Weekday vs weekend crowds

[halssister]

DH and I are working on some preliminary plans for our trip next summer. Our initial dates had us arriving on a Thursday afternoon, spending that evening plus Fri-Mon at the parks, then heading home Tuesday morning. But I've read that weekend crowds are usually worse than weekday, and we are wondering if it would be better to spend Monday - Friday (or Sun afternoon- Thursday) at the parks and drive on the weekend.

We have a lot of things to factor in, such as the fact that I make most of my summer income on weekends so that aspect would cost us more, so if the parks are less crowded generally during the week, is it quite a BIT less, or not that noticeable? We usually do RD and leave by 1 or 2, then maybe return after dinner. We were there last summer but it was a weird weather situation, where it was so cool we bought hoodies and it rained almost every day (significantly, not the usual summer shower), so we don't have a "real" idea of summer crowds or weather!

Any thoughts on this?

 

[maryj11]

When we went this year the weekend crowds were lower than the weekdays . We arrived June 24th and went to MK on the 25th on a Saturday which was not low crowds but not bad. We then went back to MK on Tuesday and it was mobbed with people. To me it feels like Monday through Wednesday were the most crowded days.

 

[mrzrich]

Weekend are travel days for many people, for some of those people that means no parks, for others, Just a partial day

Generally you would expect locals to be there on weekends, but during the summer, many locals are blacked out depending on the level of their pass.

 

[Accident]

It can vary depending on when your thinking of going, which parks your doing on what days and if anything special that brings locals out is happening. In general, I would say yes weekends are more crowded. If it's a holiday weekend where people have an extra day or 2 off it will absolutely be more crowded.. You can actually use park hours to a small degree to tell what disney thinks will happen, unfortunately the final park hours aren't posted until a couple weeks before you get there so you can't use it to preplan when you want to go. but you can use it to tell which is the more crowded part when you are there.

But don't read into this too much as more crowded doesn't mean the others days are not crowded. It's always crowded and we're talking the difference of 5-10 extra minutes in line with the big rides being double that.

 

[halssister]

Thank you all for your input! Sounds like it likely won't matter much either way. We will just wait until summer room only discounts come out and see what will work best for our work schedules and go from there! Being early morning people, we should be able to get a couple hours in every morning before it gets too crowded, anyway

 

[maryj11]

Thank you all for your input! Sounds like it likely won't matter much either way. We will just wait until summer room only discounts come out and see what will work best for our work schedules and go from there! Being early morning people, we should be able to get a couple hours in every morning before it gets too crowded, anyway

Yes you will be fine either way. The one Tuesday we went was listed as a 10 on the crowd calendar and we managed just fine. As long as you have a plan and use FP any day can work. The past two years I have planned for us to arrive so we can go on the weekend because like I said above it was a little less crowded.