Going late September, do we need rope drop?

[stephen9871]

Does anyone know how the crowds might be at Epcot monday Oct. 1? I know the F & W festival will just be getting started, but that is also the day of Epcots 30th anniversary. I wouldn't think it would be too horrible being a Monday... any guesses?

 

[PIRATEGIRL007]

We are heading back in mid September... arriving on the 18th.

When I booked that week I did so because Touring Plans had that week all 1's pretty much except on the weekend.. with 2's. Now that week is 3's and 4's... and it seems every other day it keeps going up.

I keep hearing how this September will be much busier than in years past. My travel agent agrees with this and told me she thinks "it will be much busier than a typical September".

No one can give me a reason why this year would be any different than other years.

I am certainly no expert but, we plan to be at rope drop at each park we go to... especially now that it seems September isn't going to be as slow as normal this year.

It's not any different, crowds are increasing year over year in all the parks by a bit but there are no significant events happenig that time this Sept. The main reason you are seeing conflicting info is b/c their calendar is off. By TP's defination there are to be 10% of days marked 10, 10% marked 9, etc. etc. I'm not a statician but I just skimmed thru and there are something like 15 ones for the next 365 days. Also the calendar rolls on 365 days so it goes Jan-Jan then May-May, etc it's not Jan-Dec so the % will change with those changes, make sense? There have been alot of questions about the calendar lately and it seems some bugs are being worked out.

Don't put much thought into it, we go every Sept were there the exact time last year w/ end of trip coming in on MK's anniversary and F&W run weekend. Based on a scale of 1 being dead and 10 being omgoodness I can't move 4th of july packed, the parks were in the 3-4 range the whole time with first part of Oct being more in 5-6 range. Alot of rides will have very little wait 10 min or so and the headliners mid day will be in the 40-60 min range but with good FP use it's easy to hit everything. I'm not an expert but we visit often and have been there for 9/11 anniversary & hurricaines (those are the 1's), Thanksgiving (10), and summer crowds (8-9) so I have a pretty good sample to make my own 'scale' work in my mind. I've swapped to using easywdw.coms calendar b/c it makes more sense based on what I've experienced on my own, TP has lost me with thier 10% on a rolling year calendar estimates.

 

[mickeyluv'r]

We are heading back in mid September... arriving on the 18th.

When I booked that week I did so because Touring Plans had that week all 1's pretty much except on the weekend.. with 2's. Now that week is 3's and 4's... and it seems every other day it keeps going up.

I keep hearing how this September will be much busier than in years past. My travel agent agrees with this and told me she thinks "it will be much busier than a typical September".

No one can give me a reason why this year would be any different than other years.

I am certainly no expert but, we plan to be at rope drop at each park we go to... especially now that it seems September isn't going to be as slow as normal this year.

I really would not give much concern over crowd pedictors...like WDW's park hours, they start small and raise expectations according to park hours. (My short answer take) WDW does not release crowd numbers publicly, so one WDW itself nkows how many rooms that have booked.

As the economy improves, WDW crowds willl go up.

Another factor is that the new Fantaslyand is opening.

Another factor perhaps is that there haven't been very many FLA hurricanes the last few years. If a big one hits the FLA coast, then that scares folks away. The longer they go without a reminder of the devastation of ahurricanes, the less they associate FLA with devastating storms. I'm sure there are plenty of folks still staying away from the Gulf coast due to Katrina and the oil spill.


Again, I wouldn't make yourself or your family miserable trying to get to rope drop. Maybe aim to be there before 9:30, but don't make your family miserable in the process.