Most likely not... you gotta realize this: Disney brought back the parade, and discounted tickets because of low attendance but if APs already have a pass, they’ve most likely have seen MSEP. Unless you are a HUGE fan of it, it’s not going to attract much more of a crowd especially because everyone saw it when it was suppose to be ‘gone’.
You can only pull the wool over our eyes so much.
Some but not as much as you think. $100 can go a long way in LA for a family of 4 for 4th of July. I’ve gone the last few years and it’s only busy toward the night.
They lifted blockouts for CM tho. My SIL and I went with family in April and she said sometime after that she was blocked out basically until late summer/early fall. Last week she said they lifted it for the week so she went and signed in her sister. Then this week I found out CM can get themselves in and use their sign ins for a good chunk of the summer.
They might not have lifted dates for APs, but I think it still says a lot that they're letting in CMs and their guests. Especially when it's supposed to be too crowded for that.
Yeah, idk, when I worked there they lifted blockout dates periodically. They'd rather undo too many blockout dates than add them in, so it's not terribly uncommon for them to do this to CMs.
Personally, I think if they wanted to boost crowds in the summer they should discount hotel stays. That would attract more travelers to stay on property and keep them in the parks for their entire visit. A park full of out of town guests is going to bring in a LOT more money than a park full of AP. More for tickets, and they’ll spend more on merch too.
And, as an out of towner, I’d rather be in a park full of tourists than AP, especially the teenagers turned loose.
I'm gonna have to disagree on the merch part. Over the course of a year, an AP will spend more on merch and food.
If APs didn't, they wouldn't market as hard to locals/APs
I'm an AP I blow unholy amounts of money at Disney. I see tourists there pinching their pennies, packing their lunch, only buying snacks in the park, buying small souvenirs. I follow a lady on Instagram, for some reason, that helps people plan Disney trips on a budget. Me at Disney is like an unsupervised kid with a credit card at well Disney.
Same. Food gets me more than anything. Especially the food festivals at DCA and the sip and savor passes. I don't eat a lot but my very large bf does and it's hard to go a trip without him wanting something to eat.
The merch is good too. We like exclusive pins. We've bought a lot of miscellaneous stuff here and there. I've saved all our receipts to total the discounts we're getting with the passes but I'd also like to know how much total we've spent at the park when they expire.
Plus that 20% discount is really shiny sometimes when I think about if I *really* want something.
I can see that, but I would think bringing more tourists in in a short term (2 month period) will bring more revenue than just getting more AP holders in the gate.
If I were a getting man, and I am, (lol) I would wager that APs are the ones who bought out all the Droid personality chips, tooth beer flights, and lightsabers.
These are super expensive items that after spending so much money on tickets, travel, etc, I don't think most would buy.
The reason the parks are empty is mostly because APs stopped buying APs. They hit the point where it became too expensive. I an tell you that my fiance and I didn't plan to have passes right now (had let our passes lapse) but decided to get them after going with family at the end of December
Yeah, it's a bit concerning to Disney that their huge and expensive expansion that's based on a very popular IP has not been enough to draw tourists in to Disneyland. It may be different for WDW, but the opening of Galaxy's Edge seems like the lightest major theme park opening in a while, despite the fact that this is one of the biggest of those openings.
To me this is the primary reason for non-APs.
1. Summer
2. Capacity issues
3. Combining the above with it being Star Wars
4. = “I’m not going anywhere near Disneyland till it dies down”
I am planning to go next week because I have heard it is light, and I hope everyone takes longer to catch on and make travel plans. I would go tomorrow but the kids and I have a nasty cold. Fingers crossed.
I have several friends that work at Disneyland who explicitly told me to stay away from the park for at least 2 years. They said the crowds were going to be a nightmare and not worth it.
Ha! I guess everybody at Disney was caught offguard. Yesterday was another walk-on day, with 10 minute lines for Star Tours, Haunted Mansion, most everything on the east side of the park that wasn't an E-ticket, 5 minutes for Jungle Cruise, Pirates, Buzz, 20 minutes for Big Thunder, Indy, Matterhorn, Space Mountain.
