Disney was PACKED.

Lyman's Orchard was packed and all apples picked already.

Is this post-Covid outtings? Or what?

Disney has always been packed. They've raising ticket prices to try to discourage crowds for years.

IMAGINE CITY WITH OLYMPICS EVERY YEAR

BUT FOR COSTUMES AN BROOMING

-NO- PARKING

But it is a huge boost to the economy of Salem. Everyone is making a ton and if it was the opposite (no one coming) we would be hearing all the "woo is me" stories from businesses about how without the Halloween crunch they may not make it this year and so on. Just be glad it is just a single month and not, say, all summer like some coastal towns and islands.

I dunno, this was like Christmas packed but on a regular weekday.

You think Salem isn’t a coastal town that experiences summer tourism?

Wow. A week a year.

Life long Newenglander but I’ve never desired to visit Salem to see the witch history. Isn’t it enough to learn about it from a book or tv? I had no idea it was such a circus. Who are all these people? Is it supposed to be like a Mecca for edgy atheists? Somebody make it make sense.

Well not in the crushing way of a Halloween season. Also Salem is not really a "beach town" like others.

The phrase is “woe is me”

Sorry, typo there. You are correct. In my head I did pronounce it that way. Just typed it wrong.

to even remotely the degree that any other actual beach/coastal towns on the north shore/south shore/cape do? no, no i dont.

You can watch Hocus Pocus and Hocus Pocus 2 and learn all you need.

Yeah, the framing on this (and other tourism related things in the Boston area) is truly absurd. Many communities would sacrifice their firstborns for tourism numbers like Salem's. Heck, Plymouth planned for Plymouth400 for 50 years and wasn't expecting much more visitors than Salem normally gets. Managing the traffic is a tough job, but with the funding they receive they can more than do it.

I was there on Saturday but just to run the Devil's Chase 6.66 race and then I was out of there before 11

Right, so if they want to have nonsense like "destination salem" (ooh, yeah let's celebrate the oppression, torture, and murder of women at the hands of religious extremists! No thank you.) They should set aside a separate place, like an amusement park, to do it. You can't be greedy for tourist dollars and then complain when that greed causes problems.

Boo is me*

Never lived in a tourist town I take it. Locals can’t stand tourists because, even if many work in service and benefit from tourism, they make day to day life hell during the tourist season, decrease quality of life, increase pollution, etc. Local governments don’t build up infrastructure to accommodate tourists, the only people enriched by it (since local service workers tend to make peanuts and can barely make ends meet) are a few shitty business owners, and tourism is a poor, sporadic source of tax income anyways, the benefits rarely outweigh the costs for the average person.

Source: lived in a Florida beach resort town from middle school until college.

Did you go recently? October has become pretty insane at Disney World. That was the month we use to go all the time in the 90's because it was usually slower than average and the weather was always decent. But that was also before the Halloween Party was an almost daily thing, and use to just be literally on Halloween night.

I like the 2nd or 3rd week of November now. The Christmas stuff is going on, but most people are waiting for either Thanksgiving week or December to go. Last time I went was Nov. 2019, and nothing was more than a 45 minute wait except Flight of the Passage.

That said, I have some family members who don't like going in November because it's "too cold." Which I disagree with. First of all it's warmer than Mass. is every day that time of year. It's usually still upper 70's to mid 80's during the day. Mornings can be in the upper 50's, and nights can be in the upper 60's, but who cares? That's perfect theme park weather if you ask me. And if you want to go for a night swim, every single pool is heated.

Two more tips....

DO NOT go the first week of November. It's Jersey Week and absolutely packed. Plus the Halloween decorations are down, and the Christmas decorations aren't up yet.

Another good low crowd time to go is the 1st-3rd week of September. A lot of people don't want to pull their kids from school that early in the year. I'm hesitant to go those dates though, because it's still hot, humid, and rainy and it's peak hurricane season.

If you want to do Disney World right (and who would want to do it wrong with the price these days), it's about a year to a year and a half of planning and organizing. So I'm not one to risk going in hurricane season, even if the crowd level is at the lowest point of the entire year. I've been going to DW for 31 years, and it's a tight schedule to attempt to do everything you want during a one week trip. Losing out 1-2 days because of a storm can mean a lot of missed stuff.

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Yeah those documentaries were really thorough IMO.

The entire month of October is fkn insane in Salem.

That question is answered in the article

You dont need to be interested in the witchy history to find Salem a beautiful, walkable, creative and inspiring town. Lots of shops, bars, restaurants, art galleries, CULTURE.

I was there the other week crossing the street in a crosswalk. Guy in car screamed at me that "this is why no one likes tourists.", because he had to stop for a pedestrian. Trust me I don't want to be in your tacky ass town anyway.

