The week between Christmas and New Years is the busiest of the year for all local parks. You can expect LONG waits...over 100 mins for most attractions w/o Express Plus passes and the crowds for Harry Potter are not going to help. If you can swing it, staying onsite is an excellent idea mainly for the unlimited Express access. With Express the wait times will be much shorter. Otherwise you may not have a good time because of the crowds.
Along simular lines, how busy is Xmas day itself?
We have already purchased Express Passes but I was wondering whether to brace myself for huge crowds or not?
Along simular lines, how busy is Xmas day itself?
We have already purchased Express Passes but I was wondering whether to brace myself for huge crowds or not?
Very long, christmas time is the busiest week of the year here in orlando. The first couple of weeks in December are pretty slow along with middle of January and February.
We've been down the past three years. The first year we went down Christmas eve and stayed through New Years. The last two years we went down Christmas Eve and left on the 30th.
We stayed onsite all three trips (HRH) so we had FOTL and my observation was that until the day after Christmas the crowds were pretty light. They seem to build and peaked at New Years which is why we opted to leave befroe that time.(It was really crowded New Years Eve and Day)
Definitely that time of year onsite is the way to go. It is a very enjoyable trip. I don't think I would go to WDW based on what a couple of friends who have reported.
We went on the 27th Dec 09 to the 9th Jan 10. We got fast past tickets for Universal and IOA, but you were still looking at waiting at least 30 minutes when in the fast past queue.