ericatunc said:
We're staying from the 3rd to 11th at Fort Wilderness. I called last week to try to change campsites to a full hookup, and the guy told me that all WDW, meaning all resorts, were completely booked. I was shocked, I thought this was supposed to be *THE* time to go? Now I'm having fear of long lines and people everywhere. BTW, we're taking my parents (in their 60's), they've never been.
The guy was not entirely right.
He may not have had any availability in his computer, but that doesn't mean that every room, every villa, every camp site anywhere at WDW is booked for that day. I don't think that's ever happened in the history of WDW!
However, because of the Pop Warner competitions, a convention or two, and MouseFest, travel agents have been holding large blocks of rooms at the WDW resorts, reducing the number that are available for CRO/WDTC to book. Also remember, the big internet booking sites like Travelocity, Orbitz, and Expedia all have big blocks of WDW rooms held at any given time during the year.
And WDW has also been known to reduce the number of rooms at their resorts during the slow periods of the year due to the regular rehab schedule. In the past, WDW has actually closed entire wings or eentire buildings of some resorts during the slow periods and removed those rooms from the computer; after all, if you know your resorts are only going to be 25% full during a certain month, why not concentrate that 25% in one area and turn off the lights, heat, A/C, and housekeeping to the unoccupied sections for a few weeks until bookings pick up?
Don't worry; I have been going to WDW during the 2nd week of December for 3 years running now, and although it's not as empty as it used to be, it's still not nearly as crowded as the summer peak season. Individual parks might be crowded on individual days, but the overall crowd levels in the parks will be low to moderate at worst.
Just keep in mind that even if there are 20,000 conventioneers staying in teh WDW resorts, they will all be AT THE CONVENTION during the day, not at the parks! Crowds might spike a little after the convention functions let out (usually after 5pm), but I have been to WDW during many large conventions and found that most conventioneers spend little or no time in the parks, even in the evenings.