Does the concept of "off-season" still exist at WDW?

[Remy is Up]

From an instate local Ap Holder perspective, the days of "slow" at Disney are far behind us. Are there "slower" times? Not really. Not in long doses. Maybe a day here or there, but for the most part the "low" crowds are now what was once considered moderate to heavy regardless of time of year.

 

[amilli12]

I usually arrive the Tuesday after Labor Day and find that first week fairly slow. 2019 was an anomaly because of the Dorian threat. I actually added four days getting to The World the Thursday before Labor Day. It was empty and the the hurricane never hit.

But the last four years that first week after the holiday was very manageable.

Yes, that's been our same experience. Last year I extended last minute and we arrived a couple days earlier before Dorian was to hit and it was so empty it was insane. It's always easily manageable during that time frame but I agree, those two days before/during the dates of Dorian's projected landfall were empty the likes I have never seen.

 

[Orsino]

I’m just finishing a trip and what I’m noticing is that the crowds are earlier. That “golden hour” of the past where rope drop was key, just didn’t happen this trip. People are showing up early. Obviously this is true at DHS because of the boarding groups. But AK and MK had crowds earlier in the day than previous years. I would guess that the peak crowds are not that different from previous years, but 9am crowds are very much higher than before.
On this trip we had great successes after 5pm instead. We waited less in future world standby at epcot than we did with fastpasses in the morning. DHS dies down after 4pm as the BG people are tired from an early morning. We were in line for cantina and a couple asked if they could go in now instead of their later reservation because they had been in the park since 6:30am. We waited less than 30 min for the falcon at 5pm.

nighttime is the new rope drop

 

[Mome Rath]

I've been going a looooonnnggg time, so when I answer a question like this, I have the experience over that span of decades to add perspective. No, you aren't going to have a time like after Sept 11, but that was not "normal" then (flights were pretty much empty, and you'd walk in MGM and down a street and no one else would be there). Now when people want slow times like that; I remind them gently; no, you don't. Slow times like that means we are either at war in earnest, or we are in an economic downturn the likes of which you don't want to experience.

If you take WDW as it is right now, and just look at the span of 1 year, there are slow times. "Slow" is a comparison with all the other "times." In 2019 you were not going to find a time to go that was as slow as it was after Sept 11; however, you could find some weeks that were pretty slow in comparison to the high traffic days/weeks of the year. The last time I went to a park on July 5th, my mom and I had a whole section of the monorail to ourselves in the morning, and EPCOT was sparse, more sparse than I had seen it in years. The slow times move around now, and are when people don't expect, so that makes planning to hit the park at a slow time hard to do.

I've been at Disney during every season, busy and non, and you can still make the busiest times work, it just takes patience.

 

[mickeyluv'r]

Point of order: Yes, I'm aware that "the week of _______ is basically a holiday for ________". I get that. That's missing my point.

RIGHT NOW has historically been what was universally agreed upon as a slow period. And it's not. This is what leads into the discussion.

Simply, your original post made multiple false conclusions.

You should have used different words. If you say something is universally true, or universally agreed upon, then I'm going to take you at your word. I can only base my post off the words you actually write, not the ideas you didn't include.

When you said you thought everyone is in school now, I took you at your word.

Your second premise is also incorrect. The mid-day posted standby wait for a handful off attractions isn't a reliable metric for determining total crowd levels at WDW. I tried to explain, WDW collects more data than ever, and they use that data to their advantage.

WDW has many well documented ways for manipulating the posted wait time.

1. Often enough, they simply lie. Unless you are in line right now, you have no idea. I have personally experienced wildly inaccurate wait postings many times at WDW. ( even within the last month!)

2. WDW adds or reduces park hours to manipulate wait times. In the past 2 years, they have become much more aggressive about reducing and changing park hours.

3. WDW controls the number of FP to manipulate wait times. People continuously refresh MDE to get different FP all day long.

As soon as the line for 7DMT drops, below an hour, WDW just issues a 100 FP for it, and - bingo- probably 50 of them will head to the queue inside of 15 minutes. In the days of paper FP, WDW didn't have anywhere near the same ability to manipulate crowds that they have in 2020.

4. WDW has gotten much more aggressive in how they manage attraction capacity. In years past, MK open generally = both sides of BTMRR were running.

1 side running = half as many riders as BTMRR with 2 sides running.
The wait time metric is almost completely meaningless - by itself- as a metric for overall crowd levels.

None of us knows if this is the new normal - to a point. WDW is continuously in the business of managing and assessing all the ways they can make more $. They will always do their best to evolve in ways that make more $. Maybe we'll tolerate ever longer wait times, maybe we won't.

5. Again, FP quantities are not in any way static. From home, we have no way of knowing how many FP each customer used or received each day, or where they used those FP. Standby waits don't tell us anything about the number of FP each person used, or the average amount of time they waited for each attraction, or what attractions they visited.

 

[mickeyluv'r]

No, you aren't going to have a time like after Sept 11, but that was not "normal" then (flights were pretty much empty, and you'd walk in MGM and down a street and no one else would be there).

Actually, none of us knows that for certain. (Well, except we know HS is no longer called MGM.)

None of us knows what the future will bring. Any number of bad events could happen that would scare people away from travel and/or WDW.

Mind, I hope nothing bad happens. I just don't know what the future holds.

 

[Mome Rath]

Actually, none of us knows that for certain. (Well, except we know HS is no longer called MGM.)

None of us knows what the future will bring. Any number of bad events could happen that would scare people away from travel and/or WDW.

Mind, I hope nothing bad happens. I just don't know what the future holds.

That's was the main point of my post; barring anything like Sep 11 happening, you aren't going to get post-Sep 11th crowd levels. My other contention is that if you get post-Sep 11th crowd levels, something bad has had to have happened.... which none of us want.

 

[mickeyluv'r]

nighttime is the new rope drop

Yes and no.
Many times- over the years- I have touted the benefits of WDW's PM hours.
At present, I think what said is true, but I suspect that is -in part- only true for the last and present month.
HS is a driving factor, but so is the winter weather. After dark - historically speaking- temps drop, people get sleepy.

In years past, people could only get 3 FP- so they left after their FP were done.
Prior to that, people often left when paper FP ran out for the day, but not always.

When the parks all close at/before 9pm, there aren't many PM hours to tour. It is especially bad on day when a park closes at 6 or 7pm. If one park stays open, that park is often flooded.

Much always depends on the weather. Cold, hot, rain, wind, sun. Even weather trends matter. We once hit WDW on the first nice weekend after a string of 4 very wet weekends.

Even weather beyond WDW has an impact. If a big blizzard hits, some people get trapped in FL, while others can't get to FL.

In summer, many WDW visitors know to avoid thunderstorm o'clock and the afternoon heat. Evenings can be quite busy if the parks are open and it isn't pouring.