How many people go to moonlight madness?

[we"reofftoneverland]

Just curious if anyone knows how large the events are?

 

[DanCali]

I don't think they release official numbers. We were at one of the AK events last year (August?) and it seemed well-attended but but significantly less crowded than an ordinary day. Line for Everest was ~15minutes. Flight of Passage was maybe 30 minutes long. They don't open all the rides for those events and we could have done all the ones that were operational with time to spare.

Use the food vouchers early if you can since the lines at the end of the night can get long with everyone wanting to use their remaining coupons - we didn't want to stick around for that ritual since we had a relatively long drive back home.

P.S. - It's Moonlight Magic, not Madness

 

[TinkB278]

I attended the AK one in December and to me, it felt way more crowded than I was expecting. I was honestly pretty disappointed in the event overall

 

[PurplePencil]

I attended the AK one in December and to me, it felt way more crowded than I was expecting. I was honestly pretty disappointed in the event overall

Other than the carnival games I noticed no waits or crowds. For a free event, my family was quite impressed. We rode FoP with a 5 minute wait, Na'vi with ~10ish, and Dinosaur with no wait. I rode Everest 3 times in a row as a walk-on.

 

[we"reofftoneverland]

I don't think they release official numbers. We were at one of the AK events last year (August?) and it seemed well-attended but but significantly less crowded than an ordinary day. Line for Everest was ~15minutes. Flight of Passage was maybe 30 minutes long. They don't open all the rides for those events and we could have done all the ones that were operational with time to spare.

Use the food vouchers early if you can since the lines at the end of the night can get long with everyone wanting to use their remaining coupons - we didn't want to stick around for that ritual since we had a relatively long drive back home.

P.S. - It's Moonlight Magic, not Madness

lol that’s funny. Thanks for pointing out that it is Magic! We just went to one and Dh is trying to calculate how many people are staying in dvc hotels at wdw/how many went to MM. I was like who cares but he is curious. He was guessing that there were 50k at last night’s Epcot event, but I’m thinking it was more. Would be interesting to know.

 

[we"reofftoneverland]

Other than the carnival games I noticed no waits or crowds. For a free event, my family was quite impressed. We rode FoP with a 5 minute wait, Na'vi with ~10ish, and Dinosaur with no wait. I rode Everest 3 times in a row as a walk-on.

We rode guardians last night 3x in a row with about a 15-20 min wait each time (I’m including the pre show malarkey in the wait lol).

 

[CarolMN]

We just went to one and Dh is trying to calculate how many people are staying in dvc hotels at wdw/how many went to MM.

Members who are staying at a DVC Hotel get the first opportunity to book MM reservations, but eventually booking opens for all Members, even those who are not staying on property. So just knowing how many guests are staying in a DVC resort isn't going to help him figure out capacity. MM capacities vary by the par -i.e., the MK can handle more guests than AK.

 

[jo-jo]

I attended the AK one in December and to me, it felt way more crowded than I was expecting. I was honestly pretty disappointed in the event overall

We went to one in May at DHS. We thought it was more croweded than expected . We went on smugglers run with me walking right through, but boy was that a hike for me. Stop, go, stop, I could handle, but just doing all 6 miles of standby lane in one march was long.

We tried to go to rise but it was showing 40 min wait and was told no DAS. CM said it was moving very fast, but being on it in the past, we know even once you're in , there is still a lot of "pre shows" before the ride.

 

[tjkraz]

We just went to one and Dh is trying to calculate how many people are staying in dvc hotels at wdw/how many went to MM. I was like who cares but he is curious. He was guessing that there were 50k at last night’s Epcot event, but I’m thinking it was more. Would be interesting to know.

We rode guardians last night 3x in a row with about a 15-20 min wait each time (I’m including the pre show malarkey in the wait lol).

Guardians can probably accommodate about 2000 guests per hour, or 6k over the course of Moonlight Magic. You wouldn't have ridden 3x with 15 minute waits if there were 50K guests in the park.

(Daily attendance at Epcot averages about 35k guests, and that's with people coming-and-going over a 12+ hour period, some not even bothering with attractions, etc.)

If every DVC villa at WDW were filled to capacity, there would be about 40,000 guests staying in those villas on a given night. That means 12 in every grand villa, 8-9 in every 2B, 4-5 in every studio, etc. But most rooms are not filled to capacity. Also not everyone wants to go to MM, some aren't even aware of it, many are filled with renters or resale owners who are ineligible, and some just get shut out because of the MM capacity limits.

If I were to make a wild guess, I'd say around 10-12k attendees per event, which varies by park.

 

[TinkB278]

Other than the carnival games I noticed no waits or crowds. For a free event, my family was quite impressed. We rode FoP with a 5 minute wait, Na'vi with ~10ish, and Dinosaur with no wait. I rode Everest 3 times in a row as a walk-on.

We have small kids so our entire evening was spent waiting in line for the carnival games and the bugs life meet and greet. After waiting for both of those things we had enough and left. The bugs life character line was extremely slow moving and frustrating but my son wouldn’t take no for an answer.

 

[The Jackal]

Crowds are generally smaller than average crowds when parks are open. DVC has to have enough guests to rent the park out. Not all DVC staying on points can go.

 

[crisi]

I attended the AK one in December and to me, it felt way more crowded than I was expecting. I was honestly pretty disappointed in the event overall

We had the same experience at AK - the line for Flight was well over two hours. Everest however, had an issue and had closed. Kali wasn't running. Safari had run for only an hour before it was took dark - and so there was ONE thing everyone wanted to do.

 

[tidefan]

I just wish they'd schedule some MM events when we are down there. We typically go 3-4 times a year, but since 2007, we've only been lucky enough to have one scheduled when we were down there (at Typhoon Lagoon)...

 

[DonMacGregor]

We had the same experience at AK - the line for Flight was well over two hours. Everest however, had an issue and had closed. Kali wasn't running. Safari had run for only an hour before it was took dark - and so there was ONE thing everyone wanted to do.

Went to the AK July MM, and waited 35 minutes for FOP…

 

[dvc_john]

It's funny how people can go to the same event and have entirely different experiences.

Safari was closed due to darkness. But it closed well before MM, even before regular park closing time. Not surprising.
During MM hours (for me anyway), NaVi river was a walk-on, FoP was about 10ish minutes, Dinosaur was a walk-on. Can't comment on Everest as I didn't want to ride. The only lines I saw were for the games in DinoLand.

I had a great time.

As for how many attend, I can only say that I was offsite for the Jan 25 EPCOT event, so I tried general registration.
Based on how my number declined before they stopped, about 600 numbers went by, which would mean about 2400 people max if all were for 4 people and none were skipped due to multiple devices used. (That's general registration only not including regular onsite registrations which would be the vast majority.)