DTD on a Friday night??

[foxxxy83]

Hey guys! Am arriving in Florida on a Friday afternoon (plane due to land at Sanford approx 3.15pm) so by the time I get my luggage etc and get to hotel, it's likely to be about half 5, 6ish. Was wondering if anyone knew what DTD was like on a Friday night?? Would be awesome to go and pick up my Disney & MNSSHP tickets the day we get there and marvel at the awesomeness of 'Characters In Flight'

 

[2Tiggies]

It will be busy on a Friday night. That said, it is a routine of ours to do DTD on arrival night so we can collect any tickets we have vouchers for, wander around, have a meal, grab a treat from Goofy's and then head back to the resort. With the arrival times of UK flights it makes sense to us. It will also keep you awake but ensure you are absolutely wiped when you crash into bed. You don't want to fall asleep too early first night or you will be awake at stupid o clock. This is an all round solution for us and I can find no fault with that plan, even on a weekend night

 

[tinks_1989]

Hectic. DTD weekend evening are really busy a lot if locals go in the weekends for a night/evening out.

We stay at Saratoga springs and go to down town disney most nights we try to avoid the weekends at DTD.

 

[MrRomance]

In the interests of being honest... DTD on a Friday night will be pretty busy. Weekends can be really quite crowded and depending on the time of year, it can be something of a zoo. That said, as pointed out, going to DTD on the day you arrive is a good plan and solves a multitude of sins! You can pick up anything you need to collect so you can hit the ground running on your first full day and it also keeps you awake until a reasonable time. There is nothing worse than waking up at 3am on Day 1!

 

[2Tiggies]

What are your plans for transport while you are there? I know you are staying in the DTD area but this will have a bearing on how easy or difficult it is for you.

What are your son's mealtime routines? You want to aim to immediately get him into the new time zone, in fact ideally, from when you board your flight in the UK. It would be long past his bed time by the time you land so you'll be stretching him thin, but if you can do it, this will help you out enormously to set up his body clock from day one. If he usually eats at 7 pm for his dinner for example, aim to make sure that he is eating around that time on your arrival night. You are probably looking at getting to your hotel around 6 pm if not a little earlier. You may want to consider whether to feed him at the hotel (not sure what is available there) rather than DTD because the CS restaurants are going to be very busy. We wait until after 10 pm when they empty out before grabbing our dinner but this would probably be a bit unreasonable for a 6 year old

 

[Laurafoster]

We went this Friday night, simply because i forgot it was friday (i swear on holiday i completely forget which day of the week it is). It was chaos.

DTD is bad anyway at a weekend but the added construction work and subsequent carpark closures made it so much worse.

Took us 40mins to get back to our resort - and we were staying at SSR!

On the plus side i did get a yummy EOS

 

[foxxxy83]

I can't drive so we'll be reliant on taxis. Plan was to get to hotel and grab some food (My son eats pretty much round the clock without having specific mealtimes. I carry things like cereal bars etc with me at ALL times as he goes into meltdown if he can't eat at the very second his stomach tells him he needs to!) He's also a child that can stay up until after midnight quite happily (every New Year's he stays up until 1 sometimes 2am and then is back to bouncing around at 7am the following day!) Was going to nip to DTD, pick up tickets and maybe just have a walk along to get a feel of the "we're here, we're on hol, let's enjoy ourself kinda thing". We're doing DC on the Saturday so other option is to check in hotel and get room service and early night as we need to be up at 6 then go to DTD late afternoon. Think this would be better???

 

[westgrove]

We will be in DTD when we arrive Sat eve and even if its crowded the only thing we need queue for is food! We have a gift card but it can wait if its a long wait.
We will take the resort bus each way and just browse for a few hrs and then maybe have a swim before bed

We went on our first night last time which was a fri eve and dont remember anything about how busy it was so must have been ok.

We will be in DTD next fri eve- got a HoB adr which im really looking forward to!

 

[flortlebap]

When we went in August it was busy every night and I didn't notice a huge difference on weekends lol!

But it shows more in lower season and the car parks and bus transport can be very, very busy at times.

I actually think it's less weekend busy now than back in the days when Pleasure Island was a nightclub district - that would be quiet in the week and heaving on weekends! Maybe it's just the time of year I've visited that gave me that impression though.