Have Disney missed the british

[TRC]

I don’t know the answer, maybe they do, maybe they don’t.
But I certainly wouldn’t come onto a trip planning section of a Florida forum, on a thread asking a question about Disney, and have a long discussion insinuating people who want go to Disney now are thoughtless and irresponsible and are putting there kids at risk!
There are other parts of the Forum for that discussion which IS being utilised for that very topic.
Sometimes you don’t need to say anything, just because you have an opinion and we know, you like to let EVERYONE know, sometimes just read and move on.
It’s so unnecessary.

[Roses]

Interesting at the end of the article it mentions about tourists needing to be confident about traveling due to high levels of infection. It will be interesting to see if convention season is as busy as predicted next month. We have travelled to Orlando at the end of August over the years and there is a distinct drop off as early September arrives. We have noted with interest the second two weeks of September appear to have some of the highest rack rates in hotels also.

[Yorkie2021]

It’s interesting to see how well Florida is doing compared to say California where businesses are folding at an alarming rate. Florida’s uptick is mainly due to Desantis’s policies I’m presuming. I would imagine he will be getting a nice little donation from Bob Paycheck. Gavin Newsom (if he survives the recall) not so much.

[Guest]

Originally Posted by TRC

I don’t know the answer, maybe they do, maybe they don’t.
But I certainly wouldn’t come onto a trip planning section of a Florida forum, on a thread asking a question about Disney, and have a long discussion insinuating people who want go to Disney now are thoughtless and irresponsible and are putting there kids at risk!
There are other parts of the Forum for that discussion which IS being utilised for that very topic.
Sometimes you don’t need to say anything, just because you have an opinion and we know, you like to let EVERYONE know, sometimes just read and move on.
It’s so unnecessary.

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It’s a forum. People express their opinions. I say what I would do/ wouldn’t do. Other people say what they would do/ wouldn’t do. We disagree with each other, we put our points across.

If you don’t like it, don’t read it.

[dan223]

I imagine part of the dip is because of the anniversary. Your just over a month away now from the anniversary, if you can surely it would be better to move your holiday to once the anniversary celebrations have started, that probably plays a fair part in it. Whereas hotels appear to be pretty full around the start of the celebration. Universal horror nights have also not started yet, I imagine that may bump up how busy it is when that starts as well.

As for the british, we make up such a small amount of people visiting, along with other international guests. It may make a little more of a difference when this time of the year but I wouldn't expect to a hugely noticeable degree. I think it is timing with the anniversary, and covid cases in florida.

[khonsu]

I agree with you Dan to some degree - would you put of your holiday for a month and go to the 50th? Probably. If you could.

UK makes up just around 1m visitors to Orlando each year. The majority being, obviously during the summer holidays. EU - probably (I'm guessing because I haven't see actual stats) around 3m (6.4m international visitors go to Orlando each year). 75 million in total.

So around 8-10% are non-USA / domestic visitors.

If you've been watching the YouTube channels on Disney attendance in the last week or so, the parks are much lower on numbers than previous weeks. "Mr Morrow" was reporting on 15 minute waits for Splash Mountain and Space Mountain.

Disney is missing the EU / UK visitors. America's schools have finished their holidays and these are the weeks when traditionally we're still going.

So no one is going in September (realistically) from the UK / EU - which means I would expect the parks, particularly Magic Kingdom, to nose dive in attendance levels because of the 50th celebrations. The others will be impacted by the EU and UK.

Add that to domestic travellers in the USA steering clear of Florida...

Low numbers for September.

[loldis]

EU is less than the UK, probably combined as no EU country even registers on the top visitors list. The bulk of the international visitors to Orlando are from Canada - around 3m.

As said earlier in the thread, attendance is down due to massive last minute cancellations across the board, predominately from the domestic market. Yes, there is still a large chunk of international travel missing but it was expected to be near capacity this week prior to the Delta spike, with or without us.

ETA:

Because I was curious and like data, August doesn't increase the total international arrivals as much as people think. In 2019, MCO had 669,909 international arrivals in August which is only 9.36% of the yearly total. July is actually the most popular month at 9.66% and September the least at 6.72%. However in 2019, September travel was below average due to Hurricane Dorian closing the airport.

Obviously there will be additional arrivals from other airports, but MCO does make up the vast majority of air arrivals to the Orlando area. So is unlikely to massively skew these percentages.

[Nimbus]

Originally Posted by act1980

Interesting to hear that people over there have been cancelling their trips. All I've been hearing is how busy the parks are and how it's basically business as usual in Florida 🤷🏼

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That was the case until a couple of weeks ago. The parks were almost at their pre-COVID levels. But then last week things got quieter.

This is normal. The parks generally get quieter around this time of year. It's why lots of DIBBers recommend us Brits should travel in the last two weeks of August because it's noticeably quieter.

To give an example, back on 23rd August 2019, for some of the day Splash Mountain had wait times less than 20mins long. Before 11am and after 6pm, Space Mountain sometimes had waits of less than 15mins. Sometimes those waits were higher, but 15min waits were not too uncommon back then.

Right now though, it's a bit quieter than normal. There are several factors contributing to this. UK/European/Brazilian guests (and some Canadians) aren't travelling there and this will reduce guest numbers to a certain degree. Cautious Americans are being put off by rising COVID cases and so that is another factor contributing to the reduction in guest numbers. Americans booking visits in October in order to see all the new Anniversary stuff rather than late August/September is another factor. All those, together with American schools going back, will have caused these parks to be quieter.