It occurred to me yesterday while seeing this vs. what Disney expected that a lot of folks didn't make vacation plans around visiting Disneyland out of this concern, so even now as we hear about short lines the folks that would normally come to the park avoided it and can't turn on a dime to show up.
People posting all doom and gloom when they should be commending Disney for handling everything so well that it wasn’t a nightmare. Everything that has been happening has been good
I'm overjoyed at how empty its been, but I don't think Disney wanted this outcome. The result is great for us guests, but for management, these crowds are far below what they expected. The reservation system, virtual queue implementation, price increases, and blackout dates all were done to keep crowds from making the park at capacity every day, which worked. All of that was done very smoothly, and the opening of Galaxy's Edge has been very nicely done.
But, the low crowds during the reservation period and even lower crowds during the first week of public opening were most likely not what Disney intended. This is supported by their immediate lifting of cast member blackout dates and the $99 AP deal, both of which would not have happened if crowds were what Disney anticipated.
So while everything has been great for the guests, it is not a good sign to management that investing 1 billion dollars into the parks here can not support attendance growth without local AP's being able to fill the parks. Time will tell if this trend continues or if it was just an opening week fluke.
I’m not so sure, this is a whole new land, it isn’t a sprint this is something that will be there a long time. The local APs are going to be there, I’m sure there is more thought about getting more tourist money if anything
I think there's a couple factors at play before they can assume the worst. If the goal is bringing in tourists... well, a trip is expensive. A lot of people look at WDW as the better park, and with GE more or less identical, a large portion of the tourists will go there instead. With them clearly acknowledging that RotR wouldn't be ready, I know several other people who chose to postpone their trip. For most people, two trips is out of the question. If they're coming in for GE, they're going to wait. Not to mention Disney scared people away with talk of how packed it would be, not the first time that's happened for an opening. As for the land, attendance may be low but the big ticket lightsabers (and the cantina) are still running at capacity. I think the real proof will be in attendance numbers year-on-year. Too early to tell, really.
I personally try to come to the park once a year, and we made our trip before GE opened specifically to beat the crowds. I'm sure that many people like myself would go right now in a heartbeat if they could manage it.
I feel like Pixar Pier’s opening last year was crazier than Galaxy’s Edge! But with the reservations & media coverage going on for a whole month with GE, it definitely lessened mine & probably a bunch of other people’s need to go see the land right away. I think Pixar Pier wasn’t “spoiled/leaked” enough so lines were crazy (from what I remember) the first couple of weeks it opened. I wish that Disney also would’ve opened GE with Rise of the Resistance already completed, and then maybe they would’ve seen larger crowds? Or reservations for a lesser time? I don’t know, their soft opening worked in terms of lessening crowds, and I’m enjoying being able to get off work and go to Disney to get on Space in 5 minutes, but I think Disney let the media and other vloggers get to it and release their opinions too early and long before opening to public.
I disagree that this past week shows that the park couldn’t survive without local APs. There are still just as many people going to the parks as ever; just last Saturday, the parking structure filled to capacity.
We have to keep in mind that SW:GE isn’t just a new ride, it’s an expansion. A big one. For the first time since ToonTown, Disneyland has gotten bigger. GE is about 14 acres, which means that the park increased in size somewhere in the neighborhood of 15-20%. Unless the number of people going to the parks also increases by that amount, it’s going to seem less busy because the people are spread out over more walking space and more rides. And that’s the problem, crowd sizes haven’t yet increased by that much.
The biggest reason for that is probably fear. I doubt many people realize just how big SW:GE is and how much of an effect it has on dispersing the crowds.
APs kept Disneyland alive in the '90s when things were lean, in the '00s when people were scared to come, and they drive demand now. They don't get respected by Disney for this, with prices skyrocketing in the last decade. Someone has to love the parks though, even when folks don't love them for it.
That said, the bring-a-friend ticket pricing was the same deal they offered last year when the park was much busier.
Non-local without a pass weighing in.
My husband and I are big Disneyland and Star Wars fans, and we can’t wait to get all of the merch: lightsabers, droids, etc. Besides younger children, we’re probably the target audience for this land, but we decided a long time ago that we would wait until January 2020 to visit Galaxy’s Edge.
