July crowds - no big deal

[brianphill77]

Just wrapped up a 4-day trip. I was a bit anxious going in that mid-summer could be a huge mistake, with enormous crowds and heat beyond what we want to deal with. And the heat was a bit beyond our liking, and it seemed a bit more humid than normal (and no, of course it's nothing like WDW).

But when it came to crowds and wait times, it was a breeze. We never waited more than 25 minutes in any line the entire trip. All it took was a moderate amount of planning. There are 4 of us, including 2 kids (10 and 8). During our 4 days we managed to get in (going off of memory here, I'm sure I'm forgetting some):

Space Mountain x4
Splash Mountain x2
BTMRR x5
Pirates x2
Haunted Mansion x2
Star Tours x4
Matterhorn x2
Plus just about every other DL ride at least once: Peter Pan, Mr. Toad, Snow White, Pinnochio, Alice x2, Storybookland, Tea cups, Roger Rabbit, Gadget's Go Coaster, Winnie, Autopia, Astro Blasters, Astro Orbiter, Small World, etc. Plus Fantasmic and a good spot for fireworks one night each.

RSR x2 (could have done more, but prioritized night rides, which restricted our fast pass options)
Soarin x3
Screaming x3
TOT x2
Goofy's x 5
Silly Swings x4
Grizzly x2
Mater's x3
Luigi's x2
And bunches off other stuff once - Monsters Inc, Little Mermaid, Fun Wheel, Golden Zephyr, Aladdin show, Muppetvision, Tough to be a bug, Turtle talk.

The keys for us were:
- Being there right at rope drop. It got tougher to get the kids up as the week went on, and my wife wasn't always thrilled to not sleep in. But everyone appreciated it once we were there. We got an amazing amount done those first 2 hours.
- Getting out of there not long after lunch, coming back in the evening. I would try to grab fast passes before leaving in the afternoon for something in whichever park we planned to be in that evening.
- I was our fast pass runner, going ahead to get more before using the previous set. A few times I was holding 3 sets, one time on the last day I had 4. I'm a fast walker, so I would send the rest of the fam ahead to the next ride while I took a detour to grab FPs for something else.
- Having a plan for which rides to hit early because no FPs were available and lines get long later (PP, Alice, Matterhorn) and which we could leave until later because they're usually not long (HM, Pirates).

I won't be concerned about July crowds in the future. Compared to when we came last year the first week of June, the crowds were far better this time around.

 

[surfmontana]

Glad to hear you had a great trip hitting everything you wanted.

What were the temperatures? We had 95-101 last Oct so I am hoping it won't be that bad again this Aug not a big fan of heat.

- I was our fast pass runner, going ahead to get more before using the previous set. * A few times I was holding 3 sets, one time on the last day I had 4. I'm a fast walker, so I would send the rest of the fam ahead to the next ride while I took a detour to grab FPs for something else.

Can you share how you did this? I thought you could only have 1 at a time now that they are all connected. (2 if you had one in each park, the two parks are not connected, correct?) I also thought they were really coming down on only allowing you to enter during your actual window. Fast pass is great and I would love to maximize its use like you did. Would love to get some tips

 

[jcarwash]

- Being there right at rope drop. *It got tougher to get the kids up as the week went on, and my wife wasn't always thrilled to not sleep in. But everyone appreciated it once we were there. *We got an amazing amount done those first 2 hours.

Such excellent advice for any Disney park, any time.

 

[Momto3as]

We were just there 7-27 through 7-29.
I'm a first timer so can't compare the crowds to anything else but I thought it was all very manageable. We had a slow learning curve for the fast passes but they are very necessary to getting all the rides in.
We got stuck swimming up river after Fantasmic and fireworks a few times but held tight to the little ones and managed to not loose anyone.
Agree - using the first 2 hours is key.

 

[bethy]

We went once in mid July and were worried and we found it very manageable, too. July is on our approved list.

 

[brianphill77]

Glad to hear you had a great trip hitting everything you wanted.

What were the temperatures? We had 95-101 last Oct so I am hoping it won't be that bad again this Aug not a big fan of heat.

It was around 90 each day, but a bit humid, the locals were saying that it's been unusually humid for the past few weeks.

Glad to hear you had a great trip hitting everything you wanted.Can you share how you did this? I thought you could only have 1 at a time now that they are all connected. (2 if you had one in each park, the two parks are not connected, correct?) I also thought they were really coming down on only allowing you to enter during your actual window. Fast pass is great and I would love to maximize its use like you did. Would love to get some tips

Sure, the rule is that you can grab another fast pass once the return time for your current FP is reached, or 2 hours passes from your last FP pull, whichever comes first. So the time I had 4, I had grabbed:

RSR at 11am, with a 9:10pm return
Soarin at 2:15pm, with a 6:30pm return (since over 2hrs had passed)
Goofy Sky School at 6:25pm, with a 7pm return (since over 2hrs had passed)
TOT at 7:10pm, just before getting on Soarin (since the 7pm Goofy return time had passed)

Now, this worked for us on that day because we spent the morning/early afternoon at DL, planning to be at DCA in the evening. So I hopped over to DCA from DL to grab those RSR FPs while the family was eating lunch, and hopped into DCA quickly on our way out for our afternoon break to grab Soarin. If we hadn't taken the afternoon break, or had spent all day in DCA we would have been a bit more limited, as there would have been those two 2hr chunks of time after grabbing RSR and Soarin when we couldn't have gotten any more for DCA. But there were several other times when we were holding 3 sets at once in the same park.

 

[missbmarie159]

We were just there 7/26-7/29 and I too was nervous about the crowds. We typically go mid-end of February and found the crowds this trip to be so manageable! Especially since over the years we find more and more people going around the same time as February, I'd almost dare say that our July trip was less crowded than our regular Feb trips!

 

[Mysteryincorp]

I agree July has been manageable. But just to warn everyone, the crowds really seem to be picking up. We went Wednesday, walked into Disneyland, turned around and went right over to DCA.