Janurary crowds

[dylans mommy]

Hello everyone!! As of right now we have our trip to the world booked for January 9-17. I just realized that is the weekend that the marathon is going on. So how bad are the crowds that first weekend. Our first day in the parks is supposed to be on Sunday the 10th. We can move our trip around a little bit but not too much. So tell me how bad is this going to be. We have been in November, August and July before so how does it compare to those.

DH is in the army so we need it to be in the first couple of weeks in January. We can even go the week before and possibly the week after if we have to but this was just a good week and we got all of the restaurants that we wanted.

Thanks

 

[Alesia]

http://www.easywdw.com/category/calendar/01-january-2016-crowd-calendar/

 

[Lucius Best]

Hello everyone!! As of right now we have our trip to the world booked for January 9-17. I just realized that is the weekend that the marathon is going on. So how bad are the crowds that first weekend. Our first day in the parks is supposed to be on Sunday the 10th.

January crowds are low. We've been in January several times and run the marathon. I can attest that crowds will be heavier MLK weekend than marathon weekend, as the calendar indicates. New Year's would be even busier. Marathon weekend there will be some morning road closures to deal with, but you can still get everywhere, and even with 20,000 runners at WDW, the parks were not crowded at all.

 

[dylans mommy]

Thank you both for your posts! Thank you so much for the link, I went right to it and printed it off.
Lucius Best thank you so much for posting your experience. That is good to hear that even with some road closures the crowds are really not that bad. That makes me feel better about the time we are going.

 

[marinejjh]

Hello everyone!! As of right now we have our trip to the world booked for January 9-17. I just realized that is the weekend that the marathon is going on. So how bad are the crowds that first weekend. Our first day in the parks is supposed to be on Sunday the 10th. We can move our trip around a little bit but not too much. So tell me how bad is this going to be. We have been in November, August and July before so how does it compare to those.

DH is in the army so we need it to be in the first couple of weeks in January. We can even go the week before and possibly the week after if we have to but this was just a good week and we got all of the restaurants that we wanted.

Thanks

You will have the marathon crowd there your first weekend and toward the end of your trip will be MLK weekend so both will be busy, do yourself a favor and do MK days mon through thur. This is the reason we booked for the last week of january. Also they probably won't have any discounts until after MLK weekend. Both weekend will still have less crowds then when you went in July.

 

[figmentedfollies]

In 2013 I was there unwittingly for Marathon Weekend. It was a bit busy, I especially noticed it in DTD that Saturday night, but not overwhelmingly so. It was great being able to see/cheer on the runners at the parks. However, after Monday the crowds dropped off considerably. It will, however pick back up dramatically the next Friday/Saturday for MLK weekend. Personally, I would repeat a park just so you're not rushing to do MUST DO things, rather you're repeating family favorites.

 

[5kidsmommy]

We were there last year during the marathon for the last part of our trip. Crowds were heavy on transportation (the monorail) but other than that I barely noticed them.

 

[dylans mommy]

Thank you all for your responses! This makes me feel much better about going that week. We will make sure to hit all of our must haves in the begging of the week and then do just our favorites at the end! It's good to hear that the crowds will still be less then when we went in June.

 

[toni nicole]

I will also be going in January and just wanna follow this board.

 

[roxymama]

Runner here. There may be more runners on property, but many will go to bed earlier than a normal park goer, will be running instead of touring the parks very early in the morning (for the longer races at least) and after the runs will be sitting down for a meal and/or showering and changing before hitting the parks. So I think maybe that will spread out the mass of people.
And there are quite a bit of the field doing Dopey Challenge which is running all four days. I am not one of them. I'd imagine these people will be doing a lot more resting in between runs than I will be.
Just thoughts to put you more at ease.

 

[StaciaRae]

Hi! We'll be there 1/5-1/12, its our first trip. We had everything booked and then I found out it was Marathon Weekend. I read up on it considerably and everything I read said what the previous posters say, that its not that bad. And, I do think it'll be cool to see all the runners - maybe they'll inspire me to start running Have a great trip!

 

[roxymama]

Oh and I forgot one other thing. While you are in line for rides, a big chunk of us every day will be at the Race Expo waiting in lines for our bibs or race merchadise or kids races etc. So I think it spreads us out. Kind of like conference go-ers?

 

[VictoriaBetz]

I just want to say after reading this I feel so much better about going marathon weekend! I was nervous the crowds would be insane, but seeing what you are all saying made my day

 

[Mary Beth Grater]

Great question. We arrive 1/2 for a week and didn't know about the marathon when I booked either but it was the week that worked best (taking our kids and grandkids - 8 of us). We are spending Saturday to Thursday is Disney and decided to head over to Universal on Thursday when I found out about the marathon. I am excited to see the Christmas decorations the first couple days we are there. Very excited. Haven't been there in 20 years.