Pop Warner Week 2018

[rileyreese]

My friends and I are looking at taking a girls trip the weekend of November 30, 2018. We would fly in on Friday November 30th and home December 2nd. As Best I can tell Pop Warner week starts that weekend. Should be change our travel dates by a week or two? Would it help to come in Thursday evening to get free dinning or will we just be missing free dinning all the way around?

My other question is we plan to stay at the Polynesian, will this resort be busier?

 

[siskaren]

Pop Warner participants don't stay at deluxe resorts and they don't affect the parks - there's no reason for you to change dates.

 

[dansdad]

Pop Warner participants don't stay at deluxe resorts and they don't affect the parks - there's no reason for you to change dates.

This!

 

[SpaceMountain77]

Does anyone know where Pop Warner participants typically stay? My brother and sister-in-law are currently booked for a standard room at All Star Movies.

 

[dansdad]

Does anyone know where Pop Warner participants typically stay? My brother and sister-in-law are currently booked for a standard room at All Star Movies.

Music, Movies, Sports, Caribbean Beach and Coronado Springs are all options with the Pop Warner package.

 

[DebbieB]

My friends and I are looking at taking a girls trip the weekend of November 30, 2018. We would fly in on Friday November 30th and home December 2nd. As Best I can tell Pop Warner week starts that weekend. Should be change our travel dates by a week or two? Would it help to come in Thursday evening to get free dinning or will we just be missing free dinning all the way around?

My other question is we plan to stay at the Polynesian, will this resort be busier?

I don't think you will get free dining arriving November 30th. This year it was for arrivals November 25 to 27, which was the Saturday to Monday after Thanksgiving. Then not until December 8 to 23.

 

[SpaceMountain77]

Music, Movies, Sports, Caribbean Beach and Coronado Springs are all options with the Pop Warner package.

Thank you, dansdad! I am going to suggest that they switch to Port Orleans.

 

[Best_Vacation_EVER!]

Definitely agree that if you’re not staying at a resort where the groups are staying you won’t see them much. We’ve stayed at non-pop Warner resorts in Early December (our favourite time to go to WDW) multiple times and never had an issue.

 

[dansdad]

Definitely agree that if you’re not staying at a resort where the groups are staying you won’t see them much. We’ve stayed at non-pop Warner resorts in Early December (our favourite time to go to WDW) multiple times and never had an issue.

We've had a couple stays at All Star Sports with the Pop Warner crowd and never had an issue. Other than seeing a couple group's with jerseys on, we would have never known they were there.

 

[Haley R]

I'm not sure how different it is from Contest of Champions in March, but we experienced that for the first time this year and there were tons of them at POR. I first noticed them in the park on Friday at MK, but then when we were waiting for our bus to get back it was just horrible. I'm sure that doesn't happen often because I imagine they choose Values more often than not.

 

[nikki7680]

We just booked AoA for that week. Hoping crowd levels aren't impacted too much by the Pop Warner families/player

 

[dansdad]

We just booked AoA for that week. Hoping crowd levels aren't impacted too much by the Pop Warner families/player

AoA is not a choice for the Pop Warner package. And park crowds are completely unaffected by them.

 

[goofy4tink]

I've been going down at this time of year for the past 15 years. For the past 5 or so years, it's gotten more and more crowded. There seem to be more groups of kids in the parks than ever before. They are all part of some kind of team..sports or cheer. It used to be the kids and chaperones. Each year it seems that more and more family members are going along. I can't tell you how many groups of 8-10 young girls, with cheer bows and teeshirts, in the parks. And there were large numbers of adults with them, as well as other non-cheer kids. So, I'm thinking that when little Janie goes, her family goes along too, and brings Gram and Grandpa as well.
I've never seen the parks as crowded as they were when I left on Dec 6!! It was incredible.

 

[WEDWDW]

Expect to see EVEN more Pop Warner Cheerleader(PW has their Cheer Comp at the same time as their football Super Bowl) type events in the future-Disney is set to soon open a new state-of-the- art EIGHT THOUSAND seat arena soon at ESPN WWoS.

