Pros & Cons about WDW in January

[Bob P]

Thanks everyone for your input. I was a little nervouse, but even though I love to swim, not swimming at WDW is not a major loss for me. I'm more interested in the smaller crowds and nicer weather (hey 60 degrees in FL beats 20 degrees in MA in January!!). I'll probably still do PS for the harder places to get a PS, but may wing the rest.

Speaking of the marathon, which parks are involved with that? Do they close off sections of the parks? What time do they usually start? How much is it to do? Do you have to qualify? How long is it? What is the route?

Here's a couple of links:

http://disneyworldsports.disney.go.com/dwws/en_US/marathon/listing?name=Marathon2005EventListingPage


http://www.mouseplanet.com/wdwupdate/wdw040121.htm

All four parks are involved in the full marathon, which will be on Sunday, January 8, 2006. The race starts at 6:AM; you don't have to qualify but there is a time limit. The half marathon is on Saturday the 7th and involves only MK and Epcot.

They are changing the route for the half marathon next year but I don't know if they are also changing the full marathon route (I think they aren't).

There was a website that had the route on it (I printed it out when we ran it) but I didn't keep the url, sorry...maybe someone else?


Bob

 

[alicenwonder99]

We were there this last January. It was in the 80's every day, and got down to 68-70 degrees at night. The crowds were dead, and it seemed no one knew about EMH starting that week because we practically had the parks to ourselves for EMH nights. On the day of the marathon, we slept late that day and got to MK about 11:45am and didn't experience any crowds.

We went the first week of December a few years ago and the January crowds were alot less than the December crowds.

Mary

 

[becka]

January is a great time to go because of the low crowds but the weather can be iffy. We went in January 2001 and it was COLD!! There were frost/freeze advisories every night we were there. We were very thankful that we came from a cold climate and had the appropriate clothing. We would layer on several shirts and a sweatshirt in the mornings with gloves, hat and scarves and peel them off over the course of the day and then pile them on again in the evenings. We have some funny pics of my DH and I bundled up under a palm tree drinking hot chocolate. We remember that one morning we watched the weather channel and it was actually warmer in Kansas City than in Orlando.

I think our experience was fairly unusual but the upside was NO lines. We went to Illuminations one night and it was eerily empty. We grabbed some more hot chocolate and were able to walk up to a bench right when the show started with no one around us. It was really nice.

I would like to go in January again some time but since I now work with payroll and taxes at my job it is impossible to go then because we have to get year end processing and W-2's out the door by Jan 31.

 

[crisi]

Re: PSs.....From my own experience, Disney staffs for antcipated crowd levels. We've had a long wait at Biergarten in off seasons with an empty restaurant - because they only had 3 CMs working the restaurant. So while crowds are less, they may have less "available" seats in the restuarants as well - simply because there isn't a waiter their to serve you.