I am freaking out!! Are the crowds that bad?

[clhcpaca]

I went with my family last year during free dining--the second and third week of Sept. Alot of the restaurants were not taking walkups, but the parks were not too crowded, nor the rides and shows. I think that perhaps there will be some more people (but it will not be outrageous), BUT that more of those people will have made ADR's and be eating at TS.

Cindy

 

[smartestnumber5]

My gf and I just returned this afternoon from a week at Pop. It was my 5th time and her 1st. She was shocked at how uncrowded the parks often were in terms of wait times for rides. (She has anxiety about crowds so she spent a lot of time before we left anticipating what it would be like.) I've gone in mid August in years past and I thought these crowds were less than those as well. We never waited more than 20 minutes in line, and the lines that were more than 10 minutes usually were ones that had a pre-show. (Of course, we did see wait times that were up in the 45-60 min range on the big rides a few times, but we just used FP or went in the first few hours the park was open to avoid them.) We rode:

Animal Kingdom: Expedition everest, kilaminjaro safaris, tough to be a bug, dinosaur, and kali river rapids (morning-early afternoon)

Epcot: almost everything including Test Track and Soarin (late morning to afternoon)

MGM: Muppets 3D, The Great Movie Ride, Tower of Terror, and Rockin Roller Coaster (afternoon)

Magic Kingdom: Pirates and Haunted Mansion (after 8pm), splash mountain and thunder mountain railroad (EMH after midnight), Buzz Lightyear (dinner time)

As far as restaurants, our schedule/restaurant choices may not put us in the best position to judge crowds, but we didn't see any problems of people being angry or turned away (of course, we generally weren't paying that much attention either). We ate at California Grill twice (one of those nights I tried to move the ADR and there was no availability), Artist Point around 5:40ish and it was almost completely empty (though it got fuller by the time we were leaving), Whispering Canyon Cafe (we moved our ADR from around 7:30 to around 9:40--ended up being 20 min late and it wasn't crowded at all at that time, though that is pretty late), Boma around 8pm--it definitely was crowded here but it has been everytime I've ever gone even before the DDP, Spoodles around 8--there were plenty of empty tables, and Ragland Road (made our ADR for 9:30 about 4 hours ahead of time).

Hope this helps.