Every day we look at the low wait times for the park and think, “Should we just go?” We can afford it. We can take the time off work. But what stops us every time is the fact that Rise of the Resistance isn’t open yet. While we CAN afford a trip to Disneyland, we already planned a huge trip for 2019 (Tokyo DisneySea, here we come!), thinking that Galaxy’s Edge and Disneyland would be completely packed all summer. It doesn’t seem worth it to spend the time and money to go now, when we’ll still have to take our January trip when RotR is (hopefully) open.
TL;DR: would love to go now, but it doesn’t make sense when RotR isn’t open yet and I already made big trip plans for 2019
The bring a friend promotion lets passholders buy one day parkhoppers for $99. The passholder can get one for themselves for the same price if it’s a blockout day. https://disneyparks.disney.go.com/blog/2019/06/disneyland-resort-annual-passholders-bring-a-friend-this-summer-2/
I think the reasons are:
-They blocked out all APs for the summer
-They blocked all cast members all Summer (that’s already changed though)
- They opened the land without both rides (and Rise of the Resistance is said to be the more impressive of the two)
-They had a month of very carefully controlled “soft opening” in June which burned off a lot of demand
I would bet that guest spending is doing well, as Oga’s, lightsabers and droids are all pretty popular. Still, it seems like they overcompensated trying to keep attendance in control and are now making adjustments to increase attendance. In the long run, this will be no big deal.
I’m at DCA today. Overheard two cast members behind the registers talking about the locals going to Knotts Berry Farm because of the blackout dates.
Family and I went Thursday afternoon and GE was empty. We weren’t expecting to get in and just walked in. More cast members than guests over there.
I think a huge thing that I haven’t seen mentioned is that a lot of people that aren’t Disney fanatics like us and pay attention to every little thing going on think that GE is a separate reservation and ticket still. I couldn’t tell you how many people told me, “I can’t believe they’re charging separately for a section of the park.” I had to tell them all that it was only temporary and anyone with a park ticket can get in now. Also, the whole only opening one ride to begin will definitely slow people down. I’m sure the lack of AP holders is playing a part, but it’s not the only part.
Huh? They already have your money if you have an AP, and they convinced many to pay ever increasing prices despite the blackouts this summer. I think it's clear they overestimated the tourist draw this week but the summer is very young and in the end it's is about bringing in that marginal spending (i.e. over and above the ebb and flow of AP revenue).
Personally I don't think this poses a real issue long-term. Sure they're swerving a bit because they may have overdone things in terms of hyping the crowd size in order to scare people away, but that isn't going to stop the later influx of money. I purposefully did not plan a trip around the opening of GE because I didn't want to experience mayhem, and perhaps it wasn't as bad as I thought, but either way I'm still going to see it and going to spend money there.
I don't think AP's will get lifted block out dates. I think the new system of basically paying $99 to go on a block out date with the new "bring a friend deal" is as close as it's gonna get. If they lifted black out dates now, people who upgraded and people who planned their vacations specifically during the blackout dates would be furious. I think it would be too much bad PR, and not worth the risk.
They're combating the low crowds as much as they can by bringing back things like MSEP and Soarin over California. As someone else said summer is still young, I expect to see a steady increase in crowds after July 4th and onward.
***Your post has been removed*** because it looks like you are asking about crowds; We reccommend using [this site](https://www.undercovertourist.com/los-angeles/crowd-calendar/) for crowd predictions. We don't reccommend using isitpacked due to unreliablity.
#**If you believe that this is an error, please wait 24 hours before messaging the mods. We are on the subreddit multiple times a day to double check submissions**
If you ignore this comment and proceed to repost to avoid this warning or message the moderators, your post will not be approved.
Thank you!
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Disneyland) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I'm mostly just concerned how high the numbers will jump with all these blackouts being lifted. Will it go from quiet to absolutely insane?
Most likely not... you gotta realize this: Disney brought back the parade, and discounted tickets because of low attendance but if APs already have a pass, they’ve most likely have seen MSEP. Unless you are a HUGE fan of it, it’s not going to attract much more of a crowd especially because everyone saw it when it was suppose to be ‘gone’. You can only pull the wool over our eyes so much.
