Today's crowds? (April 13th)

[OrlandoMagic]

Hi,

We visited Disneyland today and found the crowds almost unbearable, we were there for rope drop and went straight to Fantasyland and Peter Pan was already a 70 minute wait.

Did anyone else visit today? Are the crown levels normal for mid week in the middle of April? We are from the UK and normally visit WDW which I know is more specious so maybe these crowd levels are normal for Disneyland.

One thing I found odd was the amount of children, I thought most were back at school now, is this not the case?

Just curious so if anyone could shed some light that would be great. Thanks!

 

[BryANDJessMom]

We are here--we have spring break this week. I thought it wasn't going to be as bad as presidents week (mid Feb) I was wrong! It is really busy! That on top of so many things being closed has made it seem hard to manage!

 

[BryANDJessMom]

(Oh I should add- I am from Northern California / Los Alto a good portion of Santa Clara county has spring break) we have annual passes so we drive down the 6 hours to here every chance we get!

It seems ever since the anniversary to be pretty busy--not normally this bad!)

 

[sheetz]

I was checking the official app today and wait times didn't seem too out of the ordinary. In fact wait times seemed a bit lower than in recent weeks. But DL had EMH today so if you arrived at regular opening time you would have encountered long waits in Fantasyland by the time you got there.

Edit: Sorry, got my dates wrong. DCA had EMH today, not DL.

 

[BryANDJessMom]

It may have been better than last week but when you have to wait 25 mins for Snow White and over 30 for Casey Jr--it is busy!

(And today was better than Monday and Tuesday)

 

[realrellim]

We were there on Monday and it was wall-to-wall people for most of the day. And like a PP said, between all the closed rides and the fact that rides kept breaking down or closing temporarily left at right, it was difficult. Pirates, Soarin' (in DCA, but we had EMH so went to ride it first thing only to discover we couldn't) and Pinocchio were all closed when we went to ride them, though they reopened later. The King Arthur Carousel, Casey Jr, Pirates and Haunted Mansion all stopped when we rode them or just as we were waiting in the queue. Peter Pan was closed at rope drop (thankfully we'd already ridden it on Saturday so we didn't have to endure the long waits later in the day like we did for Pirates). Buzz Lightyear, Matterhorn and Alice were all temporarily closed during the day.

We kept running into breakdowns all weekend, which didn't help matters, and the DL and Touring Plans apps were not keeping up with actual wait times or even what was open vs. closed. On Saturday and Monday, every time I optimized our Touring Plans plan, it would tell us to go to a ride that was closed, or tell us the ride had a 4-minute wait when it actually had a 25-minute wait, etc.

FWIW, crowd levels at this time in April last year were much, much lower than they're seeing this year. That doesn't help you much, but it is historically unusual. Good luck!

 

[realrellim]

I was checking the official app today and wait times didn't seem too out of the ordinary. In fact wait times seemed a bit lower than in recent weeks..

The official app was not showing actual wait times for the most part when we were there on Monday. I think it spent a hour claiming that the wait for Alice was 15 minutes, but the actual queue was all the way to the Mad Hatters, which put it at 35 or 40 minutes. (I really wanted to ride it and we'd just had no luck. On Saturday it was either closed or had a 30-minute wait, on Sunday evening it still had a 30-minute wait, and most of the day on Monday that continued to be true. We finally got in line around 7 pm, having given up on it getting any shorter and waited 20 minutes.

The official app had the same problem on Saturday when we were at DCA too. We were trying some of the Bugs Land rides, all of which supposedly had 5-minute waits. We waited 20+ minutes for Flik's Flyers, after which we decided to give up and do Redwood Trail and then go swimming. Monsters too said it had something like an 8-minute wait but we waited more than 20 minutes.

The rides were generally glitchy, so it wouldn't surprise me if some of the same issues were affecting the app. I'm guessing most of the ride issues were computer-related, especially when the carousel stopped. They had to reboot the computer to get it started again. I think DD1 and DH waited 30 minutes for the carousel ride. And even IASM stopped on Saturday. The app and the line itself said we had a less than 10-minute wait but we waited 20 minutes.

