9/29 Disney parks crowds and capacity discussion

[rteetz]

On today’s podcast there was a big discussion on the current state of the parks.

Kevin and John has heard second hand from a friend that capacity had been increased and that the parks are crowded

Craig had said he believes they have increased park capacity.

Here is my take based on what I’ve heard, seen and know. Disney has not increased capacity. More people are coming. When the parks opened DHS was the only park that maybe saw all reservations booked and that was for Annual passholder only.

Now more days are being booked up but that cap hasn’t moved. That is because more people are comfortable to come. In those July and August days Disney wasn’t even touching their cap. People weren’t traveling and locals were less comfortable. As we move forward more people are traveling and more people are comfortable.

Let’s also look at crowds in the parks. Lines are socially distanced so they appear longer than they are many times because parties are separated. You also don’t have many “people eating” shows open which help keep those lines down. You also have the cleaning cycles which hinders lines and attractions overall are running at lower capacity than they should or could. Take Hollywood Studios for example. That park has a lot of big people eating shows and they simply aren’t open so rides get the brunt of the in take of people.

If we look at a park like Epcot, 50% of max capacity is roughly 50,000 people. In a non covid year that’s an average day. They aren’t reaching that. Each park has slightly different caps due to size, and other restrictions as well.

Lastly, I want to touch on guidelines being relaxed. Disney is treading carefully here. They aren’t going to be negligent and relax them. They don’t want poor headlines when they want businesses back. They also are dying to get Disneyland open. Moving too quickly and showing carelessness at WDW will only hurt them getting Disneyland open. They need to continue to show that WDW is operating safely in order to get CA to move. No doubt CA is looking at what theme parks across the country are doing before making decisions to open them in CA.

 

[jeremywolf81]

I don't know. This is not the first I've heard of this exact same thing in the past week or two. I've heard it from a couple other sources (that were in the parks and I know have no connection to the DIS crew) too. Crowds are definitely above the cap that they had in place.

 

[rteetz]

I don't know. This is not the first I've heard of this exact same thing in the past week or two. I've heard it from a couple other sources (that were in the parks and I know have no connection to the DIS crew) too. Crowds are definitely above the cap that they had in place.

Then that cap was extremely low. There is no way they have 50,000 people in the parks (each park individually) right now. If they did they would have all of their resorts open.

 

[jeremywolf81]

The other thing was the people I know were not particularly impressed because they didn't see much of any disinfecting, enforcing social distancing etc like Disney has promised. They said Universal was handling things much better.

 

[Walt4ever]

There are definitely more people in the parks, especially on weekends. Part of it is that they are starting to get maxed out across all three reservations types. AP ressies have been hitting the max routinely, especially on weekends. This past weekend, all 4 parks were out of all types of reservations. And it showed. Whether the max has been raised or not is the unknown. As an AP, we're pretty disgruntled at the reservation system and caps. At a minimum, 5-10 days out, they need to pool all remaining ressies so that APs can use them. If you haven't booked your resort or regular ticket, to bad for you. Right now, we can't go to HS on any weekend in October. Many of those Sat/Sun Epcot is the only park available to us. Even a day as far out as December 5th has HS booked for AP!

As for relaxing things, yes Cali is part of the decision process. However, I think it makes for a stronger argument if they say "We're open with no/limited restrictions in FL, why can't we open WITH restrictions in Cali?"

 

[rteetz]

There are definitely more people in the parks, especially on weekends. Part of it is that they are starting to get maxed out across all three reservations types. AP ressies have been hitting the max routinely, especially on weekends. This past weekend, all 4 parks were out of all types of reservations. And it showed. Whether the max has been raised or not is the unknown. As an AP, we're pretty disgruntled at the reservation system and caps. At a minimum, 5-10 days out, they need to pool all remaining ressies so that APs can use them. If you haven't booked your resort or regular ticket, to bad for you. Right now, we can't go to HS on any weekend in October. Many of those Sat/Sun Epcot is the only park available to us. Even a day as far out as December 5th has HS booked for AP!

As for relaxing things, yes Cali is part of the decision process. However, I think it makes for a stronger argument if they say "We're open with no/limited restrictions in FL, why can't we open WITH restrictions in Cali?"

They won’t do that for APs because people do book last minute trips and a lot of people still walk up to buy tickets. Not everyone is like us on the Dis who plan everything.

