Almost ready to give up….I know everyone here has some sad story so I will keep it short:
Was booked for April 2020. Had all my FastPass+, DR booked. PLUS booked several VIP tours, EMM, and hard to get items like Cinderella Royal table… The works! All gone
Rebooked to late September. Rebooked all the DR, VIP tours, EMM. That, plus our DP… All gone
Spent the day along with the rest of your wrestling to get park reservations (still have those!)
But… now got an email telling me my on-site hotel (Art of Animation) is not available.
as a “bonus” Delta re-booked our flights to MCO and changed the non-stop to a layover…
OK, I give up on September. My wife was not really thrilled with trying to go then anyway in that timeframe.
So my question… we are looking to re-book… again. Our previous April reservation was for one of the Spring Break weeks and showed 9s and 10s on Crowd Tracker. So this time we want to treat ourselves and avoid the Spring Break crowds (we will take the kids out of school). I am looking at the Crowd Calendar and do not understand it. I was hoping someone could explain why April is mostly 4-6, but March (when we were thinking of going) is 6-8? I know we really do not know WHAT will be going on… whether Disney will still be doing what it is doing today with reservations, so maybe crowds do not matter (but they MIGHT matter as we all scramble for park reservations).
In short, any advice on time period if we are looking to rebook in the March-May timeframe 2021?
Right now, we have a trip scheduled for December 2020 and a back up trip for April 2021. I am not trying to do TPs or look at crowd levels, yet. When I chose our dates originally, I looked at CL. Right now, until there is more data, it is mostly a whole lot of unknowns at this time. For April, I went with the second week of April since I thought the CL looked better, but who knows.
Assume things were back to normal for a minute. I’d say avoid holidays (i.e. Easter) and March to mid-April if you want to avoid all of the winter/spring breaks. Our school breaks in mid-March. I know others do as well.
We just went with the whole when-school-gets-out plan.
I have been cancelled twice now too, and I just can’t deal with the idea that I could be cancelled again in spring because it’s too close to a winter spike for recovery, and school is still insisting on a 14 day quarantine upon return home. We played it safe and just went the full year away. I hate it, but it seemed the best thing to do.
I acted like a full obstinate brat, too and used all of my points, and borrowed a few more to book a 2br villa for 9 nights. I have a very big “f**k it!” attitude about it by now.
I think the crowd calendar won’t be accurate for awhile now. There will probably be restrictions for months, if not a couple of years. Avoid holidays, but other then that, I would pick the nice weather and be sure to stay onsite since those will always get preference. I like the weather in January & February.
I think the discrepancy might have to do with when Easter falls. March and April both have some spring break crowds but a lot of school systems (to my understanding) coordinate their spring break with Easter and so the heaviest crowds tend to be the two weeks leading up to Easter. In years that Easter falls in March, it tends to be the busier month over all vs. years when it falls in April. For 2020 Easter was on 4/12 vs 2021 on 4/4. On the other hand, I’ve heard that after Easter, the crowds thin out. If I were you and was going to take my kids out of school in that general time frame with a goal of avoiding most of the spring break/Easter crowds, I’d probably aim for around the third week of April 2021 to the second week of May or so.
I’m not sure I have much advice other than the fact I,m in the same boat, May trip was cancelled and I Just cancelled our October trip. Rebooked for week of March 29, Spring break for us in NY, which I would normally never consider. But I really don’t want my kids to miss any More school or have to explain to the school district why I’m taking them out for a week. Also, I think the crowd calendar won’t be accurate for a while. I don’t think it will be a normal spring break crowd considering the pandemic and economy. Could be wrong, but at a minimum the weather should be nice. I really hope like OB nurse said schools don’t make kids quarantine for 2 weeks when they return from traveling. I didn’t think of that! I’m hoping the numbers are better by then, and Florida gets COVID under control. If not I’ll just reschedule again for fall of 2021. I’ll get there eventually.
There are a lot of states (and Canadian provinces) that have their spring break in March.
If I remember correctly from last year, someone did a cross reference of all the known spring breaks and there was a six week section between about the second week in March through to mid-April (which was Easter).
I would be curious how the Crowd Calendar accommodates that Spring break is generally scheduled based on when Easter falls? Or do you all think it just simple uses “same time last year” logic?
I think when Easter is in March, the crowds have been much heavier in March than they are when Easter is in April. At least, that’s the way it was in the before-times.
Here’s a blog @SteveBloom did a couple years ago. (I may have missed a newer blog.) It has lots of details explaining how they use many school schedules to determine CL throughout the year, including the never-the-same-twice Spring Break/Easter schedules.
OK, my kids’ spring break is April 5 - 9 and Easter is April 4. Crowd Calendar looks better for that week than for weeks in March. There does not seem to be any benefit in picking a non-break week
So I am thinking we fly out on Easter Sunday to avoid travel crowds (most Easter travelers will be before and after) and then stay at Disney for the week.
So I was supposed to go the week after East this year, so I looked into this a lot.
The week after isn’t AS busy as the week before for sure. But our crowd number slowly increased as our trip got closer. The overall opinion I got was during that week the further you get away from Easter the better the crowds, but to expect some crowds because a lot of people do have break.
But I was looking forward to April in Disney weather, And who know with this next year with traveling. But there’s my pre pandemic info!
Just another thought. I personally know 2 families that had their spring break 2020 cancelled and have re-scheduled for that week in April 2021 as that is our spring break week as well. So perhaps a lot of families are having this thought and rescheduling for that week and thereby it will be crowded. If park reservations system is still in place, perhaps not a problem just be ready to reserve your parks as soon as the window opens.
I’ve never gone at Easter, but I’ve had multiple people tell me to avoid that time of year because it is close to Spring Break, which brings huge crowds. I’m more of a January/February person. Or October-Mid December.
Are these folks who go annually (like me)? In that case their shift to next year is not going to impact what would have already been. Something to keep in mind.
