Traditionally, I take my kids to WDW for their 13th birthday. My youngest will be 13 in November 2019. She has requested that instead of her 1:1 trip, she would like the whole family to go to DL over October Break 2019. Am I crazy for even thinking about this with the opening of Star Wars? We are not Star Wars people so I could skip that section and be happy. I am a WDW veteran and know the ways to ensure lower crowds and shorter wait times there, but I don’t know the DL ins and outs. Any thoughts?
If you are happy to do the rest of the park & skip Star Wars then I would totally go for it! DL is really laid back & requires much less planning than WDW (no pre-booked FPs, ADRs open at 60 days before and even then some aren’t always ready until closer to 30 days) so you have plenty of time to learn all the ins & outs!
Thanks for the reply. Are the overall resort crowd levels expected to be 10s? Am I looking at a very busy park and hotel situation if we plan this trip?
The crowd calendar only goes to Dec 2018 right now so no idea what 2019 is predicted to be at yet. But usually if you can manage to go when the most passholder blockouts are then you’ll see a dip in the crowd level.
A great week to go is right in between Halloween & before they start the holiday decorations (usually by about the 2nd Fri in Nov). For 2019 that is Nov 8th so going anywhere in the range of Oct 31-Nov 7 would be a small lull in the rest of the resort (but maybe not Star Wars part). If that week doesn’t work for your schedule then looking at the blockout calendar for passes will be your best bet. Disney is changing up the game on that starting in June 2019 & there will be passes that will be blocked out of Disneyland but not DCA so another thing to consider when looking at your dates.
But ultimately my advice is to go when it works for your life schedule because in the end the prediction is just that, a prediction & no one can predict what merchandise or event will be offered spur-of-the-moment causing an influx of local passholders to come for said merchandise/event & no matter what the crowds will be having a plan, arriving early in the day will keep you ahead of the crowds.
You can search historical crowds for the time that you are looking to go for an estimate of crowd levels.