Disney questions

[TerriJ]

Yesterday about 1 there was hardly a place to sit or eat. I heard there were about 70,000 people there and that they quit letting people in at 80,000.

[MichaelColey]

Originally Posted by TerriJ

Were you ever right. The crowds at MK were crazy today. Too crowded really to do much. Can someone recommend the best Disney park for tomorrow?

MK was one of the least crowded parks on 3/30, so I suspect that the problem was TIME OF DAY. Get to the parks at least half an hour before they open, and maximize your use of the first hour or two (by visiting the most popular rides first), then get the maximum use of FastPasses throughout the day.

[Jay_G]

Originally Posted by dundey

We were staying at a Disney resort Christmas week 1999 - so on New Year's Eve (Millennium eve!) All the parks were full by around 10AM! They did open a couple of them again later in the day. We saw Cheap Trick that evening at the Studios. I'm not sure if that was the busiest day ever but it had to be close!

I went to Disney World in November of 1996 and I have a video of our cab driver saying that all rooms both built and unbuilt were all ready book from 12/31/1999 for the Millennium.

I think that is still the busiest day on record at WDW.

[DebBrown]

Ahhhh.... we leave for Orlando in the morning. Weather looks wonderful. We may just hang out at the pool all week. We're still working on using our 7 day park hopper passes that I bought 10 years ago. Maybe we'll have one Disney today. I've printed out the calendar but I bet there will be no "good" choice.

Deb

[TerriJ]

Hollywood Studios was doable today. We figured out how to do FP and got on some fun rides. Even with all the good advice it took us awhile to figure things out, with a group of seven. There was room to sit and eat too. And then it stormed, but we left before that.

[Jay_G]

Originally Posted by DebBrown

Ahhhh.... we leave for Orlando in the morning. Weather looks wonderful. We may just hang out at the pool all week. We're still working on using our 7 day park hopper passes that I bought 10 years ago. Maybe we'll have one Disney today. I've printed out the calendar but I bet there will be no "good" choice.

Deb

It depends on your goals. The great thing about your tickets is they don't expire and you can park hop. If you do want to do Ride, expecially rides with lines, get to a park before it opens. Follow a touring plan. You can do Space Mountain, Splash Mountain, (Thunder is still closed) the more kiddy rides like Dumbo, Peter Pan etc. Within two hours of park opening with out much of a wait at all. Same is true for Toy Story Mania, Star Tours, Tower of Terror & Rock 'n Rollercoaster, or Everest, Dinosaur, and Killmanjaro, or Soar'n & Test Track.

Then you can leave go back to the pool, and come back for the fireworks, Frantasmic or Illuminations and some more rides.

If the day had 80,000 people or 30,000 people you really can't show up a noon, wander around and try to go on the Big attractions.
There should be shows and other fun things to do that will will not have to wait long for, I really enjoy the TTA (peoplemover) and there is almost never a line for it. Tiki Birds I think you can still always get into next show, Carousel of Progress has almost no wait, which has had a new show with Obama for a couple years now. It's now almost 1:00pm and while the wait for Splash Mountain is 96 minutes, Space is 49 min, Peter Pan is 46 min. There are still attactions with under a 10 mintue wait, and that's probibly just the average for the next show. Seating every 15 minutes your wait will be from 0 to 14.9 minutes depanding of luck.

[TerriJ]

In retrospect, we could have been more organized. We did have a great time and got to go on quite a few fun rides. DIL got quite a few autographs. We will go again with other son and family and we will be more experienced! The lighted parade was something to see.

We did four parks plus downtown Disney in three days and that may have been too much.

Lots of fun and great memories, now that I am back home.

[DebBrown]

Originally Posted by Jay_G

If you do want to do Ride, expecially rides with lines, get to a park before it opens. Follow a touring plan.

Yeah... no one in my family is very industrious on this vacation. That's why today we are playing miniature golf, shopping and seeing a movie. I told my GD that she'd have to get up early for Disney.

We are lucky to have wonderful weather this week. Yesterday we played in the pool all day. I bought a big inflatable boat at Publix for $10 and we got a whole day of entertainment from it.

Deb

[TerriJ]

Getting to MK did seem like a lot of work!

[spencersmama]

We were at Magic Kingdom yesterday and did the whole park, or at least the rides we wanted to do, from about 9 pm to 12:30. The crowds really thin out when people line up to see the parade and fireworks. Most people leave after that. We even stopped by the new Dumbo ride and it was walk-on. It looked very pretty with the new water feature and lighting. Even though they like the bigger rides, I made my kids do Snow White since it will probably be our last time. They close it next month to make a princess meet and greet area. Even the temporary princess area and the Mickey meet and greet had no line that late. I guess most mini princesses were in bed at that hour.

[cindi]

Yikes!! We got back from a week in Orlando on Wed. It was so doggone busy! Both crowd wise and weather wise I felt like I was there in summer. I am just too old for this.

There was a point that the line for Splash Mountain was 2 hours! Insane.

We only went on a couple of rides when we were there. Just wasn't worth fighting the crowds.

[DebBrown]

We decided to do one crazy marathon day. We got up early and started at MK with two Space Mountain rides plus a couple of others. We were at HS by 11am, picked up fast passes for the Tower of Terror and did the singles line for the roller coaster. We caught Beauty & the Beast and a couple other rides before heading home for naps around 4pm. We went back for the Fantasmic light show and then back to MK until 1am. It really felt like more than one day! I used park hopper passes that we bought back in 2003.

It really was more doable than I expected.

Deb

[stanleyu]

Originally Posted by cindi

Yikes!! We got back from a week in Orlando on Wed. It was so doggone busy! Both crowd wise and weather wise I felt like I was there in summer. I am just too old for this.

There was a point that the line for Splash Mountain was 2 hours! Insane.

We only went on a couple of rides when we were there. Just wasn't worth fighting the crowds.

Exactly the same experience we had the one day we did WDW during the week prior to Easter. When we arrived at MK mid-morning (by monorail) I noticed that the MK lot wasn't full (good sign?), but when wew left in the evening it was in overload status. Not sure if they stopped letting people in, but it was PACKED!