If crowd calendars are less reliable than they used to be ...

[Klayfish]

OK, so I have to ask...what's the line of thinking behind "Don't go to MK on a Monday"?

 

[mdmama76]

Thanks. We are staying offsite so EMH doesn't help us (and may hurt). I'm thinking the key thing is to avoid AM EMH parks in the AM and PM EMH in the PM if we want to go to a park offering EMH on a given day at all.

 

[slpeters]

It's funny how differently people do this. We figured out how many half days we wanted in each park, decided that we wanted to do all five of the nighttime spectacles on offer during our week, then built the schedule around EMH. Not avoiding them, going to them. We did an EMH every day. Once we put those specifications in place there were only a couple of configurations that were even an option. Push Animal Kingdom as late in the trip as possible (we wanted two FP days) and that pretty much solved that.

Apparently half of our trip was nines or tens and we never really waited for anything. It worked great!

 

[tink9702]

Another consideration for us that I didn't see anyone mention is which nights we are staying late for fireworks. We don't stay late every single night because my kids still can't hang late and be up early for 5 days in a row. Since we are more morning people (especially the kids) we plan on RopeDrop every day and only some late nights. So if we want to see MK fireworks & Rivers of Light at AK I won't put MK & AK on two back to back days. I'll stick Epcot or HS between them. We've also never had more than 5 day tickets either though so if you are there lots of days I'm sure this is less of a consideration! Also, if you don't have kids, or have kids who don't need as much sleep you can ignore my thoughts as well!

 

[sponica]

OK, so I have to ask...what's the line of thinking behind "Don't go to MK on a Monday"?

I think it's this, if I'm making it a quick(ish) trip I'm doing Thursday night or Friday to Monday night, only miss 1 or 2 days of work, only miss 1 or 2 days of school. I have noticed that the MK crowds get higher on Fridays, so I'm assuming the logic holds for Mondays.

 

[mdmama76]

I think it's this, if I'm making it a quick(ish) trip I'm doing Thursday night or Friday to Monday night, only miss 1 or 2 days of work, only miss 1 or 2 days of school. I have noticed that the MK crowds get higher on Fridays, so I'm assuming the logic holds for Mondays.

This is a good point. My kids (8 and 6) can't hang late very often either.

 

[MickeyMinnieMom]

We stay onsite and are early risers, so our strategy is:

• Early EMH park
• Midday break at hotel
• Hop to another non-EMH park

OR...

• PPO ADR at a park without late EMH
• Midday break at hotel
• Hop to late EMH park

Crowd calendars have NEVER factored prominently in our planning. Only use an average of multiple calendars to decide when to travel, and give a GENERAL sense of crowds to expect (e.g. 5 vs. 9 makes a difference).

 

[Davey Jones II]

During our recent trip (22/10-1/11), we went to AK on a Monday, and that was the most crowded park during our whole trip. Therefore, I may have stumbled on another basic strategy: if a park has a new land, avoid going to that park on a Monday. My theory is the following: since the majority of WDW visitors arrive on Sunday, if a park has something new and exciting, a lot of people will want to go there first. Their first full park day is Monday.

If that's true, that would mean avoid DHS on Mondays after the opening of Toy Story Land.

 

[buzznina]

I agree about the calendars, we stopped using them years ago. While everyone avoids the parks during evening EMH, we plan to go to that park In the past, you could notice a difference in crowd levels based on certain days etc. but over the last few years the difference is not really noticeably. We always like to start and end our trips at MK and then I fill in the rest

 

[tlmadden73]

OK, so I have to ask...what's the line of thinking behind "Don't go to MK on a Monday"?

I think the theory is a lot of people want to start a week long vacation at the MK. Fly in Sunday .. go to parks M-F .. fly home on the weekend.

 

[rwdavis2]

easywdw calendars used to have long explanations on why and how specific days affect crowds. It's probably still accurate.

 

[Klayfish]

Thanks. We are staying offsite so EMH doesn't help us (and may hurt). I'm thinking the key thing is to avoid AM EMH parks in the AM and PM EMH in the PM if we want to go to a park offering EMH on a given day at all.

