Busy weeks to avoid? Best weeks to book?

[Redart59]

Hi everyone
We have AP’s that we will activate next year in September and can’t seem to find a list of busy weeks at Disney to avoid.

We do AP’s every 2 to 3 years and try to get 4 week long trips out of the 12 month period. We made a huge mistake last time we had them and tried to combine our weeks with holiday weekends to extend our vacation time and as you can imagine, that was a huge mistake due to crowds.

We just booked our first week September 24-oct 1st.
Not booked yet but will book September 16-23 to end the ap cycle.

looking for suggestions for best times to book 2 additional weeks. Below is my list so far of weeks to avoid. I am looking for additional weeks to avoid like cheerleading /sport competitions, race weekends, etc… thanks so much in advance.

MLK weekend (Jan 17th)
Presidents’ Day weekend (feb 21st)
Memorial day weekend (may 30th)
Fourth of July weekend (July 4th)
Labor Day weekend (sept 5th)
Columbus Day weekend (oct 10th)
Halloween (oct 31st)
Veterans Day weekend (nov 11th)
thanksgiving week. (Nov 24th)
Christmas/New Years (December 25th)

 

[CaptainAmerica]

I think you're overthinking it.

Avoid the week of Thanksgiving, the weeks before and after Christmas, and the weeks before and after Easter. Nothing else is anywhere near those crowds.

Holiday weekends are busier *on those weekends,* but they don't really tend to make the entire week busy. The week in between Marathon and MLK is one of the slowest weeks you'll ever find (not to mention a great time to escape cold weather), despite the fact that Marathon weekend is somewhat crowded and MLK weekend is somewhat crowded. The slowness of midweek more than makes up for it.

 

[denman007]

We've had great results and weather booking around Columbus day in years past. (everyone is in school)

 

[katyjeka]

I don't want to upset your planning but one of our busiest trips was mid September. I'm not sure what the reason was but it was wall to wall people and hot! Maybe we picked a bad year but crowds, including those at the Halloween party were crazy. A lot of people are homeschooling and many schools have transitioned to year around school and have several breaks during the year. A well planned trip at Christmas, or any other busy time can be a success if you plan! My advice(for what it's worth)is to pick times that work best for you, the crowds will be there regardless.

 

[Shellyred8]

We went during the week following Presidents weekend and that entire week was much busier than I thought it would be. We knew the weekend would be busy, but didn't think that following week would be. Lesson learned.