MK park passes unavailable on MNSSHP days

[HeiHei2018]

The first two days of MNSSHP are already showing as unavailable at MK on the park pass calendar. Do people think this is because bloggers will be there and are using their annual passes to enter early, or do people think the trend of low attendance on early closing days is over with 8 am openings? I go the week after and have a park pass for the day of the third party. Can’t decide if I should switch it to a different day. Was hoping for data from the first week to make last minute changes. So much uncertainty!

 

[Mrs.AMC]

Is it booked for everyone or just the annual pass reservations?
The pools of reservations are different.

 

[Day-al]

Is it booked for everyone or just the annual pass reservations?
The pools of reservations are different.

Both 8/16 & 19 are booked for theme park tix and resort hotel guests. I do not have an AP, so I cannot say if those are also booked.

 

[BlancheNeige7]

There is availability for APs on both the 16th and 19th.

 

[HeiHei2018]

There is availability for APs on both the 16th and 19th.

Thanks for checking. So it’s not APs that are filling up.

 

[georgina]

Actually the first day of the party is Aug 12, and that is showing green. Odd.

 

[MomOTwins]

I wouldn’t read too much into it—park passes start to fill up for MK a few weeks in advance so could just be coincidence.

 

[TheOneWithTheTriplets]

There's a ton of circumstantial evidence to suggest that Disney is using the pass system to artificially shift crowds by lowering capacity at MK on certain days.

Theoretically, sold out days should all be crowd level 9 or 10 if they're truly letting the max number of folks into a park that day. In reality, wait times very greatly and an MK day with no pass availability could be a 3 or a 9.

My guess: they are still short on staff compared to beforetimes and they need to move people's shifts around to accommodate all of the extra staffing needed for party nights (ToT stations, extra characters and handlers, etc). So, they're keeping day guest capacity low and, when parties do start running, we'll see rides running only one side, fewer QS staff at locations, etc during the day. Hopefully, this will improve over the course of the party season as the continue staffing, the international program returns, and such.

 

[HeiHei2018]

Actually the first day of the party is Aug 12, and that is showing green. Odd.

Aug 12th is full as of this morning. Definitely a trend. I am starting to worry that they will be really understaffed suring the day on party days and only run one side of rides. Fingers crossed limited park pass availability will counter that problem on our Tuesday day at MK.

 

[MomOTwins]

Aug 12th is full as of this morning. Definitely a trend. I am starting to worry that they will be really understaffed suring the day on party days and only run one side of rides. Fingers crossed limited park pass availability will counter that problem on our Tuesday day at MK.

Another reason I’m a huge fan of park hoppers during party season, even if you have to shorten your trip to budget for it. That way if party days are unpleasant you can always hop to another park and do MK an afternoon on a day when you booked another morning park.

 

[MomOTwins]

Come to think of it, maybe the park pass pool on party days IS lower, but just because of shorter hours rather than lower staffing. If Disney sets the number of park passes based on a calculation that incorporates the average number of hours a guest spends in the park, then capacity would be higher on days when regular park hours are longer. For example if disney assumes 6 hours per guest, then on a 9am to 9pm day (12 hours) the park can accommodate 2 guests for every 1.5 guests it can accommodate on a 9am to 6pm (9 hours) party day. That would explain why sometimes the “feels like” hours can fluctuate so much on sold out days because (1) park hours vary and (2) even when park hours are the same, crowds may be worse on days when everyone rope drops than when people stagger arrivals throughout the day since in an “hours” model disney would be assuming that people are staggering the times they are in the park.

 

[HeiHei2018]

Another reason I’m a huge fan of park hoppers during party season, even if you have to shorten your trip to budget for it. That way if party days are unpleasant you can always hop to another park and do MK an afternoon on a day when you booked another morning park.

We do have hoppers, and thank goodness.

 

[HeiHei2018]

And today our MK day is full, 29 days out. Definitely time to lock in reservations if you are going in fall! I have hastily made reservations, so fingers crossed I can add Epcot and cancel HS one of our days.

 

[MEC004]

I wonder if it has to do with college students leaving. They usually go back middle to end of August.

 

[georgina]

i have a hard time believing THAT many more people made MK park reservations on party days, and suspect a limited amount of reservations were available.

 

[Kingoglow]

My guess: they are still short on staff compared to beforetimes...

This is not the correct narrative. I see this type of generous statement in the press and it is starting to trigger me.

The real truth is that Disney laid off 32,000 company-wide (not all in parks and resorts). It is too generous no the company to say they are short-staffed. No, they fired their way into their current mess and people moved on with their lives.

Now we all suffer because Disney needed to save on costs.

 

[TheOneWithTheTriplets]

This is not the correct narrative. I see this type of generous statement in the press and it is starting to trigger me.

The real truth is that Disney laid off 32,000 company-wide (not all in parks and resorts). It is too generous no the company to say they are short-staffed. No, they fired their way into their current mess and people moved on with their lives.

Now we all suffer because Disney needed to save on costs.

Saying they are short staffed doesn't make any judgement about how they got there, though.

The fact is they don't have enough people to run things at capacity. That doesn't mean the situation isn't their fault.

 

[loveswdw]

It's weird because it's not just the MNSSHP days that are already unavailable. It's already four days out of that first week as of this morning. It's still over three weeks away and MK is "at capacity." ??

 

[CarolynFH]

It's weird because it's not just the MNSSHP days that are already unavailable. It's already four days out of that first week as of this morning. It's still over three weeks away and MK is "at capacity." ??View attachment 688901

Yes, my thoughts are that Disney controls capacity based on their inside knowledge of resort bookings, ADRs, available staff, etc., etc. And the first week of August is 3 days away right now. There might be a lot of people who booked vacations right before their kids go back to school (which starts August 10 in our district). IOW, we have no way of knowing why MK is “at capacity” those days - they’re at capacity because Disney says they are!

 

[leebee]

I wonder if party-attendees being able to enter MK at 4pm has anything to do with it. If they already know how many folks have park passes on a party day, they kinda have to add the number of party tickets sold to that, don't they, to have an accurate "head count" from 4-7pm?

August 19th is our MK day, with park hoppers so we can go to F&W for dinner. Trip #32, so we weren't going to do G+ (because we know there sill always be another Disney trip) but with park pass reservations closed, I might reconsider that...