Crowd calendar and planning

[campermom]

Our Disney World trip is Oct 12-16 and the park hours have started posted on the app. I’m not even 100% sure we will end up going, bc even if everything is open it might be so crowded from postponements. (What do I need to know about refunds or changes for special meals if our dates change? Like the pay ahead ones?)

Regardless, I’m going to throw myself into planning. I need some magic.

The crowd calendars probably won’t be accurate since all the patterns will be off, but the stage I’m in right now is determining which park we will do each day. We will have 5 day hoppers and want to spend the most time at MK and HS. I can start dining reservations on April 15.

Which crowd calendar should I use? They say different things.

I’ll also take any advice on Star Wars scheduling—and anything else you want to throw my way!

Our kids will be 11 (loves Star Wars), 9 (might still do princess makeover at Shades of Green) and 5 (all the fun 5 year old things-Mickey. Toy Story etc. My husband doesn’t want to do the Not so Scary party bc it’s so late and seems really pricy. I could be persuaded though if it’s worth it? We tend to NOT to do “take a break midday to rest” maybe we will one day but we tend to start early and go go go.

[nsl]

I wouldn't worry about your meals because you can cancel reservations with no penalty up to 24 hours before your reservation, and if you decide at the last minute not to keep the reservation you can just move it to a future date and then cancel it.

I've never put a ton of stock into crowd calendars with the exception of the ones that reflect Extra Magic Hours, which won't get finalized until much closer to your travel dates. Especially this year I think it's going to be anyone's guess what the first month or two of park operations will look like after it's safe for them to open again.

I would not advise doing the Halloween party. I went last year, and it was pretty disappointing. Lines were longer than they were earlier that afternoon, the park felt extremely crowded, and none of the extra offerings were enough to offset those two big negatives. I vastly preferred doing MK between 2:00-whenever they kicked out non-party guests (I think it was around 6:00) because crowds were low due to people park-hopping away from MK.

[dancingirl21]

I am a big planner and tried to figure out the crowd calendars for our trip last October. I liked Kenny the Pirate and Dad’s WDW crowd calendars best. They were easy to read. That said, I feel like they might be pretty pointless this year, and many of the bloggers have said as much. Generally parks are busier when they are open later or have EMH. Our kids are still little (3 and 6) so leaving around dinner time wasn’t a big deal for us and we would pick our park based on the hours being more limited.

We loved Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party last year. We got to MK around 4 and the kids made it until 10:30, after the first parade. We didn’t find it more crowded than other MK days and the events were fun - trick or treating, villains were out, special parade.

[Covergirl82]

I don't think crowd calendars will be very accurate for the rest of 2020, possibly into 2021. We rescheduled for August 1-9, and will plan to get to the parks when they open and then will do as much as we're able, knowing that it could be extremely busy and will probably be 9th-circle-of-hell hot (and humid). We usually don't do midday breaks, but may do that to go back to the resort and cool off at the pool. We've been to WDW a couple times, so this trip was intended to be for going to Galaxy's Edge and doing all of our favorite things.

For the cost, I would not recommend MNSSHP. We went on Halloween night when my kids were 5.5 and 7, and after having been at the park all day, they were toast by 9 pm. It was also very hard to get around to different rides because of the people crowding by the parade route and all the roped-off walkways (due to the parade). I will say, Halloween is not my favorite holiday, and Disney Villains aren't really my thing, so that may impact my opinion.

Two of our favorite rides are Toy Story Mania and Slinky Dog Dash, so I recommend getting FPs for those. We originally were supposed to be at WDW this week, and when I had originally reserved FPs, we were able to get FPs for the Star Wars Smuggler's Run ride. We're planning to get to HS super early one day to try and get a boarding group for ROTR.

[revolution]

I use Kenny the Pirate and Touring Plans to at least give me a starting point so I'm not feeling like I'm doing it in the dark.

But I think the rest of this year will be a crap shoot.

[revolution]

Oh we did MNSSHP 2 Octobers ago. We loved it! We are usually up and going early in the morning by nature. However, on the party day, we were lazy in the AM and got there just after lunch. And we scheduled a sit down dinner at 5PM. Kids were 10 and 6. We loved it. We stayed late and it was so fun.