I see your second point however CA certainly doesn’t want to give a company control that isn’t going to follow the guidelines they give them or maybe not enforce them. Not saying Disney would do that but they are going to try their best to make themselves look really good to CA.

 

[WebmasterJohn]

Our conversation continued after the podcast ended and Craig pointed out that maybe what our friends heard from the WDW cast member was that they allowed an increase OF 50% - not TO 50% park attendance. I think that makes more sense and is a big difference.

In retrospect I don't think that WDW was allowing anywhere near the maximum number of guests allowed under the states Phase 2 reopening. I think (and have heard) they were way under that number. Increasing BY 50% would still allow them to be within those guidelines and where they feel comfortable attendance wise.

I trust my source and others on the panel agreed that park attendance is up. My issue is not with allowing more guests as long as they doing it in a safe way. What concerns me is if cast members are not being told about the increase and/or the staffing isn't in place to handle the crowds it's going to have negative consequences in a multitude of ways.

No one wants Disney to succeed at their reopening more than I do but I am more concerned that people are safe. I am most worried about anyone getting sick or worse from visiting a Disney theme park, partly from a business aspect but more so from a personal/human aspect.

 

[rteetz]

I am most worried about anyone getting sick or worse from visiting a Disney theme park, partly from a business aspect but more so from a personal/human aspect.

Which is exactly why I don’t think Disney would rush this as those headlines would hurt them.

 

[rteetz]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1311044474793947137

 

[Kestryl]

I absolutely believe capacity was increased. When we booked Columbus Day week parks, by the next day the whole week was yellow for Hollywood Studios. Literally just last week, that Columbus Day week (minus Friday) was magically “green” again.

 

[rteetz]

I absolutely believe capacity was increased. When we booked Columbus Day week parks, by the next day the whole week was yellow for Hollywood Studios. Literally just last week, that Columbus Day week (minus Friday) was magically “green” again.

Disney has been changing and re-allocating reservations since they reopened.

 

[scarslegalcounsel]

I'm planning a trip (with Dreams) in March and the videos of good mask compliance were what helped me make the decision to go. In the county where I work in TN, the mask mandate from the county mayor was followed almost immediately with a statement that it was unenforceable. I mean, they take the time to pull people over for window tint violations and then miraculously always smell weed, but I guess that's a better way to allocate county resources than trying to rein in a pandemic. Lots of businesses even have signs up that say masks are optional in their business. My office of fewer than 20 employees has had 3 positive cases, one asymptomatic. My boss, a perfectly healthy man in his early fifties, spent 2 weeks in a coma back in June and he's still only able to work a few hours a day before he's too exhausted to continue. His doctor cannot tell him if or when he will be able to function fully again as "everyone else as sick as you didn't survive."

ANYWAY - even a more crowded Disney seems safer than just about anywhere around here because I could be mostly outside and surrounded by other people wearing masks and not stuck in a dense, immobile (parade or fireworks-viewing) crowd. If they get rid of the mask rule or fail to step up enforcement, however, I just can't do it. Disney seemed like the one safe place, if not perfectly safe, and that was due to mask enforcement. While I believe that mask mandates are prudent, I do think that State and local governments can follow the will of their voters. I honestly just thought that Disney as an organization was better than the Florida government. I'm not mad, I'm disappointed.

 

[Kestryl]

Disney has been changing and re-allocating reservations since they reopened.

This was on the non-AP calendar, so of capacity was maintained, either a bunch of people canceled or they took away AP slots.

 

[TheMaxRebo]

Disney has been changing and re-allocating reservations since they reopened.

I think that reallocation is the key part

They may have a capacity limit for the entire park but then by how they split the buckets they can keep the total numbers well below that cap based on how many resort rooms are taken, etc.

So if at the start there were 50,000 spots available across the 4 parks, and 15,000 of them were for resort guests, but only 10,000 people were in the resorts, then that is an artificial sublimit that will keep capacity well below that total make figure

So even if they haven't raised that total figure, just by shifting more to the passholder bucket, etc they can increase the number of people that are realistically going to be in the parks ... So in effect they are increasing capacity without touching that top number

 

[Brett Wyman]

We were there last week for 8 days. I’m not sure if they quietly increased capacity or more people are coming, or both. But it certainly felt too crowded to be safe to us. I think Disney is doing all the can to keep folks safe, but people are people and there are a lot who break the rules in various ways. Too many for Disney to manage.