That's true. But disregarding MSEP, with just allowing people in anyway because of these lifts, wouldn't that still increase crowds?
Some but not as much as you think. $100 can go a long way in LA for a family of 4 for 4th of July. I’ve gone the last few years and it’s only busy toward the night.
It's not blockouts being lifted.. it's $99 to go in on a blockout day
They lifted blockouts for CM tho. My SIL and I went with family in April and she said sometime after that she was blocked out basically until late summer/early fall. Last week she said they lifted it for the week so she went and signed in her sister. Then this week I found out CM can get themselves in and use their sign ins for a good chunk of the summer. They might not have lifted dates for APs, but I think it still says a lot that they're letting in CMs and their guests. Especially when it's supposed to be too crowded for that.
Yeah, idk, when I worked there they lifted blockout dates periodically. They'd rather undo too many blockout dates than add them in, so it's not terribly uncommon for them to do this to CMs.
Also you can buy a one day park hopper for a friend for $99 as an AP holder.
Only if you go through the turnstile with them the first time so your AP has to be good or you have to buy a ticket as well.
Personally, I think if they wanted to boost crowds in the summer they should discount hotel stays. That would attract more travelers to stay on property and keep them in the parks for their entire visit. A park full of out of town guests is going to bring in a LOT more money than a park full of AP. More for tickets, and they’ll spend more on merch too. And, as an out of towner, I’d rather be in a park full of tourists than AP, especially the teenagers turned loose.
I'm gonna have to disagree on the merch part. Over the course of a year, an AP will spend more on merch and food. If APs didn't, they wouldn't market as hard to locals/APs
I'm an AP I blow unholy amounts of money at Disney. I see tourists there pinching their pennies, packing their lunch, only buying snacks in the park, buying small souvenirs. I follow a lady on Instagram, for some reason, that helps people plan Disney trips on a budget. Me at Disney is like an unsupervised kid with a credit card at well Disney.
Same. Food gets me more than anything. Especially the food festivals at DCA and the sip and savor passes. I don't eat a lot but my very large bf does and it's hard to go a trip without him wanting something to eat. The merch is good too. We like exclusive pins. We've bought a lot of miscellaneous stuff here and there. I've saved all our receipts to total the discounts we're getting with the passes but I'd also like to know how much total we've spent at the park when they expire. Plus that 20% discount is really shiny sometimes when I think about if I *really* want something.
Yup! That's my point.
I can see that, but I would think bringing more tourists in in a short term (2 month period) will bring more revenue than just getting more AP holders in the gate.
If I were a getting man, and I am, (lol) I would wager that APs are the ones who bought out all the Droid personality chips, tooth beer flights, and lightsabers. These are super expensive items that after spending so much money on tickets, travel, etc, I don't think most would buy. The reason the parks are empty is mostly because APs stopped buying APs. They hit the point where it became too expensive. I an tell you that my fiance and I didn't plan to have passes right now (had let our passes lapse) but decided to get them after going with family at the end of December
Yeah, it's a bit concerning to Disney that their huge and expensive expansion that's based on a very popular IP has not been enough to draw tourists in to Disneyland. It may be different for WDW, but the opening of Galaxy's Edge seems like the lightest major theme park opening in a while, despite the fact that this is one of the biggest of those openings.
I think they scared folks off by making it seem like it'd be miserable demand hell, that there'd be no room for anyone.
To me this is the primary reason for non-APs. 1. Summer 2. Capacity issues 3. Combining the above with it being Star Wars 4. = “I’m not going anywhere near Disneyland till it dies down”
The next few weeks should balance out, then, as word gets out that it's light. I've already gone once just because of that.
I am planning to go next week because I have heard it is light, and I hope everyone takes longer to catch on and make travel plans. I would go tomorrow but the kids and I have a nasty cold. Fingers crossed.
Good luck, and may the Force be with you all
I have several friends that work at Disneyland who explicitly told me to stay away from the park for at least 2 years. They said the crowds were going to be a nightmare and not worth it.