 

[tammytam]

These crazy crowd reports are not making me feel too great. We'll be there in 10 days.. and I know we'll hit crowds, but was hoping the end of April wouldn't be *insane* like you guys are saying :/ I've been checking the app and was thinking "oh.. Wait times look pretty reasonable, they're down from spring break". That's crazy how "off" the reported times have been.

 

[christygobar]

Disappointed to hear - hoping next Wed/Thurs aren't terrible (I know Friday will be though)!

 

[mom2rtk]

Reports have been that Disney has cut back on staffing to offset cost overruns at Shanghai.

Is there any chance some of those rides were not running at full capacity?

This is pretty discouraging. Reports are that spring break crowds were finally starting to thin out at WDW this week. Maybe there are more west coast schools with later spring break?

 

[coasternut22]

One thing I mentioned in a previous thread, was that we were looking at going either this week or next week. The crowd calendars all said there would be similar crowds. But what I noticed is that the off-site hotel prices were 25-50% higher this week than next. This, to me was a good indicator that there would still be some residual crowds from spring break, and we opted to go next week. Let's hope this is true. Thanks for the update and letting us know what it was like this week.

 

[ImDMous]

In San Diego and we still have at least one school district that has Spring Break this week. Not sure if there are any more, but it's a possibility. Hopefully but next week it will have died down.

 

[jessicag13]

i'm going to be there next week, and i'm REALLY hoping it's not too crowded.
from this list of school vacations, i think most spring breaks should be over this week, so i'm optimistic:
http://www.disboards.com/threads/20...-school-breaks-and-dlr.3434866/#post-54158584

 

[tlovesdis]

Disneyland is crowded all the time now! There is hardly a slow season anymore. We went in January, not around the holiday or marathon and it was packed! Last September was nuts, and 100 degrees every day!

 

[DancinDaisyDuck]

New York state has spring break the week of April 25th, that's when we're going. Hopefully not too many east coast folks will be making the longer trip west that week!

 

[LizzyS]

Disneyland is crowded all the time now! There is hardly a slow season anymore. We went in January, not around the holiday or marathon and it was packed! Last September was nuts, and 100 degrees every day!

I really think that people should just prepare for large crowds no matter when they go. That way, if it's not super crowded, it's a pleasant surprise. Otherwise, you're not disappointed. I think the average visitor to the parks goes more often in recent years based on my observation, just going by the disboards.

 

[Whistlebee]

We are going next week too and I'm expecting large crowds. Arizona schools (not sure if it is state-wide) have a 4 day break over next weekend. Since Arizona is fairly close to LA I'm expecting this to increase crowds.

 

[adykate]

We were thinking about stopping in Anaheim and going to Disneyland for a couple days the first week in May as part of a trip already planned farther south. Our last trip there was for the Star Wars Half in January. I swore we wouldn't go back for a while due to increasing crowds, costs, construction and closures. But I thought maybe going during a non spring break, non race weekend (which is when we have typically gone the past couple years) would be a bit better crowd wise. With some of the recent trip reports, I am beginning to think it is just not worth the money for a couple days. I know it is still some spring break time, but it just seems like the crowds have maintained pretty intense levels. We have been quite a bit the last couple years....I wonder if I should let the good memories linger for a bit and not risk getting frustrated with spending a chunk of money for tickets and being annoyed with crowds and closures. I know many people here say going is always better than not, lol! But when looking at the cost vs frustrations involved with high crowds and closures and two young kids, I am just not sure it would be better for my family . The cost for my family to go for 2-3 days would buy a lot of drinks on a beach or by a pool with a lot less stress, lol! But it is so hard to not go when the kids get so excited about possibly going...

 

[lilsassymom]

We will be there next week also. We fly in on the 17th and are in the parks from the 18-21st and I'm worried about crowds too. Hopefully most spring breaks will be over and it's during the weekdays so crossing our fingers

 

[gsrieff]

after reading this thread I looked on touring plans, and it says they predicted the 13th to be a 2 out of 10 instead it was a 7! yikes. I also looked up what is predicted for our trip in October..an average of a 6. That seemed manageable considering it being halloweentime...i then looked up when we went in 2012 over the week of thanksgiving...it was all 10's. If i can handle that and still have a magical time, I think I'll be a happy camper no matter what the crowds are. I guess I'm one of those people who are just happy to be there.