 

[Haley R]

Expect to see EVEN more Pop Warner Cheerleader(PW has their Cheer Comp at the same time as their football Super Bowl) type events in the future-Disney is set to soon open a new state-of-the- art EIGHT THOUSAND seat arena soon at ESPN WWoS.

Oh wow. That will change some things.

 

[lambdabeta]

We were there this year for Pop Warner. Dec 4-8th. We stayed at CR and didn't have an issue at the resort but the parks were different. I agree with goofy4tink. We saw several cheer squads in the parks. They seemed to all go in together. I only saw one football team. Otherwise it was just very crowded. If the football players were in the parks they didn't all come together.

I did have a very bad experience with the cheerleaders. We got in the stand by line for Rock n Rollercoaster behind 3 women. After standing in line for 30 mins suddenly 11 girls cut the line and the women left. When we complained to a CM they told the girl's coach (who was one of the women standing in line) that they couldn't hold a space for that many girls, I asked what was going to be done after this and the CM said their policy is they don't kick people out of line. The coach was rude to us and all the tweens were rude also. They kept staring at us and texting on their phones. I complained to guest services afterward and they gave us a FP for that park which we were unable to use. The guest services person was not surprised about the issue. I plan on emailing Disney and letting them know a slap on the wrist is not an ok policy for people cutting the line. It made us be late for our dining reservation. This is just ridiculous. Has anyone else had an experience like this with these groups?

 

[fla4fun]

We were there this year for Pop Warner. Dec 4-8th. We stayed at CR and didn't have an issue at the resort but the parks were different. I agree with goofy4tink. We saw several cheer squads in the parks. They seemed to all go in together. I only saw one football team. Otherwise it was just very crowded. If the football players were in the parks they didn't all come together.

I did have a very bad experience with the cheerleaders. We got in the stand by line for Rock n Rollercoaster behind 3 women. After standing in line for 30 mins suddenly 11 girls cut the line and the women left. When we complained to a CM they told the girl's coach (who was one of the women standing in line) that they couldn't hold a space for that many girls, I asked what was going to be done after this and the CM said their policy is they don't kick people out of line. The coach was rude to us and all the tweens were rude also. They kept staring at us and texting on their phones. I complained to guest services afterward and they gave us a FP for that park which we were unable to use. The guest services person was not surprised about the issue. I plan on emailing Disney and letting them know a slap on the wrist is not an ok policy for people cutting the line. It made us be late for our dining reservation. This is just ridiculous. Has anyone else had an experience like this with these groups?

I checked in on 12/5 and didn’t see any teams of any kind in the parks. I have not had a group as large as 11 try to cut in line, but I would have complained as you did and I would follow it up with an email. However, I don’t know how easy it would be to police line cutters, as it’s usually a “he said, she said” kind of situation and it’s difficult for the CMs to see what is going on between where you enter the line and where you board. I am frustrated enough by the fact they no longer have you scan for FP near the boarding area, as that encourages people jumping from the standby queue to the FP queue.

To be fair though, if 11 extra people in line caused you to be late for your dining reservation it sounds like you would have been late anyway. At most you would have waited for maybe one or two additional vehicles so it wouldn’t have added more than a few minutes. Was there something else that contributed to it other than the line cut?

 

[lambdabeta]

I checked in on 12/5 and didn’t see any teams of any kind in the parks. I have not had a group as large as 11 try to cut in line, but I would have complained as you did and I would follow it up with an email. However, I don’t know how easy it would be to police line cutters, as it’s usually a “he said, she said” kind of situation and it’s difficult for the CMs to see what is going on between where you enter the line and where you board. I am frustrated enough by the fact they no longer have you scan for FP near the boarding area, as that encourages people jumping from the standby queue to the FP queue.

To be fair though, if 11 extra people in line caused you to be late for your dining reservation it sounds like you would have been late anyway. At most you would have waited for maybe one or two additional vehicles so it wouldn’t have added more than a few minutes. Was there something else that contributed to it other than the line cut?

