Which Parks/Which Days?

[SalandJeff]

Does anyone know which days are supposed to be busiest at which parks? Trying to plan our strategy for our 1st trip with our 2.5 yo dd, and our 1st trip in May. We usually go in the fall when there are less people.

 

[dcmbshafe]

A lot of folks have different theories on this and I believe that the Unofficial
Guide has some historical statistics. May will be a bit more crowded than the Fall, but if it isn't around Memorial Day it shouldn't be terrible. If you don't already know about "Extra Magic Hour", learn how it works as this will impact attendance at whichever park(s) are offering EMH on any given day. Your optimal strategy will depend somewhat on where you are staying (on-site or off-site). If you will be at one of the Disney resorts, you may want to take advantage of the EMH-morning offering (if your 2.5YO is an early riser like ours were at that age) but you may want to avoid the park with the EMH-evening offering since you probably won't be able to take full advantage of the later hours.

Enjoy your trip - we took our kids in September, October and early-May before they were of school age and all of the trips were really terrific but May was definitely a bit more crowded.

One other piece of unsolicited advice if you've never been to WDW with a small child - the visual stimulation offered by the parks can be overwhelming for kids so we found it critical to schedule down time in the middle of the day for rest and/or naps. It is difficult to believe that a kid can get tired out by just being pushed around in a stroller, but this definitely happens. The breaks worked for us really well and helped us avoid gigantic meltdowns later in the days.

 

[SalandJeff]

Thanks for the advice. This is our 1st trip with our dd, after 16 years of trips as a couple. So it will be quite a change! We are going to try to keep to her schedule as much as possible, which means an afternoon nap and we are only doing parks on 3 of our 6 days. I am so excited and can't wait to see my little sweetie pea's reactions at WDW!!!!