Saturday Feb 8th Magic Kingdom was shoulder to shoulder

[finedice]

Last week of Feb here as well... Can't fret, I have other worries on this trip. I am just glad I have all the knowledge from The Dis over the years packed into my brain. I will zig when others zag (and hope I can maneuver my DD's temporary wheelchair through it all!

 

[AndreaDM]

Any updates this week? We are headed down this weekend for just one day at Epcot for the Festival of the Arts on Sunday, day before Presidents' Day. I'm starting to get nervous about the crowds, but nothing I can do! I'm taking fiance for the first time though and worried that if it's too crazy he will never want to go back!

 

[maryj11]

View attachment 472262
here’s a photo I saw today on FB of the crowds at 6pm. Could hardly believe it!

Wow that looks like Christmas week crowds! Is everyone changing from summer vacations to winter?

 

[mickeysgirl17]

I was in MK on Feb 2nd and it was definitely a lot busier than I expected. It was hard to get any good fastpasses despite lots of refreshing. Also, there were huge lines for any fastpasses we did get. SDMT had a 20 min wait for the FP line. Same thing happened at Big thunder.

 

[elaine amj]

Wow that looks like Christmas week crowds! Is everyone changing from summer vacations to winter?

Epcot on Sat felt worse than NYE because cms were not controlling the traffic flow. It was hard to move through world showcase.

 

[maryj11]

Epcot on Sat felt worse than NYE because cms were not controlling the traffic flow. It was hard to move through world showcase.

That’s crazy!

 

[bethmomoftwins]

I'm also headed down this Saturday until Thursday. I'm a little worried about the crowds (especially since we are meeting some florida-based friends and had to tailor our schedules around them if we actually want to see them at all. They are back to school on tuesday while we are not, so we HAVE to do the parks on the worst days crowd wise). Saturday we arrive in the afternoon and have FP for MK the rest of the day. I guess we will just do our best to work our FP that we have for every day and just see how it goes. I have always been a park opening to closing girl, with no breaks, and my family is used to this craziness. The family we are meeting are not so I think even though the park hours are shorter this year than in the past, we'll have to suck it up and take a midday break. No PH. So while we'll just make the most of it, I am going in with tempered expectations. I hope I'll be pleasantly surprised.

 

[Cherry Limeade]

We were in Epcot on Monday and it was miserable crowded which is saying a lot since Epcot can really swallow crowds.
Yesterday (Tuesday) at DHS was MUCH better. There were FPS for SDD and TSMM available into early afternoon with refreshing. We got multiple rides on everything.
my guess is people are taking long winter weekends these days.

 

[Ajan]

Yes, I've been checking crowd levels and wait times on my app for the past few weeks periodically, as we are going the first week of March. I've been shocked at how long some of the lines are! The last time we went was in September of 2015 (first week) and it wasn't crowded in the least. We were melting though, so this time decided to head there during a cooler time, but I'm guessing everyone else is thinking the same thing.

That being said, there seem to be pockets of low crowds, even amongst the highs. Yesterday, for example, I was skimming wait times and was shocked to see FOP at 90 mins in late morning! The rest of the parks also had similar low wait times. I know it's not 100% correlated to crowd levels, but still, hoping for a few of those days during our trip because I'm the same- I love rides, but we're taking our toddler, so it's mostly going to be soaking up the magic, meeting characters, etc.

 

[NashvilleMama]

I'm not surprised by this - all the dance/cheer nationals taking place down there surely has a huge impact. I feel like half of our town's high schools took a 4-day weekend to go support them all and saw posts from friends all over the country saying the same. (I guess I run in dance/cheer friend circles now with daughters this age!)

 

[elaine amj]

Question: did anyone take the express monorail right after the fireworks or Once Upon A Time at MK on Sat, Feb 8?

That night, I got into a huge debate with DH about whether it would be faster to leave right after OUAT that finished at 9pm or linger some more to let the 8pm fireworks crowds dissipate (park was open until 10pm). He always always insists on leaving right after fireworks and I loathe waiting in the 1+ hr bus/monorail line when I could be having fun.

I dragged him onto Its a Small World and smiled my way through it I love the endless details and only wish I was better at identifying the countries. He did refuse to take an additional 10 mins to use our Pooh FP so we left Fantasyland at 9:30pm.

Got to the Express monorail at 9:40pm to a 40 min line, which was reasonably accurate. Then tram (yay no wait), then car. I hate MK's parking setup

DH still insists it would have been the same 40min line after fireworks but I think the monorail line would have been at least an hour. The debate rages on and would love it if someone who was there could help settle it lol.

At least we know ferry afterwards has a much longer line than the monorail since a CM was advising that monorail was 40 mins while ferry was over an hour.

 

[DVC_HK]

We came down Thursday and left Sunday thinking it would be a less crowded weekend and were dead wrong. I did HS and MK Thursday solo waiting on my wife's flight and you could tell both parks were very busy but you could refresh and get a good FP here and there. Our best idea was the after hours party at AK on Thursday night as we did Navi and FOP back to back at least 3 times and Everest at like 4 times. Friday was our Epcot day and we were glad to have our FPs but enjoyed the art shopping and food as it wasn't too hard to navigate. Saturday was HS day and we popped into MK for a new pandora bracelet and charms for V-day presents. We got ROTR boarding passes and were on before 9 and then we napped back at the Poly for a couple of hours before heading back to HS for FPs and dinner. Sunday was another solo day at MK and I had luckily gotten all the coaster fast passes and could snag a meet n greet with Mickey before my ME shuttle came for me as my wife had an earlier flight. If you can bob and weave through crowds and work the app it was a great time to be there with the energy

 

[wgeo]

I don't think Disney particulary cares that we Feel like it's super busy. The more guests that are frustrated about the crowds - the more of them that are willing to pay extra for the Hard Ticket events. Disney used to have more hours with EMH and they found a way to profit off of those instead. Obviously we'd all much rather be able to stay in the park until midnight with our main ticket - but Disney will never go back to extending hours, they will simply add more Hard Ticket events. And why not? They are essentially charging people twice to be in the park for the day and many people are willing to pay it. Good for them, bad for me.

 

[patman]

I think this is a huge part of it. It's the groupthink that is the downfall for everyone. Everyone has the same logic: "I want to wait to go to WDW until they open the new star wars land, but not before they open the flagship ride, and I should avoid going in December because that'll be super crowded because of winter breaks, so I should go in January/February which all the internet blogs say is cooler weather and low-crowd season." Except when everyone thinks that way, crowds are higher.

It's the flip side of how now, summer has been (comparatively) slow the last few years. Everyone is doing their "research" on the same blogs that say to avoid summer because it's hot and kids are out of school so it will be peak crowds. But our summer trips in the last few years have been far and away the least crowded because everyone thinks that way, and because even though kids are off school, they have three months in which to pick a week to go, unlike other holiday weeks throughout the year when everyone is off the exact same week.

The one thing that remains constant is spring break and christmas week are always crowd-city.

All except for one time I went during the summer, and the crowds were huge and the weather was oppressive. I was hoping the next time to go during the winter, (boston) but if what you say holds true for this summer I may again go summer of 2021.