A Busy Labor Day Weekend Ahead

    It’s the last hoorah of a completely unexpected summer. Labor Day weekend is just around the corner and it looks to be a bit of a shot in the arm for Disney bookkeepers after demand simply didn’t manifest itself this summer.

    According to the Disney Park Pass theme park reservation calendar, Labor Day weekend is completely booked for all ticket types. This is the first time we’ve seen demand of this size across ticket types. The Disney Park Pass system is a great indicator of the demand that the parks face, and while we’ve typically seen high demand for the Annual Passholder tiers, it’s encouraging to see demand in the other ticket buckets as well. Of course, looking longer into the month, we see green return to the calendar beyond Labor Day, but Disney has to be encouraged by what they see for this upcoming weekend.

    Beyond the Disney Park Pass system, a quick search of the hotel availability shows that 50% of the currently open hotels don’t have availability this weekend, and that seems to be a best case scenario given recent searches have revealed little to no availability in the past few days.

    Another metric to keep an eye on is dining availability. In this case, in-park dining seems to be decent, but not as great as what we’ve typically seen in weeks past. It’s also worth noting that Disney added more dining availability recently based on reports that we’ve received here at BlogMickey.com.

    Finally, let’s talk about crowd predictions and what you might be able to expect if you’re visiting this weekend.

    As we’ve outlined before, crowds are disproportionately high on the weekends. On a typical weekend, you can expect wait times anywhere from 50% to nearly 200% higher than the middle of the week. This Labor Day weekend, you can expect much higher waits than what we’ve seen during the phased reopening of Walt Disney World, but it’s still important to remember that Disney still has capacity limitations in place to promote physical distancing. Whereas you might have been able to get an empty photo down Main Street USA during the middle of the week in August, we expect walkways to be busy and queues overflowing as a result of physical distancing.

    This weekend will be the first real test of the operational changes that Disney World has put in place for their theme parks. From physical distancing markers in the queue to roaming Cast Members and new park-wide audio reminders enforcing mask compliance, it’ll be a weekend to pack your patience.

    So, how can you “beat the crowds” if you’re coming this weekend? Our advice remains the same – the second half of the day is better than the first half. An early arrival is typically a good strategy, but this weekend you might want to consider sleeping in a bit, grabbing a late breakfast, enjoying the resort pool, and hitting up the parks in the second half of the day. You’re still going to find crowds – there’s no avoiding them this weekend – but with hot days still being the norm here in Central Florida and no nighttime entertainment, we expect the trend of guests leaving hours before the end of the day to continue.

    Looking forward from Labor Day, we expect to see the crowds die down and stay low through the remainder of September and October. Disney is showing their hand a bit by cutting theme park hours beginning September 8th – a sign of lowered demand, and as a result, lower staffing. With the cancellation of Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party, there aren’t any seasonal events to draw guests into the theme parks this fall. We’re still anxiously awaiting news on Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party, which could decide how busy the holiday season will be at Disney World, but more on that in a bit.


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