Although the Peabody Essex museum is cool!

Salem is a lovely town. It has its drawbacks like other towns. But, the houses built and financed by profit from China trade are, to my mind, extraordinary. Few places in the US compare to the intriguing history of Salem.

Crucible, the movie, is insanely innacurate but gets the job done. More weight!

There are like 50 similar towns in New England, I just don’t understand what makes Salem special.

Pocus 2 was filmed elsewhere so eff that

Spot on. I lived in St. Augustine for a while and that place’s tourism is hell. I, a local resident, felt like a tourist attraction as they’d stare at me from the stupid tour trollies. There was just… so much of them… all littering, using up the place like an amusement park, having no regard for anything but themselves. It was honestly horrible. So glad I got out of there

I think just about every New England town has an old mansion built by opium money

We read and saw that in middle school but I guess it didn’t capture my fancy the way it did for others.

>“We used to do campaigns to tell residents, ‘Come downtown, it’s safe during the week,’ and that’s almost not true anymore,” she said.

Go during Spring. I was there on a Saturday Spring. April or May can’t remember and I loved it. I’ve been during October as well and it’s not worth it at all. Very packed and you have to wait in line to enter in each store. Only once and never again. It’s the same Salem during October and Spring. Xp

I live in Danvers and I am avoiding 128 and 114 whenever possible these days, even doctors appointments I never book in October. Thankfully, I was able to get into downtown in September for an event I had then. People have been asking me if they should go into town, I've been trying to dissuade them until November.

As a person past and currently living in a more tourist-centric area the problem is that many tourists treat areas as if it’s a resort/amusement park where everybody is there to serve and accommodate them and that their good time on their vacation trumps the daily lives of those actually living and working there, especially those of us who have nothing to do with the service or hospitality industry.

Second, it grows old fighting crowds of leisure lovers when you’re just trying to live your normal grind knowing that while some of those schmucks money is helping your local economy, far too much is flowing right back out to non local investors and corporations. The old trickle down bullshit trying to justify why we should all tolerate being shit on and disrespected by entitled shits on holiday is tired and thin.

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These New England immigrants were the Perdue Pharma of their day it seems.

I think it's woo is me, or "Worcester is me"

Been there done that I live in Maine now lol. I traded witches for Stephen King .

Yup, I used to work in this Salem tourist crush when I lived there and it was hell ever year with each one only getting worse. My pay didn’t increase for all that work but we served hundreds a day at a small cafe when usually we wouldn’t see half of that.

For those wondering October is not the only time it gets busy like this. I’d wager Halloween Time is from August to beginning of November and then the second warm weather hits, it starts up again.

As a former resident, it’s way more than that. This shit starts trickling in as soon as August, I would see tourists coming in to town dressed as skeletons or something before they had the schools back open for the year.

I used to commute to Salem State in the evenings. October kinda sucked for that.

I was saying boo-urns!

I may be crazy but that sure looks like Danny Huston on the bottom left…

I still have no idea why people want to go to Salem on Halloween. It's some made up tradition, you can go to the Witch museum anytime and not get trampled.

We went last year during the week. Earlier in the month so you still get some cool things to see and do, a little less crowded. Everyone we talked to was out of state tourists though, from all across the country. They were surprised we were local to MA. I love Salem and think it’s fun if you plan ahead and are able to go on off peak days…. Weekends are madness, I’m sure. I visit all year long in general though.

Imagine disabling caps lock

Nope. Not like Rockport, Gloucester, and a smattering of towns in between, South Shore, Cape and South Coast do.

>They've raising ticket prices to try to discourage crowds for years.

They're raising prices to make fucking money. Discourage crowds? They want more.

It wasn't just women murdered in the Salem Witch Trials

It's cruise control for cool. Why would he ever turn it off?

Well thats fine, but you are in the minority.

I used to live in Great Barrington, tourism only stopped for maybe Feb and March, if the snowfall was crappy.

I was saying this to an out of town friend who was intrigued with visiting Salem this month. Everything on the north shore takes 2-3x longer. Everything. Went from Lynn to Beverly through Salem on a weekday morning (pre 9am) and took me almost an hour. Take 128 and go through Peabody? Forget it. Lowell st/mall exits back you up like crazy. And the off chance you need to take lowell st in Peabody, you get the assholes refusing to recognize stop signs as stop signs and cut people off causing accidents. No thanks. I know that last one isn’t unique to October, but it’s amplified without a doubt. Everyone is annoyed so decorum is out the window. Locals know Salem is a shitshow and uses other routes clogging up what’s already overused and congested roads. The week when we had Salem and the topsfield fair going, should have just stayed home to avoid the guaranteed headaches

PEOPLE THINK CAPS LOCK IS LP YELLING BUT ONLY IN OCTOBER SALEM TRAFFIC

The accused lived in what is now Danvers, and later others accused from what is now Andover and Topsfield.