I don't know when you were at the parks but I saw at least 8 groups of cheerleaders. Four at HS, one at Epcot, three at MK and one football team at MK. This kind of line cutting is not a "he said/she said" kind of thing. The coach admitted it to the cast member and there were a large group of people with us and behind us who saw it happen. The family behind us was just as angry as we were. There are always lots of people who see when someone cuts in line. I just wanted to know if anyone else experienced this. If it was one or two people that is one thing but this was over the top.
As far as the wait we were in the stand by line so we had to wait for their entire group to board and all the fast pass people before we could get on. It added at least 15 mins to our wait because of the number of fast pass people going ahead of us including another cheer squad. The 11 girls were long gone before we even got to the boarding area of the ride because of the fast pass people ahead of us. If it was only the three women in front of us we would have boarded when the 11 girls did, so it did totally impact how long we waited in line.

I'm not sure what you are talking about but we had to scan our MB at the beginning of the line and then again at the end to make sure we had FP's. It wasn't on all the rides but definitely the biggest ones. I never saw anyone try to jump from the standby line to the fast pass line. In most cases it is impossible to do.

 

[Derek Demsher]

Thats a shame that some of you had that experience this year. We went that week last year (2016) and had no issues whatsoever.
We saw a few cheerleaders in the parks, but mostly just here and there with their families, never all together in huge groups.
I thought the crowds were very manageable, albeit a little bit busier than I expected, but nothing crazy.
I was looking forward to staying that week again on our 2019 trip, but maybe ill wait and see what next year looks like.

To answer your question, you won't see any at the Polynesian. Also, since your dates are at the very beginning of the
competition, your likelihood of seeing them in the parks is a little bit lower since they will be registering and competing more often in the beginning,
and usually go to the parks later in the week.

If your incredibly worried about it, the just change your dates to after the competition is done. But I would worry about it too much,
you more than likely won't be bothered by it at all.

 

[goofy4tink]

We were there this year for Pop Warner. Dec 4-8th. We stayed at CR and didn't have an issue at the resort but the parks were different. I agree with goofy4tink. We saw several cheer squads in the parks. They seemed to all go in together. I only saw one football team. Otherwise it was just very crowded. If the football players were in the parks they didn't all come together.

I did have a very bad experience with the cheerleaders. We got in the stand by line for Rock n Rollercoaster behind 3 women. After standing in line for 30 mins suddenly 11 girls cut the line and the women left. When we complained to a CM they told the girl's coach (who was one of the women standing in line) that they couldn't hold a space for that many girls, I asked what was going to be done after this and the CM said their policy is they don't kick people out of line. The coach was rude to us and all the tweens were rude also. They kept staring at us and texting on their phones. I complained to guest services afterward and they gave us a FP for that park which we were unable to use. The guest services person was not surprised about the issue. I plan on emailing Disney and letting them know a slap on the wrist is not an ok policy for people cutting the line. It made us be late for our dining reservation. This is just ridiculous. Has anyone else had an experience like this with these groups?

Yep, it's happened to me several times. I've had groups of kids say 'Oh, we're trying to reach our group up front'...well, perhaps the polite thing to do would be for the 'group' to wait until everyone is there to get in line. I'm sorry, but these groups are getting out of hand. And the sad thing is that there are polite, well mannered groups out there, but it only takes a couple of bad experiences with the poorly mannered groups to tar the entire group with that same brush! I can see saving a spot for one, maybe two, people. But if someone has to leave the line, then those remaining should allow those behind them to pass by them. When those that left return to the group, the group can then, in it's entirety, continue moving forward.

Here's my issue.....Disney loves the money that these groups bring in. It doesn't matter if it's Pop Warner kids, cheer group, quince groups, or just Brazilians.....groups are money makers. They fill rooms, and parks, at less busy times of year. If the average family doesn't like it, they can go at another time. That's pretty much how Disney thinks of it. When you see a huge number of rooms at a value resort taken over by girls there for a quinceanera celebration, you know it's going to be an experience in the parks!!!! Seriously.....50+ teen aged girls, usually South American! Oh dear God. At least the last one I saw was well chaperoned...the girls were pretty well behaved. But, that pack mentality kicks in, and all bets are off!!!!