The week before Easter traditionally is the busiest of the Spring Break weeks for theme parks. Here in Southern California, I found a large crowd at Knott's Berry Farm when I visited earlier this week.
I've yet to hear reports about crowds at Universal Orlando, though I am sure one of you will help me out with that, in the comments.
If you've been reading the site in the past, you'll know that parks have been dreading this year, given the lousy state of the U.S. economy. Disney World, in particular, has discounted heavily on hotel and food packages and (this is key) promoted those discounts relentlessly. That strategy appears to be paying off, with large crowds coming to Central Florida this week.
The Central Florida theme parks do not release attendance data, so we can't know for certain how this year's attendance matches with previous years. (Some general information about park attendance trends will become available when Disney and Universal release their 10-K reports for the quarter, later this year. Those are the reports corporations that issue public stock are required to file with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission every three months, detailing the company's financial status and outlook.)
But big crowds are good things for theme parks. What are you seeing at the parks you've attended this week?
Update: When the parks are packed, it's a perfect time to try one of our four hour tour plans. They'll help you get some of the biggies, early in the day.
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The sign at the park's entrance announces the park is currently at capacity. The family tube ride looks like it is not operating. The line to the tower for the twisty, colorful. multi-slide attraction is all the way down to the bottom of the stairs.
Orlando is ROCKIN'!
D'OH!
All those big discounts sure seem to be paying dividends now.
The Peter Pan line has now reached my home in Kingston, Ontario. Disney is currently collaborating with MIT and NASA to get an approximate wait time. The next available FastPass return time is between 10:05 AM and 11:05 AM Tuesday March 9, 2010.
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We go in June for 10 days and I'm anxious to see what the attendance is like. It was packed when we went before and I'm expecting much of the same. Just gotta take advantage of getting there early, using those FastPasses, Express Passes and Quick Queue passes at other parks, which isn't anything new for us as we always try to maximize our time on vacation.
Glad to see that parks are still doing strong.