Jersey Week November 2019 Crowd Levels

I believe they are just using the posted wait times for the day.

That's what I figured.

I'm not trying to discredit their numbers or the work they put in by any means but I don't necessarily pay attention to their crowd level predictions/reports. There's multiple different sites that have them, especially the predictions part of it, and they always seem to be different except on obvious days when they know the crowds will be bonkers. I definitely don't base my park days off of the predictions. Sometimes I think they skew the numbers purposely to get people to go to one park or another so it validates their predictions.
 
We finished up with my in-laws earlier than planned and decided to go to Epcot for dinner.

At 3pm we made reservations looking for an early dinner at 4pm (we hadn’t eaten lunch) - we had many choices including Garden Grill, Chefs D France, Tuttle italia etc. We choose Nine Dragons and headed to the park. There were no Fast Passes worth getting (memo, turtle talk, short films) except Illuminations and we didn’t plan to stay til park close because we had to pack.

Parking at 3:15 was in Create 53...can’t get much farther than that and people were arriving in droves. I was worried but we hopped on the tram anyways.

I actually made it thru bag check faster than my family went thru the No Bags line!! Crazy! But I speed walked a bit to be the first from our Tram to hit bag check and was able to get in line where I could actually touch the table immediately - so only one person in front of me..

We headed to World Showcase..stopped to see the Christmas tree...stopped at Hawaii - 0 people in line. Stopped at Almond Stand - 4 people in line but it went super fast. Loved our food from the Almond Place. Then headed to China. Figment FP popped up so we grabbed them.

Got right into dinner...At 4:55 we finished dinner and the kids wanted to wait for the acrobats, they sat in the front row and I sat on the ledge. My DH strolled around - he stopped at Italy and America to get us drinks and then walked back to China. He was gone for 25 minutes. We then strolled around World Showcase and actually discussed that it was surprisingly not as crowded as we expected - we could easily walk, find places to stand to eat or drink, and didn’t encounter nearly as many wasted folks as we expected for the final (holiday!) weekend. Even the places with popular beers / beer flights etc were not overwhelmingly crowded.

We didn’t plan to stay long and at 6:30 we made our way to Figment. The stand by wait was 5 minutes at that point. Most of the night Soarin had a 40-50 min wait and Test Track was 60-70min. I think FEA was 60/70 but was falling a bit as we were leaving.

Stopped for a photo on the way out of the park and then headed to the tram. Was able to get on the tram that was waiting and didn’t hit any traffic leaving the park at 7:15/7:20 ish.

When we were looking at dinner reservations - I checked FP at all parks. AK, DHS, and EP had crap but MK actually had quite a few good choices. Splash, Buzz, Jingle Cruise were all available for our party of 4!

Overall - our family will keep this week in the rotation. As our kids get older - finding weeks that we can go is harder and this week is perfectly timed between fall and winter sports activities, they only missed 3 days of school, we found the weekday crowds Managable and we always enjoy a festival at Epcot.
 


Overall - our family will keep this week in the rotation. As our kids get older - finding weeks that we can go is harder and this week is perfectly timed between fall and winter sports activities, they only missed 3 days of school, we found the weekday crowds Managable and we always enjoy a festival at Epcot.

Great perspective! This is also the reason we have chosen this week for next year.
 
I believe they are just using the posted wait times for the day.
If so, that’s really a useless measure. Disney can easily manipulate wait times on many rides by adjusting ride capacity and staffing.

I’m much more concerned with the actual number of people in the park. That matters a lot more to us than the wait times.
 


If so, that’s really a useless measure. Disney can easily manipulate wait times on many rides by adjusting ride capacity and staffing.

I’m much more concerned with the actual number of people in the park. That matters a lot more to us than the wait times.

Agreed. That's why I don't put much stock into their predictions/reports. Like I said earlier, I'm sure they put a lot of time and effort into it and I'm not telling anyone not to use them, I just don't think they're very accurate.
 
