Crowds first week of Food Wine Fest

[stephgles]

We are currently booked on the bb for Sept 25 to Oct 3. At this time I see we are going to be there from the start of the food and wine fest. DH would like me to move the vacation up a week but, before I do that I want to see if ppl have been there the first week and if so, how crowded are the parks?

TIA

 

[LPNmom]

We went the begin of Oct in 2006 the crowds were not bad at all. I'm going Sept 24-Oct 5th this year so I want to know what it's like in Sept!!

 

[KatMark]

I'm interested in an answer to this as well. We have gone the last three years during the first week of September. Due to DH's show schedule at work, we would have had to either go the second to last week of August or September 20-29. We chose September 20-29 because we have to get youngest son back to college in August (although now he tells me that he might stay in Dubuque all summer -- I'm such a rotten mom sometimes). Anyway, I know we hit a few days of the F&W and would like to know about the crowds as well.

 

[BostonMom]

We were at WDW for our first trip last fall. Sept. 24th-Oct.1st.

Crowds - Friends of ours were there at the same time by coincidence. We went to the MK on an EMH day and they did both an EMH day and a non-EMH day. They said the difference was HUGE. They did the whole park twice in one non-EMH day. This was with their DS4 and DS2. When we went to MK on a day with amEMH the crowds started to pick up in the afternoon and we used FP for things like Splash mountain. We also had some lines in the morning in Fantasyland (Dumbo, Ariel's grotto), but walked right onto PeterPan, Small world, and Philharmagic. I know that this is trivial to people who travel at peak times, but our friends LOVED the day when it felt like they had the whole park to themselves and could ride the same ride over and over again. At Epcot, world showcase was busy, but more like a mall on a Saturday than anything. Not bad. We used FP for soarin, but walked right onto Nemo and there was only a 5 minute wait for single riders at Mission Space. We also walked right onto the Safari at AK and into everything but ToyStory Mania at HS. AK and HS were on non-EMH days, so I really think this makes a difference and will keep it in mind when we have the chance to go again. It certainly makes travelling with little ones who don't want to wait easier.

Weather - HOT HOT HOT. Now we are Canadians who moved "down south" to Boston, so that alters our perspective, But the afternoon heat was too much for us to handle, so mid-day breaks were essential. If we were doing it again at that time of year I would make our character meal ADRs for lunches to get a nice break form the heat instead of dinners. We did this at Akershus in Epcot and it was the best way for us.

I would suggest moving your stay up a week if you can though. When they announced Free Dining last year we missed the check-in by 3 days, but we already had our airfares booked and the change fees didn't make it worth the bother to also change (and possibly lose) our ADRs. When looking into it after the fact I discovered that traditionally Free dining does not always cover that last week of September. It probably has something to do with the F&W festival. Trust me, it's a real bummer to miss such a nice deal by only a couple of days!!!

Have a great trip!! Wish we were going back too!

 

[KatMark]

Thanks for the info. We've already got the free dining (we got the bouncebak while we were there). I think we will be okay as we only run into the F&W for a couple of days at the end of our trip.