Park queues during late July

[Dodgy Bob]

Hi all,

Been to Florida/Disney twice before, have just booked for the third visit in July next year (2010).

Due to youngests birthday we've had to book from the 23rd July (for 3 weeks). I would have prefered later dates but she would have been 12 coming back which would have meant a massive change in proce due to her being classed as an adult.

What are the park queues like during the 3 weeks from 23rd July?

The two times we've been before (2 weeks after Easter 2004 and 19th August for 2 weeks in 2007) we've literally had the parks to ourselves, got a video taken from just outside the Twister ride in Universal Studios looking down both main streets. One other person apart from my kids visible .

Thanks.

Bob.

 

[JohnnySharp2]

Hi,

Normally what happens in the summer is the crowd levels drop from around the middle of August when a lot of the US schools return.
The Disney Dining Plan has made that difficult to predict.

For your dates I would say crowd levels will be quite high, would advise getting to the parks early if you can and this would have the advantage also of getting there when the weather is cooler - July is extremely hot.

 

[jen_uk]

We were there this August and the crowds didn't seem to drop like past years, a couple of times we went to parks and by 9:30am the rides had queues of over an hour

 

[Dimplenose]

We were there end of July and it was much busier than we're used to (we've previously been at end of August).

It certainly pays to be at the parks early and to make good use of fast passes. It depends on the rides you want to do but the more popular ones often had queues of 50 minutes by mid morning (Toy Story Mania had queues of 110 minutes one evening!)

We got fast passes for the rides we wanted to do and filled in the rest of the time doing rides that had 20 minute or less queues (surprisingly we twice rode Expition Everest in the standby line) - there was plenty to do. We did find that the central wait times boards at each park were very inaccurate.

When we wanted a counter service meal we found it easier to eat early too.

The upside of crowds is that the parks are open later and I find the atmosphere is better.

 

[Dodgy Bob]

Thanks for all your replies. I think we'll be ok. We're early risers and early lunchers, and I plan like the (closest I could find to the devil)