Always busy in school holidays?

[Tinkjon]

Is the park always busy throught all summer holidays? We may only be able to go during UK school hols in the future; are we destined to have hour-long queues for everything?! We've never been in school holidays before and have had an average of 15 min queues for most things (with some of the biggies being around 40 mins sometimes).

 

[elstoleno]

Compared to off-peak times, then summer is busy. But I still prefer it to off peak, cheaper seasons. Its warmer for one!

The queues can be long, but if you ride during parade times then they are shorter. Queues get longer in mid afternoon too, but in the morning and straight after EMH queues are maybe 15min max.

The only things we queue for for more than 30min are POTC when its raining, IASW and Casey Jr. But we don't really do any of the big thrill rides.

Counter service queues will be longer than most of the rides tbh!.

 

[Tinkjon]

What about non-summer school hols - eg. October half-term?

 

[DLPdaft]

Generally speaking, from reports etc over the years, and if you are subject to England and Wales school holidays (as Scotland and Ireland are different), Summer is busiest, followed by October half term if its the same week as most European schools (ie this year, when October half term is w/c 29th October), then Easter (as again, most Europeans have Easter weekend itself as school/office/public holidays).

May half term beginning of the week can be busy if it includes Whitsuntide, because again, many European countries have Whit as a public holiday. This year, our June half term should be fairly quiet in comparison, because there are no public holidays/school holidays except in the UK that week .

The quietest English/Welsh school holiday of the year is generally February half term, as usually there are no other European school holidays at the same time (but you'd need to check in advance of booking to make sure). However, its also by far the coldest time of year to go, and often there are major refurbs going on in the parks in the period between January to March each year.

 

[jothp]

Generally speaking, from reports etc over the years, and if you are subject to England and Wales school holidays (as Scotland and Ireland are different), Summer is busiest, followed by October half term if its the same week as most European schools (ie this year, when October half term is w/c 29th October), then Easter (as again, most Europeans have Easter weekend itself as school/office/public holidays).

May half term beginning of the week can be busy if it includes Whitsuntide, because again, many European countries have Whit as a public holiday. This year, our June half term should be fairly quiet in comparison, because there are no public holidays/school holidays except in the UK that week .

The quietest English/Welsh school holiday of the year is generally February half term, as usually there are no other European school holidays at the same time (but you'd need to check in advance of booking to make sure). However, its also by far the coldest time of year to go, and often there are major refurbs going on in the parks in the period between January to March each year.

We have been the last two years in our standard May half term which includes Whit and it hasn't been a bank holiday in France. Last year however we did have Ascension day later that week. May half term has generally been very manageable. The more popular rides would have queues of an hour or so (BTM, PP, Dumbo etc) but we would get on what we could during EMH, use fastpass for rides that have it and then ride IASW, story boats, POTC, teacups, pinnochio etc in the afternoons with queues of only 15 minutes or so. The pay off was that because there were no European holidays it was classed as low season so the parks closed early. This is of course different this year with dreams.

We also went in August last year and found that quite manageable too. The parks seemed a lot busier but we could still get on the rides mentioned above without waiting longer than 30 minutes most of the time.

 

[Tinkjon]

Thanks, everyone! I am wondering about applying for a job at a school,which would obviously mean no term-time leave. Not sure what it says about me that my first thought was "but then I won't be able to go to DLP in term-time!" but you have to get your priorities right, don't you?