We stay offsite, and as I mentioned, we don't even look to see what parks have EMH. I don't really know you'd see any difference.

 

[NH-to-FL]

We've been guided by the crowd calendars in EASYWDW the last few trips, apparently they're not doing these anymore. Prior to that and going forward we'll just avoid parks with EMH and hit a non-EMH park at ropedrop. This always worked well for us before we discovered crowd calendars some sites publish.

easywdw calendars used to have long explanations on why and how specific days affect crowds. It's probably still accurate.

This is what I have been doing for the last few years, following easyWDW's logic. I hope he doesn't mind. He did such a good job explaining it I learned it. Or at least the basics.

Like PSUGuy, I now avoid EMH parks. I also look for which park had an evening EMH and consider going to that park the following morning.

 

[Davey Jones II]

This is what I have been doing for the last few years, following easyWDW's logic. I hope he doesn't mind. He did such a good job explaining it I learned it. Or at least the basics.

Like PSUGuy, I now avoid EMH parks. I also look for which park had an evening EMH and consider going to that park the following morning.

In reference to the bolded...that's an interesting idea. How well does that work?

 

[Davey Jones II]

Another consideration for us that I didn't see anyone mention is which nights we are staying late for fireworks. We don't stay late every single night because my kids still can't hang late and be up early for 5 days in a row. Since we are more morning people (especially the kids) we plan on RopeDrop every day and only some late nights. So if we want to see MK fireworks & Rivers of Light at AK I won't put MK & AK on two back to back days. I'll stick Epcot or HS between them. We've also never had more than 5 day tickets either though so if you are there lots of days I'm sure this is less of a consideration! Also, if you don't have kids, or have kids who don't need as much sleep you can ignore my thoughts as well!

I scheduled all our nighttime events near the end of our trip, so that we can get up early in the first part of the trip. At least for us, once we start seeing nighttime shows, our sleep schedule is blown, and we can forget about early starts.

 

[FortForever]

We've never gone back into WS on a Saturday night, and I guess that's one thing I'd agree we wouldn't do. I can't stand drunks...happy, sad, any kind. Not my thing.

This is pretty much the only thing we don't do - WS on ANY evening. We always do WS early in the day. We've seen IllumiNations plenty of times over the years, but not anything I care about missing. I can't stand drunks, either, so just go elsewhere.

We do, almost always, take advantage of evening EMH at any park that has them. Never seen it too crowded. Then again, we don't visit WDW at peak times - summer, spring break, Christmas/New Years, or even weekends.

 

[trouttigger]

The good thing about August is that MK won't have any parties to cut your hours early there. I've had to pick based on ADRs that were hard to get that I got. We don't park hop (unless we do it to get free dining). What other posters said about avoiding parks with EMH makes sense if you can pull that off.

 

[Nancyg56]

Not arguing at all with you, but just posing a question... How do you know that Monday when MK was insane wasn't just a random thing and the next Monday it wasn't busy?

We've never gone back into WS on a Saturday night, and I guess that's one thing I'd agree we wouldn't do. I can't stand drunks...happy, sad, any kind. Not my thing.

I went one time on a Saturday night and that was enough for me. CROWDED, shoulder to shoulder and not fun at all.

OK, so I have to ask...what's the line of thinking behind "Don't go to MK on a Monday"?

I think that folks like to start a trip with the MK as their first park, and many usually arrive on Sunday.

I use the calendars as a guide. I know that they are not written in stone, btu for me, they provide a little advice to structure to start planning.

 

[Chef Louis]

OK, so I have to ask...what's the line of thinking behind "Don't go to MK on a Monday"?

The idea is most folks travel on Saturday or Sunday and there first full day they go to Magic Kingdom.

 

[Klayfish]

Yeah, but if their travel day is Saturday, day one in the park is Sunday...or maybe even Saturday if they arrive early enough. So I guess I can sort of see the logic behind it, I wonder what the difference truly is...I would love to see metrics (I know they aren't released)