Best Resort For Each Park

I try to do a few things with this blog - make some posts with current, relevant Disney news, as well as giving my commentary on that news, break down some hard data and write some fun, opinion pieces.  Those first two aren't necessarily "fun" posts but I think they're important in the context of planning a Disney World trip.  

I noticed I've done a lot of those first two posts lately and not a lot of that third, more fun type.  I'm not even sure this one qualifies!  But sometimes I just like to give my opinion about various things Disney - if I didn't want to write things like this, why do I have a blog at all (you might be asking yourself that anyway)?  So today I wanted to talk about various resorts throughout Walt Disney World property and come up with the "best" resort to stay at for each park.

July 4th Crowd Report

 

As promised (threatened?) last week, I wanted to take a look at the crowds at Walt Disney World on and around July 4th.  Some interesting data emerged from last week, and I thought we would talk about it in the context of overall crowd levels, touch a bit more on the weekday/weekend dynamic and see if we can figure out why these numbers were the way they were.

If you've ever watched the fireworks from Disney's 4th of July celebration (usually taking place on both 7/3 and 7/4 at Magic Kingdom), the crowds in the hub look daunting.  It might lead you to believe that crowds were out of control around this time. But the actual numbers here would lead you to the opposite conclusion.  As a side note, looking at crowds just in the hub around fireworks time (for ANY show) give a skewed view of what that day's crowds were like.  Most people who remain in Magic Kingdom at that time are watching the fireworks, meaning a large number of people are condensed into a relatively small space.  That also means wait times during the fireworks will generally be substantially lower.  But I digress ...

Weekday vs. Weekend Crowd Analysis

 

I keep a pretty regular eye on the crowd patterns at Walt Disney World ... so you don't have to!  Even when I don't have a trip coming up, I am interested in trends, as that can inform a decision on when to visit again.  Things have shifted a lot over the years, and Disney has gotten more savvy by programming events during formerly "slow" times to even out crowd levels throughout the year.

Actually, that's not entirely true.  Some things are beyond Disney's control, such as school breaks, holidays and weather.  Christmas season will ALWAYS be busy (a bold prediction if I do say so) and a time such as early September, with hurricane season in full effect and schools just back in session, will likely be quieter.  Disney's goal really is just to bring in more people during slow times - a good rule of thumb is that it's never really "slow" at any time, just varying degrees of busy.