Crowds around Veteran's Day November 2018

[Aby]

Hi everyone,

I'm hoping you can help me figure out the best dates for my DL trip in November.

With Veteran's day (observed) being Monday, November 12th, do you think this day will be very busy in the parks? I've checked multiple crowd calendars and am getting conflicting reports.

We will be staying in a DL resort hotel, and we have 5 day hopper tickets. My original plan was the following:

Fly in Monday November 12th, fly out Sunday November 18th. 5 days in the parks, Tuesday through Saturday. I thought that Monday being the observed holiday would probably be busier than the following Saturday, and having two weekend nights would give us more opportunity to see the fireworks, fantasmic, and WoC. Since we have 5 days, if the park gets too busy on the last day (Saturday) we could just do a half day and leave after lunch.

Some of the crowd calendars are suggesting that Monday might be better than Saturday in terms of crowds. Do you think this is likely?

I could push the trip ahead one day, and Fly in Sunday November 11th, and have 5 days in the parks, Monday (Veterans Day) to Friday. It would only give us the one day to catch the fireworks, etc. but if the crowds would be significantly lower it might be worth it.

I'd appreciate any thoughts you might have on which dates would likely be best for crowd levels.

Thanks,

Aby

 

[Angrose]

The Christmas season usually starts on that 2nd Friday of November and last year that was also Veteran's Day. The following Monday was not a holiday last year so the crowds were lower because of that. Here is a snapshot from Touring Plans historical crowd calendar. The first column is the overall DLR crowd rating out of 10, the 2nd column is just DL and the 3rd is just DCA:



Basically, to get a good idea for this year's crowds, I would swap the crowd numbers for Fri 11/10 and Mon 11/13. Since Vet's Day will be observed on Monday this year, that's when you'll see the crowds. The weekends and the rest of the week will probably be about the same, so not too bad!

Also, the holiday fireworks and WOC ran every night that week. Fantasmic! only ran on the weekends. Happy planning!

 

[mom2rtk]

That used to also be a marathon weekend, but they aren't doing those starting this year. Hopefully that will be good for crowd levels.

 

[hyperminimalism]

I was thinking about going the second week of November this year, too. My birthday is on the 13th, and it would be really neat to be able to celebrate it on the day of, but I'm worried about crowds considering it's so close to Veteran's day. However, since it would be observed on Monday the 12th, perhaps going the 13th-17th would be a better idea? I could also go the week before Veteran's day weekend. It's just been about two decades since I went to DL on my birthday, so I'm not sure how crowds will be.

 

[Lovewinnie]

Delete

 

[tarheelalum]

Veterans day and the weekend is packed. Very heavy crowds.

 

[Aby]

Thanks guys, I think I'll keep my original plan as is and try to avoid the Monday observed holiday as well. Appreciate the thoughts!

Aby

 

[avalovesminnie]

We were there last year for the half marathon. I think the bigger impact on crowds was the start of the holiday season. The first night It's a Small World was lighting up there was a literal WALL of people with no way to move. Most seemed to have come just to see the lights turn on. There was no staff attempting to direct traffic and was the most unsafe I've felt at Disney- we came up with a quick plan of who would grab which kid if people started stampeding. Of course that didn't happen but there were some angry folks around. I can't remember which day it was exactly but we avoided that area at night after that!

 

[theluckyrabbit]

FYI: For those planning trips around that weekend, there is a non-Disney sponsored race (https://runanaheim.visitanaheim.org). The expo begins on 11/10 at the Convention Center and the races are on 11/11. Since this is the first year for this race and it isn't officially put on by Disney, it's hard to say if there will be any crowd impact on the parks other than the usual holiday weekend affect,