Need advice on August 2015 visit

[PrincessIM]

Hello all,

Looking for opinions from my fellow Dis'ers. Planning a trip for August. We will be travelling by car from BC arriving August 9th-August 15th after which we plan to visit friends in San Francisco. DH has brought up another option of visiting our friends first and then travelling to DL which would have us there around August 14th/15th leaving the 21st. I've searched the threads and HydroGuys threads and from what I've read, we might be better off crowd wise going to DL August 9-15th as the SC pass holder blackouts get lifted around the 16th. Which week would you choose?

 

[Congo Queen]

If I had a choice, I would go when the SoCal AP black out was still in force. In my experience, generally, any time you can go with a greater amount of AP black outs the better. The lower level APs will have waited all through July and early August to attend and so there will be pent up demand (mid August) to attend from that group before all their kids go back to school.

There are exceptions to this general rule of course, and I just experienced one on Dec 22nd. We visited when all but the premium APs were blocked. It was extremely crowded, worse than any of the summer days I have experienced. Summer is good because people don't all have the same exact week of vacation time. Christmas week was rough.

 

[TheDoleWhipper]

Yes, as the previous poster mentioned, the first week would probably be less crowded because you avoid the swarm of APs descending on the parks as soon as their blockout lifts. Since 70% of DL visitors are locals, whether their APs are blocked really has an impact on the crowds. So I would pick the first week just to be safe.

Also, if you have kids who are excited about DLR, then they might go nuts waiting through the San Francisco part to go to disneyland, if you do SF first. And they will probably have more energy and be more excited overall if you do disneyland first!

 

[PrincessIM]

Thanks CongoQueen & Dole Whipper for your responses! Just needed to hear it for someone else