Here now, crowds and FP+, wow!

[mesaboy2]

I think it does, people park hop

I think it doesn't. People don't go to SWW only to hop away from it.

 

[JanaDee]

I think it does, people park hop

People don't go specifically for SWW weekend, only to spend time at other parks.

 

[cel_disney]

I think it doesn't. People don't go to SWW only to hop away from it.

I agree / especially on the first weekend!

 

[keaster]

This is a holiday weekend in canada so there are likely many Canucks in Florida! Our weather In this part of canada has not quite reached summer temps yet so we are still looking for heat!

 

[CarolinaBlue]

We were there from Monday until yesterday. We've been going this same time for several years now and I have definitely seen an increase in crowds. We always do rope drop and I can tell you that there were more people at rope drop this week than I've seen in the past. Normally, when we arrive at MK at 8:30am with a 9am opening, we are always at the rope on the left side of the train station. Tuesday, we were about 5 rows back. Rope drop isn't the same, either (thanks, Frozen). Now, they take the rope down and a line of CMs walk the crowds all the way up Main Street, which now causes everyone to bunch up. I can't tell you how many times DH was hit from behind by strollers. It's very difficult to walk in a crowd like that. Other than the change in rope drop, everything was pretty much the same as our past trips. We were able to do the rides we normally do and we used our 3 FPs in the evening. We did morning EMH at MK on Thursday and they did rope drop the same way, SLOWLY walking up Main Street. Once we got by the A & E people in Fantasyland, we were able to do our usual EMH rides with no waits.

I can't really blame FP+ for any issues on this trip. We have certain rides that we do in a certain order, and this time we just changed them around but were still able to do them with no wait. We are DVC members with APs, so we usually do 2 trips each year. Like I said, I have seen an increase in crowds, but it was more noticeable at rope drop at MK. We never do standby if it's 20 minutes or more. On this trip, I don't think we waited more than 10 minutes for any ride, if that long. We took our resort break just after lunch and returned to the parks around 6 to use our FPs. Had a great time at SWW on Friday!

 

[thevolcanogod]

Must be a lot of folks with lots of disposable income to just go for SWW and not even sniff the other parks. I mean I love SW but if I'm going down there I'm surely going to see the other parks while I'm there. Otherwise it's be like flying to NY to just see a show and nothing else. I'm making good money but that would just be wasteful to me.

I do also think just more people are going. Partially due to economy and partially the weather. My bet is on people having a little bit more now to vacation with after perhaps putting one off when things were really bad. Also the winter was harsh and we're having a pretty bad spring here in the Midwest. It snowed last Wednesday in Chicagoland. I know lots of people who just want out of here.

 

[TJA]

I'm also wondering if larger crowds now are due to people putting off a trip during Easter week due to the highly inflated prices and blackouts that week. We were there that week, so of course it was blacked out (but thank you cheaptickets for the deal!), and we've never seen Disney so dead. We've been going 2-3 times per year for the last 10 years, and this last trip was indeed the slowest trip we've ever had in terms of crowds. So maybe people switched around their dates to get better deals.

 

[lazy daisy]

Must be a lot of folks with lots of disposable income to just go for SWW and not even sniff the other parks. I mean I love SW but if I'm going down there I'm surely going to see the other parks while I'm there. Otherwise it's be like flying to NY to just see a show and nothing else. I'm making good money but that would just be wasteful to me.

I do also think just more people are going. Partially due to economy and partially the weather. My bet is on people having a little bit more now to vacation with after perhaps putting one off when things were really bad. Also the winter was harsh and we're having a pretty bad spring here in the Midwest. It snowed last Wednesday in Chicagoland. I know lots of people who just want out of here.

This is exactly what we did, we planned our trip around sww and still park hopped, I just think a lot of others did this too.

 

[Otter49]

There are many many local passholders who have been going for years on weekends to the Epcot concerts and if you ask any of us, you'll hear the same thing - the F&G festival has never been as busy as this year.

Usually by the end of April and certainly into May you can see the crowds tapering off significantly. Not so in 2014. Some of these crowds have easily been Food & Wine sized.

I'm sort of shuddering about what this summer might be like.

 

[sarsah]

We were at MK yesterday (Saturday), and while it was crowded we were able to ride 9 rides before noon, FP+ all 3 mountains (booked them on Friday) and then add more FP throughout the afternoon and evening. It was much more manageable than the first week in April with 3 FP+ and no more.

I'm still not a FP+ fan and it was hard to use when meeting up with friends in the park, but I actually went pretty well yesterday in MK.

 

[kristenm514]

We came home yesterday ( boo! )... thought the crowds were much worse all last week than we were expecting, too. We did the recommended parks from easywdw and crowds and lines still seemed huge. We still had a wonderful trip and did everything we wanted to do!

