I really don’t pay attention to CLs anymore. We go enough that we can still have a great trip on a CL10 day (and we did when we went over New Years once). We now tend to go for special events-- like birthdays and runDisney races. I tend to pick specific parks based on park hours, special events. It’s been said a lot but having a good TP is more important than the CL.
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I’m terrible.
I look at best airline options, combined with best resort deals.
Then book.
I don’t really worry about the rest, it all tends to fall into place.
But I’m leaving for my 9th trip in 13 months in two weeks, so if I miss something? I’ll se it in February when we go back.
I’m the worst kind of Disney Guest. 
(or best? I don’t know.)
Some days I’ve gone and not ridden anything, just watched some shows and eaten. On both coasts.
(Last night we went to Disneyland JUST to have dinner at Napa Rose and see Goofy in DCA)
But everyone here has terrific advice. 
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I couldn’t agree more! We are also late-night people. We are the people that are ushered out by security guards because the park has been closed for a while and we should have been gone an hour ago. My most magical pictures are empty Main Street, not first thing in the morning, but last thing at night. This just seems to work best with our schedule!
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A year ago April, a large group of Leftovers had a late Brown Derby reservation, for which we were seated 45 minutes late. Then the kitchen was rather slow that evening. It was Sunday and I was originally going to leave to go home after dinner, but I found a cheap but decent motel online while at the table and said the hell with it, I’ll leave early Monday.
After dinner, we were walking down a deserted Hollywood Boulevard, and noticed an inordinate number of cast members walking behind us. As soon as we passed the turnstiles, the steel gates came down behind us. We got the last tram of the night. We did give ourselves a cheer.
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I also once went to Skipper Canteen with some friends who were going to the Halloween party that night. We couldn’t seem to stop ordering wine, and I think the skipper was pleased enough to run up our tab while he did his side work. I overstayed the party start so long that I was left to my own devices to show myself out.
And before anyone gets his or her personal underthings in a twist, I went directly to the park exit, stopping for nothing. I was on a tight schedule to meet other friends at Top of the World, and dawdling would’ve meant I was stealing party admission, which would’ve caused the immediate collapse of the Disney Company and the seven Biblical plagues to descend on central Florida.
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Really?! I can’t believe it.
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We stay in the Epcot area as well, but my kids are on the other end of the age range so they don’t want to get up, but would rather stay out late. So we do the reverse of your schedule and start at HS or EP & end elsewhere. Either way, it’s really nice to be able to take a break and park hop without having to face Disney transportation 4 times in one day.
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I look at when we would like to go, and look at the CL but I don’t make the decisions for what parks base on that as they can and often will change.
Since most of the trips are for 7 or more nights, we spread out then we go to a park on more than one day. If I am planning on doing TS, these are what helps determine which park for which day when making the dining reservations.
Our next trip is 3/9/19 - 3/16/19 and we are spending 6 days in the parks, no park hopper. The parks we first planned on going to have not really changed, the only change was that we moved MK from 3/16 to 3/14 just so we weren’t in a park on the day we are leaving.
Remember that a touring plan is five times more important vs. the crowd level, so for us, it is doing the touring plans and figuring out what we want to do in a park on a specific date. We had some big changes to the CL but we didn’t change anything because of that.
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We picked the start and end dates of our trip based on our airfare rates. We booked that and our room immediately. I don’t think that’s crazy at all. Airfare can vary $100+ per person from one day of the week to another.
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Illuminating answers here, thanks all!
Our trips are usually based on outside factors because we don’t go to Disney purely to go to Disney (gasp). So our trips are based around runDisney weekends (Marathon, Princess, maybe Wine and Dine), also our Taekwondo National Tournament in the fall. And then any work trips I can finagle in the area! So I don’t really look at crowd levels (maybe when I’m planning FP or dining, but I’m more likely to look at which park has the latest hours because we are not early morning folks).
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