{"id":2356,"date":"2025-02-10T20:57:39","date_gmt":"2025-02-11T01:57:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/busterandthebanshee.com\/staging\/9512\/?p=2356"},"modified":"2025-11-18T18:19:36","modified_gmt":"2025-11-18T23:19:36","slug":"do-higher-lightning-lane-prices-mean-higher-crowds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/busterandthebanshee.com\/staging\/9512\/do-higher-lightning-lane-prices-mean-higher-crowds\/","title":{"rendered":"Do Higher Lightning Lane Prices Mean Higher Crowds?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When Disney introduced Genie+ and then Lightning Lane Single Pass and Multi Pass, one of the main features was “demand pricing”. In other words, Disney would adjust the pricing based upon how in-demand those products are predicted to be on a given day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recently in many WDW groups to which we belong, people have been asking whether they should pick their park days based upon LL pricing: “On Tuesday, a LLMP costs $29, but on Wednesday it only costs $27. Does that mean I should expect higher crowds on Tuesday?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Logically, it would make sense that Tuesday might be more crowded. If LLMP costs more on Tuesday, then Disney expects demand for LL’s to be higher on Tuesday because they expect lines to be longer. Therefore, it might be better to delay one’s visit to Wednesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, what does the real data say? Can you really predict crowd levels based on LL pricing? Read on to find out!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Experiment<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In order to see whether LL pricing can predict crowd levels, I looked at the historical LL pricing data and compared it to the average wait times guests experienced using historical data from thrill-data.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To keep things simple, I only looked at Magic Kingdom, the most popular park at Walt Disney World and the park with the highest demand for LL’s. In addition, I used the time period from 12\/1\/2024 through 1\/31\/2025. This cover a wide variety of crowd levels, including the very popular Christmas through New Year time frame.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So Can LLMP Prices Predict Crowd Levels?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Below is a scatter plot that compares the average wait time to the LLMP pricing for each day from 12\/1 through 1\/31. The further to the right the dot is, the longer the average wait time. The further to the top the dot is, the higher the LLMP price.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Scatter<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

If LLMP cost was a perfect predictor of crowd levels, you’d expect days with a high cost to have high crowd levels (upper right of the plot). Meanwhile you’d expect days with a lower cost to have lower crowd levels (lower left of the plot). However that doesn’t seem to be entirely the case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n