 

[cel_disney]

Must be a lot of folks with lots of disposable income to just go for SWW and not even sniff the other parks. I mean I love SW but if I'm going down there I'm surely going to see the other parks while I'm there. Otherwise it's be like flying to NY to just see a show and nothing else. I'm making good money but that would just be wasteful to me.

I do also think just more people are going. Partially due to economy and partially the weather. My bet is on people having a little bit more now to vacation with after perhaps putting one off when things were really bad. Also the winter was harsh and we're having a pretty bad spring here in the Midwest. It snowed last Wednesday in Chicagoland. I know lots of people who just want out of here.

We planned a short Memorial Day weekend trip in 2013 for SWW and too see new fantasyland....we did Thursday in MK, Friday at DHS from 7am to 10pm (after F!), Saturday we were back at DHS for 7am again....we did hop at dinner time to EPCOT, but that was for dinner and then DH and DS went on TT (wasn't open during our 2012 trip)...and because we skipped all of the SWW shows (otherwise we wouldn't have been done at DHS)...we went to seaworld on Sunday because it was far too crowded at disney and flew home on Monday....I don't remember seeing many people leaving DHS that were there for SWW....maybe those that don't realize it's going on opt to get out? But usually SWW doesn't dramatically impact the ride lines - this year I would think even less impact because folks could use their Tier 1 FP for shows reducing those using them for TSM...

For us, it was the opposite of disposable income - we can't make SWW a yearly thing so we wanted to get as much of it as we could...there is ALOT to see there - and even more this year!!!

 

[bluwater]

For Jaylin and others reporting trouble with getting to your rides, what FP+ strategy are you using? Are you using your pre-booked FPs morning or waiting til afternoon?

We have been coming for years but we are now stretching more and more years between visits because the crowds are just no fun for us anymore --- but we haven't given up completely. I do wonder if the new FP system is increasing the standby wait becuase guests are confused on how to use the system or think they cant use it at all.

 

[AngiTN]

School is still in session all over the country. This is typically one of the slower seasons of the year, the lull before the families show up when school lets out.

Our schools are getting out now. Seniors are all out already. Rest get out this week. I think other areas started getting out last week too.

But all in all I think crowds are up in general. A crowd level of 6 is not the same 6 as 2 years ago. Baseline crowd has increased.

 

[mom2rtk]

Our schools are getting out now. Seniors are all out already. Rest get out this week. I think other areas started getting out last week too.

But all in all I think crowds are up in general. A crowd level of 6 is not the same 6 as 2 years ago. Baseline crowd has increased.

Any non-Seniors out already are the exception.

If crowds are up now, it's only going to get worse as schools start releasing in a big numbers this week.

 

[donnsuz]

We've been here for a week with one left to go. The past few days (fri, sat, sun) the crowd levels were predicted as a 5 or 6 according to Lines. I'm guessing that they were in reality a heavy 7. Maybe partly due to fairly heavy rains on wed/thu that kept people in? After the storms the weather has been beautiful so maybe even more locals are coming out than normal :confused. We definitely saw a lot of local school groups which may have added to it all. Crowds are supposed to go back down to the 3-5 range until the beginning of the holiday weekend on Friday when they bump way up....and I hope that's true!

This is our first FP+ trip plus we were traveling with three generations with mixed tastes, so I couldn't really give you a true idea of how the FP worked for us. Initially, during planning, I thought this would be awful - but after using it and reading up on some of the short cuts/finesses I think I'm OCD enough to like it in the long run

 

[hhill]

I am here. I followed Josh's Magic Kingdom plan today and was a success. I used a total of 8 FP+. It was awesome. Everything was smooth and as planned. Hopefully the rest of my trip will be the same.

 

[CSI007]

I simply can't buy that this is because the economy is improving because it is not. We are teetering on the edge about to fall back into a another recession.

http://money.cnn.com/2014/04/30/investing/gdp-economy/

If we still use the economic indicators that were used 10 years ago we would already be in a recession again.

Food prices are sky rocketing, gas is coming down a tiny bit but still way up over the past three years, disposable income for American family's is at an all time low.

It has to be something else, either that or people just don't care about saving their money any more and are doing very expensive vacations on credit.

 

[cel_disney]

I am here. I followed Josh's Magic Kingdom plan today and was a success. I used a total of 8 FP+. It was awesome. Everything was smooth and as planned. Hopefully the rest of my trip will be the same.

For ever the rule according to the planning sites is to have a good touring plan even if its a busy park day....I think you were smart for using one...

 

[BuckeyeBama]

I was in MK 3 different days last week - the crowds were very low, and most rides were walk-on. Peter Pan was only a 40 minute wait at 3pm, Splash only had a long line for a short while each day - most of the time the wait was less than 25 minutes (and it was HOT).

Maybe I got lucky, but last week was a dream in MK. (Note - I only did MK, no other parks)