Is Friday really less crowded than Thursday right now?!

I’m looking at the historical crowd calendar and its blowing my mind that recently, Fridays have been less crowded than Thursdays. We have one day to do DL next week and can gp either Thursday OR Friday. Logic tells me to pick Thursday and the TP prediction says both days are a 9, but the historical data (and some youtubers have all generally agreed) that Fridays are less crowded. Thoughts? Vacation wise it’s a little better for us to go Thursday, but if it’s a noticeable difference we can swing Friday.
If it helps, we haven’t been for a few years so definitely want to to the Star Wars stuff (and will buy the ILL for ROTR) and will be using Genie+. We plan to rope drop tomorrow land and knock that out and maybe more before using G+ for the rest plus re-rides of whatever we get to before the main crowd sets in. We love thrill rides and will prioritize those over Fantasyland and shows/parades. Will Friday give us a better chance or will it be a wash by rope dropping and using G+? Thanks!!

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Welcome to the forums!

Right now, the difference between the best and worst day of any given week is negligible overall, mostly because of how APRs have evened out the crowds. So, just pick the days that work best for you…and certainly don’t take into consideration how things “used to be” because nothing is how it used to be any longer!

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I’ve been looking at the TP historical data, too. With both the lower Magic Keys blocked out, Mon,tues, Wed, Thurs are often 9/10s and Sundays are 4/10. I can’t explain it. Given that Fridays lately do seem a little lighter than most Thursdays. i might go for Friday. LA Unified starts back Aug 15th. Orange Co school starts Aug 17th.

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When we have gone on Fridays-Sundays this summer it’s been an easy peezy breezy time with lines not ever being backed up for security or entering the parks and the ride lines are all staffed to move them quickly as well.

Mon-Thur has been another story entirely. There’s usually MUCH less staff at security & the turnstiles so the lines are long & the rides are also staffed accordingly. It isn’t so much that the crowds are there more those days, it’s that the staff to manage the crowds isn’t there at the same level and the crowd levels are entirely based off of those wait times (which is partially dependent on the staffing), so definitely consider that in your equation.

In my opinion the difference in the number of people between a Wednesday & and Friday won’t be enough to try to chase the one with less people & it’s far more enjoyable to go when it’s busy, but also when Disney is staffed to be busy & operate more efficiently for it.

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I’m hoping that the school returns has an impact on crowd levels the week of Aug 29 to Sept 1 when I am visiting from out of town, given so many schools in North America are back in class, or starting the week after. We’ve had good luck with crowd levels doing WDW around 2015 using a similar timing. But might not be as good an impact with evening crowds from annual passes/Magic Key lower blackout levels? Already crowd levels on TP went from 3/4 up to 6/7 a few weeks ago.