Late August crowds

[TheConsciousness]

So I just read a Universal Studios blog mentioning that late August has very high crowds on average. I would have thought that with schools ramping up that it would bring relief, but apparently I was mistaken. Some crowd calendars say that the parks will be 'slow', while other say that it will be blasted.

Does anyone have any late August crowd opinions?

 

[macraven]

The parks cut back hours the last week of August
Probably due to less crowds

 

[TheConsciousness]

The parks cut back hours the last week of August
Probably due to less crowds

That is also what I've heard, idk where the blog got its info from.

 

[macraven]

I looked at the August park hours and it has been cut back starting around the 20-21

 

[dja14]

I know 'they' say the crowds are less and the hours are less (I assume they see less crowds in their hotels but I was surprised at 7 pm closing) We are going the last 2 weeks of Aug into Sept and I have seen a lot of people talking (on dis) about going then. Not as many as June and July true, but more than I expected. I think some schools are not starting til after labor day and all of those people thought (like I did) I'll wait and go as late as possible so most everyone will be back in school.

I am hoping for low crowds but expecting more moderate. I told my husband it would be crowded, hoping he'll be surprised

 

[gigi from canada]

I've looked at multiple websites that provide detailed crowd calendars. I like the orlandoinformer.com one. I'm also going the last week of August. I'm fairly confident that the crowds will be low. There's a reason that they reduce the hours, provide incentives to AP holders and discounted rooms. I got a room at RPR for 169$. They rarely go much lower.

I'm a glass half full kinda girl. I'm also a hope for the best, prepare for the worst...

 

[damo]

Every time we've been there late August, we've found the crowds to be moderate.

 

[Cuchman]

We went the last week of August last year and are doing so again this year. The crowds were pretty low - up to medium-low at times.
We didn't have express passes for our trip and had no trouble doing lots of stuff over the course of three days.
Hoping for low-ish crowds this year too!

 

[TheConsciousness]

Thank you everyone for your answers!

 

[Seeker615]

We did late August and stayed offsite. Crowds were not bad at all when we went. We managed everything with no issues. We did single rider for Harry Potter and even managed to be on the same ride several times.

 

[anorman]

We were there last year for the last two weeks of August and spent 4 nights at the beginning of our vacation onsite at the RPR to get front of the line....which we definitely needed as the crowds were very busy. Then we went back to Universal on our last day (about a week and a half later) without the express pass and there was almost nobody there. It was a Tuesday and the lineups for the two Harry Potter rides (and everything else) were almost nonexistent. The week before, the lineups for the two HP rides were at least an hour long.

 

[Cheesehead9]

We were there at the tail end of August last year and the last couple of days were very slow (well below TP projections) -- this was likely due to a tropical storm threat in Orlando at the time. It was the first time in many years that Orlando had been in a "cone of uncertainty."