First week of january?

[Raenstoirm]

After a disastrous day at WDW (flew in friday morning for a week long stay, but had to fly home 4 hours later because of a family emergency), we are looking to reschedule our trip. Although we have WDW annual passes, we have never done a holiday trip and the point of this week was to see all the decorations and parade and such with low crowds. WDW tends to undecorate early in the year and we wont be able to go before christmas and to be honest after the hellish day, I dont think I want to go back to WDW for a while (Disney was great to us, but bad memories are there). So I noticed that DL has the christmas thing going till the first weekend of the year. Neither dh or I have ever been to DL so that might be the Disney we are needing without being tainted. Getting a "taste" (we rode two rides at MK before the call that sent us running for home) made it so much worse to have to leave.

So my question is, how busy will DL be around the 3rd? Are schools back in session and tourists pretty much back to work? We are anti-crowd people, but we have been planning the holiday thing for 18 months and it is heartbreaking to have to wait another 12 months and by the looks of it DL "does christmas" so much better than WDW anyway.

Edit: I just read an entire thread on the fact that many schools arent in session till the 9th. This puts a kink in my plan. Hmmm...

 

[Eeee-va]

Sorry about your last trip!

Yup--Christmas, yes, but crowds, also yes. Last year people said it was pretty crowded the week after New Year's, and I expect the same this year. BUT, last year it sounded like Disney may not have been prepared for the number of people who showed up (like they were running fewer ride vehicles, etc.). This year, they have Disneyland scheduled to be open 'til midnight that whole week, so they're expecting crowds, but that means at least they'll be staffed for crowds.

I guess it depends on how "anti-crowd" you are. There are not very many times to go to DL when it's not crowded (and if you're "from" WDW, you may find DL all the more crowded because our walkways are smaller). I prefer times that are not crowded, but if I were in your shoes I'd want to do Disneyland anyway. The first few hours of the day are almost always pretty nice, even when the parks are crowded the rest of the day. Things also wind down a little at night. And it will be winter (one thing I really don't like is heat coupled with crowds).

But if you dislike crowds so much that they will ruin your trip, then you might be better off postponing.