DTD crowds vs park crowds

[sachilles]

I recently had an extremely quick visit to WDW on Thursday, February 5.

The crowd calendar at EasyWDW rated the day a 2.

I have not previously visited DTD. Business travel had me in Florida last Thursday, just south of Jacksonville. Work commitments ended around 3pm. Really wanted to get my 6 year old son a Disney souvenir.....
So I contacted the airline and rental car place and I was able to switch everything to Orlando for no charge. Hatched a plan and started driving south.
Got there about 6:30pm ish.
The plan was to swoop in, find something for my son, grab some dinner, take a few pictures then find a hotel at the airport by 10pm or so as I had one of the first flights out of town in the morning.

I had never visited DTD and knew it was under construction. We have a trip scheduled for late April for POR and we arrive late afternoon. In our minds we'll visit DTD that evening.

Anyways, I get to DTD at 6:30, and see electronic signs indicating parking at some place other than the new garage. The left turn lane into the garage looks rather long. I follow the signs to a lot across Buena vista and park with little drama.
Cool I'm at "Disney"! Walk on over and I'm in. Lots of construction, which I expected. Nice place, but current construction sort of blocked water views.
Lots of music, generally pretty loud overall. All the restaurants seemed to have 1 hour waits. I was able to get a bar spot at the outdoor part of splitsville.

Given that the day was rated a 2, and I was there from 6:30-9pm, it struck me as being busier than I would have expected. I don't have anything to compare it to. Given what I've read here, I assumed the place was a ghost town most of the time.

So my question is this. Does the construction compact the place a bit making it feel busier than normal?
Having never been there I don't have a frame of reference. Since there are no rides to speak of, my only reference is the shops, and they seemed as busy as my busiest day in the parks(admittedly 6 is the highest I've seen via easy wdw's ratings).

So, what do the masses think? Situation normal?

 

[tobikaye]

DTD on weekends and in the evenings can get quite busy no matter how busy the parks are. There are many people that plan either an entire day or half day off from the parks and include DTD in that part of the visit. Also, you have people that are not actually doing Disney for that trip that are visiting DTD to get that piece of Disney, such as you did.

 

[siskaren]

EasyWDW's crowd ratings are an average for the resort as a whole - meaning the parks, water parks, Downtown Disney, etc. It doesn't mean every location is going to have the same crowd level. Also, AK closed at 6:00 on the 5th and DHS closed at 7:00, so it's possible that people who had spent the day at those parks decided to spend the evening at DTD. (And I think most people save those parks for later in the week versus MK and Epcot.)

 

[SabbyR]

We always find DTD busy. We were there one time about 3 years ago so pre construction. It might of been 4 trips ago I cant really remember. Anyways, it was beginning of December and it was the last night of our trip and we decided we would do down and do some quick shopping. I realize it was Christmas season but. oh my goodness!!! World of Disney they were letting people in and out! it was the busiest place on Earth I think that day! I have never seen it that bad before!

 

[sachilles]

EasyWDW's crowd ratings are an average for the resort as a whole - meaning the parks, water parks, Downtown Disney, etc. It doesn't mean every location is going to have the same crowd level. Also, AK closed at 6:00 on the 5th and DHS closed at 7:00, so it's possible that people who had spent the day at those parks decided to spend the evening at DTD. (And I think most people save those parks for later in the week versus MK and Epcot.)

This make a lot of sense to me. It did seem to pick a lot more my 7:30.