AKL: How busy are pools mid-June? and December?

[520500]

We are traveling to AKL Kidani in mid June. We know it will be hot and busy. How busy are the pools during the week?

How about Christmas break? I may do a trip over Christmas (arrive Dec 26 and stay through the new year). I know the parks are crazy busy, and that's why we've never gone during that time. However, I don't want to pull our kiddo out of school, so school breaks are our options. We did Spring Break last year, and it was really fine. Busy, but really not crazy and we saw all we wanted at each park in 1 day each. How are the pools during Christmas time? I know the weather can really vary, but just wondered if you can swim without being crowded. Are the parks do-able? I watched the wait times this year, and they really didn't seem too awful. 40 minutes for most.

 

[drusba]

Pools are usually very busy mid-June but you can still find places to sit. Christmas time, it really depends on weather although they are usually not very full even if warm enough (I have never been to AKV that time when it was more than just warm enough and did have a couple days when it was too cold for anyone to go in the pool). As to parks during Christmas week, there is a risk that they can hit capacity, particularly at MK, resulting in closing to new guests for awhile.

If you have never been Christmas or Easter, then it is hard to come up with any comparison to what you have experienced. If by Spring Break you mean an Easter week then crowds are about 15% to 20% larger at Christmas. Standby lines for popular rides like Test Track and Soarin can get to over 3 hours for long periods of the day. Even Swiss Family Treehouse can have an hour waiting line. You need to use fastpass wisely, and if you go very early you can sometimes hit one or two things before huge crowds develop. You need to go with the attitude that you are not going to do every ride and attraction. What you also get is very heavy street crowds. See for example this photo of MK crowds from Christmas week:
http://www.chipandco.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/crowds.png

 

[520500]

Thank you! The Christmas crowds totally scare me. May need to think about that again, but would be so awesome to be there instead of Nebraska's cold weather.