Agreed. That's why I don't put much stock into their predictions/reports. Like I said earlier, I'm sure they put a lot of time and effort into it and I'm not telling anyone not to use them, I just don't think they're very accurate.
They may be accurate. You just need to understand what their numbers are based on.
 
That's what I figured.

I'm not trying to discredit their numbers or the work they put in by any means but I don't necessarily pay attention to their crowd level predictions/reports. There's multiple different sites that have them, especially the predictions part of it, and they always seem to be different except on obvious days when they know the crowds will be bonkers. I definitely don't base my park days off of the predictions. Sometimes I think they skew the numbers purposely to get people to go to one park or another so it validates their predictions.
I believe they are just using the posted wait times for the day.

If that’s the case, I’d say the crowd level 8 for MK on Saturday 11/10 is an underestimate.
There were tens of thousands of ppl jammed in from the entrance all the way up Main Street USA to the castle watching the ABC holiday taping & not riding or waiting for rides. The wait times were still extremely excessive.
 
If that’s the case, I’d say the crowd level 8 for MK on Saturday 11/10 is an underestimate.
There were tens of thousands of ppl jammed in from the entrance all the way up Main Street USA to the castle watching the ABC holiday taping & not riding or waiting for rides. The wait times were still extremely excessive.
Yep. We were in MK that night and ended up leaving around 7:30 or 8:00 because it was just insane. Just walking through Adventureland was really an adventure. Wall to wall people. And Sunday wasn’t any better.
 
Yep. We were in MK that night and ended up leaving around 7:30 or 8:00 because it was just insane. Just walking through Adventureland was really an adventure. Wall to wall people. And Sunday wasn’t any better.
Same exact scenario.
We left Skipper Canteen around 7:45 and fought our way out of the MK with our 2 year old in a stroller.
We probably ‘bumped into’ you.
It was our last night and I didn’t love ending on that note but oh well. Hopefully better luck next time.
 
Jersey Week was our favorite time to visit for many years - from 2003-2014. Crowds were always manageable -- modest at the beginning of our trips (usually Friday before) and mounting as the week progressed. Parks were busy Thursday through the following weekend, but not crazy. We took a break when my son went to college (going in the summer out of necessity), but went back Jersey Week 2017. Big change! So much more crowded! The beginning of the week was still manageable, but that second weekend (Friday - Sunday) was crazy. We tried to see the MK fireworks one last time on Saturday night and couldn't even move along Main Street. In fact, it took us about an hour to get a monorail back to our resort! Never experienced that before. While we haven't visited over Spring Break or Christmas, we have visited over July 4th twice and Jersey Week crowds were far worse.

Can't beat the time of year, weather and holiday celebrations that come along with Jersey Week, but it is important to adjust expectations. With careful planning, it's still a magical week to visit!!!
 
Jersey Week was our favorite time to visit for many years - from 2003-2014
Very similar here. We did Jersey week every year from 2001-2008 I think. Had to stop when DD hit middle and high school. In college we went in January during winter break. This was our first time back for Jersey week in 10 years and it’s drastically different.

As for weather, it was awful this year. 85 and very humid every day.
 
We did late August 4 times with our kids and then just DH and I have done late September and then October, always staying on property. I will say August crowds were lighter and it rained a bit more. September and October were a bit busier but the weather was lovely. We plan on 11/6 thru 11/11 next year so I have been following this thread and it seems like people staying off site are experiencing big crowds getting into the parks. Are guests staying on property experiencing long waits at bus stops and monorails? Our visit last year was the first time we did not rent a car and we had no problems with transportation. We did use Lyft twice and that was easy, too. How are your experiences with transportation?
 
We did late August 4 times with our kids and then just DH and I have done late September and then October, always staying on property. I will say August crowds were lighter and it rained a bit more. September and October were a bit busier but the weather was lovely. We plan on 11/6 thru 11/11 next year so I have been following this thread and it seems like people staying off site are experiencing big crowds getting into the parks. Are guests staying on property experiencing long waits at bus stops and monorails? Our visit last year was the first time we did not rent a car and we had no problems with transportation. We did use Lyft twice and that was easy, too. How are your experiences with transportation?

