Crowds for Columbus Day Weekend

[Samsma]

Hi! Thinking about a weekend trip next October for Columbus Day. Our school usually has a 4 day weekend due to a teacher's meeting on Friday. Can anyone tell me if it is a madhouse this weekend, or will it be a nice calm school year weekend?

 

[sjreed]

We have gone twice during the Columbus Day holiday (for the same reason, long 4 day weekend with teacher's meetings). I have to tell you that weekend can be pretty brutal as far as crowds go.

 

[Samsma]

bumping up

 

[Samsma]

Bump. Now that its almost over, does anyone want to comment on the crowds? Thanks!

 

[Lora]

Brutal was a pretty good description of our last couple days in the parks. We have had to get to the parks at opening and work hard at getting fast passes to make our days go smoothly. I had a group of 9 today in AK and Epcot. I had to run ahead with everyone's passes to get FP's for Safari and then later for Everest. I'm pretty sure I heard someone say the FP's were gone for Everest by the time we returned for our ride at 12:30. (I got my FP for Everest around 9:50.)

The MK was unbelievable last night. We were there from about 8:45 - 10:30 pm and I just wanted to get away from there as fast as I could. At about 9:30 pm, there was a line for Small World - I've NEVER seen a line for Small World (I'm normally there during lighter crowd times.)

By the time we got to Epcot at about 3:30 or 4:00, there were no FP's for Soarin' and they ran out of Test Track FP's not long after that. There were long lines and of course WS was packed because of the Food and Wine Festival. We've been to WDW three times in Oct. and have noticed the crowds swelling over the long weekend.

 

[shaun3000]

Animal Kingdom was fairly light on Sat, save for a few Brazillian tours. Epcot, mainly WS, was PACKED! Lines for TT and Soaring were long, as usual.

Magic Kingdom, today, was PACKED. EMH was until 1:00 AM and crowds thinned after 10:45 or so. BTMRR was down to 10 minutes, Splash Mtn was about 20. We're here til Friday and I'm really the crowds go down after Monday!

 

[il-gander]

I didn't think they were bad. We were there from September 29 through yesterday, and I had expected to see a marked upswing in crowds on Friday the 6th and Saturday the 7th. We had had a nice week crowd-wise - always a crowd just walking around, but certainly nowhere near as bad as went we last went in June, but the actual wait times on rides were 10-20 minutes until around 11 am everyday. We made good use of Fast passes, and didn't wait more than 20-30 minutes for anything all week at any time of day. A lot of our rides, particularly early in the morning, were walkons.

Having enjoyed that earlier in the week, I was a bit worried about this past Friday and Saturday being busier. We were in MK on Friday and AK on Saturday, and I really didn't notice any difference. We were only there until about 1 pm each day, but the ride times were the same. It seemed like there were quite a few empty rooms at POR the past few days.

Carla

 

[Samsma]

We normally go in late June into early July. I've never been at a quiet time, and was looking into Columbus Day for next year so my kids could experience Halloween at WDW. Thanks for the info!