harvey said:We were in Disney for our 17th trip from Feb 9-15th. This is normally a low-crowd time (Presidents week is the exception), and we were completely taken off guard by the crowds. Every park was crazy busy, and my friend who is a manager in the MK said they're all scratching their heads over the enormous crowds. She said there has been no down time in Disney since last October, and Christmas was completely 'nutty'.
We waited 20 minutes for the People Mover.There was a 20-40 minute wait for Spaceship Earth all day long. Moving around in Fantasyland was nearly impossible....you just get swept up in the throng, then when you need to stop, you are stepped on (or in my case, cursed at). Fast passes in all parks were usually given out completely. My friend also makes the announcements over the main speaker in MK as well, and I heard her all three days we were in MK announce that park hours were being extended.
We have always gone in January or February because of low attendance, so the crowds were such a surprise to us. We still had fun, but that's because we know what we want to do, and skip what doesn't thrill us. If it was our first time, I doubt we'd go back for quite a while. I witnessed severalparents in epcot who had hoped to get pictures of their kids with characters and such, but lines were crazy long. And the new fast pass enforcement and rules about holding 2 at a time make it difficult to do everything.
And BTW, the line for the new Enchanted Tales with Belle is killer.Half of it has no cover from the sun, and the line only moves every 15 minutes as they let a new group in. We waited an hour for that one. On the plus side, the new Ariel ride has a pretty constant moving and interesting queue. Wait time was listed at 50 minutes, we were in within 30. Couldn't get near the Be Our Guest restaurant.
So....be prepared with your touring plans. Even this fairly seasoned Disney tourist was overwhelmed. I think Disney would do well to build itself a new park instead of more resorts/dvc.
Just curious, did you go to parks with EMH? A lot of people say to avoid the parks with EMH because crowds are bigger but I'm wondering if thats true.