Crowd size and attraction wait times of OCT 14 to 24th? Were any Dis'ers there

[Forevermarypoppins]

Thanks to anyone who answers.
I am in a WDW vacation mood and want so badly to visit during the 50th party. I'd love to go next OCT especially since my GS has 2 different weeks in that month where they have days off and he wouldn't miss 5 days of school. I assume the week leading to Halloween would be busiest for OCT. I'm very interested in what crowds and wait times were like leading into and during: the 3rd week of OCT?

 

[gharter]

We were there the 16 to 23rd. Really only HS seemed crowded. We did EE, but not early enough. We were in line at 8:15, but they had already been letting people in. We got to RoTR and had a 45 minute wait. We were at MK on the 17th and the lines were not bad until close to party time as expected. On Friday night getting in and out of the park was crazy about 8:30. We had dined at CG, took the monorail around cause we could and got off at MK to get our bus to the resort. The line to get on the express monorail wound back and forth. The wait for any resort bus was under 1 bus for every resort we could see.
EPCOT never seemed real busy except around France. There is a terrible bottle neck heading back to Remy and strollers parked everywhere they can. At early entry, Frozen was a 5 minute wait. TT was about 10 and Soarin' was walk on.
AK , outside of FoP (we did EE so had a 15 minute wait at most), then Navi 10 minute. EE was under 5 as was dinosaur. The lines started to build about 10. But other than Navi and FoP, everything was under 30 (some significantly under).
Each park does EE differently. Some let everyone in then sort them at a check point (look of Early Entry signs). Others have EE signs at the tapstiles and you need to look for them to get in.
Over all, I thought they handled EE very well in every park.

 

[Pens Fan]

We were there the 12th - 19th. Weekday crowds weren't bad at all, but weekend crowds were horrible. Part of that was our fault. Our son didn't have enough vacation time to join us during the week so we tried to squeeze in some Epcot Food & Wine and Magic Kingdom time on the weekend when he could join us. Big mistake!!!

Moral of this story: Weekdays - Great - Weekends at EP and MK - not so much

 

[ShelsGoingToDisney]

We were there 16th-23rd. We did MK on the Monday and Friday of that week. Monday was the busiest MK has ever been for me in all my trips (I generally try to avoid really busy times so this isn't comparing to Christmas or anything!) Genie had not debuted yet for Monday so it was all stand-by. On Friday we broke down and bought Genie+ so we could make sure to get what we wanted done.

Sunday and Wed. were HS days and they were both busy but doable. Wed. was worse as it was day 2 of Genie + and we didn't have it.

Tuesday and Thursday we did Epcot and that didn't seem too bad at all, wait times for rides were great. Food & Wine was a bit busier but that's to be expected.

The weather was perfect every day. Not a cloud or a drop of rain and not too hot.

I would be careful trying to compare this year to what next year might be like because you have the official 50th this month, but you also had a ton of people cancel their reservations due to the rising COVID numbers back in August in FL, kids can't be vaccinated yet, etc. Next October might be a more "normal" Oct. I would avoid the Columbus Day time as that's always busy due to school breaks.