It was busy last week?!?

[Teki]

That is the thing that some people do not always grasp. When all rides and shows are running, that sucks people away. POTC can handle 3000+ people an hour. When the line is 30 minutes long that is 1500 people in line, and the ride itself is almost 20 minutes long, which means there are 1000 people on the ride. So 2500 people are sucked into POTC on a busy day with a 30 minute line. On a busy day at DL you will have maybe 50,000 people tops inside the park at one time. So 5% of those people would be in the POTC line or on the POTC ride when the line is 30 minutes.

Fantasmic can handle 16000 people at a time, or up to 30% of everyone who might be in the park when there are 50,000 people there.

When you go in off-season, there are less people in the park but they may be only running half the capacity of POTC and other rides (lke Autopia). Plus, a number of rides or shows may be closed for refurb. When POTC is closed that throws 5% more people into other lines. It does not pay for Disney to run at full capacity when the crowds are light, so lines are often not as short as you might think even though there are fewer people in the parks. Further, the park hours are shorter. So although the lines may be shorter, you have less time in the parks.

So because I only visit DLR every year or so I have ended up in Michelle's camp and just work FP and the long park hours to get on more rides. When we focus on rides we can easily do 30+ per day during high season without rushing (well, we rush a little first thing in the morning ).

But I have to say I am a little envious of everything Mars was able to do in two hours. Wow! Take it when you can get it!

Love your Disney math!

 

[bumbershoot]

I have nothing to contribute except to mention that the layoffs weren't the normal employees, but the fluff lower management that had been weighing down the parks for ages.

Or at least that's what I've read.

 

[Albertan mom]

I see you all think I am crazy!! I think I am hearing that it was not that busy!

I think I was just surprised at how busy it was, because the way everyone was talking, I was expecting nobody to be there!

We did WDW the last 2 Augusts during Free Dining. It was busy, but because everything was running at Full capacity, there was not big wait times.
I was comparing this trip to those trips.

I kept telling my DH that is was not going to be busy at all. He hates crowds, so kept pointing out how busy it was. So my opinion was misconstrued by him!

But, we still had a great time. And I loved the new rides, especially TSM!

 

[LavenderPeach]

I see you all think I am crazy!! I think I am hearing that it was not that busy!

I think I was just surprised at how busy it was, because the way everyone was talking, I was expecting nobody to be there!

We did WDW the last 2 Augusts during Free Dining. It was busy, but because everything was running at Full capacity, there was not big wait times.
I was comparing this trip to those trips.

I kept telling my DH that is was not going to be busy at all. He hates crowds, so kept pointing out how busy it was. So my opinion was misconstrued by him!

But, we still had a great time. And I loved the new rides, especially TSM!

I'm glad you guys had fun! You're right though that some of the lines were longer because they weren't running at full capacity. I have the same problem at Costco. I always think I am so smart going during a time when it's not very crowded but then they have less check stands open so it usually takes me longer to check out than if I went in the middle of a Saturday!

 

[godalejunior]

I have started changing my park visiting times due to all of the cut backs that Disney is and will be doing. To me, I have noticed that it's not the AMOUNT of people in the park, it's the capacity they are running at.

When we went in August, it was great because everything was running at full capacity. Sure there were more people, but I was pleasantly surprised at wait times. I am hoping to go during slow times, but I am not even as scared to go during busier times than I used to be, probably because the wait times seem almost similiar with good planning.

We were at the park 1/24-1/31 and I noticed them running at reduced capacity as well. We have been to DL this week two consecutive years prior and the CM's would be running both tracks for Matterhorn and BTMR and this year they were not. It made the difference between the ride being a walk on to a 5 to 10 min. wait. Maybe this was the difference?

 

[LOVEDISNEYLAND]

I am hear right now and have been here since Feb 7th and the whole time it's been pretty mellow. Sat and Sun was dead. We didn't have to wait any longer then 5 minutes for all the rides. Some of them we just walked right on.

 

[HydroGuy]

You must have misread my post. I was there for 14 hours and rode all of that.
I double-checked the post and it says 7am-9pm.
Still, 56 rides in 840 minutes (14 hours x 60 minutes per hour) averages out to 1 ride every 15 minutes. And that doesn't even take into account walking from attraction to attraction, smoke breaks (2 an hour), lunch, and snacks! Yeah, it was a heckuva day! I was solo (wife and kids stayed home since we'd just been at WDW) so it was commando touring all day! Most fun I've ever had at a theme park by myself!

OK, I did misread. I will downgrade my "wow" to a "very cool".

 

[nutshell]

Were you effectively using fastpasses?

 

[dlrmw]

Sounds like the OP had some good wait times. In July when we went last year, it was anywhere from 45-1.5 hr waits. But we are now slaves to school vacation, so it's always summer or spring break for us with everyone else.

The only time we went and had absolutely no wait times was after 9/11. We were probably only a handful of visitors in the park.

Oh yea, we went in Nov. 2001 and there was NO ONE there. There wasn't lines for anything most of the time we were the only ones getting on a ride with no one coming up behind us. My daughter had characters all to herself and Aladdin even sat with her for about 15 minutes in Adventureland.

 

[dlrmw]

I see you all think I am crazy!! I think I am hearing that it was not that busy!

I think I was just surprised at how busy it was, because the way everyone was talking, I was expecting nobody to be there!

We did WDW the last 2 Augusts during Free Dining. It was busy, but because everything was running at Full capacity, there was not big wait times.
I was comparing this trip to those trips.

I kept telling my DH that is was not going to be busy at all. He hates crowds, so kept pointing out how busy it was. So my opinion was misconstrued by him!

But, we still had a great time. And I loved the new rides, especially TSM!

My hubby hates crowds as well...if he has to wait 5 minutes...it's too long. Annoying! We went the day after Christmas with out of state visitors and I thought he was gonna flip out. Most of the time, my daughter and I end up leaving him at home.