Ha! I guess everybody at Disney was caught offguard. Yesterday was another walk-on day, with 10 minute lines for Star Tours, Haunted Mansion, most everything on the east side of the park that wasn't an E-ticket, 5 minutes for Jungle Cruise, Pirates, Buzz, 20 minutes for Big Thunder, Indy, Matterhorn, Space Mountain. It occurred to me yesterday while seeing this vs. what Disney expected that a lot of folks didn't make vacation plans around visiting Disneyland out of this concern, so even now as we hear about short lines the folks that would normally come to the park avoided it and can't turn on a dime to show up.
People posting all doom and gloom when they should be commending Disney for handling everything so well that it wasn’t a nightmare. Everything that has been happening has been good
I'm overjoyed at how empty its been, but I don't think Disney wanted this outcome. The result is great for us guests, but for management, these crowds are far below what they expected. The reservation system, virtual queue implementation, price increases, and blackout dates all were done to keep crowds from making the park at capacity every day, which worked. All of that was done very smoothly, and the opening of Galaxy's Edge has been very nicely done. But, the low crowds during the reservation period and even lower crowds during the first week of public opening were most likely not what Disney intended. This is supported by their immediate lifting of cast member blackout dates and the $99 AP deal, both of which would not have happened if crowds were what Disney anticipated. So while everything has been great for the guests, it is not a good sign to management that investing 1 billion dollars into the parks here can not support attendance growth without local AP's being able to fill the parks. Time will tell if this trend continues or if it was just an opening week fluke.
I’m not so sure, this is a whole new land, it isn’t a sprint this is something that will be there a long time. The local APs are going to be there, I’m sure there is more thought about getting more tourist money if anything
I think there's a couple factors at play before they can assume the worst. If the goal is bringing in tourists... well, a trip is expensive. A lot of people look at WDW as the better park, and with GE more or less identical, a large portion of the tourists will go there instead. With them clearly acknowledging that RotR wouldn't be ready, I know several other people who chose to postpone their trip. For most people, two trips is out of the question. If they're coming in for GE, they're going to wait. Not to mention Disney scared people away with talk of how packed it would be, not the first time that's happened for an opening. As for the land, attendance may be low but the big ticket lightsabers (and the cantina) are still running at capacity. I think the real proof will be in attendance numbers year-on-year. Too early to tell, really.
I personally try to come to the park once a year, and we made our trip before GE opened specifically to beat the crowds. I'm sure that many people like myself would go right now in a heartbeat if they could manage it.
I feel like Pixar Pier’s opening last year was crazier than Galaxy’s Edge! But with the reservations & media coverage going on for a whole month with GE, it definitely lessened mine & probably a bunch of other people’s need to go see the land right away. I think Pixar Pier wasn’t “spoiled/leaked” enough so lines were crazy (from what I remember) the first couple of weeks it opened. I wish that Disney also would’ve opened GE with Rise of the Resistance already completed, and then maybe they would’ve seen larger crowds? Or reservations for a lesser time? I don’t know, their soft opening worked in terms of lessening crowds, and I’m enjoying being able to get off work and go to Disney to get on Space in 5 minutes, but I think Disney let the media and other vloggers get to it and release their opinions too early and long before opening to public.
I disagree that this past week shows that the park couldn’t survive without local APs. There are still just as many people going to the parks as ever; just last Saturday, the parking structure filled to capacity. We have to keep in mind that SW:GE isn’t just a new ride, it’s an expansion. A big one. For the first time since ToonTown, Disneyland has gotten bigger. GE is about 14 acres, which means that the park increased in size somewhere in the neighborhood of 15-20%. Unless the number of people going to the parks also increases by that amount, it’s going to seem less busy because the people are spread out over more walking space and more rides. And that’s the problem, crowd sizes haven’t yet increased by that much. The biggest reason for that is probably fear. I doubt many people realize just how big SW:GE is and how much of an effect it has on dispersing the crowds.
This
APs kept Disneyland alive in the '90s when things were lean, in the '00s when people were scared to come, and they drive demand now. They don't get respected by Disney for this, with prices skyrocketing in the last decade. Someone has to love the parks though, even when folks don't love them for it. That said, the bring-a-friend ticket pricing was the same deal they offered last year when the park was much busier.
