Crowds the week BEFORE July 4th?

[Mrs. Max Goof]

We will be at WDW June 26- July 2nd.

We typically travel in late July or early August, so we are used to busy park days. I've used several crowd calendars to figure out the best days to be at each park and we have planned accordingly. My question is, will crowds this particular week be any worse than your typical mid-summer day? When we traveled in late July and August, the parks were rated a 9 in terms of crowds, and this week in July is showing the same rating. We use touring plans and have realistic expectations when it comes to summer trips, but I'm curious if we will be faced with parks filled to capacity and whatnot. Is it going to be impossible to get the FP+ reservations we want in the 30 days before our trip?

Thanks for your help and input! Any advice or tips you could give would be so appreciated!

 

[gtpoohbear]

I don't know about specific crowd numbers, but with the 4th falling on a Saturday this year, the Friday before (July 3) is the designated federal holiday. The company DH works for (and several others in the industry) give all their employees the week of the 4th off, so this year it will be the week before, when you are there. We were originally planning a trip to WDW that week, but have decided to do something different instead. Not sure how common that vacation schedule is overall, though.

If nothing else, a lot of people will have a 3-day weekend. But, I don't think I've generally heard of capacity closures during that week, maybe just on the 4th itself? Not sure if there is a place to look up that type of historical data. But my gut feeling is that it will get more crowded towards the end of the week. With any luck, you might escape the worst of it by leaving on the 2nd, though.

 

[Mrs. Max Goof]

Thanks for your quick response! I knew the weekend of would be busy, but wasn't sure about the weekdays. We are planning on doing MK on the 2nd (we leave Florida Friday morning)....really hoping that the crowds are manageable!

 

[mshanson3121]

We're going the exact same time,though first park day is June 25. EasyWDW has it at 8s and 9s, TouringPlans ranges 5-7. From what I've been told it'll be about the same as your mid-summer busyness, though as a PP mentioned Friday/Sat/Sun will be the worst of it. I've actually given up on trying to go by a crowd calendar - it's going to be busy, that's all there is to it. So we're just working on a plan that works the best for us, and we will be using touring plans.

 

[tinkerbesh]

I like this site for checking on FP+ availability for the next few months:
http://www.thedibb.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=835236

The hardest ones to get will be Anna/Elsa and 7DMT.

 

[RustManFan]

how can the government change the 4th of July to the 3rd just to get a weekday holiday? It is one specific date!

We camped at FW the week before a number of years ago and it was not the least bit crazy. My DS's birthday is 7/4 and we had tickets to the Cup race at Daytona just before that date. Of course since that trip crowds probably have gotten heavier but there are also people that will select a different time to travel simply because they anticipate issues.

 

[Mrs. Max Goof]

I can't even tell y'all how much I appreciate your responses! We will most likely not make it to WDW for a couple years after this trip, so I've been feeling a lot of pressure to make this one perfect. I got a bit panicky looking at the crowd calendars, because this is the only week that worked for us this year. I saw one crowd calendar rank the days we were going as a 10! With this being our first trip using FP+, the whole planning process has just been more stressful as a whole. So THANK YOU for a huge peace of mind!