best weekend in September October/ plan for fitting it all in?

[nurseberta]

I would like to do a weekend trip Thursday to Monday. Maybe 1 nights at HHN, Volcano bay and both parks. Do not want to pay extra for express for HHN, so thinking that if I do a premier hotel and get express passes for the rest of the park that would make it easier. I am hoping ideally one night of HHN is enough because I want to do so much else. but I'm not sure if I should stay 2 nights at Sapphire falls for 2 nights thinking I could do HHN on the day of arrival Thursday, Volcano bay Friday and switch to HRH for Saturday Sunday. any thoughts?

 

[macraven]

What you listed sounds very doable and you can do great with those plans

 

[hhoope01]

My guess would be October weekends will be more crowded (on average) than most September weekends (except maybe for Labor Day weekend). Even though HHN starts in September, I'd guess that more people are "thinking" of Halloween come October than September. Schools are just starting back from Summer break and fall breaks will be in October. Historically, the middle week of September has been one of the 2 least crowded weeks of the year. So I'd say if you are trying to pick the least crowded weekend, I'd pick either Sept 9-11th or 16-18th.

 

[djmeredith]

We were there Labor Day weekend last year and we did everything we wanted to do in the parks with EP. We did Sat - Tuesday (but ended up staying until Wed because SW cancelled our flight - luckily they cancelled while we were still at Uni, so we just extended our stay 1 night). Crowds were very manageable with EP, but might be a little more crowded this year just because it seems that more people are traveling this year in general. We did Volcano Bay on Memorial Day and got there an hour before early entry. We were able to do Krakatau twice in a row with no wait, and the rest of the day was not very crowded at all. We did not do HHN, but met some people at the pool that did, and overheard several others talking about it. You can look at hotel availability now and see that some weekends are already sold out for the Premier level hotels. So maybe pick the weekend that still has the best availability.