From a business perspective though it’s clear a lot of people feel very safe and that’s good for the park’s continued recovery so we are onboard. We just won’t be visiting right now .

My only critique would be to open up more restaurants/attractions/etc to better space out the guests. Which they seem to doing in some areas with Frozen Sing-A-Long reopening. Obviously staffing issues at play there though.

 

[maltdizzy]

Disney has been changing and re-allocating reservations since they reopened.

This was different. This wasn't moving capacity from bucket to bucket.

For Columbus Day week, DHS was full for all guest types — Resort Guests, APs, and Ticket Holders. Other parks also hit capacity in all calendars for some days that week. Then one monring all were available again. So it was either an long-standing error, or WDW management increased capacity in all three buckets.

I think we are seeing a combination of more guests feeling comfortable visiting the parks, more guests with hotel reservations because of discounts, and yes, increased crowd capacity as needed.

 

[Kingoglow]

After watching the discussion I think that there was a lot of misuse of the word capacity. There is a difference between attendance and capacity.

Rhino and Craig both stated that their observation was that capacity had risen. But that is really difficult to say for certain unless Disney come out and says that they are increasing capacity or unless Disney posts their turn-style numbers.
I do think it is fair to say that attendance is up.

We were there in August. Our observation was that attendance was well below 30% of capacity at that time (we estimated 10-15K people in MK). And what we could be seeing is that attendance is approaching the 30% capacity number. Not necessarily capacity increases beyond 30%.

I think Rhino was spot on with pointing out that the rumors could stem from a place where people feel uncomfortable in (new normal) crowded spaces now. Even if the parks are being held to 30% capacity, that can feel dangerous and uncomfortable to anyone that has been isolated for so long.

If you watch all the vlogs from the DIS team and pay attention to other vloggers doing the same thing, it seems to me, like Craig (and other vloggers live streaming from the parks) has no issue getting a park reservation weekly. And this isn't a sudden occurrence; this has been happened for many weeks. That, to me, makes it seem like there is still plenty of room within the caps.

It was a great discussion though. A great topic to keep an eye on until we hear official word.

Edit: I wanted to add that if you are someone that is not comfortable being within six feet of others right now, I would suggest avoiding EPCOT World Showcase, especially on evenings and weekends. I sense that there will be a festival going on through the end of the year and World Showcase has always been dodgy and evenings and weekends during festivals.

 

[Walt4ever]

When Disney re-opened in Shanghai, they initially had a self-imposed capacity limit lower than what China told them. They increased to the China number over time, waiting to see how things worked.

I think the same has happened in Florida. They have increased the reservations available, from the initial arbitrary low point which was below what they got permission for. We were there Labor Day weekend when park reservations were maxed out across all 3 types, all 4 parks. We were there this past weekend, where again, all reservations were maxed out across all 3 types, all 4 parks (at least Saturday, Sunday fluctuated). Visibly, there were a LOT more people at Epcot on 9/26 than there were on 9/5. There were generally no lines to get into Mexico on 9/5, there was a long line 9/26 most of the day. Same can be said for just about everywhere else. The only line we had to wait in on 9/5 was Mouse Gears at the end of the day.

Even at 50% capacity, that's a pretty normal sized crowd. In normal times, their AVERAGE daily attendance is roughly 60% of capacity. Even when they shut the gates on peak holidays, they shut them before actual capacity limits.

 

[Jrb1979]

Honestly I don't think they have raised capacity at all. Yes it's busier then in July but back then they were well below expectations. You can't really judge it by park reservations as I think they have taken a lot from the resort bucket as they are far from hitting capacity at resorts. The majority of people going are AP holders.

 

[MrKnight]

In all honesty and with all due respect to the DIS team, I feel that this topic and this discussion on this show was incredibly speculative and uncalled for, this is nothing more than speculation as at no point in time has Disney ever officially disclosed that capacity has been increased in any shape or form, nor has Disney ever released any such information regarding these type of internal decisions. Why is the DIS team spreading misinformation and rumors? A member of the DIS team walking around a park and reporting back on how they "feel" is in no shape or form any type of confirmation that park capacity has been increased or modified in any way.

I strongly encourage the DIS team to be reminded that the DIS Unplugged podcasts have listeners from all over the world, many of which utilize this information to make decisions on their travel plans and in many cases are even customers of Dreams Unlimited Travel. IMHO, spreading misinformation and rumors is not something that the DIS Unplugged podcast should be doing, please stick to factual information.