Spring Break 2024 - A Tale of Two Crowds

 

I haven't done a crowd report in a while, so I thought this was as good a time as any.  I made a couple of different posts about this last year, so I wanted to see how things compared from year to year.  We'll take a look at that here, including what I THOUGHT would happen, versus would ACTUALLY happened, and see if we can make any predictions for the rest of this spring, as there are plenty of vacations still to come (including our own!).

I usually focus a lot on crowds at this time of year since this is often the time that we take trips to Disney World.  Spring Break is an interesting time, as it's not the same as other busy/holiday weeks, since it's more spread out over a month or more, depending on how school breaks and Easter fall.  That was actually one of the most interesting things leading up to the start of the season in earnest this year, as there was no consensus week for school breaks.

Walt Disney World News Round Up - March 2024

 

Picture courtesy of Disney Parks Blog

There have been a few pieces of Disney parks news that has dropped in the last week or so.  Every time I saw something pop up, I considered writing a blog post about it, but I didn't know if it was in itself worthy enough of a whole post.  But now that we have a few things that have been collected, I figured I'd write a quick post that encompasses all of them, along with some of my commentary that you've come to love.  So let's get started:

CommuniCore Hall Open Date & Encanto Live Show:

Epcot has been undergoing its most recent transformation for what feels like forever.  Most everything has been completed and has already opened.  The one exception to that was the completion of CommuniCore Hall, which is going to be used as the "home to the iconic Epcot festivals and other celebrations" (Disney's words).  This is simply a building (and similar to what was there before) but it will represent the final stage of the Epcot overhaul.

Construction on this building had been going on for a while, but in recent months, progress had slowed to a crawl.  If you compare timed photos from CommuniCore Hall and Tiana's Bayou Adventure in Magic Kingdom, you can tell where the company's priority has been (and probably with good reason, if we're being honest).  

Do You Still Need Magic Bands At Walt Disney World?

 

As we're preparing for our (getting closer every day) next trip to Walt Disney World, we recently ordered and received new Magic Bands for our family.  They are technically Magic Band+ (because Disney needs a "+" for every occasion), and we'll get into some of the differences below.  Magic Bands have been a traditional part of our family trips for years now, but given the new technology being implemented by Disney (as well as the reality that these cute trip add-ons aren't free anymore), I began to think about this question - do we still need Magic Bands?

I wanted to discuss a little history of the Magic Band, then discuss how they have evolved, where they stand today and what other options are available.  The ultimate answer to the question in the post title here will be (say it with me) "it depends" (I figured I'd just spoil the end of this post now).  As I'm writing this post AFTER we got our recent MB+'s, I think you can probably tell what side we fall on.