Hi - I am a DL Magic Key holder planning a trip to WDW for two adults. It’s been 25 yrs since we were there and we had a young child last time. We’re looking at October, and I’m trying to make sense of the crowd calendar and the resort prices for that month.
The crowd calendar has the second week of Oct as mostly 5s and 6s; the third week as 2s and 3s; and the fourth week as 3s. The resort prices increase dramatically for that fourth week but the crowd calendar stays pretty low.
The weekend between the 3rd and 4th weeks is the Run Disney Half Marathon, and the next week ends on Halloween.
Do the crowd calendar numbers “feel right” to those of you with more experience at WDW in late October? I’d have thought the runners would have a bigger impact on crowds the following week. Does anybody think Disney might lower hotel prices for the last week of the month? (hah, I know they won’t, so that’s mostly a rhetorical question)
What your not making allowance for is Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party, which 25 years ago was a mere shadow of what it is today. Attendance in the 3rd and 4th week of October is huge but since it occurs after the park has closed it actually drives the crowd calendar down on party days.
On days with MNSSHP (and MVMCP) MK closes earlier, at 6:00, to the non-party guests. No fireworks for them, nor nighttime parade, instead of being open until something like 10:00. People without park hopper tickets often prefer to go to a park with longer hours (“get their money’s worth”) and avoid MK on party days. This makes for lower crowds on party days.
Be sure you are looking at the CL of the individual parks, not just the overall CL. Also, the time around Columbus Day/Indegenous Peoples Day is a fall break for many schools, and is more crowded.
Thanks, that definitely explains why the 2nd week would be busy. I didn’t realize other parts of the country get a long break in Oct around the holiday. Here some schools get one day off and others don’t get it at all, so it has less effect on DL.
Thanks for the insights on the MNSSHP. I think we’re going to shoot for the 3rd week and first part of the 4th week and just deal with whatever happens on the half marathon weekend. We are planning some non-park days for visiting friends in the area and hanging out at the resorts so those can just be on the days when it’s busier in the parks.
We have almost exclusively traveled in late October for years. The further you can get from Columbus/IP day and the closer you get to November the lower the crowds get and the better the weather gets. I think every party ends up selling out so even though the Halloween ones feel like they should be crazy, they are all the same.
I appreciate the reassurance that late Oct is a good time to go. We aren’t worried about the party nights. I haven’t gotten as far as planning which parks on which days yet, but I would say we might even choose MK on a day that has a party if it means lighter crowds. We’ll prioritize things that are unique at WDW and if we miss out on something we can do at home, like say Peter Pan, it won’t break my heart.