

• Devil Girl from Mars (1954)
• It Conquered the World (1956)
• Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958)
• The Amazing Colossal Man (1957)
• The Horror of Party Beach (1964)
• The Giant Gila Monster (1959)
• Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster (1965)
• Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959)
• Invasion of the Saucer Men (1957)
• Robot Monster (1953)
• Cat Women of the Moon (1953)
• Missile to the Moon (1958)

In addition there are two edited MGM animated shorts: Mouse Into Space (1962 Tom & Jerry) and The Cat That Hated People (1948 Tex Avery)

The News of the Future newsreels include segments of the kitchen of the future (from the Monsanto House of the Future), a radiation hazard suit, a flying disc, a mini-car model that drives itself on an electronic wire track embedded on the ground (in the driver’s seat was a ventriloquist dummy of Jerry Mahoney smoking a cigarette), a picture phone with a ten inch video screen, real chimps as “space cadets” riding on an amusement park rocket ride, a “frying saucer” and an automated nursery.

For Disney fans, there is a compilation to the song Great Balls of Fire, featuring a clip of Garco the robot, Disneyland’s Trip to the Moon astronauts on the moon, the flying jetpack man from Disneyland, a cartoon clip from Mars and Beyond, Tinker Bell introducing Tomorrowland from the weekly Disney television show, a costumed Mickey Mouse at the dedication of the new Disneyland Tomorrowland in 1967, as well as images of real rocket launches, Tom Corbett Space Cadet, and scenes from Forbidden Planet, Commando Cody, and The Thing.

Announcements include the warning that public demonstrations of affection will not be tolerated, the dangers of carbon monoxide poisoning if the car motor is running, the importance of disconnecting the speaker, an advertisement for the Satellite Space show for boys and girls, and more.

“Even though the Sci Fi Dine-In was designed as a restaurant first and an attraction second, it’s sometimes hard to set them apart,” said Imagineer Eric Jacobson. “It’s very strange to watch the guests, eyes riveted to screen as they eat and nobody is talking!”

*  *  *  *  *

Thanks, Jim! Here’s the review of the Sci-Fi Dine-In Theatre from The easy Guide to Your Walt Disney World Visit 2018:

And come back next Friday for more from Jim Korkis!

In the meantime, check out his books, including his latest, Call Me Walt, and his Secret Stories of Walt Disney World: Things You Never You Never Knew, which reprints much material first written for this site, all published by Theme Park Press.

Follow yourfirstvisit.net on Facebook or Twitter or Pinterest!!