We stayed off-site and only one time did we have traffic for our drive - that was leaving Epcot on Thursday afternoon...otherwise - we were at parks in no time flat...we did not go back to DHS after the entrance changed though - maybe that was worse?
 
How are your experiences with transportation?
As I posted earlier, traffic into Epcot on one day was so bad that we bailed and parked at the TTC instead and took the monorail. The day we did go directly to Epcot, we were in bumper to bumper traffic for 30 minutes to reach the toll plaza. On Sunday, we were going to MK but passed the backup to get into Epcot which was as long or longer as it had been the day we bailed and did the TTC route.

MK traffic wasn't bad and we didn't encounter any issues at AK or DHS either, though a couple of mornings as we were coming onto property from Sherberth Road, there was a huge back up to enter AK. I've never seen it that bad before.

Uber or Lyft, even if staying onsite, would still have to navigate the same traffic that everyone else is in. Even Disney bus traffic was affected, at least when we were stuck trying to get to Epcot. Multiple lanes merge there and the buses can only enter through the far right lane meaning they sometimes had to make their way across many lanes of bumper to bumper traffic which could take quite some time. The same goes for Minnie Vans. It really was quite a mess, again about the worst I have ever seen it.
 
Just back from a Thursday - Monday trip. Got to do everything we wanted pretty much and had no line for us longer than 20 minutes with smart pre-booking of FP, rope drop each day, and pretty aggressive use of 4th+ FP gotten by refreshing. I did notice that I thought the headliner attractions and even some of the mid-tier attractions were harder to get as additional ones (although we got super-lucky and got Test Track for 6 people as a 4th about 10 minutes prior to its start time). (My biggest surprise was how hard it was to get Pooh as a 4th FP! 3 trips to MK and it hardly ever showed - could have easily gotten Pirates, Mermaid, Mansion, Jungle Cruise, characters, Small World but Pooh seemed like Peter Pan this time!). Agreed with the fireworks crowds - we sprung for the dessert party this year and it was a good move. The hub was PACKED!
 
I believe they are just using the posted wait times for the day.

If so, that’s really a useless measure. Disney can easily manipulate wait times on many rides by adjusting ride capacity and staffing.
I’m much more concerned with the actual number of people in the park. That matters a lot more to us than the wait times.

If that’s the case, I’d say the crowd level 8 for MK on Saturday 11/10 is an underestimate.
There were tens of thousands of ppl jammed in from the entrance all the way up Main Street USA to the castle watching the ABC holiday taping & not riding or waiting for rides. The wait times were still extremely excessive.

Just to clarify, TP does not just use Disney's posted wait times. They do their own wait times. I don't have a TP subscription, but my understanding is that their data is at least partially crowdsourced with subscribers entering their actual wait times while there.

TP has stated they only look at wait times, not bodies in the park. This may or may not be a useful measure, depending on how you plan to spend your day in the park. We tend to go ride to ride to ride, so TP's quantification of crowds is exactly what we are looking for.

TP's website has a breakdown of which rides/attractions they use as markers (some rides/attractions are better predictors of crowd levels than others, and the website explains why). It's also only based on the peak wait times from 11am-5pm. So earlier in the morning or a late night surge/emptying of the park wouldn't be counted. World Showcase, in particular, won't really show up on their predictions because only FEA is included in their data.

In the end, the crowd numbers are just a starting point for planning. A good plan is usually more important than a low crowd number, but I think the higher the crowd number, the more planning you might need. Or maybe just the more understanding of your options so you can switch from plan A to plan B or C, depending on what you actually find when you're in the park.
 
FYI - heard a CM say that there were 80,000 guests at MK on Saturday. I don’t know what crowd level that is. Lol
 

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