Trying to plan a July '18 trip to DLR

We are planning a 2 day trip to DLR in July. I assumed that visiting the park during the week would be less crowded than on the weekends. However, the crowd calendar shows that Saturday, July 14 has a rating of 4, which is the lowest of all the days in July. Is that because it is a blackout day for annual passholders? Have those of you who frequent the park regularly found that to be accurate? Should I really plan our trip around that date? Any advice would be appreciated.

Yep, Saturday is the lowest crowd day of the week at Disneyland in the summer, and it is due to the blackout days for AP’s. We will be there that Saturday as well, and it should be great!

Thanks! Since Sat is an early entry day for DL, should we visit DCA instead? We will have one park per day tickets and plan on either Friday and Saturday or Saturday and Sunday.

We will be there that Saturday too! However we are those with the dreaded blockout day, so we will be getting dinner and then will enjoy the fireworks from PP rooftop pool area.

Sorry you are blocked! Dinner and fireworks from PPH sounds pretty nice though. We leave Sunday to head to San Diego for a bit.

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Did your tickets not come with a Magic morning? Or are those just park hoppers? If not, my advice would be to rope drop DCA. Another option is to RD DL, but rd the west side of the park (AdventureLand and Frontierland).

SD doesn’t sound half bad either. I cannot get DH down there. He got stuck there for several weeks (years ago) for work and will not go back now.

We love San Diego, but haven’t been in quite a few years. This trip is just my DS14 and me, I like to take one kid each summer to DL and somewhere else close by for a Mother/Child trip while the other kid travels internationally with my Mom. My DH loves San Diego, but not Disney, and would rather use his vacation time for fishing in Alaska or locally, so he stays home. I love taking one kid at a time to DL and each gets to do exactly what they want.

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Agree with both these ladies above that Sat will be a nice break from crowds. Although because of that Sunday is pretty crowded after about 11am – the morning is nice & quiet, but midday thru early evening get very very crowded on Sunday & if it’s a holiday weekend then Sunday will be busy all day long. Friday night gets busy as work gets out but the day & especially the morning, is pretty quiet.

I think if it were my preference I would do Fri/Sat. If you avoid the park that has early entry, that would mean starting in DL on Fri & ending with DCA on Sat, which is just fine. If you wanted to end with DL though (would be my preference) starting on Fri in DCA, even behind early entry crowds isn’t bad all because it’s only open to on-site hotel guests (and there are only 3 hotels) plus, you’ll be in the park with wider walkways for the busier of your 2 nights. Then for DL on Sat you can RD the west side – which isn’t open during early entry so you won’t be behind at all & that part of the park is so relaxing in the morning but doesn’t stay that way after 11am or so.

The trade-off though is that you will be at a slight disadvantage for the slow-loaders in Fantasyland & Tomorrowland (which are the only areas open for early entry) and Fantasyland only has FP for 2 attractions-- Matterhorn & it’s a small world. Tomorrowland has FPs for headliners so Buzz, Space & Star Tours but not for anything else. It’s possible to hit the highlights of those non-FP rides in Fantasyland & Tomorrowland though at the end of the night with not too much wait (save Peter Pan’s long line till the very end getting into line right before park close). Tomorrowland is also really calm during FWs-- a good time to get in line for Astro Orbiter, Autopia or Finding Nemo if those are a priority (& assuming you won’t be watching FWs). So you can use those tips to still enjoy DL on a Sat even if you don’t have early entry.

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We’ll be there in July too. I was surprised to see that July 4th is listed as only a 5 on the crowd calendar. Can that be right? I assume they still have a big fireworks show and other special things?

If I ever question the validity of a CL, I go to the historical calendar to see what the past few years looked like on that day/time period. That usually will tell you if it is way off base or not. Obviously that does not guarantee to that it will be the same this year, but it gives you a better educated guess.

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