Looking for crowd advice... mid july or mid august 2020

I see the Crowd Level numbers for some days in July are 5/6 and in mid/later August 6s until way late late August… I also looked at other crowd calendars, forgive me, please… and see much higher crowds in July… wondering which is a better bet crowd-wise.

I haven’t been in summer, but the general consensus of a lot of sites I visit for crowd info is that schools start going back in August so by mid to late August enough kids are back in school for crowds to be lower. July is the main month of summer where almost all kids will be off. I’ve seen this in my own life (well my facebook life) b/c where I live all kids start very late Aug or after Labor day and get out in mid June, but where I grew up and most of my FB friends still live all the kids get out in early May and go back the end of July. It boggles my mind that the schedules are so different. :open_mouth:

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By mid-August, southern school systems will be back to school. So less crowds at WDW.

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Check out the free dining offers released today!

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Each crowd calendar has their own way of getting their number. I like to look at multiples to get a better idea of when it is a “slower” time to go. CLs for a specific date aren’t reliable - they can fluctuate up to 2 levels.

FYI – A common misconception about Touring Plans Crowd Levels is that they are an indicator of the number of people in each park. However, they are an indicator of average queue waits at the rides in that park.

A CL 1 can feel like a CL 4 in terms of park capacity, but the queues may be moving quickly. Conversely, you can be in a CL 9 park that feels like a CL 5 because the streets aren’t packed. However, all the queues are super long.

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We went August 18-24, 2019 and found the crowds decreasing every day of our trip. We even saw a CL1 at AK the day we were there. We had great luck beating crowds and getting additional fast passes. We picked August exactly in hopes of lower crowd levels than July.

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If that was this year, I think that may have been an Anomaly as SWGE was days away from opening.

I wouldn’t say it was an anomaly. We’ve gone a few times in the last two weeks of August. You really can notice the crowd levels drop day by day!

Maybe the CL1 was unusual, but we booked before SWGE opening was announced and even then crowd level predictions were on the lower side.

I went back and looked at my notes…(yes, I have notes for when I plan trips - even if I don’t eventually go!)

The late summer this year was an unusually low attendance for WDW. SWGE opening at DLR was a big part of this. It opened to mixed review and large crowds. Plus, WDW hadn’t announced the RotR opening dates yet - would it open on 12/5/19 with the entire land? (no one was 100% sure so ppl held off on bookings.) Then the storms started coming - not the hurricanes… yet.

Free DDP was being offered in August for dates in September to drive hotel bookings due to lower than expected occupancy.

EEMH were being published for all the parks - many took this as a signal that it would insanely crowded and postponed booking until Dec. / holiday trips.

Do I think it will still be a low CL in 2020… probably not. People postponed 2019 summer trips to 2020 to see SWGE with both rides open will be coming out. Plus, there will be at least two more new rides that will have opened - MMRR (3/4/20) and Ratatouille (possibly).

Finally, I love TP but any CL # that is more than 60 days out I no longer trust. Wait and see… it’ll go up. TP only updates about 60 days in advance and copies & pastes the previous years historical info into the future dates.

Is this date official for Ratatouille?? I’d only seen Summer. I’ll be so happy if it is because I’m there the 18th!!

Opps! My bad… I confused my Ratatouille Paris notes with my 2020 notes. I edited… :slightly_frowning_face:

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Thanks for the update anyway!

I’ll still hold out hope that it will be open by 7/18 - or at least the 23rd. :slight_smile: I can be flexible with what parks I hit when!

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