April Crowds?

[suevee]

How busy is April looking this year? We have never been in April....Thanks

 

[BenKling]

I went the last week in April last spring... The crowds were crazy low. You had crowds for things like the parades and nightly shows, but I'm pretty sure we didn't wait for longer than a half hour the entire trip.

In fact, we blew through all the things we wanted to do at MK one morning, and had to slow down and revisit some things. I think we rode Space Mountain 5 times at least in the course of 90 minutes.

I definitely recommend it!

 

[mesaboy2]

How busy is April looking this year? We have never been in April....Thanks

Depends on how close to Easter your trip is. Could be very busy.

 

[BenKling]

Depends on how close to Easter your trip is. Could be very busy.

Very true, our trip was several weeks after Easter.

 

[suevee]

Easter is early this year on March 31. We will be there April 18 to April 22....got Cindy brkft resservations but NOT able to get Pooh at Chrystle Palace, Chef Mickey's, O'hanas or Be Our Guest....so started to worry about crowds....This is a special Grammy and Girl trip. My granddaughter will be 4 1/2 years old...

 

[rdevine10]

I just booked a trip yesterday for april 15 to 23. I was shocked that I was able to get every single dining reservation I wanted with a few choices of times. I have NEVER booked this close to going before, usually its 7 to 12 months in advance with plenty of time to plan. Im hoping the crowds will be ok, as we typically prefer late Sept into Oct, but this is when my kids have spring break! I decided it was better for april than late august!!!! (crowds and weather!)

 

[Hulles]

I usually go by the crowd calendar on **************.net.

http://**************.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/2013-Disney-World-Crowd-Calendar-v2-1-13-13.jpg

We have booked for april 20 through the 22nd. It looks like spring break crowds will be leaving right before we get there. At least thats how im hoping it works out We have been twice in april before, once during spring break which had insane crowds. Last year we had very moderate crowds and got everything we wanted to do done. Some rides still had lines but I would say the longest we waited during our trip was around 45min, which was for soarin while test track was down.

 

[Hunclemarco]

Josh at easyWDW is predicting mostly 5's and some 6's as far as crowds for April:


http://www.easywdw.com/april13-v3.jpg

 

[suevee]

Thank you for the links. I used to take my grandchildren in Feb/March but it seemed to get more crowded each year. So this time I decided to move it up a bit hoping it will not be so crowded.......

 

[MexiFinn]

Easter is early this year on March 31. We will be there April 18 to April 22....got Cindy brkft resservations but NOT able to get Pooh at Chrystle Palace, Chef Mickey's, O'hanas or Be Our Guest....so started to worry about crowds....This is a special Grammy and Girl trip. My granddaughter will be 4 1/2 years old...

Check again for Be Our Guest. We are there those same days in April and I saw several late dinners for Be Our Guest just early this morning.

ETA: I was looking for 6 people though and had option come up every night. Not sure if booking for 2 will be harder.

ETA2: I see a dinner for 2 on 4/20 at 9:10pm. Wish I could book it for you but it has to be held with credit card.

 

[suevee]

Thank you so much but my grand daughter is only four and I am not sure that she will be able to appreciate a dinner so late....I will try the walk up for lunch time while we are there.

 

[MexiFinn]

Yep. That is the problem with Be Our Guest. Only late dinners seem to be available.

We have a 4 1/2 with us as well but will make her stay up late!

She's a night owl anyway so our 8:40 dinner won't be a problem. If she did need to get to bed at regular hour, I'm sure we wouldn't be doing the late dinner.

ETA: just keep checking back periodically. We were surprised when all of the sudden we had several options when none existed before.

And I thought I read that you'll want to check for openings each night before. Something to do with the cancel policy on held reservations...so one doesn't get charged with a no-show.

http://fineartbymary.com/smilies/horse2.gif

 

[suevee]

sending this back to the top to see if there are any more people going in April ..........or have gone in April after Easter break and can advise as to what to expect for crowds.

 

[TrueEeyore]

We've never been in April before, but we're going this year. I hope the weather is nice and the crowds are low! Is that too much to ask?

 

[MikeRx]

We were there in April 2012 (2 weeks after Spring Break) and the crowds were average, slow mornings, building into the late am and afternoon. We employed our www.easywdw.com strategy and had a great trip. Rope drop, commando morning to see all of things on our priority list, eat lunch and then turn down the plan to “stroll” and enjoy the parks or return to the Poly for a swim or rest. We actually watched the crowds build as the day progressed and said “glad you weren’t here” and “enjoy the lines”…
We too never spent more than 15 minutes in a line, but did utilize FastPass extensively. We expect the exact same thing this year and have made similar plans. We now hope FastPass+ is ready for primetime by then so we can pre-schedule many of our favorites.

As a comparison, we’ve went in July 2012 and crowds were larger, but the plan we used really made them the same experience except for the weather…Our week in April (21st) started out very cool, but warmed towards the end of the week so that we could swim and it never rained! July was hot, humid and had the afternoon storms to dodge with huge crowds by mid-afternoon.

April is very manageable if done wisely, but not the “where are the people” that it may have been in the past.

See everyone in April (12-18) and Dream Cruise (18-21)!!

Mike DW DS (5 ) DMIL

First visit 1976, Pre-2010 too many off sites to remember, WDW 2/2010 BC CL, Disneyland GC 12/2010, WDW 4/2012 POLY TPV, WDW 7/2012 (off site), WDW 12/12 POP and 4/2013 POLY with Disney Dream cruise!

 

[Luvin*Livvy]

We are booked (as of last week) for April 26-May 3rd.....I'm really hoping for low crowds and nice weather as well. We went the first week in March last year and it was the most crowded I've ever seen...EVER! And the weather was pretty bad....chilly, very windy and cool when you got out of the pools. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a great week!!

 

[DisneyMagic3]

We are going the 20th-27th. We chose that in hopes of not melting (we are Canadian) or being trampled by mass crowds. Here's hoping!

 

[bigjrfan88]

We are booked (as of last week) for April 26-May 3rd.....I'm really hoping for low crowds and nice weather as well. We went the first week in March last year and it was the most crowded I've ever seen...EVER! And the weather was pretty bad....chilly, very windy and cool when you got out of the pools. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a great week!!

What were your dates last year??? We were there 3/4-3/10 and did not experience anything that you experienced. Especially the weather. We thought the weather was perfect pretty much everyday. The crowds really were not too bad either.

BTW we are goin 4/28-5/2 and then hopping on the Dream. Hope all is well with weather and crowds.

 

[MinnieLovesMickey12]

We went April 16-21 of 2012. It was definitely more crowded than our October, November or January trips but still not very bad. I'm not a crowd lover and there weren't too many ppl for me to stand it. The weather was great. We didn't get any rain but we were only there 5 days. I think if you went the last week of April crowds would be great because almost all Spring breaks are over by then.

 

[Luvin*Livvy]

What were your dates last year??? We were there 3/4-3/10 and did not experience anything that you experienced. Especially the weather. We thought the weather was perfect pretty much everyday. The crowds really were not too bad either.

BTW we are goin 4/28-5/2 and then hopping on the Dream. Hope all is well with weather and crowds.

The 7th -- 14th. The first few days were great...then around the 10th and 11th it was bad.....I actually posted about this a few weeks ago...and someone posted the crowd calendar for the week we were there last year....it started out as 6's and then quickly went to 9's and 10's. A friend of mine was there the week before Feb 27-7th and she had amazing weather and NO crowds!