The trials were conducted in what is now Salem, and Ipswich.

It was an early wealthy merchant seaport, with commerce and buildings to match. Because of later development and railroads elsewhere, and lack of a river hinterland, the town did not continue to grow, nor dismantle its past via growth after about 19th century.

I lived in one too many tourist towns. This would make me insane.

WACKY INFLATABLE FLAPPY ARM TUBE MEN WACKY INFLATABLE FLAPPY ARM TUBE MEN

The popular "Bewitched" TV show put Salem on the map, in the 1960s, producing three episodes there.

EVERYTHING BUT FLAPPY LP VERY CALM WACKY TUBE MAN

If only there was some sort of train system that went to Salem, Lynn and Beverly…

Salem gets way more tourists in October than Great Barrington ever gets

LIVING IN THE AREA, I CAN APPRECIATE THIS WAY OF THINKING.

I gotta commute to Danvers 5 days a week even before October 128 has been a shit show most of the time ever since they started doing their never ending project on 128.

I never said it didn't :) But having lived in a city that gets overrun with New Yorkers for most of the year, I can relate. Traffic was HORRENDOUS.

If I could fit a truck load of building materials onto the comm rail and also carry it, you’d be right. Not everyone has errands and obligations solved by public transit.

Gloucester is the only Essex county town to earn more tourist dollars than Salem and it is by a very small margin.

Ayo, fuck Salem.

According to?

I live within walking distance to downtown, but on the North side. I do adjust a lot of my habits in October. I can’t even think about going out anywhere in town for dinner, delivery is from nowhere on the South side of town, I go grocery shopping in other towns because there’s no way I’m driving through downtown to get to the store in Salem, I change my route home when driving to avoid traffic on all the Salem exit ramps, and if I can’t work from home on Halloween, I take PTO. I don’t travel anywhere apart from walking on Halloween unless it’s in an ambulance. This year, I’ve had to adjust further and earlier, as the crowds even during the week are spilling out into the streets that aren’t closed, trying to enjoy a walk downtown is almost impossible and at times claustrophobic, and the amount of litter on the ground and people I see actively littering is much more than years prior. I also noticed exponentially more out of state cars parked pretty far out into the neighborhoods that aren’t resident-only. This is the first year that they’ve reached my neighborhood, which we’ve never had before. We’re walkable, but it’s about a mile to the train station, so most visitors never venture out that far. I love Halloween and I love all the fun stuff everyone can see and enjoy during this time in Salem, but it’s just absolutely insane and at certain times, borderline dangerous this year. I worry that there aren’t enough crowd control measures or officials in place to keep things safe. November 1st will probably be one of the best days of the year in terms of being able to actually live my life again, and I’ve never felt so strongly about it until this year.

according to this

Yep, I lived just a little north from there, just off Amelia Island. It has a similar problem to Salem too where there aren't many ways to and from the island itself (just 2 roads, and only one is really used that much).

Are the Christmas decorations up the second week of November?

That’s what drove me to move out of Boston.

Every bar and club and restaurant was packed to the gills.

I think I have legitimate PTSD from being forced to work a retail job in downtown St. Aug during tourist season so that I could afford the obscene rent in the area. It has actually affected my ability to work retail jobs since. It never ends in that city either - you finish the summer weather, they disappear for two months then everyone would come flooding back in for Nights of Lights and shit up the place. Even in those two months, nobody shuts up about it being around the corner so there is never a true break. Even just typing this causes my body to stiffen up with how unbelievably difficult that time was on me, I wouldn’t wish those tourists upon anybody

Obligatory fuck Janice Brown Realty

I think you mean, our public transit system isn't sufficient to accommodate everyone's errands and obligations, and needs a lot more investment so everyone can use it, whatever their needs.

Growing up in Peabody, i hated this. Traffic would be backed up basically all the way to the Northshore mall on 114 and lowell st, basically making it impossible to get around to half the city

It's more Hocus Pocus and other modern movies/shows these days. Not many of the tourists I've talked to have even heard of Bewitched anymore.

Yeah they are.

The actual Christmas party dates usually start the 2nd week of November.

That’s nothing new to me

I went to Salem state for one semester, in the fall, and I blame that awful fucking traffic on why I hated it so much. I didn’t re-enroll simply because that commute was the worst and I was just two towns over.

I know what I meant. What transit system allows someone to bring multiple sheets of plywood, siding, 2x4s, bags of concrete, paint, and various other supplies? People still need to be able to use their vehicles where/when transit falls short. And it will always fall short.