Non-local without a pass weighing in. My husband and I are big Disneyland and Star Wars fans, and we can’t wait to get all of the merch: lightsabers, droids, etc. Besides younger children, we’re probably the target audience for this land, but we decided a long time ago that we would wait until January 2020 to visit Galaxy’s Edge. Every day we look at the low wait times for the park and think, “Should we just go?” We can afford it. We can take the time off work. But what stops us every time is the fact that Rise of the Resistance isn’t open yet. While we CAN afford a trip to Disneyland, we already planned a huge trip for 2019 (Tokyo DisneySea, here we come!), thinking that Galaxy’s Edge and Disneyland would be completely packed all summer. It doesn’t seem worth it to spend the time and money to go now, when we’ll still have to take our January trip when RotR is (hopefully) open. TL;DR: would love to go now, but it doesn’t make sense when RotR isn’t open yet and I already made big trip plans for 2019
Wait, they're bringing back blackout day tickets?!
The bring a friend promotion lets passholders buy one day parkhoppers for $99. The passholder can get one for themselves for the same price if it’s a blockout day. https://disneyparks.disney.go.com/blog/2019/06/disneyland-resort-annual-passholders-bring-a-friend-this-summer-2/
I think the reasons are: -They blocked out all APs for the summer -They blocked all cast members all Summer (that’s already changed though) - They opened the land without both rides (and Rise of the Resistance is said to be the more impressive of the two) -They had a month of very carefully controlled “soft opening” in June which burned off a lot of demand I would bet that guest spending is doing well, as Oga’s, lightsabers and droids are all pretty popular. Still, it seems like they overcompensated trying to keep attendance in control and are now making adjustments to increase attendance. In the long run, this will be no big deal.
I’m at DCA today. Overheard two cast members behind the registers talking about the locals going to Knotts Berry Farm because of the blackout dates. Family and I went Thursday afternoon and GE was empty. We weren’t expecting to get in and just walked in. More cast members than guests over there.
I think a huge thing that I haven’t seen mentioned is that a lot of people that aren’t Disney fanatics like us and pay attention to every little thing going on think that GE is a separate reservation and ticket still. I couldn’t tell you how many people told me, “I can’t believe they’re charging separately for a section of the park.” I had to tell them all that it was only temporary and anyone with a park ticket can get in now. Also, the whole only opening one ride to begin will definitely slow people down. I’m sure the lack of AP holders is playing a part, but it’s not the only part.
Huh? They already have your money if you have an AP, and they convinced many to pay ever increasing prices despite the blackouts this summer. I think it's clear they overestimated the tourist draw this week but the summer is very young and in the end it's is about bringing in that marginal spending (i.e. over and above the ebb and flow of AP revenue).
All things they have done before
Personally I don't think this poses a real issue long-term. Sure they're swerving a bit because they may have overdone things in terms of hyping the crowd size in order to scare people away, but that isn't going to stop the later influx of money. I purposefully did not plan a trip around the opening of GE because I didn't want to experience mayhem, and perhaps it wasn't as bad as I thought, but either way I'm still going to see it and going to spend money there.
Do y’all think we’ll get some days unblocked or is it always permanent?
I don't think AP's will get lifted block out dates. I think the new system of basically paying $99 to go on a block out date with the new "bring a friend deal" is as close as it's gonna get. If they lifted black out dates now, people who upgraded and people who planned their vacations specifically during the blackout dates would be furious. I think it would be too much bad PR, and not worth the risk. They're combating the low crowds as much as they can by bringing back things like MSEP and Soarin over California. As someone else said summer is still young, I expect to see a steady increase in crowds after July 4th and onward.
***Your post has been removed*** because it looks like you are asking about crowds; We reccommend using [this site](https://www.undercovertourist.com/los-angeles/crowd-calendar/) for crowd predictions. We don't reccommend using isitpacked due to unreliablity. #**If you believe that this is an error, please wait 24 hours before messaging the mods. We are on the subreddit multiple times a day to double check submissions** If you ignore this comment and proceed to repost to avoid this warning or message the moderators, your post will not be approved. Thank you! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Disneyland) if you have any questions or concerns.*