Niles: Why does Disneyland feel so crowded if attendance is limited?

Is Disneyland limiting its attendance these days or not?

California ditched its pandemic capacity restrictions nearly a year ago. Disneyland now is free to cram as many fans into its parks as local fire officials will allow, just like its competitors at Universal, Knott’s and Six Flags can. But unlike most other local theme parks, Disneyland and Disney California Adventure continue to require visitors to make reservations to use their tickets or Magic Key passes on any given date.

In quarterly financial report earlier this month, Disney executives boasted about that reservation system, claiming that Disney was voluntarily limiting daily attendance at Disneyland and Walt Disney World in order to create a better guest experience. If you heard that and hadn’t visited the parks recently, you might imagine something like the early days after the reopening, when almost every ride was a walk-on, and everyone enjoyed plenty of personal space when walking through the parks.

But if you actually have visited a Disney theme park this spring, you might wonder just what Disney means by “limiting” attendance. Guests fill the streets, shops, restaurants and attraction queues throughout the parks. Wait times at top attractions routinely top an hour and sometimes approach two. The parks fill first thing in the morning and remain busy through the evening. How can this be limited attendance?

Many of us have tried to erase our bad memories of it, but before the pandemic, many nights at Disneyland were far worse than the busiest days are now. Annual pass holders flooded the parks after school and work, making some walkways inside Disneyland impassable at times. Like an overgrown garden, Disneyland needed to cut back so it could grow.

Required reservations push visitors from overcrowded dates to less crowded ones, eventually distributing crowd levels so that every day is pretty much just as crowded as the next — but no dates are as overcrowded as some had been in the past.

Reservations also often push Disneyland’s Magic Key passholders to arrive earlier in the day, so that they can get the most from the days they can get into the parks. No longer do early risers get the parks to themselves until local passholders roll up in the afternoon. That can make the parks feel more crowded throughout in the day, even though overall attendance may be the same or even less.

The peak season also is shifting at both Disneyland and Walt Disney World. The biggest crowds no longer arrive during summer school vacations. The changing environment has helped drive more Walt Disney World visitors into the relatively cooler and less humid spring break season. Peak attendance is self-fulfilling at Disneyland — fewer Magic Key blockouts equals higher attendance — but the trend for some time now has been away from summer toward Halloween Time and the Holidays in the fall.

Put it all together, and that’s why the parks can feel consistently more crowded even as Disney limits the number of people it lets through the gates on certain dates.