Well, there’s a balance. The park can only hold so many people, and after a certain point wait times get ridiculous and impact the experience too much. So they do need to set some limits

That mfer forgot Giles Corey

The article points out how it’s actually harmful for a number of businesses. Anything tourist-facing does well, but businesses that cater primarily to residents find that a lot of their customers can’t or won’t make it to them through the traffic and crowds

If you can’t, that message isn’t aimed at you. Frankly, that message should be blaring loud at clear at primarily the tourists.

That early conscious raising made it possible for future writers to contemplate Salem as an historical scene.

Aided also by Arthur Miller's 1953 dramatization and reaction to Senator Joeseph McCarthy 's "Red Scare" accusations and hearings via "The Crucible", and the film produced, by the same name, in 1996.

Lived there from 2015-2017 and again from 2021-2022 for 9 months. It's just not a nice town to live in, any part of the year. Besides being pretty (and cool) it's always packed with traffic, it's poorly designed for the number of people that live there now, and the people are assholes. Not to mention that you have a massive commuter college campus right next to downtown, and college kids fucking shit up all over town all the time. It also has poor snow removal, and the local government is slow to respond to citizens.

​

It's just not a very nice place to live at all. A lot of the north shore isn't.

It's almost like humans are an invasive species

It's cool and pretty, but not very nice to actually live in IMO. I tried to live there twice and ended up disliking it both times.

Salem is not a nice place to live at all. I think you explained it better than I ever could. I tried in another comment but you did a much better job.

Does anyone actually like SSU?

And this is why salem is an over rated tourist trap swimming with teal hair girls talking about astrology.

We live downtown, own a car we have to park on the street, and we’ve been here since ’08. It’s crazy, and it’s our favorite time of year!

They could just limit the number of tickets they sell though instead. But they know they can make more money so they raise prices

It was a good place for grad school as far as instructors, facilities, flexibility, price, etc. The only thing that sucked was there's just no easy way to get there from out of town.

I lived there for 15+ years I am well aware what it is like.

Mmmmm quality checks notes 5 year old pre pandemic numbers.

Berkshire country gets way more tourists than Salem, and that’s year round.

If you would like to provide some more current numbers, I would be happy to see them. I doubt they are astoundingly different.

Salem resident chiming in... we left this October. Working remotely from a small island in the Atlantic with very few people on it. Glad to hear reports from other residents that we made the right choice this year. Sad to hear that our local businesses that serve residents with "regular" goods and services are struggling. Not looking forward to a monoculture of talismans, crystals, tarot.

Yup, looks pretty scary to me.

boo.. who?

Splitting hairs a bit. It was primarily women. Does it make you feel better that men were tortured and killed, too?

I agree! It was filmed in Newport. Fuck that movie. It was like an hour and a half long advertisement for Walgreens.

Nooo I just remembered my dentist appointment tomorrow is in downtown Salem. Fuck.

My ancestors landed there and stayed for a century so I’m biased, but see how it’s awful in spots. Commuter rail is a plus though.

One in five witches was a male, but I bet you don't care about minorities...

I think most people are celebrating the witches, not the killing of them anyways.

Don't cry, it's just a joke.

I lived in Peabody for a while and worked at the Toys R Us at the mall. I hated driving there. Lowell St was seemingly always a damned mess.

Advisory notices don't work. Resident-permit-required parking spaces work.

I went on the 16th and it wasnt even bad. Got there around 1030 ish. We found parking on lafayette and just walked over. It’s obviously going to “full” when the lots are small and everyone wants to park as close as possible.

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> I like the 2nd or 3rd week of November now. The Christmas stuff is going on, but most people are waiting for either Thanksgiving week or December to go.

A couple years ago my brother-in-law, who's a big Disney fan, told me that there's lots of families that spend their Thanksgiving every year at Disney World.

I have found that the weekend before Thanksgiving can be a pretty decent travel week with lots of hotels giving good rates. A few years back did a D.C. trip that weekend and got an amazing deal at a high end hotel a couple blocks from the Mall. Plus the crowds were pretty low key for D.C.

Geez, only if Disney can come up with system where if you pay more money you can go into some quick lane or maybe even a lightning lane for those willing to pay even more money. That way they don't have to set limits and ppl who complain about the wait times.those will the ones not shelling out more money.

> there's lots of families that spend their Thanksgiving every year at Disney World.

WTF

"You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is?"

Agnes Moorehead was from Clinton.

No idea

IDK... The first year we moved here we were taken by surprise. The second year, we had forgotten about the last time, so we were surprised again. After that, we've always planned for a packed October, changed when we ran out errands, and have just enjoyed the craziness. Some of it is about modifying your habits, some about managing expectations, and some about living in the moment.