Crowd Blog

Updates To Crowd Calendar For August Schedule

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Disney has released their park hours and entertainment schedule for August and we have updated our disney world calendar to reflect the official schedule.

The latest crowd counts for early May have also come in and as some have suspected, our estimates for May seem high. There are possible explanations such as weather, reduced travel because of swine flu or overall reduced attendance. There is also a very slight chance that our estimates were just plain wrong, however we choose to not adopt that theory. Disney’s schedule for April was adjusted on the fly and our estimates were low for some days. We compensated in our estimates for May and June, expecting park hours to be adjusted again but that might not end up being the case.

Remember that our crowd calendar refers to the maximum posted wait time at the Magic Kingdom. With Space Mountain closed, the maximum wait time will be larger than normal as guests fill up queues at the other headliners. Although we might estimate crowds at level 7, 8 or 9, the actual experience of crowd size might be light. May and June will continue to be a good time of the year to visit the parks although wait times will be higher than normal at the Magic Kingdom.

As always, the crowd calendar is subject to change. Feel free to let us know when we’re wrong (or right) by sharing with us the wait times you observe in the Theme Parks. Send us Fastpass times or Standby times by for any Theme Park while you visit.

Things we need to know:

  1. What Park is it?
  2. What Attraction is it?
  3. What time of day is it?
  4. What is the standby time (or Fastpass window time)? 

Thanks and happy touring!

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Fred Hazelton

Fred Hazelton maintains the crowd calendar, theme park wait time models and does hotel rate analysis for the Unofficial Guides. He's also done the models for the new mobile wait times product Lines. Fred Hazelton is a professional statistician living in Ontario, Canada. His email address is fred@touringplans.com. You can also follow him on Twitter: @DisneyStatsWhiz.

17 thoughts on “Updates To Crowd Calendar For August Schedule

  • Will the Crowd Calendar for August change now Disney has extended opening hours at the Magic Kingdom and added Fantasmic shows?

    Reply
  • Just wondering-since the whole of August is now a 6 is that truly what is expected or is that a middle of the road guess until more data comes in?

    It seems too good to be true and you know what they say about things that are too good to be true…

    Reply
    • We’re always supportive of the skeptics but in this case let’s try another cliche. Maybe: “A little hard work goes a long way”; or was it “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing”?

      August is usually pretty consistent from day-to-day. There will be some fluctuations but generally we expect to see levels between 5 and 7. Our predictions for June have turned out to be within our regular range (within 5 minutes).

      Reply
      • Ouch! I don’t doubt your hard work (and am quite envious of your job!). Thanks for the service and information you provide-I am a very happy consumer. I just can’t believe our luck…we thought the crowds for mid-August were going to be rough. Your giving our week all “6” makes me think our biggest challange may be the weather. We’ll take it!

      • I don’t feel too bad about that “too good to be true” comment now.

  • Not being able to get park hours or event times prior to when you need to begin booking dinner reservations is a real problem – is there any hope of Disney resolving this issue? or in lieu of that a way to make an educated guess?

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  • My family and I are going August 30-September 6th. Can anyone comment on crowd levels at this time (since labour day isn’t until the 7th this year).
    Will dining plan (which we took advantage of!) increase numbers?
    Also after buying the 2009 book I want to confirm that a touring plan is better than following the recommended parks for each day. Any feedback is greatly appreciated, can’t wait!

    Reply
  • We are going August 9-16 and I have been waiting for the update! YEY! HUGE improvement. Our trip had 7, 8 and 9s predicted and now they’re all lower. It doesn’t look to that any of the recommended parks have changed. We had to make our ADR’s on the 11th (before I saw this) and so I chose all our parks based on the “recommended parks” for each day. It looks the same to me! (BTW, we got into Cindy’s table at 8 a.m. on the day of our choice and the reservationist told me reservations for that time are very light-we would not have any problems getting anything).

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    • We are going Aug 4-12. Most of the days were 8, and now 6. I also followed the “crazy” dining call plan. I booked Cindy’s table and 8 other character meals and got my first choice for each one. Yay!

      Reply
  • The crowd calendar is derived from a statistical model that incorporates all kinds of factors. One of the major factors is the hours that the Magic Kingdom is open. Until Disney released their actual schedule for August the park hours used in our model were only guesses based on historical data. Its likely that on that particular day Disney’s posted hours ended up being less than we thought.

    Reply
    • Just in case you don’t read my post below: the reservationist for our ADRs told me that reservations are very light for the week in August we are going. I followed the crazy “get a table at Cindy’s table plan” from the book and the reservationist laughed at me. She said there will be no problem getting anything.

      Reply
  • I’m finding it difficult to understand why the estimated crowd level for Sunday 16 Aug 09 has suddenly dropped from “9” to “5”?

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  • Tax refunds. That’s what my salesman at CarMax told me when I bought a car in late March–people getting tax refund checks decided to splurge, so they were having a nice uptick. I imagine in addition to cars, a lot decided last-minute to make a Spring Break/Easter trip to WDW after all. Why management was caught off guard, no early hotel bookings/ADRs to go off of.

    Reply
  • I am surprised to see that the beginning of August has crowd levels of 6 while the end of August, which is traditionally much slower, has crowd levels that are higher. Even with free dining most kids are back in school.

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  • For the week of August 16-22>>I’m not so concerned with the numbers but with the “best park” & “Parks to avoid” recommendations. Seeing that most recommendations are given based on avoiding Magic Hours and seeing that the recommendation for Magic Kingdom as the “Best Park” are Monday, Tuesday & Friday, with magic hours for Magic Kingdom being on Tuesday & Friday-would this still be your recommendation? Same with avoiding Epcot on Friday eventhough they do not have magic hours on that day? Realizing the 1st week of Free dining may impact, but I’m just wondering. Thank you for this website. It is a blessing!

    Reply
  • Was there any changes to the August crowd calender? Almost looks like there were no changes.

    Reply

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