We were are MK Friday. We had expected the holiday weekend crowds have started to roll in and it just felt busier. It was an EMH morning and a party night.
We were off property this time - so our usual routine of walking from BLT to EMH didn’t work today...we ended up arriving at TTC at 8am. We got thru bag check (ghost.town!!) and hopped on the ferry. We were strolling down main street watching the street performers at 8:30 which I thought was pretty good. At 8:40 we got in line for the Adventureland rope. We knew we wanted to head to Splash /BTMR first thing. After the drop at Pirates we kept walking and ended up at Splash.
Apparently somewhere (maybe Resort guests?!) there was another HUGE line of people also heading there...luckily we were ahead of them and ended up as the very first guests of the day on Splash Mountain. Fun family memory! Exiting Splash we went straight to BTMR - it had a posted 30 min wait - we ended up waiting 45 min and it was 10:20 before we were done with both rides. Not bad but also a sign that it was going to be a bit busier (and we didn’t really have the ‘first hour’ benefit that you can get with ropedrop of these rides on a non- EMH day). At 9:26 when we got off Splash and onto BTMR the wait was posted at 25 min for splash but the line extended out of the ride all the way to the gift shop so not sure it was correct either.
The walkways were more crowded today than we saw at other parks this week and I felt people were sitting on the curbs essentially all day long.
We headed to Gaston’s and sat at a table with some cinnamon buns and LeFeaus Brew and then at 10:50 finally headed towards 7DMT for our 10am FP. Stopped for some photopass pictures first too! After 7DMT it was time for our Space Mountain FP. The posted wait was 70 min at 11:20 or so. At 11:40 we went on people mover which had a legit backup and 5-7 min wait. And after that we did COP before our Buzz FP.
At 12:22 we got to Buzz - the FP line was snaking thru THREE rows outside! I had NEVER seen that before - they must be giving out more FP for this ride now or something. Our FP wait was over 5 minutes just to get to the touchpoints outside and then longer inside.
I checked via modify FP availability around 11:50 and there were still many many options. At 12:30 I began the tap, grab, modify approach but the options were much much less. I ended up splitting our FP and just getting them in groups of 2 for the rest of the afternoon. The kids went on Barnstormer, Tea Cups, Little Mermaid and Speedway with FP between 1 and 4 and we also watched Laugh floor. With the modify technique - I did have a chance to get Pirates FP but we didn’t want to walk all the way down there and once or twice Buzz popped up too. Buzz seemed to have a fairly consistent 35 min stand by wait during mid day which seemed reasonable. Dumbo also had very low (10-20min) waits today and always had FP available in the afternoon and we visited all 4 of the characters at Pete’s with 15 min waits also.
At 4 we went to watch the Move It Shake It parade and found that it was also scrubbed today for the holiday taping. The Holiday Taping meant no real opening show, no castle show, and no move it shake it. If these are important to you - don’t go during a taping week!! That said - the tapings are a bit of an attraction all their own - watching the process of how long it takes to get a 5 minute segment filmed is kind of neat.
We headed out from here as the party crowds were arriving in droves - looked like it would be a busy night!
Touring Plans predicted a 3 and their ‘actual’ for MK was a 4. But at times it ‘felt’ busier. The other parks had actuals of 6 - which is what I would expect for a Friday of a Holiday weekend but was again higher than predicted.
Overall - the day worked for us as frequent park goers who weren’t looking for a dumbo or die day, but it might not work for everyone else. That said - a crowd level of 4 seems pretty reasonable to me if the short hours work for you!!
