Disneyland at capacity: stay home

It’s being reported on various discussion boards that Disneyland has reached capacity a few times already this holiday season. On those days they’ve stopped selling new tickets to the park and even totally closed the gates at least once (veteran’s day). I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that if Disneyland is having capacity issues then it needs to add more capacity. That could be done through adding new shows (or reopening closed ones), new attractions, new parades, increasing existing throughput on open attractions, extended restaurant hours, extended park hours, etc..

I haven’t spent a lot of time at the park this year so I may be a little off on the exact locations here: but I understand that Fantasyland Theatre is dark; there is only one parade that runs once during the day and once at night (or do both parades run during the holidays?); the festival arena is dark (although fixing it up may take too long after it was neglected); Tomorrowland’s attraction capacity is very low with no sub ride, no peoplemover/rocket rods, and low attendance at Honey I shrunk the Audience; and some other attractions (keel boats, motor boats, etc) gone for good. Plus let’s not even get into the discussion about how Fastpass increases the number of guests in public spaces and other queues effectively lowering capacity.

So, the question becomes how many people is Disneyland turning away on those days? 100? 1,000? 5,000? I suspect the number is between to 1,000 and 2,000. That number could easily be absorbed by increasing capacity by reopening fantasyland theatre with a holiday show or bringing back snow white. Heck bring back Beauty and the Beast permanently. It is still running in Orlando.

Disneyland management is creating an artificial supply and demand issue by keeping capacity low (much like energy companies have been doing, perhaps they learned this trick from them). The park gets free press when capacity is reached and it increases its allure to everyone as a place to go for the holiday season (unless you’re actually inside the gates experiencing the crush of humanity). The park has had at least five years of these crushing holiday numbers and yet if anything they’ve decreased capacity this year (Buzz Lightyear being at step in the right direction, but lack of shows and entertainment being a big step backwards). Hey, it’s the 50th too. Capacity should be plussed big time this year of all years.

Has anyone been at the park on these busy days? Were you turned away at the garage or gates? Do you plan to go even though huge crowds are expected all the way through the new year?

[ disney, disneyland, themepark, theme+park ]